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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/3797-0.txt b/3797-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1c280be --- /dev/null +++ b/3797-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,9316 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook of In the Days of the Comet, by H. G. Wells + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and +most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions +whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms +of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at +www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you +will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before +using this eBook. + +Title: In the Days of the Comet + +Author: H. G. Wells + +Release Date: 09, 2001 [eBook #3797] +[Most recently updated: November 14, 2020] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +Produced by: Judy Boss + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IN THE DAYS OF THE COMET *** + +[Illustration] + + + + +In the Days of the Comet + +by H. G. Wells + + +“The World’s Great Age begins anew, + The Golden Years return, +The Earth doth like a Snake renew + Her Winter Skin outworn: +Heaven smiles, and Faiths and Empires gleam +Like Wrecks of a Dissolving Dream.” + + +Contents + + PROLOGUE + THE MAN WHO WROTE IN THE TOWER + + BOOK THE FIRST — THE COMET + I. DUST IN THE SHADOWS + II. NETTIE + III. THE REVOLVER + IV. WAR + V. THE PURSUIT OF THE TWO LOVERS + + BOOK THE SECOND — THE GREEN VAPORS + I. THE CHANGE + II. THE AWAKENING + III. THE CABINET COUNCIL + + BOOK THE THIRD — THE NEW WORLD + I. LOVE AFTER THE CHANGE + II. MY MOTHER’S LAST DAYS + III. BELTANE AND NEW YEAR’S EVE + + EPILOGUE + THE WINDOW OF THE TOWER + + + + +PROLOGUE +THE MAN WHO WROTE IN THE TOWER + + +I saw a gray-haired man, a figure of hale age, sitting at a desk and +writing. + +He seemed to be in a room in a tower, very high, so that through the +tall window on his left one perceived only distances, a remote horizon +of sea, a headland and that vague haze and glitter in the sunset that +many miles away marks a city. All the appointments of this room were +orderly and beautiful, and in some subtle quality, in this small +difference and that, new to me and strange. They were in no fashion I +could name, and the simple costume the man wore suggested neither +period nor country. It might, I thought, be the Happy Future, or +Utopia, or the Land of Simple Dreams; an errant mote of memory, Henry +James’s phrase and story of “The Great Good Place,” twinkled across my +mind, and passed and left no light. + +The man I saw wrote with a thing like a fountain pen, a modern touch +that prohibited any historical retrospection, and as he finished each +sheet, writing in an easy flowing hand, he added it to a growing pile +upon a graceful little table under the window. His last done sheets lay +loose, partly covering others that were clipped together into +fascicles. + +Clearly he was unaware of my presence, and I stood waiting until his +pen should come to a pause. Old as he certainly was he wrote with a +steady hand. . . . + +I discovered that a concave speculum hung slantingly high over his +head; a movement in this caught my attention sharply, and I looked up +to see, distorted and made fantastic but bright and beautifully +colored, the magnified, reflected, evasive rendering of a palace, of a +terrace, of the vista of a great roadway with many people, people +exaggerated, impossible-looking because of the curvature of the mirror, +going to and fro. I turned my head quickly that I might see more +clearly through the window behind me, but it was too high for me to +survey this nearer scene directly, and after a momentary pause I came +back to that distorting mirror again. + +But now the writer was leaning back in his chair. He put down his pen +and sighed the half resentful sigh—“ah! you, work, you! how you gratify +and tire me!”—of a man who has been writing to his satisfaction. + +“What is this place,” I asked, “and who are you?” + +He looked around with the quick movement of surprise. + +“What is this place?” I repeated, “and where am I?” + +He regarded me steadfastly for a moment under his wrinkled brows, and +then his expression softened to a smile. He pointed to a chair beside +the table. “I am writing,” he said. + +“About this?” + +“About the change.” + +I sat down. It was a very comfortable chair, and well placed under the +light. + +“If you would like to read—” he said. + +I indicated the manuscript. “This explains?” I asked. + +“That explains,” he answered. + +He drew a fresh sheet of paper toward him as he looked at me. + +I glanced from him about his apartment and back to the little table. A +fascicle marked very distinctly “1” caught my attention, and I took it +up. I smiled in his friendly eyes. “Very well,” said I, suddenly at my +ease, and he nodded and went on writing. And in a mood between +confidence and curiosity, I began to read. + +This is the story that happy, active-looking old man in that pleasant +place had written. + + + + +BOOK THE FIRST THE COMET + + + + +CHAPTER THE FIRST DUST IN THE SHADOWS + + +§ 1 + +I have set myself to write the story of the Great Change, so far as it +has affected my own life and the lives of one or two people closely +connected with me, primarily to please myself. + +Long ago in my crude unhappy youth, I conceived the desire of writing a +book. To scribble secretly and dream of authorship was one of my chief +alleviations, and I read with a sympathetic envy every scrap I could +get about the world of literature and the lives of literary people. It +is something, even amidst this present happiness, to find leisure and +opportunity to take up and partially realize these old and hopeless +dreams. But that alone, in a world where so much of vivid and +increasing interest presents itself to be done, even by an old man, +would not, I think, suffice to set me at this desk. I find some such +recapitulation of my past as this will involve, is becoming necessary +to my own secure mental continuity. The passage of years brings a man +at last to retrospection; at seventy-two one’s youth is far more +important than it was at forty. And I am out of touch with my youth. +The old life seems so cut off from the new, so alien and so +unreasonable, that at times I find it bordering upon the incredible. +The data have gone, the buildings and places. I stopped dead the other +afternoon in my walk across the moor, where once the dismal outskirts +of Swathinglea straggled toward Leet, and asked, “Was it here indeed +that I crouched among the weeds and refuse and broken crockery and +loaded my revolver ready for murder? Did ever such a thing happen in my +life? Was such a mood and thought and intention ever possible to me? +Rather, has not some queer nightmare spirit out of dreamland slipped a +pseudo-memory into the records of my vanished life?” There must be many +alive still who have the same perplexities. And I think too that those +who are now growing up to take our places in the great enterprise of +mankind, will need many such narratives as mine for even the most +partial conception of the old world of shadows that came before our +day. It chances too that my case is fairly typical of the Change; I was +caught midway in a gust of passion; and a curious accident put me for a +time in the very nucleus of the new order. + +My memory takes me back across the interval of fifty years to a little +ill-lit room with a sash window open to a starry sky, and instantly +there returns to me the characteristic smell of that room, the +penetrating odor of an ill-trimmed lamp, burning cheap paraffin. +Lighting by electricity had then been perfected for fifteen years, but +still the larger portion of the world used these lamps. All this first +scene will go, in my mind at least, to that olfactory accompaniment. +That was the evening smell of the room. By day it had a more subtle +aroma, a closeness, a peculiar sort of faint pungency that I +associate—I know not why—with dust. + +Let me describe this room to you in detail. It was perhaps eight feet +by seven in area and rather higher than either of these dimensions; the +ceiling was of plaster, cracked and bulging in places, gray with the +soot of the lamp, and in one place discolored by a system of yellow and +olive-green stains caused by the percolation of damp from above. The +walls were covered with dun-colored paper, upon which had been printed +in oblique reiteration a crimson shape, something of the nature of a +curly ostrich feather, or an acanthus flower, that had in its less +faded moments a sort of dingy gaiety. There were several big +plaster-rimmed wounds in this, caused by Parload’s ineffectual attempts +to get nails into the wall, whereby there might hang pictures. One nail +had hit between two bricks and got home, and from this depended, +sustained a little insecurely by frayed and knotted blind-cord, +Parload’s hanging bookshelves, planks painted over with a treacly blue +enamel and further decorated by a fringe of pinked American cloth +insecurely fixed by tacks. Below this was a little table that behaved +with a mulish vindictiveness to any knee that was thrust beneath it +suddenly; it was covered with a cloth whose pattern of red and black +had been rendered less monotonous by the accidents of Parload’s +versatile ink bottle, and on it, _leit motif_ of the whole, stood and +stank the lamp. This lamp, you must understand, was of some whitish +translucent substance that was neither china nor glass, it had a shade +of the same substance, a shade that did not protect the eyes of a +reader in any measure, and it seemed admirably adapted to bring into +pitiless prominence the fact that, after the lamp’s trimming, dust and +paraffin had been smeared over its exterior with a reckless generosity. + +The uneven floor boards of this apartment were covered with scratched +enamel of chocolate hue, on which a small island of frayed carpet dimly +blossomed in the dust and shadows. + +There was a very small grate, made of cast-iron in one piece and +painted buff, and a still smaller misfit of a cast-iron fender that +confessed the gray stone of the hearth. No fire was laid, only a few +scraps of torn paper and the bowl of a broken corn-cob pipe were +visible behind the bars, and in the corner and rather thrust away was +an angular japanned coal-box with a damaged hinge. It was the custom in +those days to warm every room separately from a separate fireplace, +more prolific of dirt than heat, and the rickety sash window, the small +chimney, and the loose-fitting door were expected to organize the +ventilation of the room among themselves without any further direction. + +Parload’s truckle bed hid its gray sheets beneath an old patchwork +counterpane on one side of the room, and veiled his boxes and suchlike +oddments, and invading the two corners of the window were an old +whatnot and the washhandstand, on which were distributed the simple +appliances of his toilet. + +This washhandstand had been made of deal by some one with an excess of +turnery appliances in a hurry, who had tried to distract attention from +the rough economies of his workmanship by an arresting ornamentation of +blobs and bulbs upon the joints and legs. Apparently the piece had then +been placed in the hands of some person of infinite leisure equipped +with a pot of ocherous paint, varnish, and a set of flexible combs. +This person had first painted the article, then, I fancy, smeared it +with varnish, and then sat down to work with the combs to streak and +comb the varnish into a weird imitation of the grain of some nightmare +timber. The washhandstand so made had evidently had a prolonged career +of violent use, had been chipped, kicked, splintered, punched, stained, +scorched, hammered, desiccated, damped, and defiled, had met indeed +with almost every possible adventure except a conflagration or a +scrubbing, until at last it had come to this high refuge of Parload’s +attic to sustain the simple requirements of Parload’s personal +cleanliness. There were, in chief, a basin and a jug of water and a +slop-pail of tin, and, further, a piece of yellow soap in a tray, a +tooth-brush, a rat-tailed shaving brush, one huckaback towel, and one +or two other minor articles. In those days only very prosperous people +had more than such an equipage, and it is to be remarked that every +drop of water Parload used had to be carried by an unfortunate servant +girl,—the “slavey,” Parload called her—up from the basement to the top +of the house and subsequently down again. Already we begin to forget +how modern an invention is personal cleanliness. It is a fact that +Parload had never stripped for a swim in his life; never had a +simultaneous bath all over his body since his childhood. Not one in +fifty of us did in the days of which I am telling you. + +A chest, also singularly grained and streaked, of two large and two +small drawers, held Parload’s reserve of garments, and pegs on the door +carried his two hats and completed this inventory of a +“bed-sitting-room” as I knew it before the Change. But I had +forgotten—there was also a chair with a “squab” that apologized +inadequately for the defects of its cane seat. I forgot that for the +moment because I was sitting on the chair on the occasion that best +begins this story. + +I have described Parload’s room with such particularity because it will +help you to understand the key in which my earlier chapters are +written, but you must not imagine that this singular equipment or the +smell of the lamp engaged my attention at that time to the slightest +degree. I took all this grimy unpleasantness as if it were the most +natural and proper setting for existence imaginable. It was the world +as I knew it. My mind was entirely occupied then by graver and intenser +matters, and it is only now in the distant retrospect that I see these +details of environment as being remarkable, as significant, as indeed +obviously the outward visible manifestations of the old world disorder +in our hearts. + +§ 2 + +Parload stood at the open window, opera-glass in hand, and sought and +found and was uncertain about and lost again, the new comet. + +I thought the comet no more than a nuisance then because I wanted to +talk of other matters. But Parload was full of it. My head was hot, I +was feverish with interlacing annoyances and bitterness, I wanted to +open my heart to him—at least I wanted to relieve my heart by some +romantic rendering of my troubles—and I gave but little heed to the +things he told me. It was the first time I had heard of this new speck +among the countless specks of heaven, and I did not care if I never +heard of the thing again. + +We were two youths much of an age together, Parload was two and twenty, +and eight months older than I. He was—I think his proper definition was +“engrossing clerk” to a little solicitor in Overcastle, while I was +third in the office staff of Rawdon’s pot-bank in Clayton. We had met +first in the “Parliament” of the Young Men’s Christian Association of +Swathinglea; we had found we attended simultaneous classes in +Overcastle, he in science and I in shorthand, and had started a +practice of walking home together, and so our friendship came into +being. (Swathinglea, Clayton, and Overcastle were contiguous towns, I +should mention, in the great industrial area of the Midlands.) We had +shared each other’s secret of religious doubt, we had confided to one +another a common interest in Socialism, he had come twice to supper at +my mother’s on a Sunday night, and I was free of his apartment. He was +then a tall, flaxen-haired, gawky youth, with a disproportionate +development of neck and wrist, and capable of vast enthusiasm; he gave +two evenings a week to the evening classes of the organized science +school in Overcastle, physiography was his favorite “subject,” and +through this insidious opening of his mind the wonder of outer space +had come to take possession of his soul. He had commandeered an old +opera-glass from his uncle who farmed at Leet over the moors, he had +bought a cheap paper planisphere and _Whitaker’s Almanac_, and for a +time day and moonlight were mere blank interruptions to the one +satisfactory reality in his life—star-gazing. It was the deeps that had +seized him, the immensities, and the mysterious possibilities that +might float unlit in that unplumbed abyss. With infinite labor and the +help of a very precise article in _The Heavens_, a little monthly +magazine that catered for those who were under this obsession, he had +at last got his opera-glass upon the new visitor to our system from +outer space. He gazed in a sort of rapture upon that quivering little +smudge of light among the shining pin-points—and gazed. My troubles had +to wait for him. + +“Wonderful,” he sighed, and then as though his first emphasis did not +satisfy him, “wonderful!” + +He turned to me. “Wouldn’t you like to see?” + +I had to look, and then I had to listen, how that this scarce-visible +intruder was to be, was presently to be, one of the largest comets this +world has ever seen, how that its course must bring it within at +most—so many score of millions of miles from the earth, a mere step, +Parload seemed to think that; how that the spectroscope was already +sounding its chemical secrets, perplexed by the unprecedented band in +the green, how it was even now being photographed in the very act of +unwinding—in an unusual direction—a sunward tail (which presently it +wound up again), and all the while in a sort of undertow I was thinking +first of Nettie Stuart and the letter she had just written me, and then +of old Rawdon’s detestable face as I had seen it that afternoon. Now I +planned answers to Nettie and now belated repartees to my employer, and +then again “Nettie” was blazing all across the background of my +thoughts. . . . + +Nettie Stuart was daughter of the head gardener of the rich Mr. +Verrall’s widow, and she and I had kissed and become sweethearts before +we were eighteen years old. My mother and hers were second cousins and +old schoolfellows, and though my mother had been widowed untimely by a +train accident, and had been reduced to letting lodgings (she was the +Clayton curate’s landlady), a position esteemed much lower than that of +Mrs. Stuart, a kindly custom of occasional visits to the gardener’s +cottage at Checkshill Towers still kept the friends in touch. Commonly +I went with her. And I remember it was in the dusk of one bright +evening in July, one of those long golden evenings that do not so much +give way to night as admit at last, upon courtesy, the moon and a +choice retinue of stars, that Nettie and I, at the pond of goldfish +where the yew-bordered walks converged, made our shy beginners’ vow. I +remember still—something will always stir in me at that memory—the +tremulous emotion of that adventure. Nettie was dressed in white, her +hair went off in waves of soft darkness from above her dark shining +eyes; there was a little necklace of pearls about her sweetly modeled +neck, and a little coin of gold that nestled in her throat. I kissed +her half-reluctant lips, and for three years of my life thereafter—nay! +I almost think for all the rest of her life and mine—I could have died +for her sake. + +You must understand—and every year it becomes increasingly difficult to +understand—how entirely different the world was then from what it is +now. It was a dark world; it was full of preventable disorder, +preventable diseases, and preventable pain, of harshness and stupid +unpremeditated cruelties; but yet, it may be even by virtue of the +general darkness, there were moments of a rare and evanescent beauty +that seem no longer possible in my experience. The great Change has +come for ever more, happiness and beauty are our atmosphere, there is +peace on earth and good will to all men. None would dare to dream of +returning to the sorrows of the former time, and yet that misery was +pierced, ever and again its gray curtain was stabbed through and +through by joys of an intensity, by perceptions of a keenness that it +seems to me are now altogether gone out of life. Is it the Change, I +wonder, that has robbed life of its extremes, or is it perhaps only +this, that youth has left me—even the strength of middle years leaves +me now—and taken its despairs and raptures, leaving me judgment, +perhaps, sympathy, memories? + +I cannot tell. One would need to be young now and to have been young +then as well, to decide that impossible problem. + +Perhaps a cool observer even in the old days would have found little +beauty in our grouping. I have our two photographs at hand in this +bureau as I write, and they show me a gawky youth in ill-fitting +ready-made clothing, and Nettie—Indeed Nettie is badly dressed, and her +attitude is more than a little stiff; but I can see her through the +picture, and her living brightness and something of that mystery of +charm she had for me, comes back again to my mind. Her face has +triumphed over the photographer—or I would long ago have cast this +picture away. + +The reality of beauty yields itself to no words. I wish that I had the +sister art and could draw in my margin something that escapes +description. There was a sort of gravity in her eyes. There was +something, a matter of the minutest difference, about her upper lip so +that her mouth closed sweetly and broke very sweetly to a smile. That +grave, sweet smile! + +After we had kissed and decided not to tell our parents for awhile of +the irrevocable choice we had made, the time came for us to part, shyly +and before others, and I and my mother went off back across the moonlit +park—the bracken thickets rustling with startled deer—to the railway +station at Checkshill and so to our dingy basement in Clayton, and I +saw no more of Nettie—except that I saw her in my thoughts—for nearly a +year. But at our next meeting it was decided that we must correspond, +and this we did with much elaboration of secrecy, for Nettie would have +no one at home, not even her only sister, know of her attachment. So I +had to send my precious documents sealed and under cover by way of a +confidential schoolfellow of hers who lived near London. . . . I could +write that address down now, though house and street and suburb have +gone beyond any man’s tracing. + +Our correspondence began our estrangement, because for the first time +we came into more than sensuous contact and our minds sought +expression. + +Now you must understand that the world of thought in those days was in +the strangest condition, it was choked with obsolete inadequate +formulae, it was tortuous to a maze-like degree with secondary +contrivances and adaptations, suppressions, conventions, and +subterfuges. Base immediacies fouled the truth on every man’s lips. I +was brought up by my mother in a quaint old-fashioned narrow faith in +certain religious formulae, certain rules of conduct, certain +conceptions of social and political order, that had no more relevance +to the realities and needs of everyday contemporary life than if they +were clean linen that had been put away with lavender in a drawer. +Indeed, her religion did actually smell of lavender; on Sundays she put +away all the things of reality, the garments and even the furnishings +of everyday, hid her hands, that were gnarled and sometimes chapped +with scrubbing, in black, carefully mended gloves, assumed her old +black silk dress and bonnet and took me, unnaturally clean and sweet +also, to church. There we sang and bowed and heard sonorous prayers and +joined in sonorous responses, and rose with a congregational sigh +refreshed and relieved when the doxology, with its opening “Now to God +the Father, God the Son,” bowed out the tame, brief sermon. There was a +hell in that religion of my mother’s, a red-haired hell of curly flames +that had once been very terrible; there was a devil, who was also _ex +officio_ the British King’s enemy, and much denunciation of the wicked +lusts of the flesh; we were expected to believe that most of our poor +unhappy world was to atone for its muddle and trouble here by suffering +exquisite torments for ever after, world without end, Amen. But indeed +those curly flames looked rather jolly. The whole thing had been +mellowed and faded into a gentle unreality long before my time; if it +had much terror even in my childhood I have forgotten it, it was not so +terrible as the giant who was killed by the Beanstalk, and I see it all +now as a setting for my poor old mother’s worn and grimy face, and +almost lovingly as a part of her. And Mr. Gabbitas, our plump little +lodger, strangely transformed in his vestments and lifting his voice +manfully to the quality of those Elizabethan prayers, seemed, I think, +to give her a special and peculiar interest with God. She radiated her +own tremulous gentleness upon Him, and redeemed Him from all the +implications of vindictive theologians; she was in truth, had I but +perceived it, the effectual answer to all she would have taught me. + +So I see it now, but there is something harsh in the earnest intensity +of youth, and having at first taken all these things quite seriously, +the fiery hell and God’s vindictiveness at any neglect, as though they +were as much a matter of fact as Bladden’s iron-works and Rawdon’s +pot-bank, I presently with an equal seriousness flung them out of my +mind again. + +Mr. Gabbitas, you see, did sometimes, as the phrase went, “take notice” +of me, he had induced me to go on reading after I left school, and with +the best intentions in the world and to anticipate the poison of the +times, he had lent me Burble’s “Scepticism Answered,” and drawn my +attention to the library of the Institute in Clayton. + +The excellent Burble was a great shock to me. It seemed clear from his +answers to the sceptic that the case for doctrinal orthodoxy and all +that faded and by no means awful hereafter, which I had hitherto +accepted as I accepted the sun, was an extremely poor one, and to +hammer home that idea the first book I got from the Institute happened +to be an American edition of the collected works of Shelley, his gassy +prose as well as his atmospheric verse. I was soon ripe for blatant +unbelief. And at the Young Men’s Christian Association I presently made +the acquaintance of Parload, who told me, under promises of the most +sinister secrecy, that he was “a Socialist out and out.” He lent me +several copies of a periodical with the clamant title of _The Clarion_, +which was just taking up a crusade against the accepted religion. The +adolescent years of any fairly intelligent youth lie open, and will +always lie healthily open, to the contagion of philosophical doubts, of +scorns and new ideas, and I will confess I had the fever of that phase +badly. Doubt, I say, but it was not so much doubt—which is a complex +thing—as startled emphatic denial. “Have I believed _this!_” And I was +also, you must remember, just beginning love-letters to Nettie. + +We live now in these days, when the Great Change has been in most +things accomplished, in a time when every one is being educated to a +sort of intellectual gentleness, a gentleness that abates nothing from +our vigor, and it is hard to understand the stifled and struggling +manner in which my generation of common young men did its thinking. To +think at all about certain questions was an act of rebellion that set +one oscillating between the furtive and the defiant. People begin to +find Shelley—for all his melody—noisy and ill conditioned now because +his Anarchs have vanished, yet there was a time when novel thought HAD +to go to that tune of breaking glass. It becomes a little difficult to +imagine the yeasty state of mind, the disposition to shout and say, +“Yah!” at constituted authority, to sustain a persistent note of +provocation such as we raw youngsters displayed. I began to read with +avidity such writing as Carlyle, Browning, and Heine have left for the +perplexity of posterity, and not only to read and admire but to +imitate. My letters to Nettie, after one or two genuinely intended +displays of perfervid tenderness, broke out toward theology, sociology, +and the cosmos in turgid and startling expressions. No doubt they +puzzled her extremely. + +I retain the keenest sympathy and something inexplicably near to envy +for my own departed youth, but I should find it difficult to maintain +my case against any one who would condemn me altogether as having been +a very silly, posturing, emotional hobbledehoy indeed and quite like my +faded photograph. And when I try to recall what exactly must have been +the quality and tenor of my more sustained efforts to write memorably +to my sweetheart, I confess I shiver. . . Yet I wish they were not all +destroyed. + +Her letters to me were simple enough, written in a roundish, unformed +hand and badly phrased. Her first two or three showed a shy pleasure in +the use of the word “dear,” and I remember being first puzzled and +then, when I understood, delighted, because she had written “Willie +_asthore_” under my name. “Asthore,” I gathered, meant “darling.” But +when the evidences of my fermentation began, her answers were less +happy. + +I will not weary you with the story of how we quarreled in our silly +youthful way, and how I went the next Sunday, all uninvited, to +Checkshill, and made it worse, and how afterward I wrote a letter that +she thought was “lovely,” and mended the matter. Nor will I tell of all +our subsequent fluctuations of misunderstanding. Always I was the +offender and the final penitent until this last trouble that was now +beginning; and in between we had some tender near moments, and I loved +her very greatly. There was this misfortune in the business, that in +the darkness, and alone, I thought with great intensity of her, of her +eyes, of her touch, of her sweet and delightful presence, but when I +sat down to write I thought of Shelley and Burns and myself, and other +such irrelevant matters. When one is in love, in this fermenting way, +it is harder to make love than it is when one does not love at all. And +as for Nettie, she loved, I know, not me but those gentle mysteries. It +was not my voice should rouse her dreams to passion. . . So our letters +continued to jar. Then suddenly she wrote me one doubting whether she +could ever care for any one who was a Socialist and did not believe in +Church, and then hard upon it came another note with unexpected +novelties of phrasing. She thought we were not suited to each other, we +differed so in tastes and ideas, she had long thought of releasing me +from our engagement. In fact, though I really did not apprehend it +fully at the first shock, I was dismissed. Her letter had reached me +when I came home after old Rawdon’s none too civil refusal to raise my +wages. On this particular evening of which I write, therefore, I was in +a state of feverish adjustment to two new and amazing, two nearly +overwhelming facts, that I was neither indispensable to Nettie nor at +Rawdon’s. And to talk of comets! + +Where did I stand? + +I had grown so accustomed to think of Nettie as inseparably mine—the +whole tradition of “true love” pointed me to that—that for her to face +about with these precise small phrases toward abandonment, after we had +kissed and whispered and come so close in the little adventurous +familiarities of the young, shocked me profoundly. I! I! And Rawdon +didn’t find me indispensable either. I felt I was suddenly repudiated +by the universe and threatened with effacement, that in some positive +and emphatic way I must at once assert myself. There was no balm in the +religion I had learnt, or in the irreligion I had adopted, for wounded +self-love. + +Should I fling up Rawdon’s place at once and then in some +extraordinary, swift manner make the fortune of Frobisher’s adjacent +and closely competitive pot-bank? + +The first part of that program, at any rate, would be easy of +accomplishment, to go to Rawdon and say, “You will hear from me again,” +but for the rest, Frobisher might fail me. That, however, was a +secondary issue. The predominant affair was with Nettie. I found my +mind thick-shot with flying fragments of rhetoric that might be of +service in the letter I would write her. Scorn, irony, tenderness—what +was it to be? + +“Brother!” said Parload, suddenly. + +“What?” said I. + +“They’re firing up at