Delphi Collected Works of W. Somerset Maugham (Illustrated)

by William Somerset Maugham

  “I don’t know. I want him to come back. If he’ll do that we’ll let bygones be bygones. After all, we’ve been married for seventeen years. I’m a broadminded woman. I wouldn’t have minded what he did as long as I knew nothing about it. He must know that his infatuation won’t last. If he’ll come back now everything can be smoothed over, and no one will know anything about it.”

  It chilled me a little that Mrs. Strickland should be concerned with gossip, for I did not know then how great a part is played in women’s life by the opinion of others. It throws a shadow of insincerity over their most deeply felt emotions.

  It was known where Strickland was staying. His partner, in a violent letter, sent to his bank, had taunted him with hiding his whereabouts: and Strickland, in a cynical and humourous reply, had told his partner exactly where to find him. He was apparently living in an Hotel.

  “I’ve never heard of it,” said Mrs. Strickland. “But Fred knows it well. He says it’s very expensive.”

  She flushed darkly. I imagined that she saw her husband installed in a luxurious suite of rooms, dining at one smart restaurant after another, and she pictured his days spent at race-meetings and his evenings at the play.

  “It can’t go on at his age,” she said. “After all, he’s forty. I could understand it in a young man, but I think it’s horrible in a man of his years, with children who are nearly grown up. His health will never stand it.”

  Anger struggled in her breast with misery.

  “Tell him that our home cries out for him. Everything is just the same, and yet everything is different. I can’t live without him. I’d sooner kill myself. Talk to him about the past, and all we’ve gone through together. What am I to say to the children when they ask for him? His room is exactly as it was when he left it. It’s waiting for him. We’re all waiting for him.”

  Now she told me exactly what I should say. She gave me elaborate answers to every possible observation of his.

  “You will do everything you can for me?” she said pitifully. “Tell him what a state I’m in.”

  I saw that she wished me to appeal to his sympathies by every means in my power. She was weeping freely. I was extraordinarily touched. I felt indignant at Strickland’s cold cruelty, and I promised to do all I could to bring him back. I agreed to go over on the next day but one, and to stay in Paris till I had achieved something. Then, as it was growing late and we were both exhausted by so much emotion, I left her.

  Chapter XI

  During the journey I thought over my errand with misgiving. Now that I was free from the spectacle of Mrs. Strickland’s distress I could consider the matter more calmly. I was puzzled by the contradictions that I saw in her behaviour. She was very unhappy, but to excite my sympathy she was able to make a show of her unhappiness. It was evident that she had been prepared to weep, for she had provided herself with a sufficiency of handkerchiefs; I admired her forethought, but in retrospect it made her tears perhaps less moving. I could not decide whether she desired the return of her husband because she loved him, or because she dreaded the tongue of scandal; and I was perturbed by the suspicion that the anguish of love contemned was alloyed in her broken heart with the pangs, sordid to my young mind, of wounded vanity. I had not yet learnt how contradictory is human nature; I did not know how much pose there is in the sincere, how much baseness in the noble, nor how much goodness in the reprobate.

  But there was something of an adventure in my trip, and my spirits rose as I approached Paris. I saw myself, too, from the dramatic standpoint, and I was pleased with my role of the trusted friend bringing back the errant husband to his forgiving wife. I made up my mind to see Strickland the following evening, for I felt instinctively that the hour must be chosen with delicacy. An appeal to the emotions is little likely to be effectual before luncheon. My own thoughts were then constantly occupied with love, but I never could imagine connubial bliss till after tea.

  I enquired at my hotel for that in which Charles Strickland was living. It was called the Hotel des Belges. But the concierge, somewhat to my surprise, had never heard of it. I had understood from Mrs. Strickland that it was a large and sumptuous place at the back of the Rue de Rivoli. We looked it out in the directory. The only hotel of that name was in the Rue des Moines. The quarter was not fashionable; it was not even respectable. I shook my head.

