“Well!” ejaculated Martin Beverley vaguely. “Well!” He pushed back his chair and strolled over to the window, drawing a cigarette case from his pocket as he went. Every morning of his life he took up this position after breakfast, smoked a regulation cigarette, presumably digested the morning’s news, and thought out his plans for the day. Katrine was accustomed to the sight, but this morning something in the pose of the figure attracted an uneasy attention. The shoulders drooped, the whole attitude bespoke weariness, a lack of purpose.
Martin Beverley stood in the alcove of the window, and the light shining through the upper panes left his figure in the shade, and fell full upon the pictured face above the mantel—the fair young face with the unending smile. The scene might have been taken as the motif for an artist’s picture, portraying the desolation of a widowed home. Katrine’s quick sensibilities grasped its significance, and her heart contracted with sympathy. “Juliet! Juliet!” she sighed to herself. “The old ache; the old pain!” but in truth Juliet might never have existed, for all the part she played in her husband’s thoughts at that moment. Martin Beverley was passing through that trying stage in the life of an author when he casts about in his mind for the plan of a future book, and can find no satisfactory response. Three months ago, when his last manuscript had been despatched to the publisher, he had acclaimed his liberty with the zest of a schoolboy released from school, had found it sheer joy to wake in the morning to the expectation of a lazy day, but now the holiday mood was fast turning into unrest; the creative instinct had awakened from its sleep, and its voice would not be denied.
Imaginary characters flitted before Martin’s brain, he lived with them, carved out their lives. In a flash of enthusiasm he saw the completed whole, and found it the finest thing he had yet achieved. From time to time he wrote out notes; sketched out the first few chapters, then reading them over, fell once more into the trough of despair. A day or two of restless wanderings, and he would begin again, and again would follow the check, the discouragement. He had lived through the same misery with each fresh book which he had written. Experience had proved that in this instance it was indeed the first step which cost, that once fairly afloat his characters would grow in reality, and in inexplicable fashion would take the reins in their own hands, and work out their own destinies, but where, since the beginning of the world, is the artist to be found who can be comforted by common-sense while floundering in the valley of discouragement?
This morning for Martin Beverley had begun badly, and breakfast, instead of being a time of refreshment, had left him feeling still more jarred and dreary. Mentally he laid the blame upon Katrine’s shoulders. There was no denying the fact that Katrine was getting upon his nerves. For the first few years of their lives together all had gone well; he himself had been too bruised, too sore, to take more than a passing interest in life; and she had been but a young and malleable girl; now at the end of eight years he was awake once more, while Katrine was a woman of twenty-six, and, it was no use denying that the home atmosphere was out of time. Katrine was a clever housekeeper, careful and considerate of his comfort, she was also handsome, capable, and affectionate, yet the bitter fact remained that the tête-à-tête was beginning to jar, and an unspoken friction to shadow the air.
Martin was grateful for the help which his sister had given him, he tried persistently for self-control, yet in the recesses of his mind the question was growing daily more insistent: “How long could he endure the present manage?”
An intolerable longing possessed him to break loose from the chains which cramped his life, and to start afresh, free and untrammelled. For the moment the very presence of his sister in the room seemed more than he could bear. He turned on his heel, and walked quickly from the room.
Chapter Two.
Katrine meantime had accomplished her duties, and given herself up to the enjoyment of reading, and replying, to her Indian letter. The temptation of beginning the reply could seldom be postponed, for Dorothea’s words brought with them a personal demand, to which it was imperative to respond.