'Yes; I knew Strickland well', he said. 'I am very fond of chess, and he was always glad of a game. I come to Tahiti three of four times a year for my business, and when he was at Papeete he would come here and we would play. When he married' – Captain Brunot smiled and shrugged his shoulders – 'enfin, when he went to live with the girl that Tiaré gave him, he asked me to go and see him. I was one of the guests at the wedding feast.' He looked at Tiaré, and they both laughed. 'He did not come much to Papeete after that, and about a year later it chanced that I had to go to that part of the island for I forget what business, and when I had finished it I said to myself: "Voyons, why should I not go and see that poor Strickland?" I asked one or two natives if they knew anything about him, and I discovered that he lived not more than five kilometres from where I was. So, I went. I shall never forget the impression my visit made on me. I live on an atoll, a low island, it is a strip of land surrounding a lagoon, and its beauty is the beauty of the sea and sky, and the varied colour of the lagoon, and the grace of the coconut trees; but the place where Strickland lived had the beauty of the Garden of Eden. Ah, I wish I could make you see the enchantment of that spot, a corner hidden away from all the world, with the blue sky overhead and the rich, luxuriant trees. It was a feast of colour. And it was fragrant and cool. Words cannot describe that paradise. And here he lived, unmindful of the world and by the world forgotten. I suppose to European eyes it would have seemed astonishingly sordid. The house was dilapidated and none too clean. When I approached I saw three or four natives lying on the veranda. You know how natives love to herd together. There was a young man lying full length, smoking a cigarette, and he wore nothing but a pareo.'
The pareo is a long strip of trade cotton, red or blue, stamped with a white pattern. It is worn round the waist and hangs to the knees.
'A girl of fifteen, perhaps, was plaiting pandanus-leaf to make a hat, and an old woman was sitting on her haunches smoking a pipe. Then I saw Ata. She was suckling a new-born child, and another child, stark naked, was playing at her feet. When she saw me, she called out to Strickland, and he came to the door. He, too, wore nothing but a pareo. He was an extraordinary figure, with his red beard and matted hair, and his great hairy chest. His feet were horny and scarred, so that I knew he went always barefoot. He had gone native with a vengeance. He seemed pleased to see me, and told Ata to kill a chicken for our dinner. He took me into the house to show me the picture he was at work on when I came in. In one corner of the room was the bed, and in the middle was an easel with the canvas upon it. Because I was sorry for him, I had bought a couple of his pictures for small sums, and I had sent others to friends of mine in France. And though I had bought them out of compassion, after living with them I began to like them. Indeed, I found a strange beauty in them. Everyone thought I was mad, but it turns out that I was right. I was his first admirer in the islands.'
He smiled maliciously at Tiaré, and with lamentations she told us again the story of how at the sale of Strickland's effects she had neglected the pictures, but bought an American stove for twenty-seven francs.
'Have you the pictures still?' I asked.
'Yes; I am keeping them till my daughter is of marriageable age, and then I shall sell them. They will be her dot.'
Then he went on with the account of his visit to Strickland.
'I shall never forget the evening I spent with him. I had not intended to stay more than an hour, but he insisted that I should spend the night. I hesitated, for I confess I did not much like the look of the mats on which he proposed that I should sleep; but I shrugged my shoulders. When I was building my house in the Paumotus I had slept out for weeks on a harder bed than that, with nothing to shelter me but wild shrubs; and as for vermin, my tough skin should be proof against their malice.
'We went down to the stream to bathe while Ata was preparing the dinner, and after we had eaten it we sat on the veranda. We smoked and chatted. The young man had a concertina, and he played the tunes popular on the music-halls a dozen years before. They sounded strangely in the tropical night thousands of miles from civilization. I asked Strickland if it did not irk him to live in that promiscuity. No, he said; he liked to have his models under his hand. Presently, after loud yawning, the natives went away to sleep, and Strickland and I were left alone. I cannot describe to you the intense silence of the night. On my island in the Paumotus there is never at night the complete stillness that there was here. There is the rustle of the myriad animals on the beach, all the little shelled things that crawl about ceaselessly, and there is the noisy scurrying of the land-crabs. Now and then in the lagoon you hear the leaping of a fish, and sometimes a hurried noisy splashing as a brown shark sends all the other fish scampering for their lives. And above all, ceaseless like time, is the dull roar of the breakers on the reef. But here there was not a sound, and the air was scented with the white flowers of the night. It was a night so beautiful that your soul seemed hardly able to bear the prison of the body. You felt that it was ready to be wafted away on the immaterial air, and death bore all the aspect of a beloved friend.'
Tiaré sighed.
