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- Author: W. Somerset Maugham
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“I tried to speak, but the words wouldn’t come. Strickland didn’t say anything. He went on whistling as though it had nothing to do with him.”
Stroeve stopped again and mopped his face. I kept quite still. I believed him now, and I was astounded. But all the same I could not understand.
Then he told me, in a trembling voice, with the tears pouring down his cheeks, how he had gone up to her, trying to take her in his arms, but she had drawn away and begged him not to touch her. He implored her not to leave him. He told her how passionately he loved her, and reminded her of all the devotion he had lavished upon her. He spoke to her of the happiness of their life. He was not angry with her. He did not reproach her.
“Please let me go quietly, Dirk,” she said at last. “Don’t you understand that I love Strickland? Where he goes I shall go.”
“But you must know that he’ll never make you happy. For your own sake don’t go. You don’t know what you’ve got to look forward to.”
“It’s your fault. You insisted on his coming here.”
He turned to Strickland.
“Have mercy on her,” he implored him. “You can’t let her do anything so mad.”
“She can do as she chooses,” said Strickland. “She’s not forced to come.”
“My choice is made,” she said, in a dull voice.
Strickland’s injurious calm robbed Stroeve of the rest of his self-control. Blind rage seized him, and without knowing what he was doing he flung himself on Strickland. Strickland was taken by surprise and he staggered, but he was very strong, even after his illness, and in a moment, he did not exactly know how, Stroeve found himself on the floor.
“You funny little man,” said Strickland.
Stroeve picked himself up. He noticed that his wife had remained perfectly still, and to be made ridiculous before her increased his humiliation. His spectacles had tumbled off in the struggle, and he could not immediately see them. She picked them up and silently handed them to him. He seemed suddenly to realise his unhappiness, and though he knew he was making himself still more absurd, he began to cry. He hid his face in his hands. The others watched him without a word. They did not move from where they stood.
“Oh, my dear,” he groaned at last, “how can you be so cruel?”
“I can’t help myself, Dirk,” she answered.
“I’ve worshipped you as no woman was ever worshipped before. If in anything I did I displeased you, why didn’t you tell me, and I’d have changed. I’ve done everything I could for you.”
She did not answer. Her face was set, and he saw that he was only boring her. She put on a coat and her hat. She moved towards the door, and he saw that in a moment she would be gone. He went up to her quickly and fell on his knees before her, seizing her hands: he abandoned all self-respect.
“Oh, don’t go, my darling. I can’t live without you; I shall kill myself. If I’ve done anything to offend you I beg you to forgive me. Give me another chance. I’ll try harder still to make you happy.”
“Get up, Dirk. You’re making yourself a perfect fool.”
He staggered to his feet, but still he would not let her go.
“Where are you going?” he said hastily. “You don’t know what Strickland’s place is like. You can’t live there. It would be awful.”
“If I don’t care, I don’t see why you should.”
“Stay a minute longer. I must speak. After all, you can’t grudge me that.”
“What is the good? I’ve made up my mind. Nothing that you can say will make me alter it.”
He gulped, and put his hand to his heart to ease its painful beating.
“I’m not going to ask you to change your mind, but I want you to listen to me for a minute. It’s the last thing I shall ever ask you. Don’t refuse me that.”
She paused, looking at him with those reflective eyes of hers, which now were so different to him. She came back into the studio and leaned against the table.
“Well?”
Stroeve made a great effort to collect himself.
“You must be a little reasonable. You can’t live on air, you know. Strickland hasn’t got a penny.”
“I know.”
“You’ll suffer the most awful privations. You know why he took so long to get well. He was half starved.”
“I can earn money for him.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. I shall find a way.”
A horrible thought passed through the Dutchman’s mind, and he shuddered.
“I think you must be mad. I don’t know what has come over you.”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“Now may I go?”
“Wait one second longer.”
He looked round his studio wearily; he had loved it because her presence had made it gay and homelike; he shut his eyes for an instant; then he gave her a long look as though to impress on his mind the picture of her. He got up and took his hat.
“No; I’ll go.”
“You?”
She was startled. She did not know what he meant.
“I can’t bear to think of you living in that horrible, filthy attic. After all, this is your home just as much as mine. You’ll be comfortable here. You’ll be spared at least the worst privations.”
He went to the drawer in which he kept his money and took out several bank-notes.
“I would like to give you half what I’ve got here.”
He put them on the table. Neither Strickland nor his wife spoke.
Then he recollected something else.
