When I reached London I found waiting for me an urgent request that I
should go to Mrs. Strickland’s as soon after dinner as I could. I found
her with Colonel MacAndrew and his wife. Mrs. Strickland’s sister was
older than she, not unlike her, but more faded; and she had the
efficient air, as though she carried the British Empire in her pocket,
which the wives of senior officers acquire from the consciousness of
belonging to a superior caste. Her manner was brisk, and her
good-breeding scarcely concealed her conviction that if you were not a
soldier you might as well be a counter-jumper. She hated the Guards,
whom she thought conceited, and she could not trust herself to speak of
their ladies, who were so remiss in calling. Her gown was dowdy and
expensive.
Mrs. Strickland was plainly nervous.
“Well, tell us your news,” she said.
“I saw your husband. I’m afraid he’s quite made up his mind not to
return.” I paused a little. “He wants to paint.”
“What do you mean?” cried Mrs. Strickland, with the utmost
astonishment.
“Did you never know that he was keen on that sort of thing.”
“He must be as mad as a hatter,” exclaimed the Colonel.
Mrs. Strickland frowned a little. She was searching among her
recollections.
“I remember before we were married he used to potter about with a
paint-box. But you never saw such daubs. We used to chaff him. He had
absolutely no gift for anything like that.”
“Of course it’s only an excuse,” said Mrs. MacAndrew.
Mrs. Strickland pondered deeply for some time. It was quite clear that
she could not make head or tail of my announcement. She had put some
order into the drawing-room by now, her housewifely instincts having
got the better of her dismay; and it no longer bore that deserted look,
like a furnished house long to let, which I had noticed on my first
visit after the catastrophe. But now that I had seen Strickland in
Paris it was difficult to imagine him in those surroundings. I thought
it could hardly have failed to strike them that there was something
incongruous in him.
“But if he wanted to be an artist, why didn’t he say so?” asked Mrs.
Strickland at last. “I should have thought I was the last person to be
unsympathetic to—to aspirations of that kind.”
Mrs. MacAndrew tightened her lips. I imagine that she had never looked
with approval on her sister’s leaning towards persons who cultivated
the arts. She spoke of “culchaw” derisively.
Mrs. Strickland continued:
“After all, if he had any talent I should be the first to encourage it.
I wouldn’t have minded sacrifices. I’d much rather be married to a
painter than to a stockbroker. If it weren’t for the children, I
wouldn’t mind anything. I could be just as happy in a shabby studio in
Chelsea as in this flat.”
“My dear, I have no patience with you,” cried Mrs. MacAndrew. “You
don’t mean to say you believe a word of this nonsense?”
“But I think it’s true,” I put in mildly.
She looked at me with good-humoured contempt.
“A man doesn’t throw up his business and leave his wife and children at
the age of forty to become a painter unless there’s a woman in it. I
suppose he met one of your—artistic friends, and she’s turned his
head.”
A spot of colour rose suddenly to Mrs. Strickland’s pale cheeks.
“What is she like?”
I hesitated a little. I knew that I had a bombshell.
“There isn’t a woman.”
Colonel MacAndrew and his wife uttered expressions of incredulity, and
Mrs. Strickland sprang to her feet.
“Do you mean to say you never saw her?”
“There’s no one to see. He’s quite alone.”
“That’s preposterous,” cried Mrs. MacAndrew.
“I knew I ought to have gone over myself,” said the Colonel. “You can
bet your boots I’d have routed her out fast enough.”
“I wish you had gone over,” I replied, somewhat tartly. “You’d have
seen that every one of your suppositions was wrong. He’s not at a smart
hotel. He’s living in one tiny room in the most squalid way. If he’s
left his home, it’s not to live a gay life. He’s got hardly any money.”
“Do you think he’s done something that we don’t know about, and is
lying doggo on account of the police?”
The suggestion sent a ray of hope in all their breasts, but I would
have nothing to do with it.
“If that were so, he would hardly have been such a fool as to give his
partner his address,” I retorted acidly. “Anyhow, there’s one thing I’m
positive of, he didn’t go away with anyone. He’s not in love. Nothing
is farther from his thoughts.”
There was a pause while they reflected over my words.
“Well, if what you say is true,” said Mrs. MacAndrew at last, “things
aren’t so bad as I thought.”
Mrs. Strickland glanced at her, but said nothing.
She was very pale now, and her fine brow was dark and lowering. I could
not understand the expression of her face. Mrs. MacAndrew continued:
“If it’s just a whim, he’ll get over it.”
“Why don’t you go over to him, Amy?” hazarded the Colonel. “There’s no
reason why you shouldn’t live with him in Paris for a year. We’ll look
after the children. I dare say he’d got stale. Sooner or later he’ll be
quite ready to come back to London, and no great harm will have been
done.”
“I wouldn’t do that,” said Mrs. MacAndrew. “I’d give him all the rope
he wants. He’ll come back with his tail between his legs and settle
down again quite comfortably.” Mrs. MacAndrew looked at her sister
coolly. “Perhaps you weren’t very wise with him sometimes. Men are
queer creatures, and one has to know how to manage them.”