'Ah, I wish I were fifteen again.'
Then she caught sight of a cat trying to get at a dish of prawns on the kitchen table, and with a dexterous gesture and a lively volley of abuse flung a book at its scampering tail.
'I asked him if he was happy with Ata.'
'"She leaves me alone", he said. "She cooks my food and looks after her babies. She does what I tell her. She gives me what I want from a woman."
'"And do you never regret Europe? Do you not yearn sometimes for the light of the streets in Paris or London, the companionship of your friends and equals, que sais jei for theatres and newspapers, and the rumble of omnibuses on the cobbled pavements?"
'For a long time he was silent. Then he said:.
'"I shall stay here till I die."
'"But are you never bored or lonely?" I asked.
'He chuckled.
'"Mon pauvre ami", he said. "It is evident that you do not know what it is to be an artist."'
Capitaine Brunot turned to me with a gentle smile, and there was a wonderful look in his dark, kind eyes.
'He did me an injustice, for I too know what it is to have dreams. I have my visions too. In my way I also am an artist.'
We were all silent for a while, and Tiaré fished out of her capacious pocket a handful of cigarettes. She handed one to each of us, and we all three smoked. At last she said:.
'Since ce monsieur is interested in Strickland, why do you not take him to see Dr Coutras? He can tell him something about his illness and death.'
'Volontiers', said the Captain, looking at me.
I thanked him, and he looked at his watch.
'It is past six o'clock. We should find him at home if you care to come now.'
I got up without further ado, and we walked along the road that led to the doctor's house. He lived out of the town, but the Hotel de la Fleur was on the edge of it, and we were quickly in the country. The broad road was shaded by pepper-trees, and on each side were the plantations, coconut and vanilla. The pirate birds were screeching among the leaves of the palms. We came to a stone bridge over a shallow river, and we stopped for a few minutes to see the native boys bathing. They chased one another with shrill cries and laughter, and their bodies, brown and wet, gleamed in the sunlight.
54
As we walked along I reflected on a circumstance which all that I had lately heard about Strickland forced on my attention. Here, on this remote island, he seemed to have aroused none of the detestation with which he was regarded at home, but compassion rather; and his vagaries were accepted with tolerance. To these people, native and European, he was a queer fish, but they were used to queer fish, and they took him for granted; the world was full of odd persons, who did odd things; and perhaps they knew that a man is not what he wants to be, but what he must be. In England and France he was the square peg in the round hole, but here th
e holes were any sort of shape, and no sort of peg was quite amiss. I do not think he was any gentler here, less selfish or less brutal, but the circumstances were more favourable. If he had spent his life amid these surroundings he might have passed for no worse a man than another. He received here what he neither expected nor wanted among his own people – sympathy.
I tried to tell Captain Brunot something of the astonishment with which this filled me, and for a little while he did not answer.
'It is not strange that I, at all events, should have had sympathy for him,' he said at last, 'for, though perhaps neither of us knew it, we were both aiming at the same thing.'
'What on earth can it be that two people so dissimilar as you and Strickland could aim at?' I asked, smiling.
'Beauty.'
'A large order', I murmured.
'Do you know how men can be so obsessed by love that they are deaf and blind to everything else in the world? They are as little their own masters as the slaves chained to the benches of a galley. The passion that held Strickland in bondage was no less tyrannical than love.'
'How strange that you should say that!' I answered. 'For long ago I had the idea that he was possessed of a devil,'
'And the passion that held Strickland was a passion to create beauty. It gave him no peace. It urged him hither and thither. He was eternally a pilgrim, haunted by a divine nostalgia, and the demon within him was ruthless. There are men whose desire for truth is so great that to attain it they will shatter the very foundation of their world. Of such was Strickland, only beauty with him took the place of truth. I could only feel for him a profound compassion.'
'That is strange also. A man whom he had deeply wronged told me that he felt a great pity for him.' I was silent for a moment. 'I wonder if there you have found the explanation of a character which has always seemed to me inexplicable. 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 realized 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 seafaring 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 coconuts. 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 shell on my reef. I have come to Tahiti now to buy a schooner. I can get enough shell 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.
'Évidemment, 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, mon cher monsieur, 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 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 God. Without that we should have been lost.'
Then we arrived at the house of Dr Coutras.
55
Dr 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 he gave me a hearty look, in which, however, was great shrewdness. When he shook hands with Capitaine Brunot he inquired politely after Madame et les enfants. 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 massive 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 – que sais je? the typical dinner of the indigene – 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 recognized 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 path way, 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. Mon Dieu, 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. Tour Vamour de Dieu, get me a coconut.'
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.'