Bladden’s iron-works, and the smoke comes right +across my bit of sky.” + +The interruption came just as I was ripe to discharge my thoughts upon +him. + +“Parload,” said I, “very likely I shall have to leave all this. Old +Rawdon won’t give me a rise in my wages, and after having asked I don’t +think I can stand going on upon the old terms anymore. See? So I may +have to clear out of Clayton for good and all.” + +§ 3 + +That made Parload put down the opera-glass and look at me. + +“It’s a bad time to change just now,” he said after a little pause. + +Rawdon had said as much, in a less agreeable tone. + +But with Parload I felt always a disposition to the heroic note. “I’m +tired,” I said, “of humdrum drudgery for other men. One may as well +starve one’s body out of a place as to starve one’s soul in one.” + +“I don’t know about that altogether,” began Parload, slowly. . . . + +And with that we began one of our interminable conversations, one of +those long, wandering, intensely generalizing, diffusely personal talks +that will be dear to the hearts of intelligent youths until the world +comes to an end. The Change has not abolished that, anyhow. + +It would be an incredible feat of memory for me now to recall all that +meandering haze of words, indeed I recall scarcely any of it, though +its circumstances and atmosphere stand out, a sharp, clear picture in +my mind. I posed after my manner and behaved very foolishly no doubt, a +wounded, smarting egotist, and Parload played his part of the +philosopher preoccupied with the deeps. + +We were presently abroad, walking through the warm summer’s night and +talking all the more freely for that. But one thing that I said I can +remember. “I wish at times,” said I, with a gesture at the heavens, +“that comet of yours or some such thing would indeed strike this +world—and wipe us all away, strikes, wars, tumults, loves, jealousies, +and all the wretchedness of life!” + +“Ah!” said Parload, and the thought seemed to hang about him. + +“It could only add to the miseries of life,” he said irrelevantly, when +presently I was discoursing of other things. + +“What would?” + +“Collision with a comet. It would only throw things back. It would only +make what was left of life more savage than it is at present.” + +“But why should _anything_ be left of life?” said I. . . . + +That was our style, you know, and meanwhile we walked together up the +narrow street outside his lodging, up the stepway and the lanes toward +Clayton Crest and the high road. + +But my memories carry me back so effectually to those days before the +Change that I forget that now all these places have been altered beyond +recognition, that the narrow street and the stepway and the view from +Clayton Crest, and indeed all the world in which I was born and bred +and made, has vanished clean away, out of space and out of time, and +wellnigh out of the imagination of all those who are younger by a +generation than I. You cannot see, as I can see, the dark empty way +between the mean houses, the dark empty way lit by a bleary gas-lamp at +the corner, you cannot feel the hard checkered pavement under your +boots, you cannot mark the dimly lit windows here and there, and the +shadows upon the ugly and often patched and crooked blinds of the +people cooped within. Nor can you presently pass the beerhouse with its +brighter gas and its queer, screening windows, nor get a whiff of foul +air and foul language from its door, nor see the crumpled furtive +figure—some rascal child—that slinks past us down the steps. + +We crossed the longer street, up which a clumsy steam tram, vomiting +smoke and sparks, made its clangorous way, and adown which one saw the +greasy brilliance of shop fronts and the naphtha flares of hawkers’ +barrows dripping fire into the night. A hazy movement of people swayed +along that road, and we heard the voice of an itinerant preacher from a +waste place between the houses. You cannot see these things as I can +see them, nor can you figure—unless you know the pictures that great +artist Hyde has left the world—the effect of the great hoarding by +which we passed, lit below by a gas-lamp and towering up to a sudden +sharp black edge against the pallid sky. + +Those hoardings! They were the brightest colored things in all that +vanished world. Upon them, in successive layers of paste and paper, all +the rough enterprises of that time joined in chromatic discord; pill +vendors and preachers, theaters and charities, marvelous soaps and +astonishing pickles, typewriting machines and sewing machines, mingled +in a sort of visualized clamor. And passing that there was a muddy lane +of cinders, a lane without a light, that used its many puddles to +borrow a star or so from the sky. We splashed along unheeding as we +talked. + +Then across the allotments, a wilderness of cabbages and evil-looking +sheds, past a gaunt abandoned factory, and so to the high road. The +high road ascended in a curve past a few houses and a beerhouse or so, +and round until all the valley in which four industrial towns lay +crowded and confluent was overlooked. + +I will admit that with the twilight there came a spell of weird +magnificence over all that land and brooded on it until dawn. The +horrible meanness of its details was veiled, the hutches that were +homes, the bristling multitudes of chimneys, the ugly patches of +unwilling vegetation amidst the makeshift fences of barrel-stave and +wire. The rusty scars that framed the opposite ridges where the iron +ore was taken and the barren mountains of slag from the blast furnaces +were veiled; the reek and boiling smoke and dust from foundry, +pot-bank, and furnace, transfigured and assimilated by the night. The +dust-laden atmosphere that was gray oppression through the day became +at sundown a mystery of deep translucent colors, of blues and purples, +of somber and vivid reds, of strange bright clearnesses of green and +yellow athwart the darkling sky. Each upstart furnace, when its monarch +sun had gone, crowned itself with flames, the dark cinder heaps began +to glow with quivering fires, and each pot-bank squatted rebellious in +a volcanic coronet of light. The empire of the day broke into a +thousand feudal baronies of burning coal. The minor streets across the +valley picked themselves out with gas-lamps of faint yellow, that +brightened and mingled at all the principal squares and crossings with +the greenish pallor of incandescent mantles and the high cold glare of +the electric arc. The interlacing railways lifted bright signal-boxes +over their intersections, and signal stars of red and green in +rectangular constellations. The trains became articulated black +serpents breathing fire. + +Moreover, high overhead, like a thing put out of reach and near +forgotten, Parload had rediscovered a realm that was ruled by neither +sun nor furnace, the universe of stars. + +This was the scene of many a talk we two had held together. And if in +the daytime we went right over the crest and looked westward there was +farmland, there were parks and great mansions, the spire of a distant +cathedral, and sometimes when the weather was near raining, the crests +of remote mountains hung clearly in the sky. Beyond the range of sight +indeed, out beyond, there was Checkshill; I felt it there always, and +in the darkness more than I did by day. Checkshill, and Nettie! + +And to us two youngsters as we walked along the cinder path beside the +rutted road and argued out our perplexities, it seemed that this ridge +gave us compendiously a view of our whole world. + +There on the one hand in a crowded darkness, about the ugly factories +and work-places, the workers herded together, ill clothed, ill +nourished, ill taught, badly and expensively served at every occasion +in life, uncertain even of their insufficient livelihood from day to +day, the chapels and churches and public-houses swelling up amidst +their wretched homes like saprophytes amidst a general corruption, and +on the other, in space, freedom, and dignity, scarce heeding the few +cottages, as overcrowded as they were picturesque, in which the +laborers festered, lived the landlords and masters who owned pot-banks +and forge and farm and mine. Far away, distant, beautiful, irrelevant, +from out of a little cluster of secondhand bookshops, ecclesiastical +residences, and the inns and incidentals of a decaying market town, the +cathedral of Lowchester pointed a beautiful, unemphatic spire to vague +incredible skies. So it seemed to us that the whole world was planned +in those youthful first impressions. + +We saw everything simple, as young men will. We had our angry, +confident solutions, and whosoever would criticize them was a friend of +the robbers. It was a clear case of robbery, we held, visibly so; there +in those great houses lurked the Landlord and the Capitalist, with his +scoundrel the Lawyer, with his cheat the Priest, and we others were all +the victims of their deliberate villainies. No doubt they winked and +chuckled over their rare wines, amidst their dazzling, wickedly dressed +women, and plotted further grinding for the faces of the poor. And +amidst all the squalor on the other hand, amidst brutalities, +ignorance, and drunkenness, suffered multitudinously their blameless +victim, the Working Man. And we, almost at the first glance, had found +all this out, it had merely to be asserted now with sufficient rhetoric +and vehemence to change the face of the whole world. The Working Man +would arise—in the form of a Labor Party, and with young men like +Parload and myself to represent him—and come to his own, and then———? + +Then the robbers would get it hot, and everything would be extremely +satisfactory. + +Unless my memory plays me strange tricks that does no injustice to the +creed of thought and action that Parload and I held as the final result +of human wisdom. We believed it with heat, and rejected with heat the +most obvious qualification of its harshness. At times in our great +talks we were full of heady hopes for the near triumph of our doctrine, +more often our mood was hot resentment at the wickedness and stupidity +that delayed so plain and simple a reconstruction of the order of the +world. Then we grew malignant, and thought of barricades and +significant violence. I was very bitter, I know, upon this night of +which I am now particularly telling, and the only face upon the hydra +of Capitalism and Monopoly that I could see at all clearly, smiled +exactly as old Rawdon had smiled when he refused to give me more than a +paltry twenty shillings a week. + +I wanted intensely to salve my self-respect by some revenge upon him, +and I felt that if that could be done by slaying the hydra, I might +drag its carcass to the feet of Nettie, and settle my other trouble as +well. “What do you think of me _now_, Nettie?” + +That at any rate comes near enough to the quality of my thinking, then, +for you to imagine how I gesticulated and spouted to Parload that +night. You figure us as little black figures, unprepossessing in the +outline, set in the midst of that desolating night of flaming +industrialism, and my little voice with a rhetorical twang protesting, +denouncing. . . . + +You will consider those notions of my youth poor silly violent stuff; +particularly if you are of the younger generation born since the Change +you will be of that opinion. Nowadays the whole world thinks clearly, +thinks with deliberation, pellucid certainties, you find it impossible +to imagine how any other thinking could have been possible. Let me tell +you then how you can bring yourself to something like the condition of +our former state. In the first place you must get yourself out of +health by unwise drinking and eating, and out of condition by +neglecting your exercise, then you must contrive to be worried very +much and made very anxious and uncomfortable, and then you must work +very hard for four or five days and for long hours every day at +something too petty to be interesting, too complex to be mechanical, +and without any personal significance to you whatever. This done, get +straightway into a room that is not ventilated at all, and that is +already full of foul air, and there set yourself to think out some very +complicated problem. In a very little while you will find yourself in a +state of intellectual muddle, annoyed, impatient, snatching at the +obvious presently in choosing and rejecting conclusions haphazard. Try +to play chess under such conditions and you will play stupidly and lose +your temper. Try to do anything that taxes the brain or temper and you +will fail. + +Now, the whole world before the Change was as sick and feverish as +that, it was worried and overworked and perplexed by problems that +would not get stated simply, that changed and evaded solution, it was +in an atmosphere that had corrupted and thickened past breathing; there +was no thorough cool thinking in the world at all. There was nothing in +the mind of the world anywhere but half-truths, hasty assumptions, +hallucinations, and emotions. Nothing. . . . + +I know it seems incredible, that already some of the younger men are +beginning to doubt the greatness of the Change our world has undergone, +but read—read the newspapers of that time. Every age becomes mitigated +and a little ennobled in our minds as it recedes into the past. It is +the part of those who like myself have stories of that time to tell, to +supply, by a scrupulous spiritual realism, some antidote to that +glamour. + +§ 4 + +Always with Parload I was chief talker. + +I can look back upon myself with, I believe, an almost perfect +detachment, things have so changed that indeed now I am another being, +with scarce anything in common with that boastful foolish youngster +whose troubles I recall. I see him vulgarly theatrical, egotistical, +insincere, indeed I do not like him save with that instinctive material +sympathy that is the fruit of incessant intimacy. Because he was myself +I may be able to feel and write understandingly about motives that will +put him out of sympathy with nearly every reader, but why should I +palliate or defend his quality? + +Always, I say, I did the talking, and it would have amazed me beyond +measure if any one had told me that mine was not the greater +intelligence in these wordy encounters. Parload was a quiet youth, and +stiff and restrained in all things, while I had that supreme gift for +young men and democracies, the gift of copious expression. Parload I +diagnosed in my secret heart as a trifle dull; he posed as pregnant +quiet, I thought, and was obsessed by the congenial notion of +“scientific caution.” I did not remark that while my hands were chiefly +useful for gesticulation or holding a pen Parload’s hands could do all +sorts of things, and I did not think therefore that fibers must run +from those fingers to something in his brain. Nor, though I bragged +perpetually of my shorthand, of my literature, of my indispensable +share in Rawdon’s business, did Parload lay stress on the conics and +calculus he “mugged” in the organized science school. Parload is a +famous man now, a great figure in a great time, his work upon +intersecting radiations has broadened the intellectual horizon of +mankind for ever, and I, who am at best a hewer of intellectual wood, a +drawer of living water, can smile, and he can smile, to think how I +patronized and posed and jabbered over him in the darkness of those +early days. + +That night I was shrill and eloquent beyond measure. Rawdon was, of +course, the hub upon which I went round—Rawdon and the Rawdonesque +employer and the injustice of “wages slavery” and all the immediate +conditions of that industrial blind alley up which it seemed our lives +were thrust. But ever and again I glanced at other things. Nettie was +always there in the background of my mind, regarding me enigmatically. +It was part of my pose to Parload that I had a romantic love-affair +somewhere away beyond the sphere of our intercourse, and that note gave +a Byronic resonance to many of the nonsensical things I produced for +his astonishment. + +I will not weary you with too detailed an account of the talk of a +foolish youth who was also distressed and unhappy, and whose voice was +balm for the humiliations that smarted in his eyes. Indeed, now in many +particulars I cannot disentangle this harangue of which I tell from +many of the things I may have said in other talks to Parload. For +example, I forget if it was then or before or afterwards that, as it +were by accident, I let out what might be taken as an admission that I +was addicted to drugs. + +“You shouldn’t do that,” said Parload, suddenly. “It won’t do to poison +your brains with that.” + +My brains, my eloquence, were to be very important assets to our party +in the coming revolution. . . . + +But one thing does clearly belong to this particular conversation I am +recalling. When I started out it was quite settled in the back of my +mind that I must not leave Rawdon’s. I simply wanted to abuse my +employer to Parload. But I talked myself quite out of touch with all +the cogent reasons there were for sticking to my place, and I got home +that night irrevocably committed to a spirited—not to say a +defiant—policy with my employer. + +“I can’t stand Rawdon’s much longer,” I said to Parload by way of a +flourish. + +“There’s hard times coming,” said Parload. + +“Next winter.” + +“Sooner. The Americans have been overproducing, and they mean to dump. +The iron trade is going to have convulsions.” + +“I don’t care. Pot-banks are steady.” + +“With a corner in borax? No. I’ve heard—” + +“What have you heard?” + +“Office secrets. But it’s no secret there’s trouble coming to potters. +There’s been borrowing and speculation. The masters don’t stick to one +business as they used to do. I can tell that much. Half the valley may +be ‘playing’ before two months are out.” Parload delivered himself of +this unusually long speech in his most pithy and weighty manner. + +“Playing” was our local euphemism for a time when there was no work and +no money for a man, a time of stagnation and dreary hungry loafing day +after day. Such interludes seemed in those days a necessary consequence +of industrial organization. + +“You’d better stick to Rawdon’s,” said Parload. + +“Ugh,” said I, affecting a noble disgust. + +“There’ll be trouble,” said Parload. + +“Who cares?” said I. “Let there be trouble—the more the better. This +system has got to end, sooner or later. These capitalists with their +speculation and corners and trusts make things go from bad to worse. +Why should I cower in Rawdon’s office, like a frightened dog, while +hunger walks the streets? Hunger is the master revolutionary. When he +comes we ought to turn out and salute him. Anyway, _I’m_ going to do so +now.” + +“That’s all very well,” began Parload. + +“I’m tired of it,” I said. “I want to come to grips with all these +Rawdons. I think perhaps if I was hungry and savage I could talk to +hungry men—” + +“There’s your mother,” said Parload, in his slow judicial way. + +That _was_ a difficulty. + +I got over it by a rhetorical turn. “Why should one sacrifice the +future of the world—why should one even sacrifice one’s own +future—because one’s mother is totally destitute of imagination?” + +§ 5 + +It was late when I parted from Parload and came back to my own home. + +Our house stood in a highly respectable little square near the Clayton +parish church. Mr. Gabbitas, the curate of all work, lodged on our +ground floor, and upstairs there was an old lady, Miss Holroyd, who +painted flowers on china and maintained her blind sister in an adjacent +room; my mother and I lived in the basement and slept in the attics. +The front of the house was veiled by a Virginian creeper that defied +the Clayton air and clustered in untidy dependent masses over the +wooden porch. + +As I came up the steps I had a glimpse of Mr. Gabbitas printing +photographs by candle light in his room. It was the chief delight of +his little life to spend his holiday abroad in the company of a queer +little snap-shot camera, and to return with a great multitude of foggy +and sinister negatives that he had made in beautiful and interesting +places. These the camera company would develop for him on advantageous +terms, and he would spend his evenings the year through in printing +from them in order to inflict copies upon his undeserving friends. +There was a long frameful of his work in the Clayton National School, +for example, inscribed in old English lettering, “Italian Travel +Pictures, by the Rev. E. B. Gabbitas.” For this it seemed he lived and +traveled and had his being. It was his only real joy. By his shaded +light I could see his sharp little nose, his little pale eyes behind +his glasses, his mouth pursed up with the endeavor of his employment. + +“Hireling Liar,” I muttered, for was not he also part of the system, +part of the scheme of robbery that made wages serfs of Parload and +me?—though his share in the proceedings was certainly small. + +“Hireling Liar,” said I, standing in the darkness, outside even his +faint glow of traveled culture. . . + +My mother let me in. + +She looked at me, mutely, because she knew there was something wrong +and that it was no use for her to ask what. + +“Good night, mummy,” said I, and kissed her a little roughly, and lit +and took my candle and went off at once up the staircase to bed, not +looking back at her. + +“I’ve kept some supper for you, dear.” + +“Don’t want any supper.” + +“But, dearie———” + +“Good night, mother,” and I went up and slammed my door upon her, blew +out my candle, and lay down at once upon my bed, lay there a long time +before I got up to undress. + +There were times when that dumb beseeching of my mother’s face +irritated me unspeakably. It did so that night. I felt I had to +struggle against it, that I could not exist if I gave way to its +pleadings, and it hurt me and divided me to resist it, almost beyond +endurance. It was clear to me that I had to think out for myself +religious problems, social problems, questions of conduct, questions of +expediency, that her poor dear simple beliefs could not help me at +all—and she did not understand! Hers was the accepted religion, her +only social ideas were blind submissions to the accepted order—to laws, +to doctors, to clergymen, lawyers, masters, and all respectable persons +in authority over us, and with her to believe was to fear. She knew +from a thousand little signs—though still at times I went to church +with her—that I was passing out of touch of all these things that ruled +her life, into some terrible unknown. From things I said she could +infer such clumsy concealments as I made. She felt my socialism, felt +my spirit in revolt against the accepted order, felt the impotent +resentments that filled me with bitterness against all she held sacred. +Yet, you know, it was not her dear gods she sought to defend so much as +me! She seemed always to be wanting to say to me, “Dear, I know it’s +hard—but revolt is harder. Don’t make war on it, dear—don’t! Don’t do +anything to offend it. I’m sure it will hurt you if you do—it will hurt +you if you do.” + +She had been cowed into submission, as so many women of that time had +been, by the sheer brutality of the accepted thing. The existing order +dominated her into a worship of abject observances. It had bent her, +aged her, robbed her of eyesight so that at fifty-five she peered +through cheap spectacles at my face, and saw it only dimly, filled her +with a habit of anxiety, made her hands——— Her poor dear hands! Not in +the whole world now could you find a woman with hands so grimy, so +needle-worn, so misshapen by toil, so chapped and coarsened, so evilly +entreated. . . . At any rate, there is this I can say for myself, that +my bitterness against the world and fortune was for her sake as well as +for my own. + +Yet that night I pushed by her harshly. I answered her curtly, left her +concerned and perplexed in the passage, and slammed my door upon her. + +And for a long time I lay raging at the hardship and evil of life, at +the contempt of Rawdon, and the loveless coolness of Nettie’s letter, +at my weakness and insignificance, at the things I found intolerable, +and the things I could not mend. Over and over went my poor little +brain, tired out and unable to stop on my treadmill of troubles. +Nettie. Rawdon. My mother. Gabbitas. Nettie. . . + +Suddenly I came upon emotional exhaustion. Some clock was striking +midnight. After all, I was young; I had these quick transitions. I +remember quite distinctly, I stood up abruptly, undressed very quickly +in the dark, and had hardly touched my pillow again before I was +asleep. + +But how my mother slept that night I do not know. + +Oddly enough, I do not blame myself for behaving like this to my +mother, though my conscience blames me acutely for my arrogance to +Parload. I regret my behavior to my mother before the days of the +Change, it is a scar among my memories that will always be a little +painful to the end of my days, but I do not see how something of the +sort was to be escaped under those former conditions. In that time of +muddle and obscurity people were overtaken by needs and toil and hot +passions before they had the chance of even a year or so of clear +thinking; they settled down to an intense and strenuous application to +some partial but immediate duty, and the growth of thought ceased in +them. They set and hardened into narrow ways. Few women remained +capable of a new idea after five and twenty, few men after thirty-one +or two. Discontent with the thing that existed was regarded as immoral, +it was certainly an annoyance, and the only protest against it, the +only effort against that universal tendency in all human institutions +to thicken and clog, to work loosely and badly, to rust and weaken +towards catastrophes, came from the young—the crude unmerciful young. +It seemed in those days to thoughtful men the harsh law of being—that +either we must submit to our elders and be stifled, or disregard them, +disobey them, thrust them aside, and make our little step of progress +before we too ossified and became obstructive in our turn. + +My pushing past my mother, my irresponsive departure to my own silent +meditations, was, I now perceive, a figure of the whole hard +relationship between parents and son in those days. There appeared no +other way; that perpetually recurring tragedy was, it seemed, part of +the very nature of the progress of the world. We did not think then +that minds might grow ripe without growing rigid, or children honor +their parents and still think for themselves. We were angry and hasty +because we stifled in the darkness, in a poisoned and vitiated air. +That deliberate animation of the intelligence which is now the +universal quality, that vigor with consideration, that judgment with +confident enterprise which shine through all our world, were things +disintegrated and unknown in the corrupting atmosphere of our former +state. + +(So the first fascicle ended. I put it aside and looked for the second. + +“Well?” said the man who wrote. + +“This is fiction?” + +“It’s my story.” + +“But you— Amidst this beauty— You are not this ill-conditioned, +squalidly bred lad of whom I have been reading?” + +He smiled. “There intervenes a certain Change,” he said. “Have I not +hinted at that?” + +I hesitated upon a question, then saw the second fascicle at hand, and +picked it up.) + + + + +CHAPTER THE SECOND +NETTIE + + +§ 1 + +I cannot now remember (_the story resumed_), what interval separated +that evening on which Parload first showed me the comet—I think I only +pretended to see it then—and the Sunday afternoon I spent at +Checkshill. + +Between the two there was time enough for me to give notice and leave +Rawdon’s, to seek for some other situation very strenuously in vain, to +think and say many hard and violent things to my mother and to Parload, +and to pass through some phases of very profound wretchedness. There +must have been a passionate correspondence with Nettie, but all the +froth and fury of that has faded now out of my memory. All I have clear +now is that I wrote one magnificent farewell to her, casting her off +forever, and that I got in reply a prim little note to say, that even +if there was to be an end to everything, that was no excuse for writing +such things as I had done, and then I think I wrote again in a vein I +considered satirical. To that she did not reply. That interval was at +least three weeks, and probably four, because the comet which had been +on the first occasion only a dubious speck in the sky, certainly +visible only when it was magnified, was now a great white presence, +brighter than Jupiter, and casting a shadow on its own account. It was +now actively present in the world of human thought, every one was +talking about it, every one was looking for its waxing splendor as the +sun went down—the papers, the music-halls, the hoardings, echoed it. + +Yes; the comet was already dominant before I went over to make +everything clear to Nettie. And Parload had spent two hoarded pounds in +buying himself a spectroscope, so that he could see for himself, night +after night, that mysterious, that stimulating line—the unknown line in +the green. How many times I wonder did I look at the smudgy, quivering +symbol of the unknown things that were rushing upon us out of the +inhuman void, before I rebelled? But at last I could stand it no +longer, and I reproached Parload very bitterly for wasting his time in +“astronomical dilettantism.” + +“Here,” said I. “We’re on the verge of the biggest lock-out in the +history of this countryside; here’s distress and hunger coming, here’s +all the capitalistic competitive system like a wound inflamed, and you +spend your time gaping at that damned silly streak of nothing in the +sky!” + +Parload stared at me. “Yes, I do,” he said slowly, as though it was a +new idea. “Don’t I? . . . I wonder why.” + +“_I_ want to start meetings of an evening on Howden’s Waste.” + +“You think they’d listen?” + +“They’d listen fast enough now.” + +“They didn’t before,” said Parload, looking at his pet instrument. + +“There was a demonstration of unemployed at Swathinglea on Sunday. They +got to stone throwing.” + +Parload said nothing for a little while and I said several things. He +seemed to be considering something. + +“But, after all,” he said at last, with an awkward movement towards his +spectroscope, “that does signify something.” + +“The comet?” + +“Yes.” + +“What can it signify? You don’t want me to believe in astrology. What +does it matter what flames in the heavens—when men are starving on +earth?” + +“It’s—it’s science.” + +“Science! What we want now is socialism—not science.” + +He still seemed reluctant to give up his comet. + +“Socialism’s all right,” he said, “but if that thing up there _was_ to +hit the earth it might matter.” + +“Nothing matters but human beings.” + +“Suppose it killed them all.” + +“Oh,” said I, “that’s Rot,” + +“I wonder,” said Parload, dreadfully divided in his allegiance. + +He looked at the comet. He seemed on the verge of repeating his growing +information about the nearness of the paths of the earth and comet, and +all that might ensue from that. So I cut in with something I had got +out of a now forgotten writer called Ruskin, a volcano of beautiful +language and nonsensical suggestions, who prevailed very greatly with +eloquent excitable young men in those days. Something it was about the +insignificance of science and the supreme importance of Life. Parload +stood listening, half turned towards the sky with the tips of his +fingers on his spectroscope. He seemed to come to a sudden decision. + +“No. I don’t agree with you, Leadford,” he said. “You don’t understand +about science.” + +Parload rarely argued with that bluntness of opposition. I was so used +to entire possession of our talk that his brief contradiction struck me +like a blow. “Don’t agree with me!” I repeated. + +“No,” said Parload + +“But how?” + +“I believe science is of more importance than socialism,” he said. +“Socialism’s a theory. Science—science is something more.” + +And that was really all he seemed to be able to say. + +We embarked upon one of those queer arguments illiterate young men used +always to find so heating. Science or Socialism? It was, of course, +like arguing which is right, left handedness or a taste for onions, it +was altogether impossible