  “I’m sure that’s not it,” I said.

  The concierge shrugged his shoulders. There was no other hotel of that name in Paris. It occurred to me that Strickland had concealed his address, after all. In giving his partner the one I knew he was perhaps playing a trick on him. I do not know why I had an inkling that it would appeal to Strickland’s sense of humour to bring a furious stockbroker over to Paris on a fool’s errand to an ill-famed house in a mean street. Still, I thought I had better go and see. Next day about six o’clock I took a cab to the Rue des Moines, but dismissed it at the corner, since I preferred to walk to the hotel and look at it before I went in. It was a street of small shops subservient to the needs of poor people, and about the middle of it, on the left as I walked down, was the Hotel des Belges. My own hotel was modest enough, but it was magnificent in comparison with this. It was a tall, shabby building, that cannot have been painted for years, and it had so bedraggled an air that the houses on each side of it looked neat and clean. The dirty windows were all shut. It was not here that Charles Strickland lived in guilty splendour with the unknown charmer for whose sake he had abandoned honour and duty. I was vexed, for I felt that I had been made a fool of, and I nearly turned away without making an enquiry. I went in only to be able to tell Mrs. Strickland that I had done my best.

  The door was at the side of a shop. It stood open, and just within was a sign: Bureau au premier. I walked up narrow stairs, and on the landing found a sort of box, glassed in, within which were a desk and a couple of chairs. There was a bench outside, on which it might be presumed the night porter passed uneasy nights. There was no one about, but under an electric bell was written Garcon. I rang, and presently a waiter appeared. He was a young man with furtive eyes and a sullen look. He was in shirt-sleeves and carpet slippers.

  I do not know why I made my enquiry as casual as possible.

  “Does Mr. Strickland live here by any chance?” I asked.

  “Number thirty-two. On the sixth floor.”

  I was so surprised that for a moment I did not answer.

  “Is he in?”

  The waiter looked at a board in the bureau.

  “He hasn’t left his key. Go up and you’ll see.”

  I thought it as well to put one more question.

  “Madame est la?”

  “Monsieur est seul.”

  The waiter looked at me suspiciously as I made my way upstairs. They were dark and airless. There was a foul and musty smell. Three flights up a Woman in a dressing-gown, with touzled hair, opened a door and looked at me silently as I passed. At length I reached the sixth floor, and knocked at the door numbered thirty-two. There was a sound within, and the door was partly opened. Charles Strickland stood before me. He uttered not a word. He evidently did not know me.

  I told him my name. I tried my best to assume an airy manner.

  “You don’t remember me. I had the pleasure of dining with you last July.”

  “Come in,” he said cheerily. “I’m delighted to see you. Take a pew.”

  I entered. It was a very small room, overcrowded with furniture of the style which the French know as Louis Philippe. There was a large wooden bedstead on which was a billowing red eiderdown, and there was a large wardrobe, a round table, a very small washstand, and two stuffed chairs covered with red rep. Everything was dirty and shabby. There was no sign of the abandoned luxury that Colonel MacAndrew had so confidently described. Strickland threw on the floor the clothes that burdened one of the chairs, and I sat down on it.

  “What can I do for you?” he asked.

  In that small room he seemed even bigger than I remembered
him. He wore an old Norfolk jacket, and he had not shaved for several days. When last I saw him he was spruce enough, but he looked ill at ease: now, untidy and ill-kempt, he looked perfectly at home. I did not know how he would take the remark I had prepared.

  “I’ve come to see you on behalf of your wife.”

  “I was just going out to have a drink before dinner. You’d better come too. Do you like absinthe?”

  “I can drink it.”

  “Come on, then.”

  He put on a bowler hat much in need of brushing.

  “We might dine together. You owe me a dinner, you know.”

  “Certainly. Are you alone?”

  I flattered myself that I had got in that important question very naturally.

