Her face fell, she sighed despondently, then straightened herself, reassured.
“At any rate there is the box. In common decency I must write to thank him for the box!”
And meantime Martin was swinging along the country lanes, recalling the morning’s conversation, and pondering for the hundredth time how he could best escape from the impasse of his life.
“Any other woman would have understood—would have realised that I wanted to be alone, but the mischief of it is Katrine doesn’t see, and I can’t be brute enough to tell her in so many words. If she could be induced to take that Indian tour, we might start afresh after a year’s absence. Or she might marry out there. She’s a handsome girl, and would make a rattling wife,—to the right man! Poor old Katrine! I hope I did not show her too plainly... The furniture will have an extra polish this morning, and we shall have a superfine dinner, my favourite dishes,—an ice, and Angels on Horseback,—for a ducat we’ll have them, and I shall buy her a box of chocolates on my way home... She tries her best, poor girl. So do I, for that matter, and that is the devil of it. Effort! Effort!”
The air seemed black with clouds; the pain which long custom had dulled revived into throbbing life. He was racked with mental nausea: life stretched before him level, uneventful, intolerably dull. His very work was a mistake. Long months of effort, and struggle of spirit, and as a result a few patronising reviews, and a monetary reward, which, worked out on a time basis, approached a sweating wage. If he never wrote another line, should he be missed; would the world be a whit the poorer? What was the sum total when all was told, but amusement for an idle hour!
It was in the depths of depression that Martin entered the golf club half an hour later, but on the threshold his good angel stood waiting. His favourite partner, a retired civil servant, living in an adjoining village, stood within the pavilion and acclaimed him with delight; the most intelligent of caddies was at his disposal, and half-an-hour’s play demonstrated the fact that the day was his.
By the end of two hours the vapours had disappeared beneath the combined influences of bracing air, congenial companionship, and a succession of long drives; and then as he climbed up the side of a heathery slope, suddenly, mysteriously, in the fashion known to all writers of fiction, inspiration flashed! The longed-for clue appeared, the tangles smoothed, the barren scene vibrated with life.
Martin stood still on the hill-side, and his lungs expanded with a deep, envious breath. Work! Work! The study table—the scattered leaves, the click of the typewriter; the barren hours, the hours when thoughts flew so fast that the pen could not keep pace,—each different phase of work rose before him, and each in its turn seemed good. His former lethargy disappeared. Useless? Valueless? Was it of no value to be one of the few writers who in a decadent age kept his pages clean? When so many streams ran foul, was it a light thing to provide a crystal well? And this last book should be the best he had written; stronger, deeper, more vital. Already in his own mind it was a living thing. He conceived a man, and lived in his image; he made unto him a wife. The two faces flashed at him out of the blue...
Ten minutes later, as he took up his position before a buried ball, Martin was telling himself briskly: “Hang it all, it’s true! It is my house. I can ask whom I like—”