Collected Short Stories of W. Somerset Maugham.

So many favourites in this - most people like Rain more than any other, at any rate it is the most discussed one. My personal favourite however is Virtue, an unforgettable one.

There are many, many others of course - Round Dozen for one, with amusing details of a much married man aggrieved by one of his wives turning him in.

Then there is the heartbreaking one of love and loss that I can't think of the name and it is a rare one for lack of cynical or otherwise bringing the reader down to earth sort of twist.

There is Letter with its murder of a paramour gone wrong due to his having left a letter with his mistress who extorts the full value,

There is the story about a widow who married a friend of her murdered husband and the daughter who looks like the second husband.

And there is another one with the Italian husband murdering his own father on suspicion of an affair between his father and his wife.

And all these are only what I can recall off hand after three decades or so.

I suppose the one of love and death with grief and heartbreak remains close to heart, along with Virtue that remains close to conviction, with total agreement with the protagonist by the time the story is over.

I wish I could remember if the story about the expensive wife becoming beautiful is here, or it is by another writer.
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The Round Dozen:-


About a much marrying man who was much aggrieved and felt a genuine sense of injury and grievance when one of his wives informed the law - not particularly handsome or accomplished in any way whatsoever, middle aged and lower class and not educated nor sophisticated nor well to do, he had nevertheless developed a talent for marrying successfully by his own definition. He found lonely older women of certain financial independence at holiday places and paid them attention, and post marriage gave them a good time until their money ran out. Then it was time to move on. To his chagrin, there was a small matter of having married only eleven times. Most of his wives were in fact willing to take him back.

After his leaving prison, the protagonist received a post card from him one day, and understood he had made his round dozen to his satisfaction after all.
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Rain:-


This must have been terribly shocking to the hypocritical and pious while being nothing new to those without blinkers, when published first - 20th century was nothing if not one that shredded many such veils of pretension from established societies of west.

The story takes place on a voyage in Pacific where a woman of certain profession is having fun along with a few of males around - after all being alone most of their lives far away from home was tough on the guys, and an accommodating woman who was not merely paid goods but one with some spirit, some heart and joy, was a blessing.

Unfortunately for them there is not merely a usual contingent of the disapproving couples and other respectable members of society but also a preacher very sure and proud of himself, who goes after the woman with denunciation and promised hell fire to all that would consort with her. She is brought to abject surrender and is entirely dependent on him subsequently in her submission to a pious life henceforth. And the preacher is willing to sacrifice himself, to go to her at any hour of day or night she might need him, as his wife very proudly testifies to his selfless sacrifice of his own comforts.

The preacher meanwhile has dreams of hills of Nebraska (having read it so long ago I could be wrong about the name of the particular state) - and then one day the preacher is found dead, having committed suicide, while there is sound of phonograph and laughter and dancing from the room of the woman who was trying to reform, and a note of bitter victory.

She was sincere in her repentance and her attempt to reform, but the high minded preacher all too fallible and unaware of his own Achilles's heel shared with all life, if not more than a little hypocritical in his imposition of his will and his standards of virtue on all and sundry.
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Virtue:-


We are begun on a gentle note with the story of a forty odd year old man, caustic and yet much loved but admittedly difficult, finding love and being completely smitten with his wife he considers himself fortunate to marry - he is the same man but now happy and his acerbic nature is taken now as wit due to his basking in his wife's love, a much loved woman in society, and their insistence on being put up together when invited is an amusing embarrassment for hostesses who lack room and are used to couples wishing to be put up rather apart.

And then there is an acquaintance of the writer (protagonist really, except one tends to assume he is the writer) from colonies in Malaya, a young man who needs to have some company and is introduced to the couple. Some time later, the couple is separated, and the wife is adamant in not returning to the husband, and he commits suicide.

The protagonist is called to interpret a letter from the young man in Malaya who has now returned, and informed that he is responsible for the love that the young man and the not so young wife (now widow) fell into since he introduced them. The letter is cautious and sympathetic about her loss but equivocal about her prospects of being able to come to Malaya to marry him.

The hostess, a friend of the protagonist makes the observation that it is up to him to make the young man realise his responsibility having gone into the love affair and caused the separation, which is when it becomes clear that the wife in love with another man had never crossed her limits being a virtuous woman.

"Virtue be damned" informs her the protagonist, since it had caused so much grief and a death of a loving husband - if only the wife had quietly had had her affair and finished it the man would still be alive.

And while to some pompous hypocrites it would be an opportunity to gasp and act shocked, today the reality of that statement is only too obvious, what with "the lack of commitment" of males being so huge a problem in US.
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