  “Oh yes. In point of fact I’ve not spoken to a soul for three days. My French isn’t exactly brilliant.”

  I wondered as I preceded him downstairs what had happened to the little lady in the tea-shop. Had they quarrelled already, or was his infatuation passed? It seemed hardly likely if, as appeared, he had been taking steps for a year to make his desperate plunge. We walked to the Avenue de Clichy, and sat down at one of the tables on the pavement of a large cafe.

  Chapter XII

  The Avenue de Clichy was crowded at that hour, and a lively fancy might see in the passers-by the personages of many a sordid romance. There were clerks and shopgirls; old fellows who might have stepped out of the pages of Honore de Balzac; members, male and female, of the professions which make their profit of the frailties of mankind. There is in the streets of the poorer quarters of Paris a thronging vitality which excites the blood and prepares the soul for the unexpected.

  “Do you know Paris well?” I asked.

  “No. We came on our honeymoon. I haven’t been since.”

  “How on earth did you find out your hotel?”

  “It was recommended to me. I wanted something cheap.”

  The absinthe came, and with due solemnity we dropped water over the melting sugar.

  “I thought I’d better tell you at once why I had come to see you,” I said, not without embarrassment.

  His eyes twinkled. “I thought somebody would come along sooner or later. I’ve had a lot of letters from Amy.”

  “Then you know pretty well what I’ve got to say.”

  “I’ve not read them.”

  I lit a cigarette to give myself a moment’s time. I did not quite know now how to set about my mission. The eloquent phrases I had arranged, pathetic or indignant, seemed out of place on the Avenue de Clichy. Suddenly he gave a chuckle.

  “Beastly job for you this, isn’t it?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” I answered.

  “Well, look here, you get it over, and then we’ll have a jolly evening.”

  I hesitated.

  “Has it occurred to you that your wife is frightfully unhappy?”

  “She’ll get over it.”

  I cannot describe the extraordinary callousness with which he made this reply. It disconcerted me, but I did my best not to show it. I adopted the tone used by my Uncle Henry, a clergyman, when he was asking one of his relatives for a subscription to the Additional Curates Society.

  “You don’t mind my talking to you frankly?”

  He shook his head, smiling.

  “Has she deserved that you should treat her like this?”

  “No.”

  “Have you any complaint to make against her?”

  “None.”

  “Then, isn’t it monstrous to leave her in this fashion, after seventeen years of married life, without a fault to find with her?”

  “Monstrous.”

  I glanced at him with surprise. His cordial agreement with all I said cut the ground from under my feet. It made my position complicated, not to say ludicrous. I was prepared to be persuasive, touching, and hortatory, admonitory and expostulating, if need be vituperative even, indignant and sarcastic; but what the devil does a mentor do when the sinner makes no bones about confessing his sin? I had no experience, since my own practice has always been to deny everything.

  “What, then?” asked Strickland.

  I tried to curl my lip.

  “Well, if you acknowledge that, there doesn’t seem much more to be said.”

  “I don’t think there is.”

  I felt that I was not carrying out my embassy with any great skill. I was distinctly nettled.

  “Hang it all, one can’t leave a woman without a bob.”

  “Why not?”

  “How is she going to live?”

  “I’ve supported her for seventeen years. Why shouldn’t she support herself for a change?”

  “She can’t.”

  “Let her try.”

  Of course there were many things I might have answered to this. I might have spoken of the economic position of woman, of the contract, tacit and overt, which a man accepts by his marriage, and of much else; but I felt that there was only one point which really signified.

  “Don’t you care for her any more?”

  “Not a bit,” he replied.

  The matter was immensely serious for all the parties concerned, but there was in the manner of his answer such a cheerful effrontery that I had to bite my lips in order not to laugh. I reminded myself that his behaviour was abominable. I worked myself up into a state of moral indignation.