opposition. But the range of my rhetoric +enabled me at last to exasperate Parload, and his mere repudiation of +my conclusions sufficed to exasperate me, and we ended in the key of a +positive quarrel. “Oh, very well!” said I. “So long as I know where we +are!” + +I slammed his door as though I dynamited his house, and went raging +down the street, but I felt that he was already back at the window +worshiping his blessed line in the green, before I got round the +corner. + +I had to walk for an hour or so, before I was cool enough to go home. + +And it was Parload who had first introduced me to socialism! + +Recreant! + +The most extraordinary things used to run through my head in those +days. I will confess that my mind ran persistently that evening upon +revolutions after the best French pattern, and I sat on a Committee of +Safety and tried backsliders. Parload was there, among the prisoners, +backsliderissimus, aware too late of the error of his ways. His hands +were tied behind his back ready for the shambles; through the open door +one heard the voice of justice, the rude justice of the people. I was +sorry, but I had to do my duty. + +“If we punish those who would betray us to Kings,” said I, with a +sorrowful deliberation, “how much the more must we punish those who +would give over the State to the pursuit of useless knowledge”; and so +with a gloomy satisfaction sent him off to the guillotine. + +“Ah, Parload! Parload! If only you’d listened to me earlier, Parload. . +. .” + +None the less that quarrel made me extremely unhappy. Parload was my +only gossip, and it cost me much to keep away from him and think evil +of him with no one to listen to me, evening after evening. + +That was a very miserable time for me, even before my last visit to +Checkshill. My long unemployed hours hung heavily on my hands. I kept +away from home all day, partly to support a fiction that I was +sedulously seeking another situation, and partly to escape the +persistent question in my mother’s eyes. “Why did you quarrel with Mr. +Rawdon? Why DID you? Why do you keep on going about with a sullen face +and risk offending IT more?” I spent most of the morning in the +newspaper-room of the public library, writing impossible applications +for impossible posts—I remember that among other things of the sort I +offered my services to a firm of private detectives, a sinister breed +of traders upon base jealousies now happily vanished from the world, +and wrote apropos of an advertisement for “stevedores” that I did not +know what the duties of a stevedore might be, but that I was apt and +willing to learn—and in the afternoons and evenings I wandered through +the strange lights and shadows of my native valley and hated all +created things. Until my wanderings were checked by the discovery that +I was wearing out my boots. + +The stagnant inconclusive malaria of that time! + +I perceive that I was an evil-tempered, ill-disposed youth with a great +capacity for hatred, _but_— + +There was an excuse for hate. + +It was wrong of me to hate individuals, to be rude, harsh, and +vindictive to this person or that, but indeed it would have been +equally wrong to have taken the manifest offer life made me, without +resentment. I see now clearly and calmly, what I then felt obscurely +and with an unbalanced intensity, that my conditions were intolerable. +My work was tedious and laborious and it took up an unreasonable +proportion of my time, I was ill clothed, ill fed, ill housed, ill +educated and ill trained, my will was suppressed and cramped to the +pitch of torture, I had no reasonable pride in myself and no reasonable +chance of putting anything right. It was a life hardly worth living. +That a large proportion of the people about me had no better a lot, +that many had a worse, does not affect these facts. It was a life in +which contentment would have been disgraceful. If some of them were +contented or resigned, so much the worse for every one. No doubt it was +hasty and foolish of me to throw up my situation, but everything was so +obviously aimless and foolish in our social organization that I do not +feel disposed to blame myself even for that, except in so far as it +pained my mother and caused her anxiety. + +Think of the one comprehensive fact of the lock-out! + +That year was a bad year, a year of world-wide economic +disorganization. Through their want of intelligent direction the great +“Trust” of American ironmasters, a gang of energetic, narrow-minded +furnace owners, had smelted far more iron than the whole world had any +demand for. (In those days there existed no means of estimating any +need of that sort beforehand.) They had done this without even +consulting the ironmasters of any other country. During their period of +activity they had drawn into their employment a great number of +workers, and had erected a huge productive plant. It is manifestly just +that people who do headlong stupid things of this sort should suffer, +but in the old days it was quite possible, it was customary for the +real blunderers in such disasters, to shift nearly all the consequences +of their incapacity. No one thought it wrong for a light-witted +“captain of industry” who had led his workpeople into overproduction, +into the disproportionate manufacture, that is to say, of some +particular article, to abandon and dismiss them, nor was there anything +to prevent the sudden frantic underselling of some trade rival in order +to surprise and destroy his trade, secure his customers for one’s own +destined needs, and shift a portion of one’s punishment upon him. This +operation of spasmodic underselling was known as “dumping.” The +American ironmasters were now dumping on the British market. The +British employers were, of course, taking their loss out of their +workpeople as much as possible, but in addition they were agitating for +some legislation that would prevent—not stupid relative excess in +production, but “dumping”—not the disease, but the consequences of the +disease. The necessary knowledge to prevent either dumping or its +causes, the uncorrelated production of commodities, did not exist, but +this hardly weighed with them at all, and in answer to their demands +there had arisen a curious party of retaliatory-protectionists who +combined vague proposals for spasmodic responses to these convulsive +attacks from foreign manufacturers, with the very evident intention of +achieving financial adventures. The dishonest and reckless elements +were indeed so evident in this movement as to add very greatly to the +general atmosphere of distrust and insecurity, and in the recoil from +the prospect of fiscal power in the hands of the class of men known as +the “New Financiers,” one heard frightened old-fashioned statesmen +asserting with passion that “dumping” didn’t occur, or that it was a +very charming sort of thing to happen. Nobody would face and handle the +rather intricate truth of the business. The whole effect upon the mind +of a cool observer was of a covey of unsubstantial jabbering minds +drifting over a series of irrational economic cataclysms, prices and +employment tumbled about like towers in an earthquake, and amidst the +shifting masses were the common work-people going on with their lives +as well as they could, suffering, perplexed, unorganized, and for +anything but violent, fruitless protests, impotent. You cannot hope now +to understand the infinite want of adjustment in the old order of +things. At one time there were people dying of actual starvation in +India, while men were burning unsalable wheat in America. It sounds +like the account of a particularly mad dream, does it not? It was a +dream, a dream from which no one on earth expected an awakening. + +To us youngsters with the positiveness, the rationalism of youth, it +seemed that the strikes and lockouts, the overproduction and misery +could not possibly result simply from ignorance and want of thought and +feeling. We needed more dramatic factors than these mental fogs, these +mere atmospheric devils. We fled therefore to that common refuge of the +unhappy ignorant, a belief in callous insensate plots—we called them +“plots”—against the poor. + +You can still see how we figured it in any museum by looking up the +caricatures of capital and labor that adorned the German and American +socialistic papers of the old time. + +§ 2 + +I had cast Nettie off in an eloquent epistle, had really imagined the +affair was over forever—“I’ve done with women,” I said to Parload—and +then there was silence for more than a week. + +Before that week was over I was wondering with a growing emotion what +next would happen between us. + +I found myself thinking constantly of Nettie, picturing her—sometimes +with stern satisfaction, sometimes with sympathetic remorse—mourning, +regretting, realizing the absolute end that had come between us. At the +bottom of my heart I no more believed that there was an end between us, +than that an end would come to the world. Had we not kissed one +another, had we not achieved an atmosphere of whispering nearness, +breached our virgin shyness with one another? Of course she was mine, +of course I was hers, and separations and final quarrels and harshness +and distance were no more than flourishes upon that eternal fact. So at +least I felt the thing, however I shaped my thoughts. + +Whenever my imagination got to work as that week drew to its close, she +came in as a matter of course, I thought of her recurrently all day and +dreamt of her at night. On Saturday night I dreamt of her very vividly. +Her face was flushed and wet with tears, her hair a little disordered, +and when I spoke to her she turned away. In some manner this dream left +in my mind a feeling of distress and anxiety. In the morning I had a +raging thirst to see her. + +That Sunday my mother wanted me to go to church very particularly. She +had a double reason for that; she thought that it would certainly +exercise a favorable influence upon my search for a situation +throughout the next week, and in addition Mr. Gabbitas, with a certain +mystery behind his glasses, had promised to see what he could do for +me, and she wanted to keep him up to that promise. I half consented, +and then my desire for Nettie took hold of me. I told my mother I +wasn’t going to church, and set off about eleven to walk the seventeen +miles to Checkshill. + +It greatly intensified the fatigue of that long tramp that the sole of +my boot presently split at the toe, and after I had cut the flapping +portion off, a nail worked through and began to torment me. However, +the boot looked all right after that operation and gave no audible hint +of my discomfort. I got some bread and cheese at a little inn on the +way, and was in Checkshill park about four. I did not go by the road +past the house and so round to the gardens, but cut over the crest +beyond the second keeper’s cottage, along a path Nettie used to call +her own. It was a mere deer track. It led up a miniature valley and +through a pretty dell in which we had been accustomed to meet, and so +through the hollies and along a narrow path close by the wall of the +shrubbery to the gardens. + +In my memory that walk through the park before I came upon Nettie +stands out very vividly. The long tramp before it is foreshortened to a +mere effect of dusty road and painful boot, but the bracken valley and +sudden tumult of doubts and unwonted expectations that came to me, +stands out now as something significant, as something unforgettable, +something essential to the meaning of all that followed. Where should I +meet her? What would she say? I had asked these questions before and +found an answer. Now they came again with a trail of fresh implications +and I had no answer for them at all. As I approached Nettie she ceased +to be the mere butt of my egotistical self-projection, the custodian of +my sexual pride, and drew together and became over and above this a +personality of her own, a personality and a mystery, a sphinx I had +evaded only to meet again. + +I find a little difficulty in describing the quality of the old-world +love-making so that it may be understandable now. + +We young people had practically no preparation at all for the stir and +emotions of adolescence. Towards the young the world maintained a +conspiracy of stimulating silences. There came no initiation. There +were books, stories of a curiously conventional kind that insisted on +certain qualities in every love affair and greatly intensified one’s +natural desire for them, perfect trust, perfect loyalty, lifelong +devotion. Much of the complex essentials of love were altogether +hidden. One read these things, got accidental glimpses of this and +that, wondered and forgot, and so one grew. Then strange emotions, +novel alarming desires, dreams strangely charged with feeling; an +inexplicable impulse of self-abandonment began to tickle queerly +amongst the familiar purely egotistical and materialistic things of +boyhood and girlhood. We were like misguided travelers who had camped +in the dry bed of a tropical river. Presently we were knee deep and +neck deep in the flood. Our beings were suddenly going out from +ourselves seeking other beings—we knew not why. This novel craving for +abandonment to some one of the other sex, bore us away. We were ashamed +and full of desire. We kept the thing a guilty secret, and were +resolved to satisfy it against all the world. In this state it was we +drifted in the most accidental way against some other blindly seeking +creature, and linked like nascent atoms. + +We were obsessed by the books we read, by all the talk about us that +once we had linked ourselves we were linked for life. Then afterwards +we discovered that other was also an egotism, a thing of ideas and +impulses, that failed to correspond with ours. + +So it was, I say, with the young of my class and most of the young +people in our world. So it came about that I sought Nettie on the +Sunday afternoon and suddenly came upon her, light bodied, slenderly +feminine, hazel eyed, with her soft sweet young face under the shady +brim of her hat of straw, the pretty Venus I had resolved should be +wholly and exclusively mine. + +There, all unaware of me still, she stood, my essential feminine, the +embodiment of the inner thing in life for me—and moreover an unknown +other, a person like myself. + +She held a little book in her hand, open as if she were walking along +and reading it. That chanced to be her pose, but indeed she was +standing quite still, looking away towards the gray and lichenous +shrubbery wall and, as I think now, listening. Her lips were a little +apart, curved to that faint, sweet shadow of a smile. + +§ 3 + +I recall with a vivid precision her queer start when she heard the +rustle of my approaching feet, her surprise, her eyes almost of dismay +for me. I could recollect, I believe, every significant word she spoke +during our meeting, and most of what I said to her. At least, it seems +I could, though indeed I may deceive myself. But I will not make the +attempt. We were both too ill-educated to speak our full meanings, we +stamped out our feelings with clumsy stereotyped phrases; you who are +better taught would fail to catch our intention. The effect would be +inanity. But our first words I may give you, because though they +conveyed nothing to me at the time, afterwards they meant much. + +“_You_, Willie!” she said. + +“I have come,” I said—forgetting in the instant all the elaborate +things I had intended to say. “I thought I would surprise you—” + +“Surprise me?” + +“Yes.” + +She stared at me for a moment. I can see her pretty face now as it +looked at me—her impenetrable dear face. She laughed a queer little +laugh and her color went for a moment, and then so soon as she had +spoken, came back again. + +“Surprise me at what?” she said with a rising note. + +I was too intent to explain myself to think of what might lie in that. + +“I wanted to tell you,” I said, “that I didn’t mean quite . . . the +things I put in my letter.” + +§ 4 + +When I and Nettie had been sixteen we had been just of an age and +contemporaries altogether. Now we were a year and three-quarters older, +and she—her metamorphosis was almost complete, and I was still only at +the beginning of a man’s long adolescence. + +In an instant she grasped the situation. The hidden motives of her +quick ripened little mind flashed out their intuitive scheme of action. +She treated me with that neat perfection of understanding a young woman +has for a boy. + +“But how did you come?” she asked. + +I told her I had walked. + +“Walked!” In an instant she was leading me towards the gardens. I +_must_ be tired. I must come home with her at once and sit down. Indeed +it was near tea-time (the Stuarts had tea at the old-fashioned hour of +five). Every one would be _so_ surprised to see me. Fancy walking! +Fancy! But she supposed a man thought nothing of seventeen miles. When +_could_ I have started! + +All the while, keeping me at a distance, without even the touch of her +hand. + +“But, Nettie! I came over to talk to you!” + +“My dear boy! Tea first, if you please! And besides—aren’t we talking?” + +The “dear boy” was a new note, that sounded oddly to me. + +She quickened her pace a little. + +“I wanted to explain—” I began. + +Whatever I wanted to explain I had no chance to do so. I said a few +discrepant things that she answered rather by her intonation than her +words. + +When we were well past the shrubbery, she slackened a little in her +urgency, and so we came along the slope under the beeches to the +garden. She kept her bright, straightforward-looking girlish eyes on me +as we went; it seemed she did so all the time, but now I know, better +than I did then, that every now and then she glanced over me and behind +me towards the shrubbery. And all the while, behind her quick +breathless inconsecutive talk she was thinking. + +Her dress marked the end of her transition. + +Can I recall it? + +Not, I am afraid, in the terms a woman would use. But her bright brown +hair, which had once flowed down her back in a jolly pig-tail tied with +a bit of scarlet ribbon, was now caught up into an intricacy of pretty +curves above her little ear and cheek, and the soft long lines of her +neck; her white dress had descended to her feet; her slender waist, +which had once been a mere geographical expression, an imaginary line +like the equator, was now a thing of flexible beauty. A year ago she +had been a pretty girl’s face sticking out from a little unimportant +frock that was carried upon an extremely active and efficient pair of +brown-stockinged legs. Now there was coming a strange new body that +flowed beneath her clothes with a sinuous insistence. Every movement, +and particularly the novel droop of her hand and arm to the +unaccustomed skirts she gathered about her, and a graceful forward +inclination that had come to her, called softly to my eyes. A very fine +scarf—I suppose you would call it a scarf—of green gossamer, that some +new wakened instinct had told her to fling about her shoulders, clung +now closely to the young undulations of her body, and now streamed +fluttering out for a moment in a breath of wind, and like some shy +independent tentacle with a secret to impart, came into momentary +contact with my arm. + +She caught it back and reproved it. + +We went through the green gate in the high garden wall. I held it open +for her to pass through, for this was one of my restricted stock of +stiff politenesses, and then for a second she was near touching me. So +we came to the trim array of flower-beds near the head gardener’s +cottage and the vistas of “glass” on our left. We walked between the +box edgings and beds of begonias and into the shadow of a yew hedge +within twenty yards of that very pond with the gold-fish, at whose brim +we had plighted our vows, and so we came to the wistaria-smothered +porch. + +The door was wide open, and she walked in before me. “Guess who has +come to see us!” she cried. + +Her father answered indistinctly from the parlor, and a chair creaked. +I judged he was disturbed in his nap. + +“Mother!” she called in her clear young voice. “Puss!” + +Puss was her sister. + +She told them in a marveling key that I had walked all the way from +Clayton, and they gathered about me and echoed her notes of surprise. + +“You’d better sit down, Willie,” said her father; “now you have got +here. How’s your mother?” + +He looked at me curiously as he spoke. + +He was dressed in his Sunday clothes, a sort of brownish tweeds, but +the waistcoat was unbuttoned for greater comfort in his slumbers. He +was a brown-eyed ruddy man, and I still have now in my mind the bright +effect of the red-golden hairs that started out from his cheek to flow +down into his beard. He was short but strongly built, and his beard and +mustache were the biggest things about him. She had taken all the +possibility of beauty he possessed, his clear skin, his bright +hazel-brown eyes, and wedded them to a certain quickness she got from +her mother. Her mother I remember as a sharp-eyed woman of great +activity; she seems to me now to have been perpetually bringing in or +taking out meals or doing some such service, and to me—for my mother’s +sake and my own—she was always welcoming and kind. Puss was a youngster +of fourteen perhaps, of whom a hard bright stare, and a pale skin like +her mother’s, are the chief traces on my memory. All these people were +very kind to me, and among them there was a common recognition, +sometimes very agreeably finding expression, that I was—“clever.” They +all stood about me as if they were a little at a loss. + +“Sit down!” said her father. “Give him a chair, Puss.” + +We talked a little stiffly—they were evidently surprised by my sudden +apparition, dusty, fatigued, and white faced; but Nettie did not remain +to keep the conversation going. + +“There!” she cried suddenly, as if she were vexed. “I declare!” and she +darted out of the room. + +“Lord! what a girl it is!” said Mrs. Stuart. “I don’t know what’s come +to her.” + +It was half an hour before Nettie came back. It seemed a long time to +me, and yet she had been running, for when she came in again she was +out of breath. In the meantime, I had thrown out casually that I had +given up my place at Rawdon’s. “I can do better than that,” I said. + +“I left my book in the dell,” she said, panting. “Is tea ready?” and +that was her apology. . . + +We didn’t shake down into comfort even with the coming of the +tea-things. Tea at the gardener’s cottage was a serious meal, with a +big cake and little cakes, and preserves and fruit, a fine spread upon +a table. You must imagine me, sullen, awkward, and preoccupied, +perplexed by the something that was inexplicably unexpected in Nettie, +saying little, and glowering across the cake at her, and all the +eloquence I had been concentrating for the previous twenty-four hours, +miserably lost somewhere in the back of my mind. Nettie’s father tried +to set me talking; he had a liking for my gift of ready speech, for his +own ideas came with difficulty, and it pleased and astonished him to +hear me pouring out my views. Indeed, over there I was, I think, even +more talkative than with Parload, though to the world at large I was a +shy young lout. “You ought to write it out for the newspapers,” he used +to say. “That’s what you ought to do. _I_ never heard such nonsense.” + +Or, “You’ve got the gift of the gab, young man. We ought to ha’ made a +lawyer of you.” + +But that afternoon, even in his eyes, I didn’t shine. Failing any other +stimulus, he reverted to my search for a situation, but even that did +not engage me. + +§ 5 + +For a long time I feared I should have to go back to Clayton without +another word to Nettie, she seemed insensible to the need I felt for a +talk with her, and I was thinking even of a sudden demand for that +before them all. It was a transparent manoeuver of her mother’s who had +been watching my face, that sent us out at last together to do +something—I forget now what—in one of the greenhouses. Whatever that +little mission may have been it was the merest, most barefaced excuse, +a door to shut, or a window to close, and I don’t think it got done. + +Nettie hesitated and obeyed. She led the way through one of the +hot-houses. It was a low, steamy, brick-floored alley between staging +that bore a close crowd of pots and ferns, and behind big branching +plants that were spread and nailed overhead so as to make an impervious +cover of leaves, and in that close green privacy she stopped and turned +on me suddenly like a creature at bay. + +“Isn’t the maidenhair fern lovely?” she said, and looked at me with +eyes that said, “_Now_.” + +“Nettie,” I began, “I was a fool to write to you as I did.” + +She startled me by the assent that flashed out upon her face. But she +said nothing, and stood waiting. + +“Nettie,” I plunged, “I can’t do without you. I—I love you.” + +“If you loved me,” she said trimly, watching the white fingers she +plunged among the green branches of a selaginella, “could you write the +things you do to me?” + +“I don’t mean them,” I said. “At least not always.” + +I thought really they were very good letters, and that Nettie was +stupid to think otherwise, but I was for the moment clearly aware of +the impossibility of conveying that to her. + +“You wrote them.” + +“But then I tramp seventeen miles to say I don’t mean them.” + +“Yes. But perhaps you do.” + +I think I was at a loss; then I said, not very clearly, “I don’t.” + +“You think you—you love me, Willie. But you don’t.” + +“I do. Nettie! You know I do.” + +For answer she shook her head. + +I made what I thought was a most heroic plunge. “Nettie,” I said, “I’d +rather have you than—than my own opinions.” + +The selaginella still engaged her. “You think so now,” she said. + +I broke out into protestations. + +“No,” she said shortly. “It’s different now.” + +“But why should two letters make so much difference?” I said. + +“It isn’t only the letters. But it is different. It’s different for +good.” + +She halted a little with that sentence, seeking her expression. She +looked up abruptly into my eyes and moved, indeed slightly, but with +the intimation that she thought our talk might end. + +But I did not mean it to end like that. + +“For good?” said I. “No! . . Nettie! Nettie! You don’t mean that!” + +“I do,” she said deliberately, still looking at me, and with all her +pose conveying her finality. She seemed to brace herself for the +outbreak that must follow. + +Of course I became wordy. But I did not submerge her. She stood +entrenched, firing her contradictions like guns into my scattered +discursive attack. I remember that our talk took the absurd form of +disputing whether I could be in love with her or not. And there was I, +present in evidence, in a deepening and widening distress of soul +because she could stand there, defensive, brighter and prettier than +ever, and in some inexplicable way cut off from me and inaccessible. + +You know, we had never been together before without little enterprises +of endearment, without a faintly guilty, quite delightful excitement. + +I pleaded, I argued. I tried to show that even my harsh and difficult +letters came from my desire to come wholly into contact with her. I +made exaggerated fine statements of the longing I felt for her when I +was away, of the shock and misery of finding her estranged and cool. +She looked at me, feeling the emotion of my speech and impervious to +its ideas. I had no doubt—whatever poverty in my words, coolly written +down now—that I was eloquent then. I meant most intensely what I said, +indeed I was wholly concentrated upon it. I was set upon conveying to +her with absolute sincerity my sense of distance, and the greatness of +my desire. I toiled toward her painfully and obstinately through a +jungle of words. + +Her face changed very slowly—by such imperceptible degrees as when at +dawn light comes into a clear sky. I could feel that I touched her, +that her hardness was in some manner melting, her determination +softening toward hesitations. The habit of an old familiarity lurked +somewhere within her. But she would not let me reach her. + +“No,” she cried abruptly, starting into motion. + +She laid a hand on my arm. A wonderful new friendliness came into her +voice. “It’s impossible, Willie. Everything is different +now—everything. We made a mistake. We two young sillies made a mistake +and everything is different for ever. Yes, yes.” + +She turned about. + +“Nettie!” cried I, and still protesting, pursued her along the narrow +alley between the staging toward the hot-house door. I pursued her like +an accusation, and she went before me like one who is guilty and +ashamed. So I recall it now. + +She would not let me talk to her again. + +Yet I could see that my talk to her had altogether abolished the +clear-cut distance of our meeting in the park. Ever and again I found +her hazel eyes upon me. They expressed something novel—a surprise, as +though she realized an unwonted relationship, and a sympathetic pity. +And still—something defensive. + +When we got back to the cottage, I fell talking rather more freely with +her father about the nationalization of railways, and my spirits and +temper had so far mended at the realization that I could still produce +an effect upon Nettie, that I was even playful with Puss. Mrs. Stuart +judged from that that things were better with me than they were, and +began to beam mightily. + +But Nettie remained thoughtful and said very little. She was lost in +perplexities I could not fathom, and presently she slipped away from us +and went upstairs. + +§ 6 + +I was, of course, too footsore to walk back to Clayton, but I had a +shilling and a penny in my pocket for the train between Checkshill and +Two-Mile Stone, and that much of the distance I proposed to do in the +train. And when I got ready to go, Nettie amazed me by waking up to the +most remarkable solicitude for me. I must, she said, go by the road. It +was altogether too dark for the short way to the lodge gates. + +I pointed out that it was moonlight. “With the comet thrown in,” said +old Stuart. + +“No,” she insisted, “you _must_ go by the road.” + +I still disputed. + +She was standing near me. “To please _me_,” she urged, in a quick +undertone, and with a persuasive look that puzzled me. Even in the +moment I asked myself why should this please her? + +I might have agreed had she not followed that up with, “The hollies by +the shrubbery are as dark as pitch. And there’s the deer-hounds.” + +“I’m not afraid of the dark,” said I. “Nor of the deer-hounds, either.” + +“But those dogs! Supposing one was loose!” + +That was a girl’s argument, a girl who still had to understand that +fear is an overt argument only for her own sex. I thought too of those +grisly lank brutes straining at their chains and the chorus they could +make of a night when they heard belated footsteps along the edge of the +Killing Wood, and the thought banished my wish to please her. Like most +imaginative natures I was acutely capable of dreads and retreats, and +constantly occupied with their suppression and concealment, and to +refuse the short cut when it might appear that I did it on account of +half a dozen almost certainly chained dogs was impossible. + +So I set off in spite of her, feeling valiant and glad to be so easily +brave, but a little sorry that she should think herself crossed by me. + +A thin cloud veiled the moon, and the way under the beeches was dark +and indistinct. I was not so preoccupied with my love-affairs as to +neglect what I will confess was always my custom at night across that +wild and lonely park. I made myself a club by fastening a big flint to +one end of my twisted handkerchief and tying the other about my wrist, +and with this in my pocket, went on comforted. + +And it chanced that as I emerged from the hollies by the corner of the +shrubbery I was startled to come unexpectedly upon a young man in +evening dress smoking a cigar. + +I was walking on turf, so that the sound I made was slight. He stood +clear in the moonlight, his cigar glowed like a blood-red star, and it +did not occur to me at the time that I advanced towards him almost +invisibly in an impenetrable shadow. + +“Hullo,” he cried, with a sort of amiable challenge. “I’m here first!” + +I came out into the light. “Who cares if you are?” said I. + +I had jumped at once to an interpretation of his words. I knew that +there was an intermittent dispute between the House people and the +villager public about the use of this track, and it is needless to say +where my sympathies fell in that dispute. + +“Eh?” he cried in surprise. + +“Thought I would run away, I suppose,” said I, and came close up to +him. + +All my enormous hatred of his class had flared up at the sight of his +costume, at the fancied challenge of his words. I knew him. He was +Edward Verrall, son of the man who owned not only this great estate but +more than half of Rawdon’s pot-bank, and who had interests and +possessions, collieries and rents, all over the district of the Four +Towns. He was a gallant youngster, people said, and very clever. Young +as he was there was talk of parliament for him; he had been a great +success at the university, and he was being sedulously popularized +among us. He took with a light confidence, as a matter of course, +advantages that I would have faced the rack to get, and I firmly +believed myself a better man than he. He was, as he stood there, a +concentrated figure of all that filled me with bitterness. One day he +had stopped in a motor outside our house, and I remember the thrill of +rage with which I had noted the dutiful admiration in my mother’s eyes +as she peered through her blind at him. “That’s young Mr. Verrall,” she +said. “They say he’s very clever.” + +“They would,” I answered. “Damn them and him!” + +But that is by the way. + +He was clearly astonished to find himself face to face with a man. His +note changed. + +“Who the devil are _you?