“Will you pack up my clothes and leave them with the concierge? I’ll come and fetch them to-morrow.” He tried to smile.” Goodbye, my dear. I’m grateful for all the happiness you gave me in the past.”
He walked out and closed the door behind him. With my mind’s eye I saw Strickland throw his hat on a table, and, sitting down, begin to smoke a cigarette.
I kept silence for a little while, thinking of what Stroeve had told me. I could not stomach his weakness, and he saw my disapproval. “You know as well as I do how Strickland lived,” he said tremulously. “I couldn’t let her live in those circumstances — I simply couldn’t.”
“That’s your business,” I answered.
“What would you have done?” he asked.
“She went with her eyes open. If she had to put up with certain inconveniences it was her own lookout.”
“Yes; but, you see, you don’t love her.”
“Do you love her still?”
“Oh, more than ever. Strickland isn’t the man to make a woman happy. It can’t last. I want her to know that I shall never fail her.”
“Does that mean that you’re prepared to take her back?”
“I shouldn’t hesitate. Why, she’ll want me more than ever then. When she’s alone and humiliated and broken it would be dreadful if she had nowhere to go.”
He seemed to bear no resentment. I suppose it was commonplace in me that I felt slightly outraged at his lack of spirit. Perhaps he guessed what was in my mind, for he said:
“I couldn’t expect her to love me as I loved her. I’m a buffoon. I’m not the sort of man that women love. I’ve always known that. I can’t blame her if she’s fallen in love with Strickland.”
“You certainly have less vanity than any man I’ve ever known,” I said.
“I love her so much better than myself. It seems to me that when vanity comes into love it can only be because really you love yourself best. After all, it constantly happens that a man when he’s married falls in love with somebody else; when he gets over it he returns to his wife, and she takes him back, and everyone thinks it very natural. Why should it be different with women?”
“I dare say that’s logical,” I smiled, “but most men are made differently, and they can’t.”
But while I talked to Stroeve I was puzzling over the suddenness of the whole affair. I could not imagine that he had had no warning. I remembered the curious look I had seen in Blanche Stroeve’s eyes; perhaps its explanation was that she was growing dimly conscious of a feeling in her heart that surprised and alarmed her.
“Did you have no suspicion before to-day that there was anything between them?” I asked.
He did not answer for a while. There was a pencil on the table, and unconsciously he drew a head on the blotting-paper.
“Please say so, if you hate my asking you questions,” I said.
“It eases me to talk. Oh, if you knew the frightful anguish in my heart.” He threw the pencil down. “Yes, I’ve known it for a fortnight. I knew it before she did.”
“Why on earth didn’t you send Strickland packing?”
“I couldn’t believe it. It seemed so improbable. She couldn’t bear the sight of him. It was more than improbable; it was incredible. I thought it was merely jealousy. You see, I’ve always been jealous, but I trained myself never to show it; I was jealous of every man she knew; I was jealous of you. I knew she didn’t love me as I loved her. That was only natural, wasn’t it? But she allowed me to love her, and that was enough to make me happy. I forced myself to go out for hours together in order to leave them by themselves; I wanted to punish myself for suspicions which were unworthy of me; and when I came back I found they didn’t want me — not Strickland, he didn’t care if I was there or not, but Blanche. She shuddered when I went to kiss her. When at last I was certain I didn’t know what to do; I knew they’d only laugh at me if I made a scene. I thought if I held my tongue and pretended not to see, everything would come right. I made up my mind to get him away quietly, without quarrelling. Oh, if you only knew what I’ve suffered!”
Then he told me again of his asking Strickland to go. He chose his moment carefully, and tried to make his request sound casual; but he could not master the trembling of his voice; and he felt himself that into words that he wished to seem jovial and friendly there crept the bitterness of his jealousy. He had not expected Strickland to take him up on the spot and make his preparations to go there and then; above all, he had not expected his wife’s decision to go with him. I saw that now he wished with all his heart that he had held his tongue. He preferred the anguish of jealousy to the anguish of separation.
“I wanted to kill him, and I only made a fool of myself.”
He was silent for a long time, and then he said what I knew was in his mind.
“If I’d only waited, perhaps it would have gone all right. I shouldn’t have been so impatient. Oh, poor child, what have I driven her to?”
I shrugged my shoulders, but did not speak. I had no sympathy for Blanche Stroeve, but knew that it would only pain poor Dirk if I told him exactly what I thought of her.
He had reached that stage of exhaustion when he could not stop talking. He went over again every word of the scene. Now something occurred to him that he had not told me before; now he discussed what he ought to have said instead of what he did say; then he lamented his blindness. He regretted that he had done this,
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