He went out blithe upon his duty. After an interval, the adoring voice of Mrs. Herman floated up, beseeching him to put on his ar'tics.
At the Studio table Charles sat, struggling to get down to work. He had put away The Record, put away embittered thoughts. But he did not get down to work with much success all the same, the reason being that his great Subject, unluckily, was no longer clear in his mind.
From the table-drawer he had produced a stack of manuscript, an inch high; and now he sat, not reading it, but merely disapproving it en masse. The stack was his premature effort to begin, really to begin his new novel—six chapters of the new novel written, fifteen thousand words. Launching upon this draft an hour after he finished Mary the Freewoman, he had pushed on, night after night, at first with confident rapidity. Latterly, he had become conscious of an increasing sense of resistance. And now he knew that all this was mere waste stuff, accomplishing nothing but to show him what not to write.
Well, but what to write then? What did he really want to say? It was absurd; but he did not know. It really seemed that he saw too much to settle, with enthusiasm, upon anything. By constant accessions of fresh understanding, his centre of balance, his novel's chief prerequisite, was kept in a continuous state of flux....
Of "material" on the Unrest, Charles possessed a superfluity; of "plots," of "significant characters" and "illustrative incidents," his head was fuller than his pencil would ever write. His problem, of course, had always been for the fixed point of view and the moral "line." No longer could he be satisfied with that crude, simple line which had contented him in his first book, which still contented the other fellows: the line which "proved," as Lily Stender proved, that economic independence was the automatic salvation of women. He knew that wasn't the whole story now. As for writing a book to show that Woman's Place was the Home, of course that had never crossed his mind, even when most strongly gripped by conservative reactions. His quest was for a framework which should develop conflicting values on a far finer scale.
Of course, what he should have liked to show was a wholly admirable woman: one who combined all the sane competence and human worth of the best new women, with the soft faculty for supplying beauty and charm of her old-fashioned sister. But that day in Mary's office had left him with the honest suspicion that such a goddess did not exist, and couldn't. From the other direction also, as noted, his delicate scales had been joggled, with unsettling literary effects. The too hasty manuscript on the writing-table by no means followed the "line" the author had first plotted, prior to his meditations in the Green Park, after the bridge-party. No, in this draft the Home-Maker was married and had three children in Chapter One. Through all, the desire to rebuke the egoism of the day had persisted, as clearly the point of view most inviting to him, fullest of possibilities. And now Miss Trevenna, in some way, had disturbed and unsettled him there too....
The rain beat against the Studio windows. The green-shaded lamp burned dully on the author's table. Big Bill, without surcease, ticked off the author's minutes. Charles rubbed the bridge of his nose, pondering deeply. Just now, as he turned the pages of his private book—where the essay form had long since been abandoned, where appeared the most surprising vacillations of authoritative opinion—he had made a somewhat striking discovery. It had suddenly come upon him that "Notes on Women" had, gradually but distinctly, dwindled down into "Notes on Mary," "Notes on Angela Flower," and "Notes on Flora Trevenna." In short, it appeared that, in the most unconscious way, he had been seeking to extract his "line" from his own story, as it were, from "life."
The discovery came upon the young man as most arresting and significant.
"And I don't know where I stand, that's just the trouble! I ought to wait awhile," he thought, aloud. "See how it all works out.... Things'll be turning up...."
On which—once more—Judge Blenso's picturesque head came sticking through the Studio door, and Judge Blenso's rich voice said, officially:—