Mrs. MacAndrew shared the common opinion of her sex that a man is
always a brute to leave a woman who is attached to him, but that a
woman is much to blame if he does. _Le cœur a ses raisons que la raison
ne connait pas._
Mrs. Strickland looked slowly from one to another of us.
“He’ll never come back,” she said.
“Oh, my dear, remember what we’ve just heard. He’s been used to comfort
and to having someone to look after him. How long do you think it’ll be
before he gets tired of a scrubby room in a scrubby hotel? Besides, he
hasn’t any money. He must come back.”
“As long as I thought he’d run away with some woman I thought there was
a chance. I don’t believe that sort of thing ever answers. He’d have
got sick to death of her in three months. But if he hasn’t gone because
he’s in love, then it’s finished.”
“Oh, I think that’s awfully subtle,” said the Colonel, putting into the
word all the contempt he felt for a quality so alien to the traditions
of his calling. “Don’t you believe it. He’ll come back, and, as Dorothy
says, I dare say he’ll be none the worse for having had a bit of a
fling.”
“But I don’t want him back,” she said.
“Amy!”
It was anger that had seized Mrs. Strickland, and her pallor was the
pallor of a cold and sudden rage. She spoke quickly now, with little
gasps.
“I could have forgiven it if he’d fallen desperately in love with
someone and gone off with her. I should have thought that natural. I
shouldn’t really have blamed him. I should have thought he was led
away. Men are so weak, and women are so unscrupulous. But this is
different. I hate him. I’ll never forgive him now.”
Colonel MacAndrew and his wife began to talk to her together. They were
astonished. They told her she was mad. They could not understand. Mrs.
Strickland turned desperately to me.
“Don’t _you_ see?” she cried.
“I’m not sure. Do you mean that you could have forgiven him if he’d
left you for a woman, but not if he’s left you for an idea? You think
you’re a match for the one, but against the other you’re helpless?”
Mrs. Strickland gave me a look in which I read no great friendliness,
but did not answer. Perhaps I had struck home. She went on in a low and
trembling voice:
“I never knew it was possible to hate anyone as much as I hate him. Do
you know, I’ve been comforting myself by thinking that however long it
lasted he’d want me at the end? I knew when he was dying he’d send for
me, and I was ready to go; I’d have nursed him like a mother, and at
the last I’d have told him that it didn’t matter, I’d loved him always,
and I forgave him everything.”
I have always been a little disconcerted by the passion women have for
behaving beautifully at the death-bed of those they love. Sometimes it
seems as if they grudge the longevity which postpones their chance of
an effective scene.
“But now—now it’s finished. I’m as indifferent to him as if he were a
stranger. I should like him to die miserable, poor, and starving,
without a friend. I hope he’ll rot with some loathsome disease. I’ve
done with him.”
I thought it as well then to say what Strickland had suggested.
“If you want to divorce him, he’s quite willing to do whatever is
necessary to make it possible.”
“Why should I give him his freedom?”
“I don’t think he wants it. He merely thought it might be more
convenient to you.”
Mrs. Strickland shrugged her shoulders impatiently. I think I was a
little disappointed in her. I expected then people to be more of a
piece than I do now, and I was distressed to find so much
vindictiveness in so charming a creature. I did not realise how motley
are the qualities that go to make up a human being. Now I am well aware
that pettiness and grandeur, malice and charity, hatred and love, can
find place side by side in the same human heart.
I wondered if there was anything I could say that would ease the sense
of bitter humiliation which at present tormented Mrs. Strickland. I
thought I would try.
“You know, I’m not sure that your husband is quite responsible for his
actions. I do not think he is himself. He seems to me to be possessed
by some power which is using him for its own ends, and in whose hold he
is as helpless as a fly in a spider’s web. It’s as though someone had
cast a spell over him. I’m reminded of those strange stories one
sometimes hears of another personality entering into a man and driving
out the old one. The soul lives unstably in the body, and is capable of
mysterious transformations. In the old days they would say Charles
Strickland had a devil.”
Mrs. MacAndrew smoothed down the lap of her gown, and gold bangles fell
over her wrists.
“All that seems to me very far-fetched,” she said acidly. “I don’t deny
that perhaps Amy took her husband a little too much for granted. If she
hadn’t been so busy with her own affairs, I can’t believe that she
wouldn’t have suspected something was the matter. I don’t think that
Alec could have something on his mind for a year or more without my
having a pretty shrewd idea of it.”
The Colonel stared into vacancy, and I wondered whether anyone could be
quite so innocent of guile as he looked.
“But that doesn’t prevent the fact that Charles Strickland is a
heartless beast.” She looked at me severely. “I can tell you why he
left his wife—from pure selfishness and nothing else whatever.”
“That is certainly the simplest explanation,” I said. But I thought it
explained nothing. When, saying I was tired, I rose to go, Mrs.
Strickland made no attempt to detain me.