第39章

"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 gratitude 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 ortwo 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 god 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 God 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 heshowed 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.