“He’s by way of being a pukka soldier, you know,” said Mrs. Ronaldson gaily. “That’s why he’s only a Major.”
I remembered my anticipation long ago that she would marry a soldier. It was inevitable. She had all the graces of the soldier’s wife. She was civil and affable, but she could hardly conceal her intimate conviction that she was not quite as others were. Robert was breezy.
“It’s a bit of luck that I should be in London when you turned up,” he said. “I’ve only got three days’ leave.”
“He’s dying to get back,” said his mother.
“Well, I don’t mind confessing it, I have a rattling good time at the front. I’ve made a lot of good pals. It’s a first-rate life. Of course war’s terrible, and all that sort of thing; but it does bring out the best qualities in a man, there’s no denying that.”
Then I told them what I had learned about Charles Strickland in Tahiti. I thought it unnecessary to say anything of Ata and her boy, but for the rest I was as accurate as I could be. When I had narrated his lamentable death I ceased. For a minute or two we were all silent. Then Robert Strickland struck a match and lit a cigarette.
“The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceeding small,” he said, somewhat impressively.
Mrs. Strickland and Mrs. Ronaldson looked down with a slightly pious expression which indicated, I felt sure, that they thought the quotation was from Holy Writ. Indeed, I was unconvinced that Robert Strickland did not share their illusion. I do not know why I suddenly thought of Strickland’s son by Ata. They had told me he was a merry, lighthearted youth. I saw him, with my mind’s eye, on the schooner on which he worked, wearing nothing but a pair of dungarees; and at night, when the boat sailed along easily before a light breeze, and the sailors were gathered on the upper deck, while the captain and the supercargo lolled in deck-chairs, smoking their pipes, I saw him dance with another lad, dance wildly, to the wheezy music of the concertina. Above was the blue sky, and the stars, and all about the desert of the Pacific Ocean.
A quotation from the Bible came to my lips, but I held my tongue, for I know that clergymen think it a little blasphemous when the laity poach upon their preserves. My Uncle Henry, for twenty-seven years Vicar of Whitstable, was on these occasions in the habit of saying that the devil could always quote scripture to his purpose. He remembered the days when you could get thirteen Royal Natives for a shilling.
Endnotes
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A Modern Artist: Notes on the Work of Charles Strickland, by Edward Leggatt, A.R.H.A. Martin Secker, 1917. ↩
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Karl Strickland: Sein Leben und seine Kunst, by Hugo Weitbrecht-Rotholz, Ph. D. Schwingel und Hanisch. Leipzig, 1914. ↩
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Strickland: The Man and His Work, by his son, Robert Strickland. Wm. Heinemann, 1913. ↩
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This was described in Christie’s catalogue as follows: “A nude woman, a native of the Society Islands, is lying on the ground beside a brook. Behind is a tropical Landscape with palm trees, bananas, etc. 60 in. × 48 in.” ↩
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This picture, formerly in the possession of a wealthy manufacturer at Lille, who fled from that city on the approach of the Germans, is now in the National Gallery at Stockholm. The Swede is adept at the gentle pastime of fishing in troubled waters. ↩
Colophon
The Moon and Sixpence
was published in 1919 by
W. Somerset Maugham.
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