Mr Abbot had been married twenty years, and had learnt that his personal comfort was only to be purchased by a complete indulgence of his wife’s fancies.
“All right, my dear,” he said, “we’ll see what can be done.”
And so arrangements were made. An invalid friend owned a small house on an island in the Pacific, which he was willing to let for a summer holiday. Mrs Abbot leapt at the opportunity, and with Eric Walker submitting as to an intractable decree of Fate, within five weeks he and Mr and Mrs Abbot were leaning over the taffrail of the ship watching the churned foam stretch out in a white line behind them.
The island was certainly very charming. The air was soft and scented, the deep blue of the sky merged almost imperceptibly into the deeper blue of the sea. The garden was full of rich flowers and luxuriant growth; the sunshine was full and heavy; it was the kind of island which one never expects to see, but of which one dreams fondly, hopelessly.
“Now,” said Mrs Abbot, “you’ll be able to paint wonderful pictures, won’t you, Eric?”
“I hope so,” he said, gazing round with puzzled eyes at this world that, for all its riot of colour, lacked so strangely the sights and sounds to which he was accustomed.
For four days he wandered round with his sketchbook and water-colours. First of all he tried to draw the little house that was overgrown with fruit and flowers, but the lines blurred into one another, and he could not find the clear-cut form that he understood. Then he tried to paint the sunlight as it flickered on the waves, but its movement was irregular and spasmodic, unsuited to his method, and he failed equally when he tried to interpret the sway of the branches and the lazy droop of the oranges. He was puzzled, unhappy, unable to understand why things so vague and indefinite should be called beautiful. Mrs Abbot’s large, kindly voice quite failed to comfort him.
“Wait for your inspiration to come,” she would say. “Just walk about and absorb all that’s round you, and you’ll be painting before you know where you are.”
And next day it seemed as though her prophecy had been fulfilled. Eric had gone out directly after breakfast with his easel, paints, and canvas. They had seen nothing of him the whole morning; he had not come back to lunch, and by tea-time there were still no signs of him.
“I knew it,” said Mrs Abbot, “I knew it. We only had to take him away and put him in fresh surroundings; he was bound to respond to beauty, he only needed the sunshine.”