Chapter XXX

by William Somerset Maugham

　　But the bed I made up for myself was sufficientlyuncomfortable to give me a wakeful night, and I thought a gooddeal of what the unlucky Dutchman had told me. I was not somuch puzzled by Blanche Stroeve's action, for I saw in thatmerely the result of a physical appeal. I do not suppose shehad ever really cared for her husband, and what I had takenfor love was no more than the feminine response to caressesand 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 ofthe world recognises its strength when it urges a girl tomarry 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 amiablevanity that women ascribe to it spiritual value. It is anemotion which is defenceless against passion. I suspectedthat Blanche Stroeve's violent dislike of Strickland had in itfrom the beginning a vague element of sexual attraction.Who am I that I should seek to unravel the mysterious intricaciesof sex? Perhaps Stroeve's passion excited without satisfyingthat part of her nature, and she hated Strickland because shefelt in him the power to give her what she needed. I thinkshe was quite sincere when she struggled against her husband'sdesire to bring him into the studio; I think she wasfrightened of him, though she knew not why; and I rememberedhow she had foreseen disaster. I think in some curious waythe horror which she felt for him was a transference of thehorror which she felt for herself because he so strangelytroubled her. His appearance was wild and uncouth; there wasaloofness in his eyes and sensuality in his mouth; he was bigand strong; he gave the impression of untamed passion; andperhaps she felt in him, too, that sinister element which hadmade me think of those wild beings of the world's earlyhistory when matter, retaining its early connection with theearth, seemed to possess yet a spirit of its own. If heaffected her at all, it was inevitable that she should love orhate him. She hated him.And then I fancy that the daily intimacy with the sick manmoved her strangely. She raised his head to give him food,and it was heavy against her hand; when she had fed him shewiped his sensual mouth and his red beard. She washed his limbs;they were covered with thick hair; and when she driedhis hands, even in his weakness they were strong and sinewy.His fingers were long; they were the capable, fashioningfingers of the artist; and I know not what troubling thoughtsthey excited in her. He slept very quietly, without amovement, so that he might have been dead, and he was likesome wild creature of the woods, resting after a long chase;and she wondered what fancies passed through his dreams.Did he dream of the nymph flying through the woods of Greece withthe satyr in hot pursuit? She fled, swift of foot anddesperate, but he gained on her step by step, till she felthis hot breath on her neck; and still she fled silently, andsilently he pursued, and when at last he seized her was itterror that thrilled her heart or was it ecstasy?Blanche Stroeve was in the cruel grip of appetite.Perhaps she hated Strickland still, but she hungered for him,and everything that had made up her life till then became ofno account. She ceased to be a woman, complex, kind andpetulant, considerate and thoughtless; she was a Maenad.She was desire.But perhaps this is very fanciful; and it may be that she wasmerely bored with her husband and went to Strickland out of acallous curiosity. She may have had no particular feeling forhim, but succumbed to his wish from propinquity or idleness,to find then that she was powerless in a snare of her owncontriving. How did I know what were the thoughts andemotions behind that placid brow and those cool gray eyes?But if one could be certain of nothing in dealing withcreatures so incalculable as human beings, there wereexplanations of Blanche Stroeve's behaviour which were at allevents plausible. On the other hand, I did not understandStrickland at all. I racked my brain, but could in no wayaccount for an action so contrary to my conception of him.It was not strange that he should so heartlessly have betrayedhis friends' confidence, nor that he hesitated not at all togratify a whim at the cost of another's misery. That was inhis character. He was a man without any conception ofgratitude. He had no compassion. The emotions common to mostof us simply did not exist in him, and it was as absurd toblame him for not feeling them as for blaming the tigerbecause he is fierce and cruel. But it was the whim I couldnot understand.I could not believe that Strickland had fallen in love withBlanche Stroeve. I did not believe him capable of love.That is an emotion in which tenderness 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 pleasure -- if notunselfishness, at all events a selfishness which marvellouslyconceals itself; it has in it a certain diffidence.These were not traits which I could imagine in Strickland.Love is absorbing; it takes the lover out of himself; the mostclear-sighted, though he may know, cannot realise that his lovewill 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 sametime a little less. He ceases to be himself. He is no longeran individual, but a thing, an instrument to some purposeforeign to his ego. Love is never quite devoid ofsentimentality, and Strickland was the least inclined to thatinfirmity of any man I have known. I could not believe thathe would ever suffer that possession of himself which love is;he could never endure a foreign yoke. I believed him capableof uprooting from his heart, though it might be with agony, sothat he was left battered and ensanguined, anything that camebetween himself and that uncomprehended craving that urged himconstantly to he knew not what. If I have succeeded at all ingiving the complicated impression that Strickland made on me,it will not seem outrageous to say that I felt he was at oncetoo great and too small for love.But I suppose that everyone's conception of the passion isformed on his own idiosyncrasies, and it is different withevery different person. A man like Strickland would love in amanner peculiar to himself. It was vain to seek the analysisof his emotion.