_” he asked. + +My retort was the cheap expedient of re-echoing, “Who the devil are +you?” + +“_Well_,” he said. + +“I’m coming along this path if I like,” I said. “See? It’s a public +path—just as this used to be public land. You’ve stolen the land—you +and yours, and now you want to steal the right of way. You’ll ask us to +get off the face of the earth next. I sha’n’t oblige. See?” + +I was shorter and I suppose a couple of years younger than he, but I +had the improvised club in my pocket gripped ready, and I would have +fought with him very cheerfully. But he fell a step backward as I came +toward him. + +“Socialist, I presume?” he said, alert and quiet and with the faintest +note of badinage. + +“One of many.” + +“We’re all socialists nowadays,” he remarked philosophically, “and I +haven’t the faintest intention of disputing your right of way.” + +“You’d better not,” I said. + +“No!” + +“No.” + +He replaced his cigar, and there was a brief pause. “Catching a train?” +he threw out. + +It seemed absurd not to answer. “Yes,” I said shortly. + +He said it was a pleasant evening for a walk. + +I hovered for a moment and there was my path before me, and he stood +aside. There seemed nothing to do but go on. “Good night,” said he, as +that intention took effect. + +I growled a surly good-night. + +I felt like a bombshell of swearing that must presently burst with some +violence as I went on my silent way. He had so completely got the best +of our encounter. + +§ 7 + +There comes a memory, an odd intermixture of two entirely divergent +things, that stands out with the intensest vividness. + +As I went across the last open meadow, following the short cut to +Checkshill station, I perceived I had two shadows. + +The thing jumped into my mind and stopped its tumid flow for a moment. +I remember the intelligent detachment of my sudden interest. I turned +sharply, and stood looking at the moon and the great white comet, that +the drift of the clouds had now rather suddenly unveiled. + +The comet was perhaps twenty degrees from the moon. What a wonderful +thing it looked floating there, a greenish-white apparition in the dark +blue deeps! It looked brighter than the moon because it was smaller, +but the shadow it cast, though clearer cut, was much fainter than the +moon’s shadow. . . I went on noting these facts, watching my two +shadows precede me. + +I am totally unable to account for the sequence of my thoughts on this +occasion. But suddenly, as if I had come on this new fact round a +corner, the comet was out of my mind again, and I was face to face with +an absolutely new idea. I wonder sometimes if the two shadows I cast, +one with a sort of feminine faintness with regard to the other and not +quite so tall, may not have suggested the word or the thought of an +assignation to my mind. All that I have clear is that with the +certitude of intuition I knew what it was that had brought the youth in +evening dress outside the shrubbery. Of course! He had come to meet +Nettie! + +Once the mental process was started it took no time at all. The day +which had been full of perplexities for me, the mysterious invisible +thing that had held Nettie and myself apart, the unaccountable strange +something in her manner, was revealed and explained. + +I knew now why she had looked guilty at my appearance, what had brought +her out that afternoon, why she had hurried me in, the nature of the +“book” she had run back to fetch, the reason why she had wanted me to +go back by the high-road, and why she had pitied me. It was all in the +instant clear to me. + +You must imagine me a black little creature, suddenly stricken +still—for a moment standing rigid—and then again suddenly becoming +active with an impotent gesture, becoming audible with an inarticulate +cry, with two little shadows mocking my dismay, and about this figure +you must conceive a great wide space of moonlit grass, rimmed by the +looming suggestion of distant trees—trees very low and faint and dim, +and over it all the domed serenity of that wonderful luminous night. + +For a little while this realization stunned my mind. My thoughts came +to a pause, staring at my discovery. Meanwhile my feet and my previous +direction carried me through the warm darkness to Checkshill station +with its little lights, to the ticket-office window, and so to the +train. + +I remember myself as it were waking up to the thing—I was alone in one +of the dingy “third-class” compartments of that time—and the sudden +nearly frantic insurgence of my rage. I stood up with the cry of an +angry animal, and smote my fist with all my strength against the panel +of wood before me. . . . + +Curiously enough I have completely forgotten my mood after that for a +little while, but I know that later, for a minute perhaps, I hung for a +time out of the carriage with the door open, contemplating a leap from +the train. It was to be a dramatic leap, and then I would go storming +back to her, denounce her, overwhelm her; and I hung, urging myself to +do it. I don’t remember how it was I decided not to do this, at last, +but in the end I didn’t. + +When the train stopped at the next station I had given up all thoughts +of going back. I was sitting in the corner of the carriage with my +bruised and wounded hand pressed under my arm, and still insensible to +its pain, trying to think out clearly a scheme of action—action that +should express the monstrous indignation that possessed me. + + + + +CHAPTER THE THIRD +THE REVOLVER + + +§ 1 + +“That comet is going to hit the earth!” + +So said one of the two men who got into the train and settled down. + +“Ah!” said the other man. + +“They do say that it is made of gas, that comet. We sha’n’t blow up, +shall us?”. . . + +What did it matter to me? + +I was thinking of revenge—revenge against the primary conditions of my +being. I was thinking of Nettie and her lover. I was firmly resolved he +should not have her—though I had to kill them both to prevent it. I did +not care what else might happen, if only that end was ensured. All my +thwarted passions had turned to rage. I would have accepted eternal +torment that night without a second thought, to be certain of revenge. +A hundred possibilities of action, a hundred stormy situations, a whirl +of violent schemes, chased one another through my shamed, exasperated +mind. The sole prospect I could endure was of some gigantic, inexorably +cruel vindication of my humiliated self. + +And Nettie? I loved Nettie still, but now with the intensest jealousy, +with the keen, unmeasuring hatred of wounded pride, and baffled, +passionate desire. + +§ 2 + + +As I came down the hill from Clayton Crest—for my shilling and a penny +only permitted my traveling by train as far as Two-Mile Stone, and +thence I had to walk over the hill—I remember very vividly a little man +with a shrill voice who was preaching under a gas-lamp against a +hoarding to a thin crowd of Sunday evening loafers. He was a short man, +bald, with a little fair curly beard and hair and watery blue eyes, and +he was preaching that the end of the world drew near. + +I think that is the first time I heard any one link the comet with the +end of the world. He had got that jumbled up with international +politics and prophecies from the Book of Daniel. + +I stopped to hear him only for a moment or so. I do not think I should +have halted at all but his crowd blocked my path, and the sight of his +queer wild expression, the gesture of his upward-pointing finger, held +me. + +“There is the end of all your Sins and Follies,” he bawled. “There! +There is the Star of Judgments, the Judgments of the most High God! It +is appointed unto all men to die—unto all men to die”—his voice changed +to a curious flat chant—“and after death, the Judgment! The Judgment!” + +I pushed and threaded my way through the bystanders and went on, and +his curious harsh flat voice pursued me. I went on with the thoughts +that had occupied me before—where I could buy a revolver, and how I +might master its use—and probably I should have forgotten all about him +had he not taken a part in the hideous dream that ended the little +sleep I had that night. For the most part I lay awake thinking of +Nettie and her lover. + +Then came three strange days—three days that seem now to have been +wholly concentrated upon one business. + +This dominant business was the purchase of my revolver. I held myself +resolutely to the idea that I must either restore myself by some +extraordinary act of vigor and violence in Nettie’s eyes or I must kill +her. I would not let myself fall away from that. I felt that if I let +this matter pass, my last shred of pride and honor would pass with it, +that for the rest of my life I should never deserve the slightest +respect or any woman’s love. Pride kept me to my purpose between my +gusts of passion. + +Yet it was not easy to buy that revolver. + +I had a kind of shyness of the moment when I should have to face the +shopman, and I was particularly anxious to have a story ready if he +should see fit to ask questions why I bought such a thing. I determined +to say I was going to Texas, and I thought it might prove useful there. +Texas in those days had the reputation of a wild lawless land. As I +knew nothing of caliber or impact, I wanted also to be able to ask with +a steady face at what distance a man or woman could be killed by the +weapon that might be offered me. I was pretty cool-headed in relation +to such practical aspects of my affair. I had some little difficulty in +finding a gunsmith. In Clayton there were some rook-rifles and so forth +in a cycle shop, but the only revolvers these people had impressed me +as being too small and toylike for my purpose. It was in a pawnshop +window in the narrow High Street of Swathinglea that I found my choice, +a reasonably clumsy and serious-looking implement ticketed “As used in +the American army.” + +I had drawn out my balance from the savings bank, matter of two pounds +and more, to make this purchase, and I found it at last a very easy +transaction. The pawnbroker told me where I could get ammunition, and I +went home that night with bulging pockets, an armed man. + +The purchase of my revolver was, I say, the chief business of those +days, but you must not think I was so intent upon it as to be +insensible to the stirring things that were happening in the streets +through which I went seeking the means to effect my purpose. They were +full of murmurings: the whole region of the Four Towns scowled lowering +from its narrow doors. The ordinary healthy flow of people going to +work, people going about their business, was chilled and checked. +Numbers of men stood about the streets in knots and groups, as +corpuscles gather and catch in the blood-vessels in the opening stages +of inflammation. The women looked haggard and worried. The ironworkers +had refused the proposed reduction of their wages, and the lockout had +begun. They were already at “play.” The Conciliation Board was doing +its best to keep the coal-miners and masters from a breach, but young +Lord Redcar, the greatest of our coal owners and landlord of all +Swathinglea and half Clayton, was taking a fine upstanding attitude +that made the breach inevitable. He was a handsome young man, a gallant +young man; his pride revolted at the idea of being dictated to by a +“lot of bally miners,” and he meant, he said, to make a fight for it. +The world had treated him sumptuously from his earliest years; the +shares in the common stock of five thousand people had gone to pay for +his handsome upbringing, and large, romantic, expensive ambitions +filled his generously nurtured mind. He had early distinguished himself +at Oxford by his scornful attitude towards democracy. There was +something that appealed to the imagination in his fine antagonism to +the crowd—on the one hand, was the brilliant young nobleman, +picturesquely alone; on the other, the ugly, inexpressive multitude, +dressed inelegantly in shop-clothes, under-educated, under-fed, +envious, base, and with a wicked disinclination for work and a wicked +appetite for the good things it could so rarely get. For common +imaginative purposes one left out the policeman from the design, the +stalwart policeman protecting his lordship, and ignored the fact that +while Lord Redcar had his hands immediately and legally on the +workman’s shelter and bread, they could touch him to the skin only by +some violent breach of the law. + +He lived at Lowchester House, five miles or so beyond Checkshill; but +partly to show how little he cared for his antagonists, and partly no +doubt to keep himself in touch with the negotiations that were still +going on, he was visible almost every day in and about the Four Towns, +driving that big motor car of his that could take him sixty miles an +hour. The English passion for fair play one might have thought +sufficient to rob this bold procedure of any dangerous possibilities, +but he did not go altogether free from insult, and on one occasion at +least an intoxicated Irish woman shook her fist at him. . . . + +A dark, quiet crowd, that was greater each day, a crowd more than half +women, brooded as a cloud will sometimes brood permanently upon a +mountain crest, in the market-place outside the Clayton Town Hall, +where the conference was held. . . . + +I consider myself justified in regarding Lord Redcar’s passing +automobile with a special animosity because of the leaks in our roof. + +We held our little house on lease; the owner was a mean, saving old man +named Pettigrew, who lived in a villa adorned with plaster images of +dogs and goats, at Overcastle, and in spite of our specific agreement, +he would do no repairs for us at all. He rested secure in my mother’s +timidity. Once, long ago, she had been behind-hand with her rent, with +half of her quarter’s rent, and he had extended the days of grace a +month; her sense that some day she might need the same mercy again made +her his abject slave. She was afraid even to ask that he should cause +the roof to be mended for fear he might take offence. But one night the +rain poured in on her bed and gave her a cold, and stained and soaked +her poor old patchwork counterpane. Then she got me to compose an +excessively polite letter to old Pettigrew, begging him as a favor to +perform his legal obligations. It is part of the general imbecility of +those days that such one-sided law as existed was a profound mystery to +the common people, its provisions impossible to ascertain, its +machinery impossible to set in motion. Instead of the clearly written +code, the lucid statements of rules and principles that are now at the +service of every one, the law was the muddle secret of the legal +profession. Poor people, overworked people, had constantly to submit to +petty wrongs because of the intolerable uncertainty not only of law but +of cost, and of the demands upon time and energy, proceedings might +make. There was indeed no justice for any one too poor to command a +good solicitor’s deference and loyalty; there was nothing but rough +police protection and the magistrate’s grudging or eccentric advice for +the mass of the population. The civil law, in particular, was a +mysterious upper-class weapon, and I can imagine no injustice that +would have been sufficient to induce my poor old mother to appeal to +it. + +All this begins to sound incredible. I can only assure you that it was +so. + +But I, when I learned that old Pettigrew had been down to tell my +mother all about his rheumatism, to inspect the roof, and to allege +that nothing was needed, gave way to my most frequent emotion in those +days, a burning indignation, and took the matter into my own hands. I +wrote and asked him, with a withering air of technicality, to have the +roof repaired “as per agreement,” and added, “if not done in one week +from now we shall be obliged to take proceedings.” I had not mentioned +this high line of conduct to my mother at first, and so when old +Pettigrew came down in a state of great agitation with my letter in his +hand, she was almost equally agitated. + +“How could you write to old Mr. Pettigrew like that?” she asked me. + +I said that old Pettigrew was a shameful old rascal, or words to that +effect, and I am afraid I behaved in a very undutiful way to her when +she said that she had settled everything with him—she wouldn’t say how, +but I could guess well enough—and that I was to promise her, promise +her faithfully, to do nothing more in the matter. I wouldn’t promise +her. + +And—having nothing better to employ me then—I presently went raging to +old Pettigrew in order to put the whole thing before him in what I +considered the proper light. Old Pettigrew evaded my illumination; he +saw me coming up his front steps—I can still see his queer old nose and +the crinkled brow over his eye and the little wisp of gray hair that +showed over the corner of his window-blind—and he instructed his +servant to put up the chain when she answered the door, and to tell me +that he would not see me. So I had to fall back upon my pen. + +Then it was, as I had no idea what were the proper “proceedings” to +take, the brilliant idea occurred to me of appealing to Lord Redcar as +the ground landlord, and, as it were, our feudal chief, and pointing +out to him that his security for his rent was depreciating in old +Pettigrew’s hands. I added some general observations on leaseholds, the +taxation of ground rents, and the private ownership of the soil. And +Lord Redcar, whose spirit revolted at democracy, and who cultivated a +pert humiliating manner with his inferiors to show as much, earned my +distinguished hatred for ever by causing his secretary to present his +compliments to me, and his request that I would mind my own business +and leave him to manage his. At which I was so greatly enraged that I +first tore this note into minute innumerable pieces, and then dashed it +dramatically all over the floor of my room—from which, to keep my +mother from the job, I afterward had to pick it up laboriously on +all-fours. + +I was still meditating a tremendous retort, an indictment of all Lord +Redcar’s class, their manners, morals, economic and political crimes, +when my trouble with Nettie arose to swamp all minor troubles. Yet, not +so completely but that I snarled aloud when his lordship’s motor-car +whizzed by me, as I went about upon my long meandering quest for a +weapon. And I discovered after a time that my mother had bruised her +knee and was lame. Fearing to irritate me by bringing the thing before +me again, she had set herself to move her bed out of the way of the +drip without my help, and she had knocked her knee. All her poor +furnishings, I discovered, were cowering now close to the peeling +bedroom walls; there had come a vast discoloration of the ceiling, and +a washing-tub was in occupation of the middle of her chamber. . . . + +It is necessary that I should set these things before you, should give +the key of inconvenience and uneasiness in which all things were +arranged, should suggest the breath of trouble that stirred along the +hot summer streets, the anxiety about the strike, the rumors and +indignations, the gatherings and meetings, the increasing gravity of +the policemen’s faces, the combative headlines of the local papers, the +knots of picketers who scrutinized any one who passed near the silent, +smokeless forges, but in my mind, you must understand, such impressions +came and went irregularly; they made a moving background, changing +undertones, to my preoccupation by that darkly shaping purpose to which +a revolver was so imperative an essential. + +Along the darkling streets, amidst the sullen crowds, the thought of +Nettie, my Nettie, and her gentleman lover made ever a vivid +inflammatory spot of purpose in my brain. + +§ 3 + + +It was three days after this—on Wednesday, that is to say—that the +first of those sinister outbreaks occurred that ended in the bloody +affair of Peacock Grove and the flooding out of the entire line of the +Swathinglea collieries. It was the only one of these disturbances I was +destined to see, and at most a mere trivial preliminary of that +struggle. + +The accounts that have been written of this affair vary very widely. To +read them is to realize the extraordinary carelessness of truth that +dishonored the press of those latter days. In my bureau I have several +files of the daily papers of the old time—I collected them, as a matter +of fact—and three or four of about that date I have just this moment +taken out and looked through to refresh my impression of what I saw. +They lie before me—queer, shriveled, incredible things; the cheap paper +has already become brittle and brown and split along the creases, the +ink faded or smeared, and I have to handle them with the utmost care +when I glance among their raging headlines. As I sit here in this +serene place, their quality throughout, their arrangement, their tone, +their arguments and exhortations, read as though they came from drugged +and drunken men. They give one the effect of faded bawling, of screams +and shouts heard faintly in a little gramophone. . . . It is only on +Monday I find, and buried deep below the war news, that these +publications contain any intimation that unusual happenings were +forward in Clayton and Swathinglea. + +What I saw was towards evening. I had been learning to shoot with my +new possession. I had walked out with it four or five miles across a +patch of moorland and down to a secluded little coppice full of +blue-bells, halfway along the high-road between Leet and Stafford. Here +I had spent the afternoon, experimenting and practising with careful +deliberation and grim persistence. I had brought an old kite-frame of +cane with me, that folded and unfolded, and each shot-hole I made I +marked and numbered to compare with my other endeavors. At last I was +satisfied that I could hit a playing-card at thirty paces nine times +out of ten; the light was getting too bad for me to see my penciled +bull’s-eye, and in that state of quiet moodiness that sometimes comes +with hunger to passionate men, I returned by the way of Swathinglea +towards my home. + +The road I followed came down between banks of wretched-looking +working-men’s houses, in close-packed rows on either side, and took +upon itself the _rôle_ of Swathinglea High Street, where, at a lamp and +a pillar-box, the steam-trams began. So far that dirty hot way had been +unusually quiet and empty, but beyond the corner, where the first group +of beershops clustered, it became populous. It was very quiet still, +even the children were a little inactive, but there were a lot of +people standing dispersedly in little groups, and with a general +direction towards the gates of the Bantock Burden coalpit. + +The place was being picketed, although at that time the miners were +still nominally at work, and the conferences between masters and men +still in session at Clayton Town Hall. But one of the men employed at +the Bantock Burden pit, Jack Briscoe, was a socialist, and he had +distinguished himself by a violent letter upon the crisis to the +leading socialistic paper in England, _The Clarion_, in which he had +adventured among the motives of Lord Redcar. The publication of this +had been followed by instant dismissal. As Lord Redcar wrote a day or +so later to the _Times_—I have that _Times_, I have all the London +papers of the last month before the Change— + +“The man was paid off and kicked out. Any self-respecting employer +would do the same.” The thing had happened overnight, and the men did +not at once take a clear line upon what was, after all, a very +intricate and debatable occasion. But they came out in a sort of +semiofficial strike from all Lord Redcar’s collieries beyond the canal +that besets Swathinglea. They did so without formal notice, committing +a breach of contract by this sudden cessation. But in the long labor +struggles of the old days the workers were constantly putting +themselves in the wrong and committing illegalities through that +overpowering craving for dramatic promptness natural to uneducated +minds. + +All the men had not come out of the Bantock Burden pit. Something was +wrong there, an indecision if nothing else; the mine was still working, +and there was a rumor that men from Durham had been held in readiness +by Lord Redcar, and were already in the mine. Now, it is absolutely +impossible to ascertain certainly how things stood at that time. The +newspapers say this and that, but nothing trustworthy remains. + +I believe I should have gone striding athwart the dark stage of that +stagnant industrial drama without asking a question, if Lord Redcar had +not chanced to come upon the scene about the same time as myself and +incontinently end its stagnation. + +He had promised that if the men wanted a struggle he would put up the +best fight they had ever had, and he had been active all that afternoon +in meeting the quarrel half way, and preparing as conspicuously as +possible for the scratch force of “blacklegs”—as we called them—who +were, he said and we believed, to replace the strikers in his pits. + +I was an eye-witness of the whole of the affair outside the Bantock +Burden pit, and—I do not know what happened. + +Picture to yourself how the thing came to me. + +I was descending a steep, cobbled, excavated road between banked-up +footways, perhaps six feet high, upon which, in a monotonous series, +opened the living room doors of rows of dark, low cottages. The +perspective of squat blue slate roofs and clustering chimneys drifted +downward towards the irregular open space before the colliery—a space +covered with coaly, wheel-scarred mud, with a patch of weedy dump to +the left and the colliery gates to the right. Beyond, the High Street +with shops resumed again in good earnest and went on, and the lines of +the steam-tramway that started out from before my feet, and were here +shining and acutely visible with reflected skylight and here lost in a +shadow, took up for one acute moment the greasy yellow irradiation of a +newly lit gaslamp as they vanished round the bend. Beyond, spread a +darkling marsh of homes, an infinitude of little smoking hovels, and +emergent, meager churches, public-houses, board schools, and other +buildings amidst the prevailing chimneys of Swathinglea. To the right, +very clear and relatively high, the Bantock Burden pit-mouth was marked +by a gaunt lattice bearing a great black wheel, very sharp and distinct +in the twilight, and beyond, in an irregular perspective, were others +following the lie of the seams. The general effect, as one came down +the hill, was of a dark compressed life beneath a very high and wide +and luminous evening sky, against which these pit-wheels rose. And +ruling the calm spaciousness of that heaven was the great comet, now +green-white, and wonderful for all who had eyes to see. + +The fading afterglow of the sunset threw up all the contours and +skyline to the west, and the comet rose eastward out of the pouring +tumult of smoke from Bladden’s forges. The moon had still to rise. + +By this time the comet had begun to assume the cloudlike form still +familiar through the medium of a thousand photographs and sketches. At +first it had been an almost telescopic speck; it had brightened to the +dimensions of the greatest star in the heavens; it had still grown, +hour by hour, in its incredibly swift, its noiseless and inevitable +rush upon our earth, until it had equaled and surpassed the moon. Now +it was the most splendid thing this sky of earth has ever held. I have +never seen a photograph that gave a proper idea of it. Never at any +time did it assume the conventional tailed outline, comets are supposed +to have. Astronomers talked of its double tail, one preceding it and +one trailing behind it, but these were foreshortened to nothing, so +that it had rather the form of a bellying puff of luminous smoke with +an intenser, brighter heart. It rose a hot yellow color, and only began +to show its distinctive greenness when it was clear of the mists of the +evening. + +It compelled attention for a space. For all my earthly concentration of +mind, I could but stare at it for a moment with a vague anticipation +that, after all, in some way so strange and glorious an object must +have significance, could not possibly be a matter of absolute +indifference to the scheme and values of my life. + +But how? + +I thought of Parload. I thought of the panic and uneasiness that was +spreading in this very matter, and the assurances of scientific men +that the thing weighed so little—at the utmost a few hundred tons of +thinly diffused gas and dust—that even were it to smite this earth +fully, nothing could possibly ensue. And, after all, said I, what +earthly significance has any one found in the stars? + +Then, as one still descended, the houses and buildings rose up, the +presence of those watching groups of people, the tension of the +situation; and one forgot the sky. + +Preoccupied with myself and with my dark dream about Nettie and my +honor, I threaded my course through the stagnating threat of this +gathering, and was caught unawares, when suddenly the whole scene +flashed into drama. . . . + +The attention of every one swung round with an irresistible magnetism +towards the High Street, and caught me as a rush of waters might catch +a wisp of hay. Abruptly the whole crowd was sounding one note. It was +not a word, it was a sound that mingled threat and protest, something +between a prolonged “Ah!” and “Ugh!” Then with a hoarse intensity of +anger came a low heavy booing, “Boo! boo—oo!” a note stupidly +expressive of animal savagery. “Toot, toot!” said Lord Redcar’s +automobile in ridiculous repartee. “Toot, toot!” One heard it whizzing +and throbbing as the crowd obliged it to slow down. + +Everybody seemed in motion towards the colliery gates, I, too, with the +others. + +I heard a shout. Through the dark figures about me I saw the motor-car +stop and move forward again, and had a glimpse of something writhing on +the ground. + +It was alleged afterwards that Lord Redcar was driving, and that he +quite deliberately knocked down a little boy who would not get out of +his way. It is asserted with equal confidence that the boy was a man +who tried to pass across the front of the motor-car as it came slowly +through the crowd, who escaped by a hair’s breadth, and then slipped on +the tram-rail and fell down. I have both accounts set forth, under +screaming headlines, in two of these sere newspapers upon my desk. No +one could ever ascertain the truth. Indeed, in such a blind tumult of +passion, could there be any truth? + +There was a rush forward, the horn of the car sounded, everything +swayed violently to the right for perhaps ten yards or so, and there +was a report like a pistol-shot. + +For a moment every one seemed running away. A woman, carrying