The Moon and Sixpence

part they are entertaining talkers. The extent of
their experience is pleasantly balanced by the
fertility of their imagination. It cannot be said
that they are without guile, but they have a tol-
erant respect for the law, when the law is sup-
ported by strength. It is hazardous to play poker
with them, but their ingenuity adds a peculiar
excitement to the best game in the world. I came
to know Captain Nichols very well before I left
Tahiti, and I am the richer for his acquaintance. I
do not consider that the cigars and whisky he
consumed at my expense (he always refused cock-
tails, since he was practically a teetotaller), and
the few dollars, borrowed with a civil air of con-
ferring a favour upon me, that passed from my
pocket to his, were in any way equivalent to the
entertainment he afforded me. I remained his
debtor. I should be sorry if my conscience, insist-
ing on a rigid attention to the matter in hand,
forced me to dismiss him in a couple of lines.
I do not know why Captain Nichols first left
England. It was a matter upon which he was reti-
cent, and with persons of his kind a direct ques-
tion is never very discreet. He hinted at unde-
served misfortune, and there is no doubt that he

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looked upon himself as the victim of injustice.
My fancy played with the various forms of fraud
and violence, and I agreed with him sympatheti-
cally when he remarked that the authorities in
the old country were so damned technical. But it
was nice to see that any unpleasantness he had
endured in his native land had not impaired his
ardent patriotism. He frequently declared that
England was the finest country in the world, sir,
and he felt a lively superiority over Americans,
Colonials, Dagos, Dutchmen, and Kanakas.
But I do not think he was a happy man. He
suffered from dyspepsia, and he might often be
seen sucking a tablet of pepsin; in the morning
his appetite was poor; but this affliction alone
would hardly have impaired his spirits. He had a
greater cause of discontent with life than this.
Eight years before he had rashly married a wife.
There are men whom a merciful Providence has
undoubtedly ordained to a single life, but who
from wilfulness or through circumstances they
could not cope with have flown in the face of its
decrees. There is no object more deserving of pity
than the married bachelor. Of such was Captain
Nichols. I met his wife. She was a woman of
twenty-eight, I should think, though of a type
whose age is always doubtful; for she cannot have
looked different when she was twenty, and at
forty would look no older. She gave me an im-
pression of extraordinary tightness. Her plain
face with its narrow lips was tight, her skin was
stretched tightly over her bones, her smile was
tight, her hair was tight, her clothes were tight,
and the white drill she wore had all the effect of
black bombazine. I could not imagine why Cap-
tain Nichols had married her, and having mar-
ried her why he had not deserted her. Perhaps
he had, often, and his melancholy arose from the
fact that he could never succeed. However far
he went and in howsoever secret a place he hid
himself, I felt sure that Mrs. Nichols, inexorable
as fate and remorseless as conscience, would

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Somerset Maugham
presently rejoin him. He could as little escape
her as the cause can escape the effect.
The rogue, like the artist and perhaps the
gentleman, belongs to no class. He is not embar-
rassed by the 
sans gene of the hobo, nor put out
of countenance by the etiquette of the prince.
But Mrs. Nichols belonged to the well-defined
class, of late become vocal, which is known as
the lower-middle. Her father, in fact, was a po-
liceman. I am certain that he was an efficient
one. I do not know what her hold was on the
Captain, but I do not think it was love. I never
heard her speak, but it may be that in private
she had a copious conversation. At any rate, Cap-
tain Nichols was frightened to death of her. Some-
times, sitting with me on the terrace of the ho-
tel, he would become conscious that she was
walking in the road outside. She did not call him;
she gave no sign that she was aware of his exist-
ence; she merely walked up and down compos-
edly. Then a strange uneasiness would seize the
Captain; he would look at his watch and sigh.
“ Well, I must be off,” he said.
Neither wit nor whisky could detain him then.
Yet he was a man who had faced undaunted hur-
ricane and typhoon, and would not have hesi-
tated to fight a dozen unarmed niggers with
nothing but a revolver to help him. Sometimes
Mrs. Nichols would send her daughter, a pale-
faced, sullen child of seven, to the hotel.
“Mother wants you,” she said, in a whining
tone.
“ Very well, my dear,” said Captain Nichols.
He rose to his feet at once, and accompanied
his daughter along the road. I suppose it was a
very pretty example of the triumph of spirit over
matter, and so my digression has at least the
advantage of a moral.

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The Moon and Sixpence