How did you hit on it?"
He turned to me with a smile.
"Did I not tell you that I, too, in my way was an artist?
I realised in myself the same desire as animated him.
But whereas his medium was paint, mine has been life."
Then Captain Brunot told me a story which I must repeat, since, if only by way of contrast, it adds something to my impression of Strickland. It has also to my mind a beauty of its own.
Captain Brunot was a Breton, and had been in the French Navy.
He left it on his marriage, and settled down on a small property he had near Quimper to live for the rest of his days in peace; but the failure of an attorney left him suddenly penniless, and neither he nor his wife was willing to live in penury where they had enjoyed consideration. During his sea faring days he had cruised the South Seas, and he determined now to seek his fortune there. He spent some months in Papeete to make his plans and gain experience; then, on money borrowed from a friend in France, he bought an island in the Paumotus.
It was a ring of land round a deep lagoon, uninhabited, and covered only with scrub and wild guava. With the intrepid woman who was his wife, and a few natives, he landed there, and set about building a house, and clearing the scrub so that he could plant cocoa-nuts. That was twenty years before, and now what had been a barren island was a garden.
"It was hard and anxious work at first, and we worked strenuously, both of us. Every day I was up at dawn, clearing, planting, working on my house, and at night when I threw myself on my bed it was to sleep like a log till morning. My wife worked as hard as I did. Then children were born to us, first a son and then a daughter. My wife and I have taught them all they know. We had a piano sent out from France, and she has taught them to play and to speak English, and I have taught them Latin and mathematics, and we read history together. They can sail a boat. They can swim as well as the natives. There is nothing about the land of which they are ignorant. Our trees have prospered, and there is sh.e.l.l on my reef. I have come to Tahiti now to buy a schooner. I can get enough sh.e.l.l to make it worth while to fish for it, and, who knows? I may find pearls. I have made something where there was nothing. I too have made beauty.
Ah, you do not know what it is to look at those tall, healthy trees and think that every one I planted myself."
"Let me ask you the question that you asked Strickland.
Do you never regret France and your old home in Brittany?"
"Some day, when my daughter is married and my son has a wife and is able to take my place on the island, we shall go back and finish our days in the old house in which I was born."
"You will look back on a happy life," I said.
", it is not exciting on my island, and we are very far from the world -- imagine, it takes me four days to come to Tahiti -- but we are happy there. It is given to few men to attempt a work and to achieve it. Our life is simple and innocent. We are untouched by ambition, and what pride we have is due only to our contemplation of the work of our hands. Malice cannot touch us, nor envy attack. Ah, , they talk of the blessedness of labour, and it is a meaningless phrase, but to me it has the most intense significance. I am a happy man."
"I am sure you deserve to be," I smiled.
"I wish I could think so. I do not know how I have deserved to have a wife who was the perfect friend and helpmate, the perfect mistress and the perfect mother."
I reflected for a while on the life that the Captain suggested to my imagination.
"It is obvious that to lead such an existence and make so great a success of it, you must both have needed a strong will and a determined character."
"Perhaps; but without one other factor we could have achieved nothing."
"And what was that?"
He stopped, somewhat dramatically, and stretched out his arm.
"Belief in G.o.d. Without that we should have been lost."
Then we arrived at the house of Dr. Coutras.
Chapter LV
Mr. Coutras was an old Frenchman of great stature and exceeding bulk. His body was shaped like a huge duck"s egg; and his eyes, sharp, blue, and good-natured, rested now and then with self-satisfaction on his enormous paunch. His complexion was florid and his hair white. He was a man to attract immediate sympathy. He received us in a room that might have been in a house in a provincial town in France, and the one or two Polynesian curios had an odd look. He took my hand in both of his -- they were huge -- and gave me a hearty look, in which, however, was great shrewdness. When he shook hands with Capitaine Brunot he enquired politely after . For some minutes there was an exchange of courtesies and some local gossip about the island, the prospects of copra and the vanilla crop; then we came to the object of my visit.
