"Haven"t you been in bitter distress once when a helping hand was held out to you? You know how much it means. Couldn"t you like to do someone a good turn when you have the chance?"
The words were ordinary enough, and to my mind there was in them something so hortatory that I almost smiled. I was astonished at the effect they had on Blanche Stroeve.
She started a little, and gave her husband a long look.
His eyes were fixed on the ground. I did not know why he seemed embarra.s.sed. A faint colour came into her cheeks, and then her face became white -- more than white, ghastly; you felt that the blood had shrunk away from the whole surface of her body; and even her hands were pale. A shiver pa.s.sed through her. The silence of the studio seemed to gather body, so that it became an almost palpable presence. I was bewildered.
"Bring Strickland here, Dirk. I"ll do my best for him."
"My precious," he smiled.
He wanted to take her in his arms, but she avoided him.
"Don"t be affectionate before strangers, Dirk," she said.
"It makes me feel such a fool."
Her manner was quite normal again, and no one could have told that so shortly before she had been shaken by such a great emotion.
Chapter XXVI
Next day we moved Strickland. It needed a good deal of firmness and still more patience to induce him to come, but he was really too ill to offer any effective resistance to Stroeve"s entreaties and to my determination. We dressed him, while he feebly cursed us, got him downstairs, into a cab, and eventually to Stroeve"s studio. He was so exhausted by the time we arrived that he allowed us to put him to bed without a word.
He was ill for six weeks. At one time it looked as though he could not live more than a few hours, and I am convinced that it was only through the Dutchman"s doggedness that he pulled through. I have never known a more difficult patient. It was not that he was exacting and querulous; on the contrary, he never complained, he asked for nothing, he was perfectly silent; but he seemed to resent the care that was taken of him; he received all inquiries about his feelings or his needs with a jibe, a sneer, or an oath. I found him detestable, and as soon as he was out of danger I had no hesitation in telling him so.
"Go to h.e.l.l," he answered briefly.
Dirk Stroeve, giving up his work entirely, nursed Strickland with tenderness and sympathy. He was dexterous to make him comfortable, and he exercised a cunning of which I should never have thought him capable to induce him to take the medicines prescribed by the doctor. Nothing was too much trouble for him. Though his means were adequate to the needs of himself and his wife, he certainly had no money to waste; but now he was wantonly extravagant in the purchase of delicacies, out of season and dear, which might tempt Strickland"s capricious appet.i.te. I shall never forget the tactful patience with which he persuaded him to take nourishment.
He was never put out by Strickland"s rudeness; if it was merely sullen, he appeared not to notice it; if it was aggressive, he only chuckled. When Strickland, recovering somewhat, was in a good humour and amused himself by laughing at him, he deliberately did absurd things to excite his ridicule.
Then he would give me little happy glances, so that I might notice in how much better form the patient was.
Stroeve was sublime.
But it was Blanche who most surprised me. She proved herself not only a capable, but a devoted nurse. There was nothing in her to remind you that she had so vehemently struggled against her husband"s wish to bring Strickland to the studio.
She insisted on doing her share of the offices needful to the sick.
She arranged his bed so that it was possible to change the sheet without disturbing him. She washed him. When I remarked on her competence, she told me with that pleasant little smile of hers that for a while she had worked in a hospital.
She gave no sign that she hated Strickland so desperately.
She did not speak to him much, but she was quick to forestall his wants. For a fortnight it was necessary that someone should stay with him all night, and she took turns at watching with her husband. I wondered what she thought during the long darkness as she sat by the bedside. Strickland was a weird figure as he lay there, thinner than ever, with his ragged red beard and his eyes staring feverishly into vacancy; his illness seemed to have made them larger, and they had an unnatural brightness.
"Does he ever talk to you in the night?" I asked her once.
"Never."
"Do you dislike him as much as you did?"
"More, if anything."
She looked at me with her calm gray eyes. Her expression was so placid, it was hard to believe that she was capable of the violent emotion I had witnessed.
"Has he ever thanked you for what you do for him?"
"No," she smiled.
"He"s inhuman."
