He smiled maliciously at Tiare, 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 twentyseven 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 (小虫), 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 verandah (露台). We smoked and chatted.
"The young man had a concertina (手风琴), 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 civilisation.
"I asked Strickland if it did not irk (使厌恶) 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 (无数的) animals on the beach, all the little shelled things that crawl about ceaselessly, and there is the noisy scurrying of the landcrabs.
"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 (奔跑) for their lives.
"And above all, ceaseless like time, is the dull roar of the breakers (碎浪) 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."
Tiare sighed.
"Ah, I wish I were fifteen again."
Then she caught sight of a cat trying to get at a dish of prawns (对虾) 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 (渴望) sometimes for the light of the streets in Paris or London, the companionship of your friends, and equals, que sais-je (法文，“我知道什么呢”)? 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 (法文，“我可怜的朋友”),' 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 Tiare fished out of her capacious (容量大的) pocket a handful of cigarettes.
She handed one to each of us, and we all three smoked. At last she said:
"Since ce monsieur (ce monsieur, “这位先生”) 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 (“我很愿意”)," 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, cocoa-nut and vanilla (香子兰).
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.
As we walked along I reflected (深思) 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 (嫌恶) with which he was regarded at home, but compassion rather; and his vagaries (异常行为) were accepted with tolerance. {1}
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 the 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. {2}
"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." {3}
"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 (朝圣者), 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 (同情)."
"That is strange also. A man whom he had deeply wronged (伤害) 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 realised in myself the same desire as animated (激励) 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 (法国布列塔尼地区的人), 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 (贫困) where they had enjoyed consideration.
During his sea faring days he had cruised the South Seas, and he determined now to seek his fortune there.
