When I left him, after we had buried poor Blanche, Stroeve walked into
the house with a heavy heart. Something impelled him to go to the
studio, some obscure desire for self-torture, and yet he dreaded the
anguish that he foresaw. He dragged himself up the stairs; his feet
seemed unwilling to carry him; and outside the door he lingered for a
long time, trying to summon up courage to go in. He felt horribly sick.
He had an impulse to run down the stairs after me and beg me to go in
with him; he had a feeling that there was somebody in the studio. He
remembered how often he had waited for a minute or two on the landing
to get his breath after the ascent, and how absurdly his impatience to
see Blanche had taken it away again. To see her was a delight that
never staled, and even though he had not been out an hour he was as
excited at the prospect as if they had been parted for a month.
Suddenly he could not believe that she was dead. What had happened
could only be a dream, a frightful dream; and when he turned the key
and opened the door, he would see her bending slightly over the table
in the gracious attitude of the woman in Chardin’s _Benedicite_, which
always seemed to him so exquisite. Hurriedly he took the key out of his
pocket, opened, and walked in.
The apartment had no look of desertion. His wife’s tidiness was one of
the traits which had so much pleased him; his own upbringing had given
him a tender sympathy for the delight in orderliness; and when he had
seen her instinctive desire to put each thing in its appointed place it
had given him a little warm feeling in his heart. The bedroom looked as
though she had just left it: the brushes were neatly placed on the
toilet-table, one on each side of the comb; someone had smoothed down
the bed on which she had spent her last night in the studio; and her
nightdress in a little case lay on the pillow. It was impossible to
believe that she would never come into that room again.
But he felt thirsty, and went into the kitchen to get himself some
water. Here, too, was order. On a rack were the plates that she had
used for dinner on the night of her quarrel with Strickland, and they
had been carefully washed. The knives and forks were put away in a
drawer. Under a cover were the remains of a piece of cheese, and in a
tin box was a crust of bread. She had done her marketing from day to
day, buying only what was strictly needful, so that nothing was left
over from one day to the next. Stroeve knew from the enquiries made by
the police that Strickland had walked out of the house immediately
after dinner, and the fact that Blanche had washed up the things as
usual gave him a little thrill of horror. Her methodicalness made her
suicide more deliberate. Her self-possession was frightening. A sudden
pang seized him, and his knees felt so weak that he almost fell. He
went back into the bedroom and threw himself on the bed. He cried out
her name.
“Blanche. Blanche.”
The thought of her suffering was intolerable. He had a sudden vision of
her standing in the kitchen—it was hardly larger than a
cupboard—washing the plates and glasses, the forks and spoons, giving
the knives a rapid polish on the knife-board; and then putting
everything away, giving the sink a scrub, and hanging the dish-cloth up
to dry—it was there still, a gray torn rag; then looking round to see
that everything was clean and nice. He saw her roll down her sleeves
and remove her apron—the apron hung on a peg behind the door—and take
the bottle of oxalic acid and go with it into the bedroom.
The agony of it drove him up from the bed and out of the room. He went
into the studio. It was dark, for the curtains had been drawn over the
great window, and he pulled them quickly back; but a sob broke from him
as with a rapid glance he took in the place where he had been so happy.
Nothing was changed here, either. Strickland was indifferent to his
surroundings, and he had lived in the other’s studio without thinking
of altering a thing. It was deliberately artistic. It represented
Stroeve’s idea of the proper environment for an artist. There were bits
of old brocade on the walls, and the piano was covered with a piece of
silk, beautiful and tarnished; in one corner was a copy of the Venus of
Milo, and in another of the Venus of the Medici. Here and there was an
Italian cabinet surmounted with Delft, and here and there a bas-relief.
In a handsome gold frame was a copy of Velasquez’ Innocent X., that
Stroeve had made in Rome, and placed so as to make the most of their
decorative effect were a number of Stroeve’s pictures, all in splendid
frames. Stroeve had always been very proud of his taste. He had never
lost his appreciation for the romantic atmosphere of a studio, and
though now the sight of it was like a stab in his heart, without
thinking what he was at, he changed slightly the position of a Louis
XV. table which was one of his treasures. Suddenly he caught sight of a
canvas with its face to the wall. It was a much larger one than he
himself was in the habit of using, and he wondered what it did there.
He went over to it and leaned it towards him so that he could see the
painting. It was a nude. His heart began to beat quickly, for he
guessed at once that it was one of Strickland’s pictures. He flung it
back against the wall angrily—what did he mean by leaving it there?—but
his movement caused it to fall, face downwards, on the ground. No mater
whose the picture, he could not leave it there in the dust, and he
raised it; but then curiosity got the better of him. He thought he
would like to have a proper look at it, so he brought it along and set
it on the easel. Then he stood back in order to see it at his ease.