I shall not tell what Dr. Coutras related to me in his words, but in my own, for I cannot hope to give at second hand any impression of his vivacious delivery. He had a deep, resonant voice, fitted to his ma.s.sive frame, and a keen sense of the dramatic. To listen to him was, as the phrase goes, as good as a play; and much better than most.
It appears that Dr. Coutras had gone one day to Taravao in order to see an old chiefess who was ill, and he gave a vivid picture of the obese old lady, lying in a huge bed, smoking cigarettes, and surrounded by a crowd of dark-skinned retainers.
When he had seen her he was taken into another room and given dinner -- raw fish, fried bananas, and chicken -- , the typical dinner of the -- and while he was eating it he saw a young girl being driven away from the door in tears. He thought nothing of it, but when he went out to get into his trap and drive home, he saw her again, standing a little way off; she looked at him with a woebegone air, and tears streamed down her cheeks. He asked someone what was wrong with her, and was told that she had come down from the hills to ask him to visit a white man who was sick. They had told her that the doctor could not be disturbed. He called her, and himself asked what she wanted.
She told him that Ata had sent her, she who used to be at the Hotel de la Fleur, and that the Red One was ill. She thrust into his hand a crumpled piece of newspaper, and when he opened it he found in it a hundred-franc note.
"Who is the Red One?" he asked of one of the bystanders.
He was told that that was what they called the Englishman, a painter, who lived with Ata up in the valley seven kilometres from where they were. He recognised Strickland by the description. But it was necessary to walk. It was impossible for him to go; that was why they had sent the girl away.
"I confess," said the doctor, turning to me, "that I hesitated. I did not relish fourteen kilometres over a bad pathway, and there was no chance that I could get back to Papeete that night. Besides, Strickland was not sympathetic to me. He was an idle, useless scoundrel, who preferred to live with a native woman rather than work for his living like the rest of us. , how was I to know that one day the world would come to the conclusion that he had genius?
I asked the girl if he was not well enough to have come down to see me. I asked her what she thought was the matter with him.
She would not answer. I pressed her, angrily perhaps, but she looked down on the ground and began to cry. Then I shrugged my shoulders; after all, perhaps it was my duty to go, and in a very bad temper I bade her lead the way."
His temper was certainly no better when he arrived, perspiring freely and thirsty. Ata was on the look-out for him, and came a little way along the path to meet him.
"Before I see anyone give me something to drink or I shall die of thirst," he cried out. ", get me a cocoa-nut."
She called out, and a boy came running along. He swarmed up a tree, and presently threw down a ripe nut. Ata pierced a hole in it, and the doctor took a long, refreshing draught.
Then he rolled himself a cigarette and felt in a better humour.
"Now, where is the Red One?" he asked.
"He is in the house, painting. I have not told him you were coming. Go in and see him."
"But what does he complain of? If he is well enough to paint, he is well enough to have come down to Taravao and save me this confounded walk. I presume my time is no less valuable than his."
Ata did not speak, but with the boy followed him to the house.
The girl who had brought him was by this time sitting on the verandah, and here was lying an old woman, with her back to the wall, making native cigarettes. Ata pointed to the door.
The doctor, wondering irritably why they behaved so strangely, entered, and there found Strickland cleaning his palette.
There was a picture on the easel. Strickland, clad only in a , was standing with his back to the door, but he turned round when he heard the sound of boots. He gave the doctor a look of vexation. He was surprised to see him, and resented the intrusion. But the doctor gave a gasp, he was rooted to the floor, and he stared with all his eyes.
This was not what he expected. He was seized with horror.
"You enter without ceremony," said Strickland. "What can I do for you?"
The doctor recovered himself, but it required quite an effort for him to find his voice. All his irritation was gone, and he felt -- -- he felt an overwhelming pity.
"I am Dr. Coutras. I was down at Taravao to see the chiefess, and Ata sent for me to see you."
"She"s a d.a.m.ned fool. I have had a few aches and pains lately and a little fever, but that"s nothing; it will pa.s.s off.
Next time anyone went to Papeete I was going to send for some quinine."
"Look at yourself in the gla.s.s."
Strickland gave him a glance, smiled, and went over to a cheap mirror in a little wooden frame, that hung on the wall.
"Well?"