"How should I know? It is true I had never heard of this work; but I thought perhaps it had fallen into the hands of a private owner.Even now there is no certain list of Strickland's paintings.""When he grew blind he would sit hour after hour in those two rooms that he had painted, looking at his works with sightless eyes, and seeing, perhaps, more than he had ever seen in his life before.Ata told me that he never complained of his fate, he never lost courage.To the end his mind remained serene and undisturbed.But he made her promise that when she had buried him -- did I tell you that I dug his grave with my own hands, for none of the natives would approach the infected house, and we buried him, she and I, sewn up in three <i pareos> joined together, under the mango-tree -- he made her promise that she would set fire to the house and not leave it till it was burned to the ground and not a stick remained."I did not speak for a while, for I was thinking.Then I said: "He remained the same to the end, then.""Do you understand? I must tell you that I thought it my duty to dissuade her.""Even after what you have just said?"
"Yes; for I knew that here was a work of genius, and I did not think we had the right to deprive the world of it.But Ata would not listen to me.She had promised.I would not stay to witness the barbarous deed, and it was only afterwards that I heard what she had done.She poured paraffin on the dry floors and on the pandanus-mats, and then she set fire.In a little while nothing remained but smouldering embers, and a great masterpiece existed no longer.
"I think Strickland knew it was a masterpiece.He had achieved what he wanted.His life was complete.He had made a world and saw that it was good. Then, in pride and contempt, he destroyed, it.""But I must show you my picture," said Dr.Coutras, moving on."What happened to Ata and the child?"They went to the Marquesas.She had relations there.I have heard that the boy works on one of Cameron's schooners.They say he is very like his father in appearance."At the door that led from the verandah to the doctor's consulting-room,he paused and smiled.
"It is a fruit-piece. You would think it not a very suitable picture for a doctor's consulting-room, but my wife will not have it in the drawing- room. She says it is frankly obscene.""A fruit-piece!" I exclaimed in surprise.
We entered the room, and my eyes fell at once on the picture.I looked at it for a long time.
It was a pile of mangoes, bananas, oranges, and I know not what.and at first sight it was an innocent picture enough.It would have been passed in an exhibition of the Post- Impressionists by a careless person as an excellent but not very remarkable example of the school; but perhaps afterwards it would come back to his recollection, and he would wonder why.I do not think then he could ever entirely forget it.
The colours were so strange that words can hardly tell what a troubling emotion they gave.They were sombre blues, opaque like a delicately carved bowl in lapis lazuli, and yet with a quivering lustre that suggested the palpitation of mysterious life; there were purples, horrible like raw and putrid flesh, and yet with a glowing, sensual passion that called up vague memories of the Roman Empire of Heliogabalus; there were reds, shrill like the berries of holly -- one thought of Christmas in England, and the snow, the good cheer, and the pleasure of children -- and yet by some magic softened till they had the swooning tenderness of a dove's breast; there were deep yellows that died with an unnatural passion into a green as fragrant as the spring and as pure as the sparkling water of a mountain brook.Who can tell what anguished fancy made these fruits? They belonged to a Polynesian garden of the Hesperides.There was something strangely alive in them, as though they were created in a stage of the earth's dark history when things were not irrevocably fixed to their forms.They were extravagantly luxurious.They were heavy with tropical odours.They seemed to possess a sombre passion of their own.It was enchanted fruit, to taste which might open the gateway to God knows what secrets of the soul and to mysterious palaces of the imagination.They were sullen with unawaited dangers, and to eat them might turn a man to beast or god.All that was healthy and natural, all that clung to happyrelationships and the simple joys of simple men, shrunk from them in dismay; and yet a fearful attraction was in them, and, like the fruit on the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil they were terrible with the possibilities of the Unknown.
At last I turned away.I felt that Strickland had kept his secret to the grave.
"<i Voyons, Rene, mon ami>," came the loud, cheerful voice of Madame Coutras, "what are you doing all this time? Here are the <i aperitifs>.Ask <i Monsieur> if he will not drink a little glass of Quinquina Dubonnet.""<i Volontiers>, Madame," I said, going out on to the verandah.The spell was broken.
