The Moon and Sixpence

Chapter XXX
B
UT
THE
BED
I made up for myself was sufficiently
uncomfortable to give me a wakeful night, and I
thought a good deal of what the unlucky Dutch-
man had told me. I was not so much puzzled by
Blanche Stroeve’s action, for I saw in that merely
the result of a physical appeal. I do not suppose
she had ever really cared for her husband, and
what I had taken for love was no more than the
feminine response to caresses and comfort which
in the minds of most women passes for it. It is a
passive feeling capable of being roused for any
object, as the vine can grow on any tree; and the
wisdom of the world recognises its strength when
it urges a girl to marry the man who wants her
with the assurance that love will follow. It is an
emotion made up of the satisfaction in security,
pride of property, the pleasure of being desired,
the gratification of a household, and it is only by
an amiable vanity that women ascribe to it spiri-

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The Moon and Sixpence
tual value. It is an emotion which is defenceless
against passion. I suspected that Blanche
Stroeve’s violent dislike of Strickland had in it
from the beginning a vague element of sexual
attraction. Who am I that I should seek to un-
ravel the mysterious intricacies of sex? Perhaps
Stroeve’s passion excited without satisfying that
part of her nature, and she hated Strickland be-
cause she felt in him the power to give her what
she needed. I think she was quite sincere when
she struggled against her husband’s desire to
bring him into the studio; I think she was fright-
ened of him, though she knew not why; and I
remembered how she had foreseen disaster. I
think in some curious way the horror which she
felt for him was a transference of the horror
which she felt for herself because he so strangely
troubled her. His appearance was wild and un-
couth; there was aloofness in his eyes and sen-
suality in his mouth; he was big and strong; he
gave the impression of untamed passion; and
perhaps she felt in him, too, that sinister ele-
ment which had made me think of those wild
beings of the world’s early history when mat-
ter, retaining its early connection with the earth,
seemed to possess yet a spirit of its own. If he
affected her at all, it was inevitable that she
should love or hate him. She hated him.
And then I fancy that the daily intimacy with
the sick man moved her strangely. She raised his
head to give him food, and it was heavy against
her hand; when she had fed him she wiped his
sensual mouth and his red beard. She washed
his limbs; they were covered with thick hair; and
when she dried his hands, even in his weakness
they were strong and sinewy. His fingers were
long; they were the capable, fashioning fingers
of the artist; and I know not what troubling
thoughts they excited in her. He slept very qui-
etly, without a movement, so that he might have
been dead, and he was like some wild creature
of the woods, resting after a long chase; and she

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wondered what fancies passed through his
dreams. Did he dream of the nymph flying
through the woods of Greece with the satyr in
hot pursuit? She fled, swift of foot and desper-
ate, but he gained on her step by step, till she
felt his hot breath on her neck; and still she fled
silently, and silently he pursued, and when at
last he seized her was it terror that thrilled her
heart or was it ecstasy?
Blanche Stroeve was in the cruel grip of appe-
tite. Perhaps she hated Strickland still, but she
hungered for him, and everything that had made
up her life till then became of no account. She
ceased to be a woman, complex, kind and petu-
lant, considerate and thoughtless; she was a
Maenad. She was desire.
But perhaps this is very fanciful; and it may be
that she was merely bored with her husband and
went to Strickland out of a callous curiosity. She
may have had no particular feeling for him, but
succumbed to his wish from propinquity or idle-
ness, to find then that she was powerless in a
snare of her own contriving. How did I know what
were the thoughts and emotions behind that
placid brow and those cool gray eyes?
But if one could be certain of nothing in deal-
ing with creatures so incalculable as human be-
ings, there were explanations of Blanche
Stroeve’s behaviour which were at all events
plausible. On the other hand, I did not understand
Strickland at all. I racked my brain, but could in
no way account for an action so contrary to my
conception of him. It was not strange that he
should so heartlessly have betrayed his friends’
confidence, nor that he hesitated not at all to
gratify a whim at the cost of another’s misery.
That was in his character. He was a man without
any conception of gratitude. He had no compas-
sion. The emotions common to most of us sim-
ply did not exist in him, and it was as absurd to
blame him for not feeling them as for blaming
the tiger because he is fierce and cruel. But it

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The Moon and Sixpence
was the whim I could not understand.
I could not believe that Strickland had fallen in
love with Blanche Stroeve. I did not believe him
capable of love. That is an emotion in which ten-
derness is an essential part, but Strickland had
no tenderness either for himself or for others;
there is in love a sense of weakness, a desire to
protect, an eagerness to do good and to give plea-
sure — if not unselfishness, at all events a self-
ishness which marvellously conceals itself; it has
in it a certain diffidence. These were not traits
which I could imagine in Strickland. Love is ab-
sorbing; it takes the lover out of himself; the most
clear-sighted, though he may know, cannot realise
that his love will cease; it gives body to what he
knows is illusion, and, knowing it is nothing else,
he loves it better than reality. It makes a man a
little more than himself, and at the same time a
little less. He ceases to be himself. He is no longer
an individual, but a thing, an instrument to some
purpose foreign to his ego. Love is never quite
devoid of sentimentality, and Strickland was the
least inclined to that infirmity of any man I have
known. I could not believe that he would ever
suffer that possession of himself which love is;
he could never endure a foreign yoke. I believed
him capable of uprooting from his heart, though
it might be with agony, so that he was left bat-
tered and ensanguined, anything that came be-
tween himself and that uncomprehended crav-
ing that urged him constantly to he knew not
what. If I have succeeded at all in giving the com-
plicated impression that Strickland made on me,
it will not seem outrageous to say that I felt he
was at once too great and too small for love.
But I suppose that everyone’s conception of
the passion is formed on his own idiosyncrasies,
and it is different with every different person. A
man like Strickland would love in a manner pe-
culiar to himself. It was vain to seek the analysis
of his emotion.

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