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_ 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. _
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