  “Damn it all, there are your children to think of. They’ve never done you any harm. They didn’t ask to be brought into the world. If you chuck everything like this, they’ll be thrown on the streets.

  “They’ve had a good many years of comfort. It’s much more than the majority of children have. Besides, somebody will look after them. When it comes to the point, the MacAndrews will pay for their schooling.”

  “But aren’t you fond of them? They’re such awfully nice kids. Do you mean to say you don’t want to have anything more to do with them?”

  “I liked them all right when they were kids, but now they’re growing up I haven’t got any particular feeling for them.”

  “It’s just inhuman.”

  “I dare say.”

  “You don’t seem in the least ashamed.”

  “I’m not.”

  I tried another tack.

  “Everyone will think you a perfect swine.”

  “Let them.”

  “Won’t it mean anything to you to know that people loathe and despise you?”

  “No.”

  His brief answer was so scornful that it made my question, natural though it was, seem absurd. I reflected for a minute or two.

  “I wonder if one can live quite comfortably when one’s conscious of the disapproval of one’s fellows? Are you sure it won’t begin to worry you? Everyone has some sort of a conscience, and sooner or later it will find you out. Supposing your wife died, wouldn’t you be tortured by remorse?”

  He did not answer, and I waited for some time for him to speak. At last I had to break the silence myself.

  “What have you to say to that?”

  “Only that you’re a damned fool.”

  “At all events, you can be forced to support your wife and children,” I retorted, somewhat piqued. “I suppose the law has some protection to offer them.”

  “Can the law get blood out of a stone? I haven’t any money. I’ve got about a hundred pounds.”

  I began to be more puzzled than before. It was true that his hotel pointed to the most straitened circumstances.

  “What are you going to do when you’ve spent that?”

  “Earn some.”

  He was perfectly cool, and his eyes kept that mocking smile which made all I said seem rather foolish. I paused for a little while to consider what I had better say next. But it was he who spoke first.

  “Why doesn’t Amy marry again? She’s comparatively young, and she’s not unattractive. I can recommend her as an excellent wife. If she wants to divorce me I don’t mind giving her the necessary grounds.”

  Now it was my turn t
o smile. He was very cunning, but it was evidently this that he was aiming at. He had some reason to conceal the fact that he had run away with a woman, and he was using every precaution to hide her whereabouts. I answered with decision.

  “Your wife says that nothing you can do will ever induce her to divorce you. She’s quite made up her mind. You can put any possibility of that definitely out of your head.”

  He looked at me with an astonishment that was certainly not feigned. The smile abandoned his lips, and he spoke quite seriously.

  “But, my dear fellow, I don’t care. It doesn’t matter a twopenny damn to me one way or the other.”

  I laughed.

  “Oh, come now; you mustn’t think us such fools as all that. We happen to know that you came away with a woman.”

  He gave a little start, and then suddenly burst into a shout of laughter. He laughed so uproariously that people sitting near us looked round, and some of them began to laugh too.

  “I don’t see anything very amusing in that.”

  “Poor Amy,” he grinned.

  Then his face grew bitterly scornful.

  “What poor minds women have got! Love. It’s always love. They think a man leaves only because he wants others. Do you think I should be such a fool as to do what I’ve done for a woman?”

  “Do you mean to say you didn’t leave your wife for another woman?”

  “Of course not.”

  “On your word of honour?”

  I don’t know why I asked for that. It was very ingenuous of me.

  “On my word of honour.”

  “Then, what in God’s name have you left her for?”

  “I want to paint.”

  I looked at him for quite a long time. I did not understand. I thought he was mad. It must be remembered that I was very young, and I looked upon him as a middle-aged man. I forgot everything but my own amazement.

  “But you’re forty.”

  “That’s what made me think it was high time to begin.”

  “Have you ever painted?”

  “I rather wanted to be a painter when I was a boy, but my father made me go into business because he said there was no money in art. I began to paint a bit a year ago. For the last year I’ve been going to some classes at night.”