A third week went by, and Martin loathed himself, and loathed life.  He was oppressed by a sense of failure.  There was reason for the editors refusing his stuff.  He could see that clearly now, and laugh at himself and the dreams he had dreamed.  Ruth returned his “Sea Lyrics” by mail.  He read her letter apathetically.  She did her best to say how much she liked them and that they were beautiful.  But she could not lie, and she could not disguise the truth from herself.  She knew they were failures, and he read her disapproval in every perfunctory and unenthusiastic line of her letter.  And she was right.  He was firmly convinced of it as he read the poems over.  Beauty and wonder had departed from him, and as he read the poems he caught himself puzzling as to what he had had in mind when he wrote them.  His audacities of phrase struck him as grotesque, his felicities of expression were monstrosities, and everything was absurd, unreal, and impossible.  He would have burned the “Sea Lyrics” on the spot, had his will been strong enough to set them aflame.  There was the engine-room, but the exertion of carrying them to the furnace was not worth while.  All his exertion was used in washing other persons’ clothes.  He did not have any left for private affairs.

He resolved that when Sunday came he would pull himself together and answer Ruth’s letter.  But Saturday afternoon, after work was finished and he had taken a bath, the desire to forget overpowered him.  “I guess I’ll go down and see how Joe’s getting on,” was the way he put it to himself; and in the same moment he knew that he lied.  But he did not have the energy to consider the lie.  If he had had the energy, he would have refused to consider the lie, because he wanted to forget.  He started for the village slowly and casually, increasing his pace in spite of himself as he neared the saloon.

“I thought you was on the water-wagon,” was Joe’s greeting.

Martin did not deign to offer excuses, but called for whiskey, filling his own glass brimming before he passed the bottle.

“Don’t take all night about it,” he said roughly.

The other was dawdling with the bottle, and Martin refused to wait for him, tossing the glass off in a gulp and refilling it.

“Now, I can wait for you,” he said grimly; “but hurry up.”

Joe hurried, and they drank together.

“The work did it, eh?” Joe queried.

Martin refused to discuss the matter.

“It’s fair hell, I know,” the other went on, “but I kind of hate to see you come off the wagon, Mart.  Well, here’s how!”

Martin drank on silently, biting out his orders and invitations and awing the barkeeper, an effeminate country youngster with watery blue eyes and hair parted in the middle.

“It’s something scandalous the way they work us poor devils,” Joe was remarking.  “If I didn’t bowl up, I’d break loose an’ burn down the shebang.  My bowlin’ up is all that saves ’em, I can tell you that.”