"He"s abominable."
Stroeve was, of course, delighted with her. He could not do enough to show his grat.i.tude for the whole-hearted devotion with which she had accepted the burden he laid on her.
But he was a little puzzled by the behaviour of Blanche and Strickland towards one another.
"Do you know, I"ve seen them sit there for hours together without saying a word?"
On one occasion, when Strickland was so much better that in a day or two he was to get up, I sat with them in the studio.
Dirk and I were talking. Mrs. Stroeve sewed, and I thought I recognised the shirt she was mending as Strickland"s. He lay on his back; he did not speak. Once I saw that his eyes were fixed on Blanche Stroeve, and there was in them a curious irony.
Feeling their gaze, she raised her own, and for a moment they stared at one another. I could not quite understand her expression. Her eyes had in them a strange perplexity, and perhaps -- but why? -- alarm. In a moment Strickland looked away and idly surveyed the ceiling, but she continued to stare at him, and now her look was quite inexplicable.
In a few days Strickland began to get up. He was nothing but skin and bone. His clothes hung upon him like rags on a scarecrow. With his untidy beard and long hair, his features, always a little larger than life, now emphasised by illness, he had an extraordinary aspect; but it was so odd that it was not quite ugly. There was something monumental in his ungainliness. I do not know how to express precisely the impression he made upon me. It was not exactly spirituality that was obvious, though the screen of the flesh seemed almost transparent, because there was in his face an outrageous sensuality; but, though it sounds nonsense, it seemed as though his sensuality were curiously spiritual. There was in him something primitive. He seemed to partake of those obscure forces of nature which the Greeks personified in shapes part human and part beast, the satyr and the faun.
I thought of Marsyas, whom the G.o.d flayed because he had dared to rival him in song. Strickland seemed to bear in his heart strange harmonies and unadventured patterns, and I foresaw for him an end of torture and despair. I had again the feeling that he was possessed of a devil; but you could not say that it was a devil of evil, for it was a primitive force that existed before good and ill.
He was still too weak to paint, and he sat in the studio, silent, occupied with G.o.d knows what dreams, or reading.
The books he liked were queer; sometimes I would find him poring over the poems of Mallarme, and he read them as a child reads, forming the words with his lips, and I wondered what strange emotion he got from those subtle cadences and obscure phrases; and again I found him absorbed in the detective novels of Gaboriau.
I amused myself by thinking that in his choice of books he showed pleasantly the irreconcilable sides of his fantastic nature. It was singular to notice that even in the weak state of his body he had no thought for its comfort.
Stroeve liked his ease, and in his studio were a couple of heavily upholstered arm-chairs and a large divan.
Strickland would not go near them, not from any affectation of stoicism, for I found him seated on a three-legged stool when I went into the studio one day and he was alone, but because he did not like them. For choice he sat on a kitchen chair without arms. It often exasperated me to see him.
I never knew a man so entirely indifferent to his surroundings.
Chapter XXVII
Two or three weeks pa.s.sed. One morning, having come to a pause in my work, I thought I would give myself a holiday, and I went to the Louvre. I wandered about looking at the pictures I knew so well, and let my fancy play idly with the emotions they suggested. I sauntered into the long gallery, and there suddenly saw Stroeve. I smiled, for his appearance, so rotund and yet so startled, could never fail to excite a smile, and then as I came nearer I noticed that he seemed singularly disconsolate. He looked woebegone and yet ridiculous, like a man who has fallen into the water with all his clothes on, and, being rescued from death, frightened still, feels that he only looks a fool. Turning round, he stared at me, but I perceived that he did not see me. His round blue eyes looked hara.s.sed behind his gla.s.ses.
"Stroeve," I said.
He gave a little start, and then smiled, but his smile was rueful.
"Why are you idling in this disgraceful fashion?" I asked gaily.
"It"s a long time since I was at the Louvre. I thought I"d come and see if they had anything new."
"But you told me you had to get a picture finished this week."
"Strickland"s painting in my studio."
"Well?"
"I suggested it myself. He"s not strong enough to go back to his own place yet. I thought we could both paint there.