________________________________________________
_ Next day we moved Strickland. It needed a good deal of
firmness and still more patience to induce him to come, but he
was really too ill to offer any effective resistance to
Stroeve's entreaties and to my determination. We dressed him,
while he feebly cursed us, got him downstairs, into a cab, and
eventually to Stroeve's studio. He was so exhausted by the
time we arrived that he allowed us to put him to bed without a word.
He was ill for six weeks. At one time it looked as
though he could not live more than a few hours, and I am
convinced that it was only through the Dutchman's doggedness
that he pulled through. I have never known a more difficult
patient. It was not that he was exacting and querulous;
on the contrary, he never complained, he asked for nothing,
he was perfectly silent; but he seemed to resent the care that
was taken of him; he received all inquiries about his feelings
or his needs with a jibe, a sneer, or an oath. I found him
detestable, and as soon as he was out of danger I had no
hesitation in telling him so.
"Go to hell," he answered briefly.
Dirk Stroeve, giving up his work entirely, nursed Strickland
with tenderness and sympathy. He was dexterous to make him
comfortable, and he exercised a cunning of which I should
never have thought him capable to induce him to take the
medicines prescribed by the doctor. Nothing was too much
trouble for him. Though his means were adequate to the needs
of himself and his wife, he certainly had no money to waste;
but now he was wantonly extravagant in the purchase of
delicacies, out of season and dear, which might tempt
Strickland's capricious appetite. I shall never forget the
tactful patience with which he persuaded him to take nourishment.
He was never put out by Strickland's rudeness;
if it was merely sullen, he appeared not to notice it; if it
was aggressive, he only chuckled. When Strickland, recovering
somewhat, was in a good humour and amused himself by laughing
at him, he deliberately did absurd things to excite his ridicule.
Then he would give me little happy glances, so that
I might notice in how much better form the patient was.
Stroeve was sublime.
But it was Blanche who most surprised me. She proved herself
not only a capable, but a devoted nurse. There was nothing in
her to remind you that she had so vehemently struggled against
her husband's wish to bring Strickland to the studio.
She insisted on doing her share of the offices needful to the sick.
She arranged his bed so that it was possible to change the
sheet without disturbing him. She washed him. When I
remarked on her competence, she told me with that pleasant
little smile of hers that for a while she had worked in a hospital.
She gave no sign that she hated Strickland so desperately.
She did not speak to him much, but she was quick to
forestall his wants. For a fortnight it was necessary that
someone should stay with him all night, and she took turns at
watching with her husband. I wondered what she thought during
the long darkness as she sat by the bedside. Strickland was a
weird figure as he lay there, thinner than ever, with his
ragged red beard and his eyes staring feverishly into vacancy;
his illness seemed to have made them larger, and they had an
unnatural brightness.
"Does he ever talk to you in the night?" I asked her once.
"Never."
"Do you dislike him as much as you did?"
"More, if anything."
She looked at me with her calm gray eyes. Her expression was
so placid, it was hard to believe that she was capable of the
violent emotion I had witnessed.
"Has he ever thanked you for what you do for him?"
"No," she smiled.
"He's inhuman."
"He's abominable."
Stroeve was, of course, delighted with her. He could not do
enough to show his gratitude for the whole-hearted devotion
with which she had accepted the burden he laid on her.
But he was a little puzzled by the behaviour of Blanche and
Strickland towards one another.
"Do you know, I've seen them sit there for hours together
without saying a word?"
On one occasion, when Strickland was so much better that in a
day or two he was to get up, I sat with them in the studio.
Dirk and I were talking. Mrs. Stroeve sewed, and I thought I
recognised the shirt she was mending as Strickland's. He lay
on his back; he did not speak. Once I saw that his eyes were
fixed on Blanche Stroeve, and there was in them a curious irony.
Feeling their gaze, she raised her own, and for a moment
they stared at one another. I could not quite understand
her expression. Her eyes had in them a strange perplexity,
and perhaps -- but why? -- alarm. In a moment Strickland
looked away and idly surveyed the ceiling, but she continued
to stare at him, and now her look was quite inexplicable.
In a few days Strickland began to get up. He was nothing but
skin and bone. His clothes hung upon him like rags on a
scarecrow. With his untidy beard and long hair, his features,
always a little larger than life, now emphasised by illness,
he had an extraordinary aspect; but it was so odd that it was
not quite ugly. There was something monumental in his
ungainliness. I do not know how to express precisely the
impression he made upon me. It was not exactly spirituality
that was obvious, though the screen of the flesh seemed almost
transparent, because there was in his face an outrageous
sensuality; but, though it sounds nonsense, it seemed as
though his sensuality were curiously spiritual. There was in
him something primitive. He seemed to partake of those
obscure forces of nature which the Greeks personified in
shapes part human and part beast, the satyr and the faun.
I thought of Marsyas, whom the god flayed because he had dared
to rival him in song. Strickland seemed to bear in his heart
strange harmonies and unadventured patterns, and I foresaw for
him an end of torture and despair. I had again the feeling
that he was possessed of a devil; but you could not say that
it was a devil of evil, for it was a primitive force that
existed before good and ill.
He was still too weak to paint, and he sat in the studio,
silent, occupied with God knows what dreams, or reading.
The books he liked were queer; sometimes I would find him poring
over the poems of Mallarme, and he read them as a child reads,
forming the words with his lips, and I wondered what strange
emotion he got from those subtle cadences and obscure phrases;
and again I found him absorbed in the detective novels of Gaboriau.
I amused myself by thinking that in his choice of books
he showed pleasantly the irreconcilable sides of his
fantastic nature. It was singular to notice that even in the
weak state of his body he had no thought for its comfort.
Stroeve liked his ease, and in his studio were a couple of
heavily upholstered arm-chairs and a large divan.
Strickland would not go near them, not from any affectation
of stoicism, for I found him seated on a three-legged stool
when I went into the studio one day and he was alone,
but because he did not like them. For choice he sat on a
kitchen chair without arms. It often exasperated me to see him.
I never knew a man so entirely indifferent to his surroundings. _
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