The Moon and Sixpence“I thought I’d

The Moon and Sixpence
“I thought I’d better tell you at once why I had come to see you “,I said, not without embarrassment.
His eyes twinkled.
“I thought somebody would come along sooner or later. I have had a lot of letters from Amy.”
“Then you know pretty well what I have got to say.”
I lit a cigarette to give myself a moment‘s time .I did not quite know about how to set my mission. The eloquent phrases I had arranged, pathetic or indignant, seemed out of place on the Avenue de Clichy. Suddenly he gave a chuckle.
“Beastly job for this, isn’t it?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I answered
“Well, look here, you get it over, and then we’ll have a jolly evening.”
I hesitated.”Has it occurred to you that your wife is frightfully unhappy?”
“She’ll get over it.”
I cannot describe the extraordinary callousness with which he made this reply .It disconcerted me, but I did my best not to show it. I adopted the tone used by my Uncle Henry, a clergyman, when he was asking one of his relatives for a subscription to the Additional Curates Society.
“You don’t mine to talking to you frankly?”
Ho shook his head, smiling.
“Has she deserved that you should treat her like this?”
“No.”
“Have you any complaint to make against her?”
“None”
“Then, isn’t it monstrous to leave her in this fashion, after seventeen years of married life, without a fault to find with her?”
“Monstrous.”
I glanced at him with surprise. His cordial agreement with all I said cut the ground from under my feet. It made my position complicated, not to say ludicrous. I was prepared to be persuasive, touching, and hortatory, admonitory and expostulating, if need be vituperative even, indignant and sarcastic; but what the devil dose a mentor do when the sinner makes no bones about confessing his sin? I had no experience, since my own practice has always been to deny everything.
“What, then?” asked Strickland
I tried to curl my lip
“Well, if you acknowledge that, there doesn’t seem much more to be said.”
“I don’t think there is.”
I felt that I was not carrying out my embassy with any great skill. I was distinctly nettled.
“Hang it all, one can’t leave a woman without a bob?”
“Why not?”
“How is she going to live?”
“I have supported for her seventeen years. Why shouldn’t she support herself for a change?”
“She can’t”
“Let her try”
Of course there were many things I might have answered to this. I might have spoken of the economic position of woman, of the contract, tacit and overt, which a man accepts by his marriage, and of much else; but I felt that there was only one point which really signified.
“Don’t you care for her any more?”
“Not a bit “he replied.
The matter was immensely serious for all the parties concerned, but there in the manner of his answers such a cheerful effrontery that I had to bite my lips in order not to laugh. I remained myself that his behavior was abominable. I worked myself up into a state of moral indignation.
“Damn it all, there are your children to think of. They have never done you any harm. They didn’t ask to be brought into the world. If you chuck everything like this, they’ll be thrown on the streets.”
“They have had a good many years of comfort .It is much more than the majority of children have. Besides, somebody will look after them. When it comes to the point, the Mac Andrews will pay for their schooling.”
“But aren’t you fond of them? They are such awfully nice kids. Do you mean to say you don’t want to have anything more to do with them?”
“I liked them all right when they were kids, but now they are growing up. I haven’t any particular feeling for them.”
“It’s just inhuman.”
“I dare say.”
“You don’t seem in the least ashamed.”
“I am not.”
I tried another tack.
“Everyone will think you a perfect swine.”
“Let them.”
“Won’t it mean anything to you know that people loathe and despise you?”
“No.”
His brief answer was so scornful that it made my question, natural though it was, seem absurd. I reflected for minute or two.
Notes:
“The Moon and Sixpence” appeared in 1919 and is a kind of illustration and analysis of one of S.Maugham’s favorite convictions that human nature is unpredictable, that it is knit of contradictions, that the secret of man’s heart and mind is rarely penetrated.
The plausibility of the narrative derives mainly from its having been suggested by the strange life of the French stockbroker turned painter Paul Gauguin.
The novel contains excellent characterization and dramatic narration; it is rich in imaginary and exquisite style.
The actual popularity of “The Moon and Sixpence” owes to masterful depiction of characters that are living and freshly observed natural dialogue and elaborate witty style of narration.