He gave a gasp. It was the picture of a woman lying on a sofa, with one
arm beneath her head and the other along her body; one knee was raised,
and the other leg was stretched out. The pose was classic. Stroeve’s
head swam. It was Blanche. Grief and jealousy and rage seized him, and
he cried out hoarsely; he was inarticulate; he clenched his fists and
raised them threateningly at an invisible enemy. He screamed at the top
of his voice. He was beside himself. He could not bear it. That was too
much. He looked round wildly for some instrument; he wanted to hack the
picture to pieces; it should not exist another minute. He could see
nothing that would serve his purpose; he rummaged about his painting
things; somehow he could not find a thing; he was frantic. At last he
came upon what he sought, a large scraper, and he pounced on it with a
cry of triumph. He seized it as though it were a dagger, and ran to the
picture.
As Stroeve told me this he became as excited as when the incident
occurred, and he took hold of a dinner-knife on the table between us,
and brandished it. He lifted his arm as though to strike, and then,
opening his hand, let it fall with a clatter to the ground. He looked
at me with a tremulous smile. He did not speak.
“Fire away,” I said.
“I don’t know what happened to me. I was just going to make a great
hole in the picture, I had my arm all ready for the blow, when suddenly
I seemed to see it.”
“See what?”
“The picture. It was a work of art. I couldn’t touch it. I was afraid.”
Stroeve was silent again, and he stared at me with his mouth open and
his round blue eyes starting out of his head.
“It was a great, a wonderful picture. I was seized with awe. I had
nearly committed a dreadful crime. I moved a little to see it better,
and my foot knocked against the scraper. I shuddered.”
I really felt something of the emotion that had caught him. I was
strangely impressed. It was as though I were suddenly transported into
a world in which the values were changed. I stood by, at a loss, like a
stranger in a land where the reactions of man to familiar things are
all different from those he has known. Stroeve tried to talk to me
about the picture, but he was incoherent, and I had to guess at what he
meant. Strickland had burst the bonds that hitherto had held him. He
had found, not himself, as the phrase goes, but a new soul with
unsuspected powers. It was not only the bold simplification of the
drawing which showed so rich and so singular a personality; it was not
only the painting, though the flesh was painted with a passionate
sensuality which had in it something miraculous; it was not only the
solidity, so that you felt extraordinarily the weight of the body;
there was also a spirituality, troubling and new, which led the
imagination along unsuspected ways, and suggested dim empty spaces, lit
only by the eternal stars, where the soul, all naked, adventured
fearful to the discovery of new mysteries.
If I am rhetorical it is because Stroeve was rhetorical. (Do we not
know that man in moments of emotion expresses himself naturally in the
terms of a novelette?) Stroeve was trying to express a feeling which he
had never known before, and he did not know how to put it into common
terms. He was like the mystic seeking to describe the ineffable. But
one fact he made clear to me; people talk of beauty lightly, and having
no feeling for words, they use that one carelessly, so that it loses
its force; and the thing it stands for, sharing its name with a hundred
trivial objects, is deprived of dignity. They call beautiful a dress, a
dog, a sermon; and when they are face to face with Beauty cannot
recognise it. The false emphasis with which they try to deck their
worthless thoughts blunts their susceptibilities. Like the charlatan
who counterfeits a spiritual force he has sometimes felt, they lose the
power they have abused. But Stroeve, the unconquerable buffoon, had a
love and an understanding of beauty which were as honest and sincere as
was his own sincere and honest soul. It meant to him what God means to
the believer, and when he saw it he was afraid.
“What did you say to Strickland when you saw him?”
“I asked him to come with me to Holland.”
I was dumbfounded. I could only look at Stroeve in stupid amazement.
“We both loved Blanche. There would have been room for him in my
mother’s house. I think the company of poor, simple people would have
done his soul a great good. I think he might have learnt from them
something that would be very useful to him.”
“What did he say?”
“He smiled a little. I suppose he thought me very silly. He said he had
other fish to fry.”
I could have wished that Strickland had used some other phrase to
indicate his refusal.
“He gave me the picture of Blanche.”
I wondered why Strickland had done that. But I made no remark, and for
some time we kept silence.
“What have you done with all your things?” I said at last.
“I got a Jew in, and he gave me a round sum for the lot. I’m taking my
pictures home with me. Beside them I own nothing in the world now but a
box of clothes and a few books.”
“I’m glad you’re going home,” I said.
I felt that his chance was to put all the past behind him. I hoped that
the grief which now seemed intolerable would be softened by the lapse
of time, and a merciful forgetfulness would help him to take up once
more the burden of life. He was young still, and in a few years he
would look back on all his misery with a sadness in which there would
be something not unpleasurable. Sooner or later he would marry some
honest soul in Holland, and I felt sure he would be happy. I smiled at
the thought of the vast number of bad pictures he would paint before he
died.
Next day I saw him off for Amsterdam.