a +shawl-wrapped child, blundered into me, and sent me reeling back. Every +one thought of firearms, but, as a matter of fact, something had gone +wrong with the motor, what in those old-fashioned contrivances was +called a backfire. A thin puff of bluish smoke hung in the air behind +the thing. The majority of the people scattered back in a disorderly +fashion, and left a clear space about the struggle that centered upon +the motor-car. + +The man or boy who had fallen was lying on the ground with no one near +him, a black lump, an extended arm and two sprawling feet. The +motor-car had stopped, and its three occupants were standing up. Six or +seven black figures surrounded the car, and appeared to be holding on +to it as if to prevent it from starting again; one—it was Mitchell, a +well-known labor leader—argued in fierce low tones with Lord Redcar. I +could not hear anything they said, I was not near enough. Behind me the +colliery gates were open, and there was a sense of help coming to the +motor-car from that direction. There was an unoccupied muddy space for +fifty yards, perhaps, between car and gate, and then the wheels and +head of the pit rose black against the sky. I was one of a rude +semicircle of people that hung as yet indeterminate in action about +this dispute. + +It was natural, I suppose, that my fingers should close upon the +revolver in my pocket. + +I advanced with the vaguest intentions in the world, and not so quickly +but that several men hurried past me to join the little knot holding up +the car. + +Lord Redcar, in his big furry overcoat, towered up over the group about +him; his gestures were free and threatening, and his voice loud. He +made a fine figure there, I must admit; he was a big, fair, handsome +young man with a fine tenor voice and an instinct for gallant effect. +My eyes were drawn to him at first wholly. He seemed a symbol, a +triumphant symbol, of all that the theory of aristocracy claims, of all +that filled my soul with resentment. His chauffeur sat crouched +together, peering at the crowd under his lordship’s arm. But Mitchell +showed as a sturdy figure also, and his voice was firm and loud. + +“You’ve hurt that lad,” said Mitchell, over and over again. “You’ll +wait here till you see if he’s hurt.” + +“I’ll wait here or not as I please,” said Redcar; and to the chauffeur, +“Here! get down and look at it!” + +“You’d better not get down,” said Mitchell; and the chauffeur stood +bent and hesitating on the step. + +The man on the back seat stood up, leant forward, and spoke to Lord +Redcar, and for the first time my attention was drawn to him. It was +young Verrall! His handsome face shone clear and fine in the green +pallor of the comet. + +I ceased to hear the quarrel that was raising the voice of Mitchell and +Lord Redcar. This new fact sent them spinning into the background. +Young Verrall! + +It was my own purpose coming to meet me half way. + +There was to be a fight here, it seemed certain to come to a scuffle, +and here we were— + +What was I to do? I thought very swiftly. Unless my memory cheats me, I +acted with swift decision. My hand tightened on my revolver, and then I +remembered it was unloaded. I had thought my course out in an instant. +I turned round and pushed my way out of the angry crowd that was now +surging back towards the motor-car. + +It would be quiet and out of sight, I thought, among the dump heaps +across the road, and there I might load unobserved. . . + +A big young man striding forward with his fists clenched, halted for +one second at the sight of me. + +“What!” said he. “Ain’t afraid of them, are you?” + +I glanced over my shoulder and back at him, was near showing him my +pistol, and the expression changed in his eyes. He hung perplexed at +me. Then with a grunt he went on. + +I heard the voices growing loud and sharp behind me. + +I hesitated, half turned towards the dispute, then set off running +towards the heaps. Some instinct told me not to be detected loading. I +was cool enough therefore to think of the aftermath of the thing I +meant to do. + +I looked back once again towards the swaying discussion—or was it a +fight now? and then I dropped into the hollow, knelt among the weeds, +and loaded with eager trembling fingers. I loaded one chamber, got up +and went back a dozen paces, thought of possibilities, vacillated, +returned and loaded all the others. I did it slowly because I felt a +little clumsy, and at the end came a moment of inspection—had I +forgotten any thing? And then for a few seconds I crouched before I +rose, resisting the first gust of reaction against my impulse. I took +thought, and for a moment that great green-white meteor overhead swam +back into my conscious mind. For the first time then I linked it +clearly with all the fierce violence that had crept into human life. I +joined up that with what I meant to do. I was going to shoot young +Verrall as it were under the benediction of that green glare. + +But about Nettie? + +I found it impossible to think out that obvious complication. + +I came up over the heap again, and walked slowly back towards the +wrangle. + +Of course I had to kill him. . . . + +Now I would have you believe I did not want to murder young Verrall at +all at that particular time. I had not pictured such circumstances as +these, I had never thought of him in connection with Lord Redcar and +our black industrial world. He was in that distant other world of +Checkshill, the world of parks and gardens, the world of sunlit +emotions and Nettie. His appearance here was disconcerting. I was taken +by surprise. I was too tired and hungry to think clearly, and the hard +implication of our antagonism prevailed with me. In the tumult of my +passed emotions I had thought constantly of conflicts, confrontations, +deeds of violence, and now the memory of these things took possession +of me as though they were irrevocable resolutions. + +There was a sharp exclamation, the shriek of a woman, and the crowd +came surging back. The fight had begun. + +Lord Redcar, I believe, had jumped down from his car and felled +Mitchell, and men were already running out to his assistance from the +colliery gates. + +I had some difficulty in shoving through the crowd; I can still +remember very vividly being jammed at one time between two big men so +that my arms were pinned to my sides, but all the other details are +gone out of my mind until I found myself almost violently projected +forward into the “scrap.” + +I blundered against the corner of the motor-car, and came round it face +to face with young Verrall, who was descending from the back +compartment. His face was touched with orange from the automobile’s big +lamps, which conflicted with the shadows of the comet light, and +distorted him oddly. That effect lasted but an instant, but it put me +out. Then he came a step forward, and the ruddy lights and queerness +vanished. + +I don’t think he recognized me, but he perceived immediately I meant +attacking. He struck out at once at me a haphazard blow, and touched me +on the cheek. + +Instinctively I let go of the pistol, snatched my right hand out of my +pocket and brought it up in a belated parry, and then let out with my +left full in his chest. + +It sent him staggering, and as he went back I saw recognition mingle +with astonishment in his face. + +“You know me, you swine,” I cried and hit again. + +Then I was spinning sideways, half-stunned, with a huge lump of a fist +under my jaw. I had an impression of Lord Redcar as a great furry bulk, +towering like some Homeric hero above the fray. I went down before +him—it made him seem to rush up—and he ignored me further. His big flat +voice counseled young Verrall— + +“Cut, Teddy! It won’t do. The picketa’s got i’on bahs. . . .” + +Feet swayed about me, and some hobnailed miner kicked my ankle and went +stumbling. There were shouts and curses, and then everything had swept +past me. I rolled over on my face and beheld the chauffeur, young +Verrall, and Lord Redcar—the latter holding up his long skirts of fur, +and making a grotesque figure—one behind the other, in full bolt across +a coldly comet-lit interval, towards the open gates of the colliery. + +I raised myself up on my hands. + +Young Verrall! + +I had not even drawn my revolver—I had forgotten it. I was covered with +coaly mud—knees, elbows, shoulders, back. I had not even drawn my +revolver! . . . + +A feeling of ridiculous impotence overwhelmed me. I struggled painfully +to my feet. + +I hesitated for a moment towards the gates of the colliery, and then +went limping homeward, thwarted, painful, confused, and ashamed. I had +not the heart nor desire to help in the wrecking and burning of Lord +Redcar’s motor. + +§ 4 + + +In the night, fever, pain, fatigue—it may be the indigestion of my +supper of bread and cheese—roused me at last out of a hag-rid sleep to +face despair. I was a soul lost amidst desolations and shame, +dishonored, evilly treated, hopeless. I raged against the God I denied, +and cursed him as I lay. + +And it was in the nature of my fever, which was indeed only half +fatigue and illness, and the rest the disorder of passionate youth, +that Nettie, a strangely distorted Nettie, should come through the +brief dreams that marked the exhaustions of that vigil, to dominate my +misery. I was sensible, with an exaggerated distinctness, of the +intensity of her physical charm for me, of her every grace and beauty; +she took to herself the whole gamut of desire in me and the whole gamut +of pride. She, bodily, was my lost honor. It was not only loss but +disgrace to lose her. She stood for life and all that was denied; she +mocked me as a creature of failure and defeat. My spirit raised itself +towards her, and then the bruise upon my jaw glowed with a dull heat, +and I rolled in the mud again before my rivals. + +There were times when something near madness took me, and I gnashed my +teeth and dug my nails into my hands and ceased to curse and cry out +only by reason of the insufficiency of words. And once towards dawn I +got out of bed, and sat by my looking-glass with my revolver loaded in +my hand. I stood up at last and put it carefully in my drawer and +locked it—out of reach of any gusty impulse. After that I slept for a +little while. + +Such nights were nothing rare and strange in that old order of the +world. Never a city, never a night the whole year round, but amidst +those who slept were those who waked, plumbing the deeps of wrath and +misery. Countless thousands there were so ill, so troubled, they +agonize near to the very border-line of madness, each one the center of +a universe darkened and lost. . . + +The next day I spent in gloomy lethargy. + +I had intended to go to Checkshill that day, but my bruised ankle was +too swollen for that to be possible. I sat indoors in the ill-lit +downstairs kitchen, with my foot bandaged, and mused darkly and read. +My dear old mother waited on me, and her brown eyes watched me and +wondered at my black silences, my frowning preoccupations. I had not +told her how it was my ankle came to be bruised and my clothes muddy. +She had brushed my clothes in the morning before I got up. + +Ah well! Mothers are not treated in that way now. That I suppose must +console me. I wonder how far you will be able to picture that dark, +grimy, untidy room, with its bare deal table, its tattered wall paper, +the saucepans and kettle on the narrow, cheap, but by no means +economical range, the ashes under the fireplace, the rust-spotted steel +fender on which my bandaged feet rested; I wonder how near you can come +to seeing the scowling pale-faced hobbledehoy I was, unshaven and +collarless, in the Windsor chair, and the little timid, dirty, devoted +old woman who hovered about me with love peering out from her puckered +eyelids. . . + +When she went out to buy some vegetables in the middle of the morning +she got me a half-penny journal. It was just such a one as these upon +my desk, only that the copy I read was damp from the press, and these +are so dry and brittle, they crack if I touch them. I have a copy of +the actual issue I read that morning; it was a paper called +emphatically the _New Paper_, but everybody bought it and everybody +called it the “yell.” It was full that morning of stupendous news and +still more stupendous headlines, so stupendous that for a little while +I was roused from my egotistical broodings to wider interests. For it +seemed that Germany and England were on the brink of war. + +Of all the monstrous irrational phenomena of the former time, war was +certainly the most strikingly insane. In reality it was probably far +less mischievous than such quieter evil as, for example, the general +acquiescence in the private ownership of land, but its evil +consequences showed so plainly that even in those days of stifling +confusion one marveled at it. On no conceivable grounds was there any +sense in modern war. Save for the slaughter and mangling of a multitude +of people, the destruction of vast quantities of material, and the +waste of innumerable units of energy, it effected nothing. The old war +of savage and barbaric nations did at least change humanity, you +assumed yourselves to be a superior tribe in physique and discipline, +you demonstrated this upon your neighbors, and if successful you took +their land and their women and perpetuated and enlarged your +superiority. The new war changed nothing but the color of maps, the +design of postage stamps, and the relationship of a few accidentally +conspicuous individuals. In one of the last of these international +epileptic fits, for example, the English, with much dysentery and bad +poetry, and a few hundred deaths in battle, conquered the South African +Boers at a gross cost of about three thousand pounds per head—they +could have bought the whole of that preposterous imitation of a nation +for a tenth of that sum—and except for a few substitutions of +personalities, this group of partially corrupt officials in the place +of that, and so forth, the permanent change was altogether +insignificant. (But an excitable young man in Austria committed suicide +when at length the Transvaal ceased to be a “nation.”) Men went through +the seat of that war after it was all over, and found humanity +unchanged, except for a general impoverishment, and the convenience of +an unlimited supply of empty ration tins and barbed wire and cartridge +cases—unchanged and resuming with a slight perplexity all its old +habits and misunderstandings, the nigger still in his slum-like kraal, +the white in his ugly ill-managed shanty. . . + +But we in England saw all these things, or did not see them, through +the mirage of the _New Paper_, in a light of mania. All my adolescence +from fourteen to seventeen went to the music of that monstrous +resonating futility, the cheering, the anxieties, the songs and the +waving of flags, the wrongs of generous Buller and the glorious heroism +of De Wet—who _always_ got away; that was the great point about the +heroic De Wet—and it never occurred to us that the total population we +fought against was less than half the number of those who lived cramped +ignoble lives within the compass of the Four Towns. + +But before and after that stupid conflict of stupidities, a greater +antagonism was coming into being, was slowly and quietly defining +itself as a thing inevitable, sinking now a little out of attention +only to resume more emphatically, now flashing into some acute +definitive expression and now percolating and pervading some new region +of thought, and that was the antagonism of Germany and Great Britain. + +When I think of that growing proportion of readers who belong entirely +to the new order, who are growing up with only the vaguest early +memories of the old world, I find the greatest difficulty in writing +down the unintelligible confusions that were matter of fact to their +fathers. + +Here were we British, forty-one millions of people, in a state of +almost indescribably aimless, economic, and moral muddle that we had +neither the courage, the energy, nor the intelligence to improve, that +most of us had hardly the courage to think about, and with our affairs +hopelessly entangled with the entirely different confusions of three +hundred and fifty million other persons scattered about the globe, and +here were the Germans over against us, fifty-six millions, in a state +of confusion no whit better than our own, and the noisy little +creatures who directed papers and wrote books and gave lectures, and +generally in that time of world-dementia pretended to be the national +mind, were busy in both countries, with a sort of infernal unanimity, +exhorting—and not only exhorting but successfully persuading—the two +peoples to divert such small common store of material, moral and +intellectual energy as either possessed, into the purely destructive +and wasteful business of war. And—I have to tell you these things even +if you do not believe them, because they are vital to my story—there +was not a man alive who could have told you of any real permanent +benefit, of anything whatever to counterbalance the obvious waste and +evil, that would result from a war between England and Germany, whether +England shattered Germany or was smashed and overwhelmed, or whatever +the end might be. + +The thing was, in fact, an enormous irrational obsession, it was, in +the microcosm of our nation, curiously parallel to the egotistical +wrath and jealousy that swayed my individual microcosm. It measured the +excess of common emotion over the common intelligence, the legacy of +inordinate passion we have received from the brute from which we came. +Just as I had become the slave of my own surprise and anger and went +hither and thither with a loaded revolver, seeking and intending vague +fluctuating crimes, so these two nations went about the earth, hot +eared and muddle headed, with loaded navies and armies terribly ready +at hand. Only there was not even a Nettie to justify their stupidity. +There was nothing but quiet imaginary thwarting on either side. + +And the press was the chief instrument that kept these two huge +multitudes of people directed against one another. + +The press—those newspapers that are now so strange to us—like the +“Empires,” the “Nations,” the Trusts, and all the other great monstrous +shapes of that extraordinary time—was in the nature of an unanticipated +accident. It had happened, as weeds happen in abandoned gardens, just +as all our world has happened,—because there was no clear Will in the +world to bring about anything better. Towards the end this “press” was +almost entirely under the direction of youngish men of that eager, +rather unintelligent type, that is never able to detect itself aimless, +that pursues nothing with incredible pride and zeal, and if you would +really understand this mad era the comet brought to an end, you must +keep in mind that every phase in the production of these queer old +things was pervaded by a strong aimless energy and happened in a +concentrated rush. + +Let me describe to you, very briefly, a newspaper day. + +Figure first, then, a hastily erected and still more hastily designed +building in a dirty, paper-littered back street of old London, and a +number of shabbily dressed men coming and going in this with projectile +swiftness, and within this factory companies of printers, tensely +active with nimble fingers—they were always speeding up the +printers—ply their type-setting machines, and cast and arrange masses +of metal in a sort of kitchen inferno, above which, in a beehive of +little brightly lit rooms, disheveled men sit and scribble. There is a +throbbing of telephones and a clicking of telegraph needles, a rushing +of messengers, a running to and fro of heated men, clutching proofs and +copy. Then begins a clatter roar of machinery catching the infection, +going faster and faster, and whizzing and banging,—engineers, who have +never had time to wash since their birth, flying about with oil-cans, +while paper runs off its rolls with a shudder of haste. The proprietor +you must suppose arriving explosively on a swift motor-car, leaping out +before the thing is at a standstill, with letters and documents +clutched in his hand, rushing in, resolute to “hustle,” getting +wonderfully in everybody’s way. At the sight of him even the messenger +boys who are waiting, get up and scamper to and fro. Sprinkle your +vision with collisions, curses, incoherencies. You imagine all the +parts of this complex lunatic machine working hysterically toward a +crescendo of haste and excitement as the night wears on. At last the +only things that seem to travel slowly in all those tearing vibrating +premises are the hands of the clock. + +Slowly things draw on toward publication, the consummation of all those +stresses. Then in the small hours, into the now dark and deserted +streets comes a wild whirl of carts and men, the place spurts paper at +every door, bales, heaps, torrents of papers, that are snatched and +flung about in what looks like a free fight, and off with a rush and +clatter east, west, north, and south. The interest passes outwardly; +the men from the little rooms are going homeward, the printers disperse +yawning, the roaring presses slacken. The paper exists. Distribution +follows manufacture, and we follow the bundles. + +Our vision becomes a vision of dispersal. You see those bundles hurling +into stations, catching trains by a hair’s breadth, speeding on their +way, breaking up, smaller bundles of them hurled with a fierce accuracy +out upon the platforms that rush by, and then everywhere a division of +these smaller bundles into still smaller bundles, into dispersing +parcels, into separate papers, and the dawn happens unnoticed amidst a +great running and shouting of boys, a shoving through letter slots, +openings of windows, spreading out upon book-stalls. For the space of a +few hours you must figure the whole country dotted white with rustling +papers—placards everywhere vociferating the hurried lie for the day; +men and women in trains, men and women eating and reading, men by +study-fenders, people sitting up in bed, mothers and sons and daughters +waiting for father to finish—a million scattered people reading—reading +headlong—or feverishly ready to read. It is just as if some vehement +jet had sprayed that white foam of papers over the surface of the land. +. . + +And then you know, wonderfully gone—gone utterly, vanished as foam +might vanish upon the sand. + +Nonsense! The whole affair a noisy paroxysm of nonsense, unreasonable +excitement, witless mischief, and waste of strength—signifying nothing. +. . . + +And one of those white parcels was the paper I held in my hands, as I +sat with a bandaged foot on the steel fender in that dark underground +kitchen of my mother’s, clean roused from my personal troubles by the +yelp of the headlines. She sat, sleeves tucked up from her ropy arms, +peeling potatoes as I read. + +It was like one of a flood of disease germs that have invaded a body, +that paper. There I was, one corpuscle in the big amorphous body of the +English community, one of forty-one million such corpuscles and, for +all my preoccupations, these potent headlines, this paper ferment, +caught me and swung me about. And all over the country that day, +millions read as I read, and came round into line with me, under the +same magnetic spell, came round—how did we say it?—Ah!—“to face the +foe.” + +The comet had been driven into obscurity overleaf. The column headed +“Distinguished Scientist says Comet will Strike our Earth. Does it +Matter?” went unread. “Germany”—I usually figured this mythical +malignant creature as a corseted stiff-mustached Emperor enhanced by +heraldic black wings and a large sword—had insulted our flag. That was +the message of the _New Paper_, and the monster towered over me, +threatening fresh outrages, visibly spitting upon my faultless +country’s colors. Somebody had hoisted a British flag on the right bank +of some tropical river I had never heard of before, and a drunken +German officer under ambiguous instructions had torn it down. Then one +of the convenient abundant natives of the country, a British subject +indisputably, had been shot in the leg. But the facts were by no means +clear. Nothing was clear except that we were not going to stand any +nonsense from Germany. Whatever had or had not happened we meant to +have an apology for, and apparently they did not mean apologizing. + +“HAS WAR COME AT LAST?” + + +That was the headline. One’s heart leapt to assent. . . . + +There were hours that day when I clean forgot Nettie, in dreaming of +battles and victories by land and sea, of shell fire, and +entrenchments, and the heaped slaughter of many thousands of men. + +But the next morning I started for Checkshill, started, I remember, in +a curiously hopeful state of mind, oblivious of comets, strikes, and +wars. + +§ 5 + + +You must understand that I had no set plan of murder when I walked over +to Checkshill. I had no set plan of any sort. There was a great +confusion of dramatically conceived intentions in my head, scenes of +threatening and denunciation and terror, but I did not mean to kill. +The revolver was to turn upon my rival my disadvantage in age and +physique. . . . + +But that was not it really! The revolver!—I took the revolver because I +had the revolver and was a foolish young lout. It was a dramatic sort +of thing to take. I had, I say, no plan at all. + +Ever and again during that second trudge to Checkshill I was irradiated +with a novel unreasonable hope. I had awakened in the morning with the +hope, it may have been the last unfaded trail of some obliterated +dream, that after all Nettie might relent toward me, that her heart was +kind toward me in spite of all that I imagined had happened. I even +thought it possible that I might have misinterpreted what I had seen. +Perhaps she would explain everything. My revolver was in my pocket for +all that. + +I limped at the outset, but after the second mile my ankle warmed to +forgetfulness, and the rest of the way I walked well. Suppose, after +all, I was wrong? + +I was still debating that, as I came through the park. By the corner of +the paddock near the keeper’s cottage, I was reminded by some belated +blue hyacinths of a time when I and Nettie had gathered them together. +It seemed impossible that we could really have parted ourselves for +good and all. A wave of tenderness flowed over me, and still flooded me +as I came through the little dell and drew towards the hollies. But +there the sweet Nettie of my boy’s love faded, and I thought of the new +Nettie of desire and the man I had come upon in the moonlight, I +thought of the narrow, hot purpose that had grown so strongly out of my +springtime freshness, and my mood darkened to night. + +I crossed the beech wood and came towards the gardens with a resolute +and sorrowful heart. When I reached the green door in the garden wall I +was seized for a space with so violent a trembling that I could not +grip the latch to lift it, for I no longer had any doubt how this would +end. That trembling was succeeded by a feeling of cold, and whiteness, +and self-pity. I was astonished to find myself grimacing, to feel my +cheeks wet, and thereupon I gave way completely to a wild passion of +weeping. I must take just a little time before the thing was done. . . +. I turned away from the door and stumbled for a little distance, +sobbing loudly, and lay down out of sight among the bracken, and so +presently became calm again. I lay there some time. I had half a mind +to desist, and then my emotion passed like the shadow of a cloud, and I +walked very coolly into the gardens. + +Through the open door of one of the glass houses I saw old Stuart. He +was leaning against the staging, his hands in his pockets, and so deep +in thought he gave no heed to me. + +I hesitated and went on towards the cottage, slowly. + +Something struck me as unusual about the place, but I could not tell at +first what it was. One of the bedroom windows was open, and the +customary short blind, with its brass upper rail partly unfastened, +drooped obliquely across the vacant space. It looked negligent and odd, +for usually everything about the cottage was conspicuously trim. + +The door was standing wide open, and everything was still. But giving +that usually orderly hall an odd look—it was about half-past two in the +afternoon—was a pile of three dirty plates, with used knives and forks +upon them, on one of the hall chairs. + +I went into the hall, looked into either room, and hesitated. + +Then I fell to upon the door-knocker and gave a loud rat-tat-too, and +followed this up with an amiable “Hel-lo!” + +For a time no one answered me, and I stood listening and expectant, +with my fingers about my weapon. Some one moved about upstairs +presently, and was still again. The tension of waiting seemed to brace +my nerves. + +I had my hand on the knocker for the second time, when Puss appeared in +the doorway. + +For a moment we remained staring at one another without speaking. Her +hair was disheveled, her face dirty, tear-stained, and irregularly red. +Her expression at the sight of me was pure astonishment. I thought she +was about to say something, and then she had darted away out of the +house again. + +“I say, Puss!” I said. “Puss!” + +I followed her out of the door. “Puss! What’s the matter? Where’s +Nettie?” + +She vanished round the corner of the house. + +I hesitated, perplexed whether I should pursue her. What did it all +mean? Then I heard some one upstairs. + +“Willie!” cried the voice of Mrs. Stuart. “Is that you?” + +“Yes,” I answered. “Where’s every one? Where’s Nettie? I want to have a +talk with her.” + +She did not answer, but I heard her dress rustle as she moved. I Judged +she was upon the landing overhead. + +I paused at the foot of the stairs, expecting her to appear and come +down. + +Suddenly came a strange sound, a rush of sounds, words jumbled and +hurrying, confused and shapeless, borne along upon a note of throaty +distress that at last submerged the words altogether and ended in a +wail. Except that it came from a woman’s throat it was exactly the +babbling sound of a weeping child with a grievance. “I can’t,” she +said, “I can’t,” and that was all I could distinguish. It was to my +young ears the strangest sound conceivable from a kindly motherly +little woman, whom I had always thought of chiefly as an unparalleled +maker of cakes. It frightened me. I went upstairs at once in a state of +infinite alarm, and there she was upon the landing, leaning forward +over the top of the chest of drawers beside her open bedroom door, and +weeping. I never saw such weeping. One thick strand of black hair had +escaped, and hung with a spiral twist down her back; never before had I +noticed that she had gray hairs. + +As I came up upon the landing her voice rose again. “Oh that I should +have to tell you, Willie! Oh that I should have to tell you!” She +dropped her head again, and a fresh gust of tears swept all further +words away. + +I said nothing, I was too astonished; but I drew nearer to her, and +waited. . . . + +I never saw such weeping; the extraordinary wetness of her dripping +handkerchief abides with me to this day. + +“That I should have lived to see this day!” she wailed. “I had rather a +thousand times she was struck dead at my feet.” + +I began to understand. + +“Mrs. Stuart,” I said, clearing my throat; “what has become of Nettie?” + +“That I should have lived to see this day!” she said by way of reply. + +I waited till her passion abated. + +There came a lull. I forgot the weapon in my pocket. I said nothing, +and suddenly she stood erect before me, wiping her swollen eyes. +“Willie,” she gulped, “she’s gone!” + +“Nettie?” + +“Gone! . . . Run away. . . . Run away from her home. Oh, Willie, +Willie! The shame of it! The sin and shame of it!” + +She flung herself upon my shoulder, and clung to me, and began again to +wish her daughter lying dead at our feet. + +“There, there,” said I, and all my being was a-tremble. “Where has she +gone?” I said as softly as I could. + +But for the time she was preoccupied with her own sorrow, and I had to +hold her there, and comfort her with the blackness of finality +spreading over my soul. + +“Where has she gone?” I asked for the fourth time. + +“I don’t know—we don’t know. And oh, Willie, she went out yesterday +morning! I said to her, ‘Nettie,’ I said to her, ‘you’re mighty fine +for a morning call.’ ‘Fine clo’s for a fine day,’ she said, and that +was her last words to me!—Willie!—the child I suckled at my breast!” + +“Yes, yes. But where has she gone?” I said. + +She went on with sobs, and now telling her story with a sort of +fragmentary hurry: “She went out bright and shining, out of this house +for ever. She was smiling, Willie—as if she was glad to be going. +(“Glad to be going,” I echoed with soundless lips.) ‘You’re mighty fine +for the morning,’ I says; ‘mighty fine.’ ‘Let the girl be pretty,’ says +her father, ‘while she’s young!’ And somewhere she’d got a parcel of +her things hidden to pick up, and she was going off—out of this house +for ever!” + +She became quiet. + +“Let the girl be pretty,” she repeated; “let the girl be pretty while +she’s young. . . . Oh! how can we go on _living_, Willie? He doesn’t +show it, but he’s like a stricken beast. He’s wounded to the heart. She +was always his favorite. He never seemed to care for Puss like he did +for her. And she’s wounded him—” + +“Where has she gone?” I reverted at last to that. + +“We don’t know. She leaves her own blood, she trusts herself— Oh, +Willie, it’ll kill me! I wish she and me together were lying in our +graves.” + +“But”—I moistened my lips and spoke slowly—“she may have gone to +marry.” + +“If that was so! I’ve prayed to God it might be so, Willie. I’ve prayed +that he’d take pity on her—him, I mean, she’s with.” + +I jerked out: “Who’s that?” + +“In her letter, she said he was a gentleman. She did say he was a +gentleman.” + +“In her letter. Has she written? Can I see her letter?” + +“Her father took it.” + +“But if she writes— When did she write?” + +“It came this morning.” + +“But where did it come from? You can tell—” + +“She didn’t say. She said she was happy. She said love took one like a +storm—” + +“Curse that! Where is her letter? Let me see it. And as for this +gentleman—” + +She stared at me. + +“You know who it is.” + +“Willie!” she protested. + +“You know who it is, whether she said or not?” Her eyes made a mute +unconfident denial. + +“Young Verrall?” + +She made no answer. “All I could do for you, Willie,” she began +presently. + +“Was it young Verrall?” I insisted. + +For a second, perhaps, we faced one another in stark understanding. . . +. Then she plumped back to the chest of drawers, and her wet +pocket-handkerchief, and I knew she sought refuge from my relentless +eyes. + +My pity for her vanished. She knew it was her mistress’s son as well as +I! And for some time she had known, she had felt. + +I hovered over her for a moment, sick with amazed disgust. I suddenly +bethought me of old Stuart, out in the greenhouse, and turned and went +downstairs. As I did so, I looked up to see Mrs. Stuart moving +droopingly and lamely back into her own room. + +§ 6 + + +Old Stuart was pitiful. + +I found him still inert in the greenhouse where I had first seen him. +He did not move as I drew near him; he glanced at me, and then stared +hard again at the flowerpots before him. + +“Eh, Willie,” he said, “this is a black day for all of us.” + +“What are you going to do?” I asked. + +“The missus takes on so,” he said. “I came out here.” + +“What do you mean to do?” + +“What _is_ a man to do in such a case?” + +“Do!” I cried, “why— Do!” + +“He ought to marry her,” he said. + +“By God, yes!” I cried. “He must do that anyhow.” + +“He ought to. It’s—it’s cruel. But what am _I_ to do? Suppose he won’t? +Likely he won’t. What then?” + +He drooped with an intensified despair. + +“Here’s this cottage,” he said, pursuing some contracted argument. +“We’ve lived here all our lives, you might say. . . . Clear out. At my +age. . . . One can’t die in a slum.” + +I stood before him for a space, speculating what thoughts might fill +the gaps between these broken words. I found his lethargy, and the +dimly shaped mental attitudes his words indicated, abominable. I said +abruptly, “You have her letter?” + +He dived into his breast-pocket, became motionless for ten seconds, +then woke up again and produced her letter. He drew it clumsily from +its envelope, and handed it to me silently. + +“Why!” he cried, looking at me for the first time, “What’s come to your +chin, Willie?” + +“It’s nothing,” I said. “It’s a bruise;” and I opened the letter. + +It was written on greenish tinted fancy note-paper, and with all and +more than Nettie’s usual triteness and inadequacy of expression. Her +handwriting bore no traces of emotion; it was round and upright and +clear as though it had been done in a writing lesson. Always her +letters were like masks upon her image; they fell like curtains before +the changing charm of her face; one altogether forgot the sound of her +light clear voice, confronted by a perplexing stereotyped thing that +had mysteriously got a hold upon one’s heart and pride. How did that +letter run?— + +“MY DEAR MOTHER, + “Do not be distressed at my going away. I have gone somewhere safe, + and with some one who cares for me very much. I am sorry for your + sakes, but it seems that it had to be. Love is a very difficult + thing, and takes hold of one in ways one does not expect. Do not + think I am ashamed about this, I glory in my love, and you must not + trouble too much about me. I am very, very happy (deeply + underlined). + + +“Fondest love to Father and Puss. +“Your loving +“Nettie.” + + +That queer little document! I can see it now for the childish simple +thing it was, but at the time I read it in a suppressed anguish of +rage. It plunged me into a pit of hopeless shame; there seemed to +remain no pride for me in life until I had revenge. I stood staring at +those rounded upstanding letters, not trusting myself to speak or move. +At last I stole a glance at Stuart. + +He held the envelope in his hand, and stared down at the postmark +between his horny thumbnails. + +“You can’t even tell where she is,” he said, turning the thing round in +a hopeless manner, and then desisting. “It’s hard on us, Willie. Here +she is; she hadn’t anything to complain of; a sort of pet for all of +us. Not even made to do her share of the ‘ousework. And she goes off +and leaves us like a bird that’s learnt to fly. Can’t _trust_ us, +that’s what takes me. Puts ‘erself— But there! What’s to happen to +her?” + +“What’s to happen to him?” + +He shook his head to show that problem was beyond him. + +“You’ll go after her,” I said in an even voice; “you’ll make him marry +her?” + +“Where am I to go?” he asked helplessly, and held out the envelope with +a gesture; “and what could I do? Even if I knew— How could I leave the +gardens?” + +“Great God!” I cried, “not leave these gardens! It’s your Honor, man! +If she was my daughter—if she was my daughter—I’d tear the world to +pieces!” . . I choked. “You mean to stand it?” + +“What can I do?” + +“Make him marry her! Horsewhip him! Horsewhip him, I say!—I’d strangle +him!” + +He scratched slowly at his hairy cheek, opened his mouth, and shook his +head. Then, with an intolerable note of sluggish gentle wisdom, he +said, “People of our sort, Willie, can’t do things like that.” + +I came near to raving. I had a wild impulse to strike him in the face. +Once in my boyhood I happened upon a bird terribly mangled by some cat, +and killed it in a frenzy of horror and pity. I had a gust of that same +emotion now, as this shameful mutilated soul fluttered in the dust, +before me. Then, you know, I dismissed him from the case. + +“May I look?” I asked. + +He held out the envelope reluctantly. + +“There it is,” he said, and pointing with his garden-rough forefinger. +“I.A.P.A.M.P. What can you make of that?” + +I took the thing in my hands. The adhesive stamp customary in those +days was defaced by a circular postmark, which bore the name of the +office of departure and the date. The impact in this particular case +had been light or made without sufficient ink, and half the letters of +the name had left no impression. I could distinguish— + +I A P A M P + + +and very faintly below D.S.O. + +I guessed the name in an instant flash of intuition. It was +Shaphambury. The very gaps shaped that to my mind. Perhaps in a sort of +semi-visibility other letters were there, at least hinting themselves. +It was a place somewhere on the east coast, I knew, either in Norfolk +or Suffolk. + +“Why!” cried I—and stopped. + +What was the good of telling him? + +Old Stuart had glanced up sharply, I am inclined to think almost +fearfully, into my face. “You—you haven’t got it?” he said. + +Shaphambury—I should remember that. + +“You don’t think you got it?” he said. + +I handed the envelope back to him. + +“For a moment I thought it might be Hampton,” I said. + +“Hampton,” he repeated. “Hampton. How could you make Hampton?” He +turned the envelope about. “H.A.M.—why, Willie, you’re a worse hand at +the job than me!” + +He replaced the letter in the envelope and stood erect to put this back +in his breast pocket. + +I did not mean to take any risks in this affair. I drew a stump of +pencil from my waistcoat pocket, turned a little away from him and +wrote “Shaphambury” very quickly on my frayed and rather grimy shirt +cuff. + +“Well,” said I, with an air of having done nothing remarkable. + +I turned to him with some unimportant observation—I have forgotten +what. + +I never finished whatever vague remark I commenced. + +I looked up to see a third person waiting at the greenhouse door. + +§ 7 + + +It was old Mrs. Verrall. + +I wonder if I can convey the effect of her to you. She was a little old +lady with extraordinarily flaxen hair, her weak aquiline features were +pursed up into an assumption of dignity, and she was richly dressed. I +would like to underline that “richly dressed,” or have the words +printed in florid old English or Gothic lettering. No one on earth is +now quite so richly dressed as she was, no one old or young indulges in +so quiet and yet so profound a sumptuosity. But you must not imagine +any extravagance of outline or any beauty or richness of color. The +predominant colors were black and fur browns, and the effect of +richness was due entirely to the extreme costliness of the materials +employed. She affected silk brocades with rich and elaborate patterns, +priceless black lace over creamy or purple satin, intricate trimmings +through which threads and bands of velvet wriggled, and in the winter +rare furs. Her gloves fitted exquisitely, and ostentatiously simple +chains of fine gold and pearls, and a great number of bracelets, laced +about her little person. One was forced to feel that the slightest +article she wore cost more than all the wardrobe of a dozen girls like +Nettie; her bonnet affected the simplicity that is beyond rubies. +Richness, that is the first quality about this old lady that I would +like to convey to you, and the second was cleanliness. You felt that +old Mrs. Verrall was exquisitely clean. If you had boiled my poor dear +old mother in soda for a month you couldn’t have got her so clean as +Mrs. Verrall constantly and manifestly was. And pervading all her +presence shone her third great quality, her manifest confidence in the +respectful subordination of the world. + +She was pale and a little out of breath that day, but without any loss +of her ultimate confidence, and it was clear to me that she had come to +interview Stuart upon the outbreak of passion that had bridged the gulf +between their families. + +And here again I find myself writing in an unknown language, so far as +my younger readers are concerned. You who know only the world that +followed the Great Change will find much that I am telling +inconceivable. Upon these points I cannot appeal, as I have appealed +for other confirmations, to the old newspapers; these were the things +that no one wrote about because every one understood and every one had +taken up an attitude. There were in England and America, and indeed +throughout the world, two great informal divisions of human beings—the +Secure and the Insecure. There was not and never had been in either +country a nobility—it was and remains a common error that the British +peers were noble—neither in law nor custom were there noble families, +and we altogether lacked the edification one found in Russia, for +example, of a poor nobility. A peerage was an hereditary possession +that, like the family land, concerned only the eldest sons of the +house; it radiated no luster of _noblesse oblige_. The rest of the +world were in law and practice common—and all America was common. But +through the private ownership of land that had resulted from the +neglect of feudal obligations in Britain and the utter want of +political foresight in the Americas, large masses of property had +become artificially stable in the hands of a small minority, to whom it +was necessary to mortgage all new public and private enterprises, and +who were held together not by any tradition of service and nobility but +by the natural sympathy of common interests and a common large scale of +living. It was a class without any very definite boundaries; vigorous +individualities, by methods for the most part violent and questionable, +were constantly thrusting themselves from insecurity to security, and +the sons and daughters of secure people, by marrying insecurity or by +wild extravagance or flagrant vice, would sink into the life of anxiety +and insufficiency which was the ordinary life of man. The rest of the +population was landless and, except by working directly or indirectly +for the Secure, had no legal right to exist. And such was the +shallowness and insufficiency of our thought, such the stifled egotism +of all our feelings before the Last Days, that very few indeed of the +Secure could be found to doubt that this was the natural and only +conceivable order of the world. + +It is the life of the Insecure under the old order that I am +displaying, and I hope that I am conveying something of its hopeless +bitterness to you, but you must not imagine that the Secure lived lives +of paradisiacal happiness. The pit of insecurity below them made itself +felt, even though it was not comprehended. Life about them was ugly; +the sight of ugly and mean houses, of ill-dressed people, the vulgar +appeals of the dealers in popular commodities, were not to be escaped. +There was below the threshold of their minds an uneasiness; they not +only did not think clearly about social economy but they displayed an +instinctive disinclination to think. Their security was not so perfect +that they had not a dread of falling towards the pit, they were always +lashing themselves by new ropes, their cultivation of “connexions,” of +interests, their desire to confirm and improve their positions, was a +constant ignoble preoccupation. You must read Thackeray to get the full +flavor of their lives. Then the bacterium was apt to disregard class +distinctions, and they were never really happy in their servants. Read +their surviving books. Each generation bewails the decay of that +“fidelity” of servants, no generation ever saw. A world that is squalid +in one corner is squalid altogether, but that they never understood. +They believed there was not enough of anything to go round, they +believed that this was the intention of God and an incurable condition +of life, and they held passionately and with a sense of right to their +disproportionate share. They maintained a common intercourse as +“Society” of all who were practically secure, and their choice of that +word is exhaustively eloquent of the quality of their philosophy. But, +if you can master these alien ideas upon which the old system rested, +just in the same measure will you understand the horror these people +had for marriages with the Insecure. In the case of their girls and +women it was extraordinarily rare, and in the case of either sex it was +regarded as a disastrous social crime. Anything was better than that. + +You are probably aware of the hideous fate that was only too probably +the lot, during those last dark days, of every girl of the insecure +classes who loved and gave way to the impulse of self-abandonment +without marriage, and so you will understand the peculiar situation of +Nettie with young Verrall. One or other had to suffer. And as they were +both in a state of great emotional exaltation and capable of strange +generosities toward each other, it was an open question and naturally a +source of great anxiety to a mother in Mrs. Verrall’s position, whether +the sufferer might not be her son—whether as the outcome of that +glowing irresponsible commerce Nettie might not return prospective +mistress of Checkshill Towers. The chances were greatly against that +conclusion, but such things did occur. + +These laws and customs sound, I know, like a record of some +nasty-minded lunatic’s inventions. They were invincible facts in that +vanished world into which, by some accident, I had been born, and it +was the dream of any better state of things that was scouted as lunacy. +Just think of it! This girl I loved with all my soul, for whom I was +ready to sacrifice my life, was not good enough to marry young Verrall. +And I had only to look at his even, handsome, characterless face to +perceive a creature weaker and no better than myself. She was to be his +pleasure until he chose to cast her aside, and the poison of our social +system had so saturated her nature—his evening dress, his freedom and +his money had seemed so fine to her and I so clothed in squalor—that to +that prospect she had consented. And to resent the social conventions +that created their situation, was called “class envy,” and gently born +preachers reproached us for the mildest resentment against an injustice +no living man would now either endure or consent to profit by. + +What was the sense of saying “peace” when there was no peace? If there +was one hope in the disorders of that old world it lay in revolt and +conflict to the death. + +But if you can really grasp the shameful grotesqueness of the old life, +you will begin to appreciate the interpretation of old Mrs. Verrall’s +appearance that leapt up at once in my mind. + +She had come to compromise the disaster! + +And the Stuarts _would_ compromise! I saw that only too well. + +An enormous disgust at the prospect of the imminent encounter between +Stuart and his mistress made me behave in a violent and irrational way. +I wanted to escape seeing that, seeing even Stuart’s first gesture in +that, at any cost. + +“I’m off,” said I, and turned my back on him without any further +farewell. + +My line of retreat lay by the old lady, and so I advanced toward her. + +I saw her expression change, her mouth fell a little way open, her +forehead wrinkled, and her eyes grew round. She found me a queer +customer even at the first sight, and there was something in the manner +of my advance that took away her breath. + +She stood at the top of the three or four steps that descended to the +level of the hothouse floor. She receded a pace or two, with a certain +offended dignity at the determination of my rush. + +I gave her no sort of salutation. + +Well, as a matter of fact, I did give her a sort of salutation. There +is no occasion for me to begin apologizing now for the thing I said to +her—I strip these things before you—if only I can get them stark enough +you will understand and forgive. I was filled with a brutal and +overpowering desire to insult her. + +And so I addressed this poor little expensive old woman in the +following terms, converting her by a violent metonymy into a +comprehensive plural. “You infernal land thieves!” I said point-blank +into her face. “_Have you come to offer them money?_” + +And without waiting to test her powers of repartee I passed rudely +beyond her and vanished, striding with my fists clenched, out of her +world again. . . + +I have tried since to imagine how the thing must have looked to her. So +far as her particular universe went I had not existed at all, or I had +existed only as a dim black thing, an insignificant speck, far away +across her park in irrelevant, unimportant transit, until this moment +when she came, sedately troubled, into her own secure gardens and +sought for Stuart among the greenhouses. Then abruptly I flashed into +being down that green-walled, brick-floored vista as a black-avised, +ill-clad young man, who first stared and then advanced scowling toward +her. Once in existence I developed rapidly. I grew larger in +perspective and became more and more important and sinister every +moment. I came up the steps with inconceivable hostility and disrespect +in my bearing, towered over her, becoming for an instant at least a +sort of second French Revolution, and delivered myself with the +intensest concentration of those wicked and incomprehensible words. +Just for a second I threatened annihilation. Happily that was my +climax. + +And then I had gone by, and the Universe was very much as it had always +been except for the wild swirl in it, and the faint sense of insecurity +my episode left in its wake. + +The thing that never entered my head in those days was that a large +proportion of the rich were rich in absolute good faith. I thought they +saw things exactly as I saw them, and wickedly denied. But indeed old +Mrs. Verrall was no more capable of doubting the perfection of her +family’s right to dominate a wide country side, than she was of +examining the Thirty-nine Articles or dealing with any other of the +adamantine pillars upon which her universe rested in security. + +No doubt I startled and frightened her tremendously. But she could not +understand. + +None of her sort of people ever did seem to understand such livid +flashes of hate, as ever and again lit the crowded darkness below their +feet. The thing leapt out of the black for a moment and vanished, like +a threatening figure by a desolate roadside lit for a moment by one’s +belated carriage-lamp and then swallowed up by the night. They counted +it with nightmares, and did their best to forget what was evidently as +insignificant as it was disturbing. + + + + +CHAPTER THE FOURTH WAR + + +§ 1 + +From that moment when I insulted old Mrs. Verrall I became +representative, I was a man who stood for all the disinherited of the +world. I had no hope of pride or pleasure left in me, I was raging +rebellion against God and mankind. There were no more vague intentions +swaying me this way and that; I was perfectly clear now upon what I +meant to do. I would make my protest and die. + +I would make my protest and die. I was going to kill Nettie—Nettie who +had smiled and promised and given herself to another, and who stood now +for all the conceivable delightfulnesses, the lost imaginations of the +youthful heart, the unattainable joys in life; and Verrall who stood +for all who profited by the incurable injustice of our social order. I +would kill them both. And that being done I would blow my brains out +and see what vengeance followed my blank refusal to live. + +So indeed I was resolved. I raged monstrously. And above me, abolishing +the stars, triumphant over the yellow waning moon that followed it +below, the giant meteor towered up towards the zenith. + +“Let me only kill!” I cried. “Let me only kill!” + +So I shouted in my frenzy. I was in a fever that defied hunger and +fatigue; for a long time I had prowled over the heath towards +Lowchester talking to myself, and now that night had fully come I was +tramping homeward, walking the long seventeen miles without a thought +of rest. And I had eaten nothing since the morning. + +I suppose I must count myself mad, but I can recall my ravings. + +There were times when I walked weeping through that brightness that was +neither night nor day. There were times when I reasoned in a +topsy-turvy fashion with what I called the Spirit of All Things. But +always I spoke to that white glory in the sky. + +“Why am I here only to suffer ignominies?” I asked. “Why have you made +me with pride that cannot be satisfied, with desires that turn and rend +me? Is it a jest, this world—a joke you play on your guests? I—even +I—have a better humor than that!” + +“Why not learn from me a certain decency of mercy? Why not undo? Have I +ever tormented—day by day, some wretched worm—making filth for it to +trail through, filth that disgusts it, starving it, bruising it, +mocking it? Why should you? Your jokes are clumsy. Try—try some milder +fun up there; do you hear? Something that doesn’t hurt so infernally.” + +“You say this is your purpose—your purpose with me. You are making +something with me—birth pangs of a soul. Ah! How can I believe you? You +forget I have eyes for other things. Let my own case go, but what of +that frog beneath the cart-wheel, God?—and the bird the cat had torn?” + +And after such blasphemies I would fling out a ridiculous little +debating society hand. “Answer me that!” + +A week ago it had been moonlight, white and black and hard across the +spaces of the park, but now the light was livid and full of the quality +of haze. An extraordinarily low white mist, not three feet above the +ground, drifted broodingly across the grass, and the trees rose ghostly +out of that phantom sea. Great and shadowy and strange was the world +that night, no one seemed abroad; I and my little cracked voice drifted +solitary through the silent mysteries. Sometimes I argued as I have +told, sometimes I tumbled along in moody vacuity, sometimes my torment +was vivid and acute. + +Abruptly out of apathy would come a boiling paroxysm of fury, when I +thought of Nettie mocking me and laughing, and of her and Verrall +clasped in one another’s arms. + +“I will not have it so!” I screamed. “I will not have it so!” + +And in one of these raving fits I drew my revolver from my pocket and +fired into the quiet night. Three times I fired it. + +The bullets tore through the air, the startled trees told one another +in diminishing echoes the thing I had done, and then, with a slow +finality, the vast and patient night healed again to calm. My shots, my +curses and blasphemies, my prayers—for anon I prayed—that Silence took +them all. + +It was—how can I express it?—a stifled outcry tranquilized, lost, amid +the serene assumptions, the overwhelming empire of that brightness. The +noise of my shots, the impact upon things, had for the instant been +enormous, then it had passed away. I found myself standing with the +revolver held up, astonished, my emotions penetrated by something I +could not understand. Then I looked up over my shoulder at the great +star, and remained staring at it. + +“Who are _you_?” I said at last. + +I was like a man in a solitary desert who has suddenly heard a voice. . +. . + +That, too, passed. + +As I came over Clayton Crest I recalled that I missed the multitude +that now night after night walked out to stare at the comet, and the +little preacher in the waste beyond the hoardings, who warned sinners +to repent before the Judgment, was not in his usual place. + +It was long past midnight, and every one had gone home. But I did not +think of this at first, and the solitude perplexed me and left a memory +behind. The gas-lamps were all extinguished because of the brightness +of the comet, and that too was unfamiliar. The little newsagent in the +still High Street had shut up and gone to bed, but one belated board +had been put out late and forgotten, and it still bore its placard. + +The word upon it—there was but one word upon it in staring letters—was: +“WAR.” + +You figure that empty mean street, emptily echoing to my footsteps—no +soul awake and audible but me. Then my halt at the placard. And amidst +that sleeping stillness, smeared hastily upon the board, a little askew +and crumpled, but quite distinct beneath that cool meteoric glare, +preposterous and appalling, the measureless evil of that word— + +“WAR!” + +§ 2 + + +I awoke in that state of equanimity that so often follows an emotional +drenching. + +It was late, and my mother was beside my bed. She had some breakfast +for me on a battered tray. + +“Don’t get up yet, dear,” she said. “You’ve been sleeping. It was three +o’clock when you got home last night. You must have been tired out.” + +“Your poor face,” she went on, “was as white as a sheet and your eyes +shining. . . . It frightened me to let you in. And you stumbled on the +stairs.” + +My eyes went quietly to my coat pocket, where something still bulged. +She probably had not noticed. “I went to Checkshill,” I said. “You +know—perhaps—?” + +“I got a letter last evening, dear,” and as she bent near me to put the +tray upon my knees, she kissed my hair softly. For a moment we both +remained still, resting on that, her cheek just touching my head. + +I took the tray from her to end the pause. + +“Don’t touch my clothes, mummy,” I said sharply, as she moved towards +them. “I’m still equal to a clothes-brush.” + +And then, as she turned away, I astonished her by saying, “You dear +mother, you! A little—I understand. Only—now—dear mother; oh! let me +be! Let me be!” + +And, with the docility of a good servant, she went from me. Dear heart +of submission that the world and I had used so ill! + +It seemed to me that morning that I could never give way to a gust of +passion again. A sorrowful firmness of the mind possessed me. My +purpose seemed now as inflexible as iron; there was neither love nor +hate nor fear left in me—only I pitied my mother greatly for all that +was still to come. I ate my breakfast slowly, and thought where I could +find out about Shaphambury, and how I might hope to get there. I had +not five shillings in the world. + +I dressed methodically, choosing the least frayed of my collars, and +shaving much more carefully than was my wont; then I went down to the +Public Library to consult a map. + +Shaphambury was on the coast of Essex, a long and complicated journey +from Clayton. I went to the railway-station and made some memoranda +from the time-tables. The porters I asked were not very clear about +Shaphambury, but the booking-office clerk was helpful, and we puzzled +out all I wanted to know. Then I came out into the coaly street again. +At the least I ought to have two pounds. + +I went back to the Public Library and into the newspaper room to think +over this problem. + +A fact intruded itself upon me. People seemed in an altogether +exceptional stir about the morning journals, there was something +unusual in the air of the room, more people and more talking than +usual, and for a moment I was puzzled. Then I bethought me: “This war +with Germany, of course!” A naval battle was supposed to be in progress +in the North Sea. Let them! I returned to the consideration of my own +affairs. + +Parload? + +Could I go and make it up with him, and then borrow? I weighed the +chances of that. Then I thought of selling or pawning something, but +that seemed difficult. My winter overcoat had not cost a pound when it +was new, my watch was not likely to fetch many shillings. Still, both +these things might be factors. I thought with a certain repugnance of +the little store my mother was probably making for the rent. She was +very secretive about that, and it was locked in an old tea-caddy in her +bedroom. I knew it would be almost impossible to get any of that money +from her willingly, and though I told myself that in this issue of +passion and death no detail mattered, I could not get rid of tormenting +scruples whenever I thought of that tea-caddy. Was there no other +course? Perhaps after every other source had been tapped I might +supplement with a few shillings frankly begged from her. “These +others,” I said to myself, thinking without passion for once of the +sons of the Secure, “would find it difficult to run their romances on a +pawnshop basis. However, we must manage it.” + +I felt the day was passing on, but I did not get excited about that. +“Slow is swiftest,” Parload used to say, and I meant to get everything +thought out completely, to take a long aim and then to act as a bullet +flies. + +I hesitated at a pawnshop on my way home to my midday meal, but I +determined not to pledge my watch until I could bring my overcoat also. + +I ate silently, revolving plans. + +§ 3 + + +After our midday dinner—it was a potato-pie, mostly potato with some +scraps of cabbage and bacon—I put on my overcoat and got it out of the +house while my mother was in the scullery at the back. + +A scullery in the old world was, in the case of such houses as ours, a +damp, unsavory, mainly subterranean region behind the dark living-room +kitchen, that was rendered more than typically dirty in our case by the +fact that into it the coal-cellar, a yawning pit of black uncleanness, +opened, and diffused small crunchable particles about the uneven brick +floor. It was the region of “washing-up,” that greasy, damp function +that followed every meal; its atmosphere had ever a cooling steaminess +and the memory of boiled cabbage, and the sooty black stains where +saucepan or kettle had been put down for a minute, scraps of +potato-peel caught by the strainer of the escape-pipe, and rags of a +quite indescribable horribleness of acquisition, called “dish-clouts,” +rise in my memory at the name. The altar of this place was the “sink,” +a tank of stone, revolting to a refined touch, grease-filmed and +unpleasant to see, and above this was a tap for cold water, so arranged +that when the water descended it splashed and wetted whoever had turned +it on. This tap was our water supply. And in such a place you must +fancy a little old woman, rather incompetent and very gentle, a soul of +unselfishness and sacrifice, in dirty clothes, all come from their +original colors to a common dusty dark gray, in worn, ill-fitting +boots, with hands distorted by ill use, and untidy graying hair—my +mother. In the winter her hands would be “chapped,” and she would have +a cough. And while she washes up I go out, to sell my overcoat and +watch in order that I may desert her. + +I gave way to queer hesitations in pawning my two negotiable articles. +A weakly indisposition to pawn in Clayton, where the pawnbroker knew +me, carried me to the door of the place in Lynch Street, Swathinglea, +where I had bought my revolver. Then came an idea that I was giving too +many facts about myself to one man, and I came back to Clayton after +all. I forget how much money I got, but I remember that it was rather +less than the sum I had made out to be the single fare to Shaphambury. +Still deliberate, I went back to the Public Library to find out whether +it was possible, by walking for ten or twelve miles anywhere, to +shorten the journey. My boots were in a dreadful state, the sole of the +left one also was now peeling off, and I could not help perceiving that +all my plans might be wrecked if at this crisis I went on shoe leather +in which I could only shuffle. So long as I went softly they would +serve, but not for hard walking. I went to the shoemaker in Hacker +Street, but he would not promise any repairs for me under forty-eight +hours. + +I got back home about five minutes to three, resolved to start by the +five train for Birmingham in any case, but still dissatisfied about my +money. I thought of pawning a book or something of that sort, but I +could think of nothing of obvious value in the house. My mother’s +silver—two gravy-spoons and a salt-cellar—had been pawned for some +weeks, since, in fact, the June quarter day. But my mind was full of +hypothetical opportunities. + +As I came up the steps to our door, I remarked that Mr. Gabbitas looked +at me suddenly round his dull red curtains with a sort of alarmed +resolution in his eye and vanished, and as I walked along the passage +he opened his door upon me suddenly and intercepted me. + +You are figuring me, I hope, as a dark and sullen lout in shabby, +cheap, old-world clothes that are shiny at all the wearing surfaces, +and with a discolored red tie and frayed linen. My left hand keeps in +my pocket as though there is something it prefers to keep a grip upon +there. Mr. Gabbitas was shorter than I, and the first note he struck in +the impression he made upon any one was of something bright and +birdlike. I think he wanted to be birdlike, he possessed the +possibility of an avian charm, but, as a matter of fact, there was +nothing of the glowing vitality of the bird in his being. And a bird is +never out of breath and with an open mouth. He was in the clerical +dress of that time, that costume that seems now almost the strangest of +all our old-world clothing, and he presented it in its cheapest +form—black of a poor texture, ill-fitting, strangely cut. Its long +skirts accentuated the tubbiness of his body, the shortness of his +legs. The white tie below his all-round collar, beneath his innocent +large-spectacled face, was a little grubby, and between his not very +clean teeth he held a briar pipe. His complexion was whitish, and +although he was only thirty-three or four perhaps, his sandy hair was +already thinning from the top of his head. + +To your eye, now, he would seem the strangest figure, in the utter +disregard of all physical beauty or dignity about him. You would find +him extraordinarily odd, but in the old days he met not only with +acceptance but respect. He was alive until within a year or so ago, but +his later appearance changed. As I saw him that afternoon he was a very +slovenly, ungainly little human being indeed, not only was his clothing +altogether ugly and queer, but had you stripped the man stark, you +would certainly have seen in the bulging paunch that comes from flabby +muscles and flabbily controlled appetites, and in the rounded shoulders +and flawed and yellowish skin, the same failure of any effort toward +clean beauty. You had an instinctive sense that so he had been from the +beginning. You felt he was not only drifting through life, eating what +came in his way, believing what came in his way, doing without any +vigor what came in his way, but that _into_ life also he had drifted. +You could not believe him the child of pride and high resolve, or of +any splendid passion of love. He had just _happened_. . . But we all +happened then. Why am I taking this tone over this poor little curate +in particular? + +“Hello!” he said, with an assumption of friendly ease. “Haven’t seen +you for weeks! Come in and have a gossip.” + +An invitation from the drawing-room lodger was in the nature of a +command. I would have liked very greatly to have refused it, never was +invitation more inopportune, but I had not the wit to think of an +excuse. “All right,” I said awkwardly, and he held the door open for +me. + +“I’d be very glad if you would,” he amplified. “One doesn’t get much +opportunity of intelligent talk in this parish.” + +What the devil was he up to, was my secret preoccupation. He fussed +about me with a nervous hospitality, talking in jumpy fragments, +rubbing his hands together, and taking peeps at me over and round his +glasses. As I sat down in his leather-covered armchair, I had an odd +memory of the one in the Clayton dentist’s operating-room—I know not +why. + +“They’re going to give us trouble in the North Sea, it seems,” he +remarked with a sort of innocent zest. “I’m glad they mean fighting.” + +There was an air of culture about his room that always cowed me, and +that made me constrained even on this occasion. The table under the +window was littered with photographic material and the later albums of +his continental souvenirs, and on the American cloth trimmed shelves +that filled the recesses on either side of the fireplace were what I +used to think in those days a quite incredible number of books—perhaps +eight hundred altogether, including the reverend gentleman’s photograph +albums and college and school text-books. This suggestion of learning +was enforced by the little wooden shield bearing a college coat-of-arms +that hung over the looking-glass, and by a photograph of Mr. Gabbitas +in cap and gown in an Oxford frame that adorned the opposite wall. And +in the middle of that wall stood his writing-desk, which I knew to have +pigeon-holes when it was open, and which made him seem not merely +cultured but literary. At that he wrote sermons, composing them +himself! + +“Yes,” he said, taking possession of the hearthrug, “the war had to +come sooner or later. If we smash their fleet for them now; well, +there’s an end to the matter!” + +He stood on his toes and then bumped down on his heels, and looked +blandly through his spectacles at a water-color by his sister—the +subject was a bunch of violets—above the sideboard which was his pantry +and tea-chest and cellar. “Yes,” he said as he did so. + +I coughed, and wondered how I might presently get away. + +He invited me to smoke—that queer old practice!—and then when I +declined, began talking in a confidential tone of this “dreadful +business” of the strikes. “The war won’t improve _that_ outlook,” he +said, and was very grave for a moment. + +He spoke of the want of thought for their wives and children shown by +the colliers in striking merely for the sake of the union, and this +stirred me to controversy, and distracted me a little from my +resolution to escape. + +“I don’t quite agree with that,” I said, clearing my throat. “If the +men didn’t strike for the union now, if they let that be broken up, +where would they be when the pinch of reductions did come?” + +To which he replied that they couldn’t expect to get top-price wages +when the masters were selling bottom-price coal. I replied, “That isn’t +it. The masters don’t treat them fairly. They have to protect +themselves.” + +To which Mr. Gabbitas answered, “Well, I don’t know. I’ve been in the +Four Towns some time, and I must say I don’t think the balance of +injustice falls on the masters’ side.” + +“It falls on the men,” I agreed, wilfully misunderstanding him. + +And so we worked our way toward an argument. “Confound this argument!” +I thought; but I had no skill in self-extraction, and my irritation +crept into my voice. Three little spots of color came into the cheeks +and nose of Mr. Gabbitas, but his voice showed nothing of his ruffled +temper. + +“You see,” I said, “I’m a socialist. I don’t think this world was made +for a small minority to dance on the faces of every one else.” + +“My dear fellow,” said the Rev. Gabbitas, “_I’m_ a socialist too. Who +isn’t. But that doesn’t lead me to class hatred.” + +“You haven’t felt the heel of this confounded system. _I_ have.” + +“Ah!” said he; and catching him on that note came a rap at the front +door, and, as he hung suspended, the sound of my mother letting some +one in and a timid rap. + +“_Now_,” thought I, and stood up, resolutely, but he would not let me. +“No, no, no!” said he. “It’s only for the Dorcas money.” + +He put his hand against my chest with an effect of physical compulsion, +and cried, “Come in!” + +“Our talk’s just getting interesting,” he protested; and there entered +Miss Ramell, an elderly little young lady who was mighty in Church help +in Clayton. + +He greeted her—she took no notice of me—and went to his bureau, and I +remained standing by my chair but unable to get out of the room. “I’m +not interrupting?” asked Miss Ramell. + +“Not in the least,” he said; drew out the carriers and opened his desk. +I could not help seeing what he did. + +I was so fretted by my impotence to leave him that at the moment it did +not connect at all with the research of the morning that he was taking +out money. I listened sullenly to his talk with Miss Ramell, and saw +only, as they say in Wales, with the front of my eyes, the small flat +drawer that had, it seemed, quite a number of sovereigns scattered over +its floor. “They’re so unreasonable,” complained Miss Ramell. Who could +be otherwise in a social organization that bordered on insanity? + +I turned away from them, put my foot on the fender, stuck my elbow on +the plush-fringed mantelboard, and studied the photographs, pipes, and +ash-trays that adorned it. What was it I had to think out before I went +to the station? + +Of course! My mind made a queer little reluctant leap—it felt like +being forced to leap over a bottomless chasm—and alighted upon the +sovereigns that were just disappearing again as Mr. Gabbitas shut his +drawer. + +“I won’t interrupt your talk further,” said Miss Ramell, receding +doorward. + +Mr. Gabbitas played round her politely, and opened the door for her and +conducted her into the passage, and for a moment or so I had the +fullest sense of proximity to those—it seemed to me there must be ten +or twelve—sovereigns. . . . + +The front door closed and he returned. My chance of escape had gone. + +§ 4 + + +“_I must_ be going,” I said, with a curiously reinforced desire to get +away out of that room. + +“My dear chap!” he insisted, “I can’t think of it. Surely—there’s +nothing to call you away.” Then with an evident desire to shift the +venue of our talk, he asked, “You never told me what you thought of +Burble’s little book.” + +I was now, beneath my dull display of submission, furiously angry with +him. It occurred to me to ask myself why I should defer and qualify my +opinions to him. Why should I pretend a feeling of intellectual and +social inferiority toward him. He asked what I thought of Burble. I +resolved to tell him—if necessary with arrogance. Then perhaps he would +release me. I did not sit down again, but stood by the corner of the +fireplace. + +“That was the little book you lent me last summer?” I said. + +“He reasons closely, eh?” he said, and indicated the armchair with a +flat hand, and beamed persuasively. + +I remained standing. “I didn’t think much of his reasoning powers,” I +said. + +“He was one of the cleverest bishops London ever had.” + +“That may be. But he was dodging about in a jolly feeble case,” said I. + +“You mean?” + +“That he’s wrong. I don’t think he proves his case. I don’t think +Christianity is true. He knows himself for the pretender he is. His +reasoning’s—Rot.” + +Mr. Gabbitas went, I think, a shade paler than his wont, and +propitiation vanished from his manner. His eyes and mouth were round, +his face seemed to get round, his eyebrows curved at my remarks. + +“I’m sorry you think that,” he said at last, with a catch in his +breath. + +He did not repeat his suggestion that I should sit. He made a step or +two toward the window and turned. “I suppose you will admit—” he began, +with a faintly irritating note of intellectual condescension. . . . . + +I will not tell you of his arguments or mine. You will find if you care +to look for them, in out-of-the-way corners of our book museums, the +shriveled cheap publications—the publications of the Rationalist Press +Association, for example—on which my arguments were based. Lying in +that curious limbo with them, mixed up with them and indistinguishable, +are the endless “Replies” of orthodoxy, like the mixed dead in some +hard-fought trench. All those disputes of our fathers, and they were +sometimes furious disputes, have gone now beyond the range of +comprehension. You younger people, I know, read them with impatient +perplexity. You cannot understand how sane creatures could imagine they +had joined issue at all in most of these controversies. All the old +methods of systematic thinking, the queer absurdities of the +Aristotelian logic, have followed magic numbers and mystical numbers, +and the Rumpelstiltskin magic of names now into the blackness of the +unthinkable. You can no more understand our theological passions than +you can understand the fancies that made all ancient peoples speak of +their gods only by circumlocutions, that made savages pine away and die +because they had been photographed, or an Elizabethan farmer turn back +from a day’s expedition because he had met three crows. Even I, who +have been through it all, recall our controversies now with something +near incredulity. + +Faith we can understand to-day, all men live by faith, but in the old +time every one confused quite hopelessly Faith and a forced, incredible +Belief in certain pseudo-concrete statements. I am inclined to say that +neither believers nor unbelievers had faith as we understand it—they +had insufficient intellectual power. They could not trust unless they +had something to see and touch and say, like their barbarous ancestors +who could not make a bargain without exchange of tokens. If they no +longer worshipped stocks and stones, or eked out their needs with +pilgrimages and images, they still held fiercely to audible images, to +printed words and formulae. + +But why revive the echoes of the ancient logomachies? + +Suffice it that we lost our tempers very readily in pursuit of God and +Truth, and said exquisitely foolish things on either side. And on the +whole—from the impartial perspective of my three and seventy years—I +adjudicate that if my dialectic was bad, that of the Rev. Gabbitas was +altogether worse. + +Little pink spots came into his cheeks, a squealing note into his +voice. We interrupted each other more and more rudely. We invented +facts and appealed to authorities whose names I mispronounced; and, +finding Gabbitas shy of the higher criticism and the Germans, I used +the names of Karl Marx and Engels as Bible exegetes with no little +effect. A silly wrangle! a preposterous wrangle!—you must imagine our +talk becoming louder, with a developing quarrelsome note—my mother no +doubt hovering on the staircase and listening in alarm as who should +say, “My dear, don’t offend it! Oh, don’t offend it! Mr. Gabbitas +enjoys its friendship. Try to think whatever Mr. Gabbitas says”—though +we still kept in touch with a pretence of mutual deference. The ethical +superiority of Christianity to all other religions came to the fore—I +know not how. We dealt with the matter in bold, imaginative +generalizations, because of the insufficiency of our historical +knowledge. I was moved to denounce Christianity as the ethic of slaves, +and declare myself a disciple of a German writer of no little vogue in +those days, named Nietzsche. + +For a disciple I must confess I was particularly ill acquainted with +the works of the master. Indeed, all I knew of him had come to me +through a two-column article in _The Clarion_ for the previous week. . +. . But the Rev. Gabbitas did not read _The Clarion_. + +I am, I know, putting a strain upon your credulity when I tell you that +I now have little doubt that the Rev. Gabbitas was absolutely ignorant +even of the name of Nietzsche, although that writer presented a +separate and distinct attitude of attack upon the faith that was in the +reverend gentleman’s keeping. + +“I’m a disciple of Nietzsche,” said I, with an air of extensive +explanation. + +He shied away so awkwardly at the name that I repeated it at once. + +“But do you know what Nietzsche says?” I pressed him viciously. + +“He has certainly been adequately answered,” said he, still trying to +carry it off. + +“Who by?” I rapped out hotly. “Tell me that!” and became mercilessly +expectant. + +§ 5 + + +A happy accident relieved Mr. Gabbitas from the embarrassment of that +challenge, and carried me another step along my course of personal +disaster. + +It came on the heels of my question in the form of a clatter of horses +without, and the gride and cessation of wheels. I glimpsed a +straw-hatted coachman and a pair of grays. It seemed an incredibly +magnificent carriage for Clayton. + +“Eh!” said the Rev. Gabbitas, going to the window. “Why, it’s old Mrs. +Verrall! It’s old Mrs. Verrall. Really! What _can_ she want with me?” + +He turned to me, and the flush of controversy had passed and his face +shone like the sun. It was not every day, I perceived, that Mrs. +Verrall came to see him. + +“I get so many interruptions,” he said, almost grinning. “You must +excuse me a minute! Then—then I’ll tell you about that fellow. But +don’t go. I pray you don’t go. I can assure you. . . . _most_ +interesting.” + +He went out of the room waving vague prohibitory gestures. + +“I _must_ go,” I cried after him. + +“No, no, no!” in the passage. “I’ve got your answer,” I think it was he +added, and “quite mistaken;” and I saw him running down the steps to +talk to the old lady. + +I swore. I made three steps to the window, and this brought me within a +yard of that accursed drawer. + +I glanced at it, and then at that old woman who was so absolutely +powerful, and instantly her son and Nettie’s face were flaming in my +brain. The Stuarts had, no doubt, already accepted accomplished facts. +And I too— + +What was I doing here? + +What was I doing here while judgment escaped me? + +I woke up. I was injected with energy. I took one reassuring look at +the curate’s obsequious back, at the old lady’s projected nose and +quivering hand, and then with swift, clean movements I had the little +drawer open, four sovereigns in my pocket, and the drawer shut again. +Then again at the window—they were still talking. + +That was all right. He might not look in that drawer for hours. I +glanced at his clock. Twenty minutes still before the Birmingham train. +Time to buy a pair of boots and get away. But how I was to get to the +station? + +I went out boldly into the passage, and took my hat and stick. . . . +Walk past him? + +Yes. That was all right! He could not argue with me while so important +a person engaged him. . . . I came boldly down the steps. + +“I want a list made, Mr. Gabbitas, of all the really _deserving_ +cases,” old Mrs. Verrall was saying. + +It is curious, but it did not occur to me that here was a mother whose +son I was going to kill. I did not see her in that aspect at all. +Instead, I was possessed by a realization of the blazing imbecility of +a social system that gave this palsied old woman the power to give or +withhold the urgent necessities of life from hundreds of her +fellow-creatures just according to her poor, foolish old fancies of +desert. + +“We could make a _provisional_ list of that sort,” he was saying, and +glanced round with a preoccupied expression at me. + +“I _must_ go,” I said at his flash of inquiry, and added, “I’ll be back +in twenty minutes,” and went on my way. He turned again to his +patroness as though he forgot me on the instant. Perhaps after all he +was not sorry. + +I felt extraordinarily cool and capable, exhilarated, if anything, by +this prompt, effectual theft. After all, my great determination would +achieve itself. I was no longer oppressed by a sense of obstacles, I +felt I could grasp accidents and turn them to my advantage. I would go +now down Hacker Street to the little shoemaker’s—get a sound, good pair +of boots—ten minutes—and then to the railway-station—five minutes +more—and off! I felt as efficient and non-moral as if I was Nietzsche’s +Over-man already come. It did not occur to me that the curate’s clock +might have a considerable margin of error. + +§ 6 + + +I missed the train. + +Partly that was because the curate’s clock was slow, and partly it was +due to the commercial obstinacy of the shoemaker, who would try on +another pair after I had declared my time was up. I bought the final +pair however, gave him a wrong address for the return of the old ones, +and only ceased to feel like the Nietzschean Over-man, when I saw the +train running out of the station. + +Even then I did not lose my head. It occurred to me almost at once +that, in the event of a prompt pursuit, there would be a great +advantage in not taking a train from Clayton; that, indeed, to have +done so would have been an error from which only luck had saved me. As +it was, I had already been very indiscreet in my inquiries about +Shaphambury; for once on the scent the clerk could not fail to remember +me. Now the chances were against his coming into the case. I did not go +into the station therefore at all, I made no demonstration of having +missed the train, but walked quietly past, down the road, crossed the +iron footbridge, and took the way back circuitously by White’s +brickfields and the allotments to the way over Clayton Crest to +Two-Mile Stone, where I calculated I should have an ample margin for +the 6.13 train. + +I was not very greatly excited or alarmed then. Suppose, I reasoned, +that by some accident the curate goes to that drawer at once: will he +be certain to miss four out of ten or eleven sovereigns? If he does, +will he at once think I have taken them? If he does, will he act at +once or wait for my return? If he acts at once, will he talk to my +mother or call in the police? Then there are a dozen roads and even +railways out of the Clayton region, how is he to know which I have +taken? Suppose he goes straight at once to the right station, they will +not remember my departure for the simple reason that I didn’t depart. +But they may remember about Shaphambury? It was unlikely. + +I resolved not to go directly to Shaphambury from Birmingham, but to go +thence to Monkshampton, thence to Wyvern, and then come down on +Shaphambury from the north. That might involve a night at some +intermediate stopping-place but it would effectually conceal me from +any but the most persistent pursuit. And this was not a case of murder +yet, but only the theft of four sovereigns. + +I had argued away all anxiety before I reached Clayton Crest. + +At the Crest I looked back. What a world it was! And suddenly it came +to me that I was looking at this world for the last time. If I overtook +the fugitives and succeeded, I should die with them—or hang. I stopped +and looked back more attentively at that wide ugly valley. + +It was my native valley, and I was going out of it, I thought never to +return, and yet in that last prospect, the group of towns that had +borne me and dwarfed and crippled and made me, seemed, in some +indefinable manner, strange. I was, perhaps, more used to seeing it +from this comprehensive view-point when it was veiled and softened by +night; now it came out in all its weekday reek, under a clear afternoon +sun. That may account a little for its unfamiliarity. And perhaps, too, +there was something in the emotions through which I had been passing +for a week and more, to intensify my insight, to enable me to pierce +the unusual, to question the accepted. But it came to me then, I am +sure, for the first time, how promiscuous, how higgledy-piggledy was +the whole of that jumble of mines and homes, collieries and potbanks, +railway yards, canals, schools, forges and blast furnaces, churches, +chapels, allotment hovels, a vast irregular agglomeration of ugly +smoking accidents in which men lived as happy as frogs in a dustbin. +Each thing jostled and damaged the other things about it, each thing +ignored the other things about it; the smoke of the furnace defiled the +potbank clay, the clatter of the railway deafened the worshipers in +church, the public-house thrust corruption at the school doors, the +dismal homes squeezed miserably amidst the monstrosities of +industrialism, with an effect of groping imbecility. Humanity choked +amidst its products, and all its energy went in increasing its +disorder, like a blind stricken thing that struggles and sinks in a +morass. + +I did not think these things clearly that afternoon. Much less did I +ask how I, with my murderous purpose, stood to them all. I write down +that realization of disorder and suffocation here and now as though I +had thought it, but indeed then I only felt it, felt it transitorily as +I looked back, and then stood with the thing escaping from my mind. + +I should never see that country-side again. + +I came back to that. At any rate I wasn’t sorry. The chances were I +should die in sweet air, under a clean sky. + +From distant Swathinglea came a little sound, the minute undulation of +a remote crowd, and then rapidly three shots. + +That held me perplexed for a space. . . . Well, anyhow I was leaving it +all! Thank God I was leaving it all! Then, as I turned to go on, I +thought of my mother. + +It seemed an evil world in which to leave one’s mother. My thoughts +focused upon her very vividly for a moment. Down there, under that +afternoon light, she was going to and fro, unaware as yet that she had +lost me, bent and poking about in the darkling underground kitchen, +perhaps carrying a lamp into the scullery to trim, or sitting +patiently, staring into the fire, waiting tea for me. A great pity for +her, a great remorse at the blacker troubles that lowered over her +innocent head, came to me. Why, after all, was I doing this thing? + +Why? + +I stopped again dead, with the hill crest rising between me and home. I +had more than half a mind to return to her. + +Then I thought of the curate’s sovereigns. If he has missed them +already, what should I return to? And, even if I returned, how could I +put them back? + +And what of the night after I renounced my revenge? What of the time +when young Verrall came back? And Nettie? + +No! The thing had to be done. + +But at least I might have kissed my mother before I came away, left her +some message, reassured her at least for a little while. All night she +would listen and wait for me. . . . . + +Should I send her a telegram from Two-Mile Stone? + +It was no good now; too late, too late. To do that would be to tell the +course I had taken, to bring pursuit upon me, swift and sure, if +pursuit there was to be. No. My mother must suffer! + +I went on grimly toward Two-Mile Stone, but now as if some greater will +than mine directed my footsteps thither. + +I reached Birmingham before darkness came, and just caught the last +train for Monkshampton, where I had planned to pass the night. + + + + +CHAPTER THE FIFTH +THE PURSUIT OF THE TWO LOVERS + + +§ 1 + +As the train carried me on from Birmingham to Monkshampton, it carried +me not only into a country where I had never been before, but out of +the commonplace daylight and the touch and quality of ordinary things, +into the strange unprecedented night that was ruled by the giant meteor +of the last days. + +There was at that time a curious accentuation of the common alternation +of night and day. They became separated with a widening difference of +value in regard to all mundane affairs. During the day, the comet was +an item in the newspapers, it was jostled by a thousand more living +interests, it was as nothing in the skirts of the war storm that was +now upon us. It was an astronomical phenomenon, somewhere away over +China, millions of miles away in the deeps. We forgot it. But directly +the sun sank one turned ever and again toward the east, and the meteor +resumed its sway over us. + +One waited for its rising, and yet each night it came as a surprise. +Always it rose brighter than one had dared to think, always larger and +with some wonderful change in its outline, and now with a strange, less +luminous, greener disk upon it that grew with its growth, the umbra of +the earth. It shone also with its own light, so that this shadow was +not hard or black, but it shone phosphorescently and with a diminishing +intensity where the stimulus of the sun’s rays was withdrawn. As it +ascended toward the zenith, as the last trailing daylight went after +the abdicating sun, its greenish white illumination banished the +realities of day, diffused a bright ghostliness over all things. It +changed the starless sky about it to an extraordinary deep blue, the +profoundest color in the world, such as I have never seen before or +since. I remember, too, that as I peered from the train that was +rattling me along to Monkshampton, I perceived and was puzzled by a +coppery red light that mingled with all the shadows that were cast by +it. + +It turned our ugly English industrial towns to phantom cities. +Everywhere the local authorities discontinued street lighting—one could +read small print in the glare,—and so at Monkshampton I went about +through pale, white, unfamiliar streets, whose electric globes had +shadows on the path. Lit windows here and there burnt ruddy orange, +like holes cut in some dream curtain that hung before a furnace. A +policeman with noiseless feet showed me an inn woven of moonshine, a +green-faced man opened to us, and there I abode the night. And the next +morning it opened with a mighty clatter, and was a dirty little +beerhouse that stank of beer, and there was a fat and grimy landlord +with red spots upon his neck, and much noisy traffic going by on the +cobbles outside. + +I came out, after I had paid my bill, into a street that echoed to the +bawlings of two newsvendors and to the noisy yappings of a dog they had +raised to emulation. They were shouting: “Great British disaster in the +North Sea. A battleship lost with all hands!” + +I bought a paper, went on to the railway station reading such details +as were given of this triumph of the old civilization, of the blowing +up of this great iron ship, full of guns and explosives and the most +costly and beautiful machinery of which that time was capable, together +with nine hundred able-bodied men, all of them above the average, by a +contact mine towed by a German submarine. I read myself into a fever of +warlike emotions. Not only