________________________________________________
_ Next day, though I pressed him to remain, Stroeve left me.
I offered to fetch his things from the studio, but he insisted
on going himself; I think he hoped they had not thought of
getting them together, so that he would have an opportunity of
seeing his wife again and perhaps inducing her to come back to him.
But he found his traps waiting for him in the porter's
lodge, and the concierge told him that Blanche had gone out.
I do not think he resisted the temptation of giving her an
account of his troubles. I found that he was telling them to
everyone he knew; he expected sympathy, but only excited
ridicule.
He bore himself most unbecomingly. Knowing at what time his
wife did her shopping, one day, unable any longer to bear not
seeing her, he waylaid her in the street. She would not speak
to him, but he insisted on speaking to her. He spluttered out
words of apology for any wrong he had committed towards her;
he told her he loved her devotedly and begged her to return to him.
She would not answer; she walked hurriedly, with averted
face. I imagined him with his fat little legs trying to keep
up with her. Panting a little in his haste, he told her how
miserable he was; he besought her to have mercy on him;
he promised, if she would forgive him, to do everything she
wanted. He offered to take her for a journey. He told her
that Strickland would soon tire of her. When he repeated to
me the whole sordid little scene I was outraged. He had shown
neither sense nor dignity. He had omitted nothing that could
make his wife despise him. There is no cruelty greater than a
woman's to a man who loves her and whom she does not love;
she has no kindness then, no tolerance even, she has only an
insane irritation. Blanche Stroeve stopped suddenly, and as
hard as she could slapped her husband's face. She took
advantage of his confusion to escape, and ran up the stairs to
the studio. No word had passed her lips.
When he told me this he put his hand to his cheek as though he
still felt the smart of the blow, and in his eyes was a pain
that was heartrending and an amazement that was ludicrous.
He looked like an overblown schoolboy, and though I felt so sorry
for him, I could hardly help laughing.
Then he took to walking along the street which she must pass
through to get to the shops, and he would stand at the corner,
on the other side, as she went along. He dared not speak to
her again, but sought to put into his round eyes the appeal
that was in his heart. I suppose he had some idea that the
sight of his misery would touch her. She never made the
smallest sign that she saw him. She never even changed the
hour of her errands or sought an alternative route. I have an
idea that there was some cruelty in her indifference. Perhaps
she got enjoyment out of the torture she inflicted.
I wondered why she hated him so much.
I begged Stroeve to behave more wisely. His want of spirit
was exasperating.
"You're doing no good at all by going on like this," I said.
"I think you'd have been wiser if you'd hit her over the head
with a stick. She wouldn't have despised you as she does now."
I suggested that he should go home for a while. He had often
spoken to me of the silent town, somewhere up in the north of
Holland, where his parents still lived. They were poor
people. His father was a carpenter, and they dwelt in a
little old red-brick house, neat and clean, by the side of a
sluggish canal. The streets were wide and empty; for two
hundred years the place had been dying, but the houses had the
homely stateliness of their time. Rich merchants, sending
their wares to the distant Indies, had lived in them calm and
prosperous lives, and in their decent decay they kept still an
aroma of their splendid past. You could wander along the
canal till you came to broad green fields, with windmills here
and there, in which cattle, black and white, grazed lazily.
I thought that among those surroundings, with their
recollections of his boyhood, Dirk Stroeve would forget his
unhappiness. But he would not go.
"I must be here when she needs me," he repeated. "It would be
dreadful if something terrible happened and I were not at hand."
"What do you think is going to happen?" I asked.
"I don't know. But I'm afraid."
I shrugged my shoulders.
For all his pain, Dirk Stroeve remained a ridiculous object.
He might have excited sympathy if he had grown worn and thin.
He did nothing of the kind. He remained fat, and his round,
red cheeks shone like ripe apples. He had great neatness of
person, and he continued to wear his spruce black coat and his
bowler hat, always a little too small for him, in a dapper,
jaunty manner. He was getting something of a paunch, and
sorrow had no effect on it. He looked more than ever like a
prosperous bagman. It is hard that a man's exterior should
tally so little sometimes with his soul. Dirk Stroeve had the
passion of Romeo in the body of Sir Toby Belch. He had a
sweet and generous nature, and yet was always blundering;
a real feeling for what was beautiful and the capacity to create
only what was commonplace; a peculiar delicacy of sentiment
and gross manners. He could exercise tact when dealing with
the affairs of others, but none when dealing with his own.
What a cruel practical joke old Nature played when she flung
so many contradictory elements together, and left the man face
to face with the perplexing callousness of the universe. _
Read next: CHAPTER 32
Read previous: CHAPTER 30
Table of content of Moon and Sixpence
GO TO TOP OF SCREEN
Post your review
Your review will be placed after the table of content of this book