did I forget the meteor, but for a time I +forgot even the purpose that took me on to the railway station, bought +my ticket, and was now carrying me onward to Shaphambury. + +So the hot day came to its own again, and people forgot the night. + +Each night, there shone upon us more and more insistently, beauty, +wonder, the promise of the deeps, and we were hushed, and marveled for +a space. And at the first gray sounds of dawn again, at the shooting of +bolts and the noise of milk-carts, we forgot, and the dusty habitual +day came yawning and stretching back again. The stains of coal smoke +crept across the heavens, and we rose to the soiled disorderly routine +of life. + +“Thus life has always been,” we said; “thus it will always be.” + +The glory of those nights was almost universally regarded as +spectacular merely. It signified nothing to us. So far as western +Europe went, it was only a small and ignorant section of the lower +classes who regarded the comet as a portent of the end of the world. +Abroad, where there were peasantries, it was different, but in England +the peasantry had already disappeared. Every one read. The newspaper, +in the quiet days before our swift quarrel with Germany rushed to its +climax, had absolutely dispelled all possibilities of a panic in this +matter. The very tramps upon the high-roads, the children in the +nursery, had learnt that at the utmost the whole of that shining cloud +could weigh but a few score tons. This fact had been shown quite +conclusively by the enormous deflections that had at last swung it +round squarely at our world. It had passed near three of the smallest +asteroids without producing the minutest perceptible deflection in +their course; while, on its own part, it had described a course through +nearly three degrees. When it struck our earth there was to be a +magnificent spectacle, no doubt, for those who were on the right side +of our planet to see, but beyond that nothing. It was doubtful whether +we were on the right side. The meteor would loom larger and larger in +the sky, but with the umbra of our earth eating its heart of brightness +out, and at last it would be the whole sky, a sky of luminous green +clouds, with a white brightness about the horizon, west and east. Then +a pause—a pause of not very exactly definite duration—and then, no +doubt, a great blaze of shooting stars. They might be of some unwonted +color because of the unknown element that line in the green revealed. +For a little while the zenith would spout shooting stars. Some, it was +hoped, would reach the earth and be available for analysis. + +That, science said, would be all. The green clouds would whirl and +vanish, and there might be thunderstorms. But through the attenuated +wisps of comet shine, the old sky, the old stars, would reappear, and +all would be as it had been before. And since this was to happen +between one and eleven in the morning of the approaching Tuesday—I +slept at Monkshampton on Saturday night,—it would be only partially +visible, if visible at all, on our side of the earth. Perhaps, if it +came late, one would see no more than a shooting star low down in the +sky. All this we had with the utmost assurances of science. Still it +did not prevent the last nights being the most beautiful and memorable +of human experiences. + +The nights had become very warm, and when next day I had ranged +Shaphambury in vain, I was greatly tormented, as that unparalleled +glory of the night returned, to think that under its splendid +benediction young Verrall and Nettie made love to one another. + +I walked backward and forward, backward and forward, along the sea +front, peering into the faces of the young couples who promenaded, with +my hand in my pocket ready, and a curious ache in my heart that had no +kindred with rage. Until at last all the promenaders had gone home to +bed, and I was alone with the star. + +My train from Wyvern to Shaphambury that morning was a whole hour late; +they said it was on account of the movement of troops to meet a +possible raid from the Elbe. + +§ 2 + + +Shaphambury seemed an odd place to me even then. But something was +quickening in me at that time to feel the oddness of many accepted +things. Now in the retrospect I see it as intensely queer. The whole +place was strange to my untraveled eyes; the sea even was strange. Only +twice in my life had I been at the seaside before, and then I had gone +by excursion to places on the Welsh coast whose great cliffs of rock +and mountain backgrounds made the effect of the horizon very different +from what it is upon the East Anglian seaboard. Here what they call a +cliff was a crumbling bank of whitey-brown earth not fifty feet high. + +So soon as I arrived I made a systematic exploration of Shaphambury. To +this day I retain the clearest memories of the plan I shaped out then, +and how my inquiries were incommoded by the overpowering desire of +every one to talk of the chances of a German raid, before the Channel +Fleet got round to us. I slept at a small public-house in a Shaphambury +back street on Sunday night. I did not get on to Shaphambury from +Wyvern until two in the afternoon, because of the infrequency of Sunday +trains, and I got no clue whatever until late in the afternoon of +Monday. As the little local train bumped into sight of the place round +the curve of a swelling hill, one saw a series of undulating grassy +spaces, amidst which a number of conspicuous notice-boards appealed to +the eye and cut up the distant sea horizon. Most of these referred to +comestibles or to remedies to follow the comestibles; and they were +colored with a view to be memorable rather than beautiful, to “stand +out” amidst the gentle grayish tones of the east coast scenery. The +greater number, I may remark, of the advertisements that were so +conspicuous a factor in the life of those days, and which rendered our +vast tree-pulp newspapers possible, referred to foods, drinks, tobacco, +and the drugs that promised a restoration of the equanimity these other +articles had destroyed. Wherever one went one was reminded in glaring +letters that, after all, man was little better than a worm, that +eyeless, earless thing that burrows and lives uncomplainingly amidst +nutritious dirt, “an alimentary canal with the subservient appendages +thereto.” But in addition to such boards there were also the big black +and white boards of various grandiloquently named “estates.” The +individualistic enterprise of that time had led to the plotting out of +nearly all the country round the seaside towns into roads and +building-plots—all but a small portion of the south and east coast was +in this condition, and had the promises of those schemes been realized +the entire population of the island might have been accommodated upon +the sea frontiers. Nothing of the sort happened, of course; the whole +of this uglification of the coast-line was done to stimulate a little +foolish gambling in plots, and one saw everywhere agents’ boards in +every state of freshness and decay, ill-made exploitation roads +overgrown with grass, and here and there, at a corner, a label, +“Trafalgar Avenue,” or “Sea View Road.” Here and there, too, some small +investor, some shopman with “savings,” had delivered his soul to the +local builders and built himself a house, and there it stood, +ill-designed, mean-looking, isolated, ill-placed on a cheaply fenced +plot, athwart which his domestic washing fluttered in the breeze amidst +a bleak desolation of enterprise. Then presently our railway crossed a +high road, and a row of mean yellow brick houses—workmen’s cottages, +and the filthy black sheds that made the “allotments” of that time a +universal eyesore, marked our approach to the more central areas of—I +quote the local guidebook—“one of the most delightful resorts in the +East Anglian poppy-land.” Then more mean houses, the gaunt ungainliness +of the electric force station—it had a huge chimney, because no one +understood how to make combustion of coal complete—and then we were in +the railway station, and barely three-quarters of a mile from the +center of this haunt of health and pleasure. + +I inspected the town thoroughly before I made my inquiries. The road +began badly with a row of cheap, pretentious, insolvent-looking shops, +a public-house, and a cab-stand, but, after an interval of little red +villas that were partly hidden amidst shrubbery gardens, broke into a +confusedly bright but not unpleasing High Street, shuttered that +afternoon and sabbatically still. Somewhere in the background a church +bell jangled, and children in bright, new-looking clothes were going to +Sunday-school. Thence through a square of stuccoed lodging-houses, that +seemed a finer and cleaner version of my native square, I came to a +garden of asphalt and euonymus—the Sea Front. I sat down on a cast-iron +seat, and surveyed first of all the broad stretches of muddy, sandy +beach, with its queer wheeled bathing machines, painted with the +advertisements of somebody’s pills—and then at the house fronts that +stared out upon these visceral counsels. Boarding-houses, private +hotels, and lodging-houses in terraces clustered closely right and left +of me, and then came to an end; in one direction scaffolding marked a +building enterprise in progress, in the other, after a waste interval, +rose a monstrous bulging red shape, a huge hotel, that dwarfed all +other things. Northward were low pale cliffs with white denticulations +of tents, where the local volunteers, all under arms, lay encamped, and +southward, a spreading waste of sandy dunes, with occasional bushes and +clumps of stunted pine and an advertisement board or so. A hard blue +sky hung over all this prospect, the sunshine cast inky shadows, and +eastward was a whitish sea. It was Sunday, and the midday meal still +held people indoors. + +A queer world! thought I even then—to you now it must seem impossibly +queer,—and after an interval I forced myself back to my own affair. + +How was I to ask? What was I to ask for? I puzzled for a long time over +that—at first I was a little tired and indolent—and then presently I +had a flow of ideas. + +My solution was fairly ingenious. I invented the following story. I +happened to be taking a holiday in Shaphambury, and I was making use of +the opportunity to seek the owner of a valuable feather boa, which had +been left behind in the hotel of my uncle at Wyvern by a young lady, +traveling with a young gentleman—no doubt a youthful married couple. +They had reached Shaphambury somewhen on Thursday. I went over the +story many times, and gave my imaginary uncle and his hotel plausible +names. At any rate this yarn would serve as a complete justification +for all the questions I might wish to ask. + +I settled that, but I still sat for a time, wanting the energy to +begin. Then I turned toward the big hotel. Its gorgeous magnificence +seemed to my inexpert judgment to indicate the very place a rich young +man of good family would select. + +Huge draught-proof doors were swung round for me by an ironically +polite under-porter in a magnificent green uniform, who looked at my +clothes as he listened to my question and then with a German accent +referred me to a gorgeous head porter, who directed me to a princely +young man behind a counter of brass and polish, like a bank—like +several banks. This young man, while he answered me, kept his eye on my +collar and tie—and I knew that they were abominable. + +“I want to find a lady and gentleman who came to Shaphambury on +Tuesday,” I said. + +“Friends of yours?” he asked with a terrible fineness of irony. + +I made out at last that here at any rate the young people had not been. +They might have lunched there, but they had had no room. But I went +out—door opened again for me obsequiously—in a state of social +discomfiture, and did not attack any other establishment that +afternoon. + +My resolution had come to a sort of ebb. More people were promenading, +and their Sunday smartness abashed me. I forgot my purpose in an acute +sense of myself. I felt that the bulge of my pocket caused by the +revolver was conspicuous, and I was ashamed. I went along the sea front +away from the town, and presently lay down among pebbles and sea +poppies. This mood of reaction prevailed with me all that afternoon. In +the evening, about sundown, I went to the station and asked questions +of the outporters there. But outporters, I found, were a class of men +who remembered luggage rather than people, and I had no sort of idea +what luggage young Verrall and Nettie were likely to have with them. + +Then I fell into conversation with a salacious wooden-legged old man +with a silver ring, who swept the steps that went down to the beach +from the parade. He knew much about young couples, but only in general +terms, and nothing of the particular young couple I sought. He reminded +me in the most disagreeable way of the sensuous aspects of life, and I +was not sorry when presently a gunboat appeared in the offing +signalling the coastguard and the camp, and cut short his observations +upon holidays, beaches, and morals. + +I went, and now I was past my ebb, and sat in a seat upon the parade, +and watched the brightening of those rising clouds of chilly fire that +made the ruddy west seem tame. My midday lassitude was going, my blood +was running warmer again. And as the twilight and that filmy brightness +replaced the dusty sunlight and robbed this unfamiliar place of all its +matter-of-fact queerness, its sense of aimless materialism, romance +returned to me, and passion, and my thoughts of honor and revenge. I +remember that change of mood as occurring very vividly on this +occasion, but I fancy that less distinctly I had felt this before many +times. In the old times, night and the starlight had an effect of +intimate reality the daytime did not possess. The daytime—as one saw it +in towns and populous places—had hold of one, no doubt, but only as an +uproar might, it was distracting, conflicting, insistent. Darkness +veiled the more salient aspects of those agglomerations of human +absurdity, and one could exist—one could imagine. + +I had a queer illusion that night, that Nettie and her lover were close +at hand, that suddenly I should come on them. I have already told how I +went through the dusk seeking them in every couple that drew near. And +I dropped asleep at last in an unfamiliar bedroom hung with gaudily +decorated texts, cursing myself for having wasted a day. + +§ 3 + + +I sought them in vain the next morning, but after midday I came in +quick succession on a perplexing multitude of clues. After failing to +find any young couple that corresponded to young Verrall and Nettie, I +presently discovered an unsatisfactory quartette of couples. + +Any of these four couples might have been the one I sought; with regard +to none of them was there conviction. They had all arrived either on +Wednesday or Thursday. Two couples were still in occupation of their +rooms, but neither of these were at home. Late in the afternoon I +reduced my list by eliminating a young man in drab, with side whiskers +and long cuffs, accompanied by a lady, of thirty or more, of +consciously ladylike type. I was disgusted at the sight of them; the +other two young people had gone for a long walk, and though I watched +their boarding-house until the fiery cloud shone out above, sharing and +mingling in an unusually splendid sunset, I missed them. Then I +discovered them dining at a separate table in the bow window, with +red-shaded candles between them, peering out ever and again at this +splendor that was neither night nor day. The girl in her pink evening +dress looked very light and pretty to me—pretty enough to enrage +me,—she had well shaped arms and white, well-modeled shoulders, and the +turn of her cheek and the fair hair about her ears was full of subtle +delights; but she was not Nettie, and the happy man with her was that +odd degenerate type our old aristocracy produced with such odd +frequency, chinless, large bony nose, small fair head, languid +expression, and a neck that had demanded and received a veritable +sleeve of collar. I stood outside in the meteor’s livid light, hating +them and cursing them for having delayed me so long. I stood until it +was evident they remarked me, a black shape of envy, silhouetted +against the glare. + +That finished Shaphambury. The question I now had to debate was which +of the remaining couples I had to pursue. + +I walked back to the parade trying to reason my next step out, and +muttering to myself, because there was something in that luminous +wonderfulness that touched one’s brain, and made one feel a little +light-headed. + +One couple had gone to London; the other had gone to the Bungalow +village at Bone Cliff. Where, I wondered, was Bone Cliff? + +I came upon my wooden-legged man at the top of his steps. + +“Hullo,” said I. + +He pointed seaward with his pipe, his silver ring shone in the sky +light. + +“Rum,” he said. + +“What is?” I asked. + +“Search-lights! Smoke! Ships going north! If it wasn’t for this blasted +Milky Way gone green up there, we might see.” + +He was too intent to heed my questions for a time. Then he vouchsafed +over his shoulder— + +“Know Bungalow village?—rather. Artis’ and such. Nice goings on! Mixed +bathing—something scandalous. Yes.” + +“But where is it?” I said, suddenly exasperated. + +“There!” he said. “What’s that flicker? A gunflash—or I’m a lost soul!” + +“You’d hear,” I said, “long before it was near enough to see a flash.” + +He didn’t answer. Only by making it clear I would distract him until he +told me what I wanted to know could I get him to turn from his absorbed +contemplation of that phantom dance between the sea rim and the shine. +Indeed I gripped his arm and shook him. Then he turned upon me cursing. + +“Seven miles,” he said, “along this road. And now go to ‘ell with yer!” + +I answered with some foul insult by way of thanks, and so we parted, +and I set off towards the bungalow village. + +I found a policeman, standing star-gazing, a little way beyond the end +of the parade, and verified the wooden-legged man’s directions. + +“It’s a lonely road, you know,” he called after me. . . . + +I had an odd intuition that now at last I was on the right track. I +left the dark masses of Shaphambury behind me, and pushed out into the +dim pallor of that night, with the quiet assurance of a traveler who +nears his end. + +The incidents of that long tramp I do not recall in any orderly +succession, the one progressive thing is my memory of a growing +fatigue. The sea was for the most part smooth and shining like a +mirror, a great expanse of reflecting silver, barred by slow broad +undulations, but at one time a little breeze breathed like a faint sigh +and ruffled their long bodies into faint scaly ripples that never +completely died out again. The way was sometimes sandy, thick with +silvery colorless sand, and sometimes chalky and lumpy, with lumps that +had shining facets; a black scrub was scattered, sometimes in thickets, +sometimes in single bunches, among the somnolent hummocks of sand. At +one place came grass, and ghostly great sheep looming up among the +gray. After a time black pinewoods intervened, and made sustained +darknesses along the road, woods that frayed out at the edges to +weirdly warped and stunted trees. Then isolated pine witches would +appear, and make their rigid gestures at me as I passed. Grotesquely +incongruous amidst these forms, I presently came on estate boards, +appealing, “Houses can be built to suit purchaser,” to the silence, to +the shadows, and the glare. + +Once I remember the persistent barking of a dog from somewhere inland +of me, and several times I took out and examined my revolver very +carefully. I must, of course, have been full of my intention when I did +that, I must have been thinking of Nettie and revenge, but I cannot now +recall those emotions at all. Only I see again very distinctly the +greenish gleams that ran over lock and barrel as I turned the weapon in +my hand. + +Then there was the sky, the wonderful, luminous, starless, moonless +sky, and the empty blue deeps of the edge of it, between the meteor and +the sea. And once—strange phantoms!—I saw far out upon the shine, and +very small and distant, three long black warships, without masts, or +sails, or smoke, or any lights, dark, deadly, furtive things, traveling +very swiftly and keeping an equal distance. And when I looked again +they were very small, and then the shine had swallowed them up. + +Then once a flash and what I thought was a gun, until I looked up and +saw a fading trail of greenish light still hanging in the sky. And +after that there was a shiver and whispering in the air, a stronger +throbbing in one’s arteries, a sense of refreshment, a renewal of +purpose. . . . + +Somewhere upon my way the road forked, but I do not remember whether +that was near Shaphambury or near the end of my walk. The hesitation +between two rutted unmade roads alone remains clear in my mind. + +At last I grew weary. I came to piled heaps of decaying seaweed and +cart tracks running this way and that, and then I had missed the road +and was stumbling among sand hummocks quite close to the sea. I came +out on the edge of the dimly glittering sandy beach, and something +phosphorescent drew me to the water’s edge. I bent down and peered at +the little luminous specks that floated in the ripples. + +Presently with a sigh I stood erect, and contemplated the lonely peace +of that last wonderful night. The meteor had now trailed its shining +nets across the whole space of the sky and was beginning to set; in the +east the blue was coming to its own again; the sea was an intense edge +of blackness, and now, escaped from that great shine, and faint and +still tremulously valiant, one weak elusive star could just be seen, +hovering on the verge of the invisible. + +How beautiful it was! how still and beautiful! Peace! peace!—the peace +that passeth understanding, robed in light descending! . . . + +My heart swelled, and suddenly I was weeping. + +There was something new and strange in my blood. It came to me that +indeed I did not want to kill. + +I did not want to kill. I did not want to be the servant of my passions +any more. A great desire had come to me to escape from life, from the +daylight which is heat and conflict and desire, into that cool night of +eternity—and rest. I had played—I had done. + +I stood upon the edge of the great ocean, and I was filled with an +inarticulate spirit of prayer, and I desired greatly—peace from myself. + +And presently, there in the east, would come again the red discoloring +curtain over these mysteries, the finite world again, the gray and +growing harsh certainties of dawn. My resolve I knew would take up with +me again. This was a rest for me, an interlude, but to-morrow I should +be William Leadford once more, ill-nourished, ill-dressed, ill-equipped +and clumsy, a thief and shamed, a wound upon the face of life, a source +of trouble and sorrow even to the mother I loved; no hope in life left +for me now but revenge before my death. + +Why this paltry thing, revenge? It entered into my thoughts that I +might end the matter now and let these others go. + +To wade out into the sea, into this warm lapping that mingled the +natures of water and light, to stand there breast-high, to thrust my +revolver barrel into my mouth———? + +Why not? + +I swung about with an effort. I walked slowly up the beach thinking. . +. . + +I turned and looked back at the sea. No! Something within me said, +“No!” + +I must think. + +It was troublesome to go further because the hummocks and the tangled +bushes began. I sat down amidst a black cluster of shrubs, and rested, +chin on hand. I drew my revolver from my pocket and looked at it, and +held it in my hand. Life? Or Death? . . . + +I seemed to be probing the very deeps of being, but indeed +imperceptibly I fell asleep, and sat dreaming. + +§ 4 + + +Two people were bathing in the sea. + +I had awakened. It was still that white and wonderful night, and the +blue band of clear sky was no wider than before. These people must have +come into sight as I fell asleep, and awakened me almost at once. They +waded breast-deep in the water, emerging, coming shoreward, a woman, +with her hair coiled about her head, and in pursuit of her a man, +graceful figures of black and silver, with a bright green surge flowing +off from them, a pattering of flashing wavelets about them. He smote +the water and splashed it toward her, she retaliated, and then they +were knee-deep, and then for an instant their feet broke the long +silver margin of the sea. + +Each wore a tightly fitting bathing dress that hid nothing of the +shining, dripping beauty of their youthful forms. + +She glanced over her shoulder and found him nearer than she thought, +started, gesticulated, gave a little cry that pierced me to the heart, +and fled up the beach obliquely toward me, running like the wind, and +passed me, vanished amidst the black distorted bushes, and was gone—she +and her pursuer, in a moment, over the ridge of sand. + +I heard him shout between exhaustion and laughter. . . . + +And suddenly I was a thing of bestial fury, standing up with hands held +up and clenched, rigid in gesture of impotent threatening, against the +sky. . . . + +For this striving, swift thing of light and beauty was Nettie—and this +was the man for whom I had been betrayed! + +And, it blazed upon me, I might have died there by the sheer ebbing of +my will—unavenged! + +In another moment I was running and stumbling, revolver in hand, in +quiet unsuspected pursuit of them, through the soft and noiseless sand. + +§ 5 + + +I came up over the little ridge and discovered the bungalow village I +had been seeking, nestling in a crescent lap of dunes. A door slammed, +the two runners had vanished, and I halted staring. + +There was a group of three bungalows nearer to me than the others. Into +one of these three they had gone, and I was too late to see which. All +had doors and windows carelessly open, and none showed a light. + +This place, upon which I had at last happened, was a fruit of the +reaction of artistic-minded and carelessly living people against the +costly and uncomfortable social stiffness of the more formal seaside +resorts of that time. It was, you must understand, the custom of the +steam-railway companies to sell their carriages after they had been +obsolete for a sufficient length of years, and some genius had hit upon +the possibility of turning these into little habitable cabins for the +summer holiday. The thing had become a fashion with a certain +Bohemian-spirited class; they added cabin to cabin, and these little +improvised homes, gaily painted and with broad verandas and +supplementary leantos added to their accommodation, made the brightest +contrast conceivable to the dull rigidities of the decorous resorts. Of +course there were many discomforts in such camping that had to be faced +cheerfully, and so this broad sandy beach was sacred to high spirits +and the young. Art muslin and banjoes, Chinese lanterns and frying, are +leading “notes,” I find, in the impression of those who once knew such +places well. But so far as I was concerned this odd settlement of +pleasure-squatters was a mystery as well as a surprise, enhanced rather +than mitigated by an imaginative suggestion or so I had received from +the wooden-legged man at Shaphambury. I saw the thing as no gathering +of light hearts and gay idleness, but grimly—after the manner of poor +men poisoned by the suppression of all their cravings after joy. To the +poor man, to the grimy workers, beauty and cleanness were absolutely +denied; out of a life of greasy dirt, of muddied desires, they watched +their happier fellows with a bitter envy and foul, tormenting +suspicions. Fancy a world in which the common people held love to be a +sort of beastliness, own sister to being drunk! . . . + +There was in the old time always something cruel at the bottom of this +business of sexual love. At least that is the impression I have brought +with me across the gulf of the great Change. To succeed in love seemed +such triumph as no other success could give, but to fail was as if one +was tainted. . . . + +I felt no sense of singularity that this thread of savagery should run +through these emotions of mine and become now the whole strand of these +emotions. I believed, and I think I was right in believing, that the +love of all true lovers was a sort of defiance then, that they closed a +system in each other’s arms and mocked the world without. You loved +against the world, and these two loved AT me. They had their business +with one another, under the threat of a watchful fierceness. A sword, a +sharp sword, the keenest edge in life, lay among their roses. + +Whatever may be true of this for others, for me and my imagination, at +any rate, it was altogether true. I was never for dalliance, I was +never a jesting lover. I wanted fiercely; I made love impatiently. +Perhaps I had written irrelevant love-letters for that very reason; +because with this stark theme I could not play. . . + +The thought of Nettie’s shining form, of her shrinking bold abandon to +her easy conqueror, gave me now a body of rage that was nearly too +strong for my heart and nerves and the tense powers of my merely +physical being. I came down among the pale sand-heaps slowly toward +that queer village of careless sensuality, and now within my puny body +I was coldly sharpset for pain and death, a darkly gleaming hate, a +sword of evil, drawn. + +§ 6 + + +I halted, and stood planning what I had to do. + +Should I go to bungalow after bungalow until one of the two I sought +answered to my rap? But suppose some servant intervened! + +Should I wait where I was—perhaps until morning—watching? And +meanwhile——— + +All the nearer bungalows were very still now. If I walked softly to +them, from open windows, from something seen or overheard, I might get +a clue to guide me. Should I advance circuitously, creeping upon them, +or should I walk straight to the door? It was bright enough for her to +recognize me clearly at a distance of many paces. + +The difficulty to my mind lay in this, that if I involved other people +by questions, I might at last confront my betrayers with these others +close about me, ready to snatch my weapon and seize my hands. Besides, +what names might they bear here? + +“Boom!” the sound crept upon my senses, and then again it came. + +I turned impatiently as one turns upon an impertinence, and beheld a +great ironclad not four miles out, steaming fast across the dappled +silver, and from its funnels sparks, intensely red, poured out into the +night. As I turned, came the hot flash of its guns, firing seaward, and +answering this, red flashes and a streaming smoke in the line between +sea and sky. So I remembered it, and I remember myself staring at it—in +a state of stupid arrest. It was an irrelevance. What had these things +to do with me? + +With a shuddering hiss, a rocket from a headland beyond the village +leapt up and burst hot gold against the glare, and the sound of the +third and fourth guns reached me. + +The windows of the dark bungalows, one after another, leapt out, +squares of ruddy brightness that flared and flickered and became +steadily bright. Dark heads appeared looking seaward, a door opened, +and sent out a brief lane of yellow to mingle and be lost in the +comet’s brightness. That brought me back to the business in hand. + +“Boom! boom!” and when I looked again at the great ironclad, a little +torchlike spurt of flame wavered behind her funnels. I could hear the +throb and clangor of her straining engines. . . . + +I became aware of the voices of people calling to one another in the +village. A white-robed, hooded figure, some man in a bathing wrap, +absurdly suggestive of an Arab in his burnous, came out from one of the +nearer bungalows, and stood clear and still and shadowless in the +glare. + +He put his hands to shade his seaward eyes, and shouted to people +within. + +The people within—_my_ people! My fingers tightened on my revolver. +What was this war nonsense to me? I would go round among the hummocks +with the idea of approaching the three bungalows inconspicuously from +the flank. This fight at sea might serve my purpose—except for that, it +had no interest for me at all. Boom! boom! The huge voluminous +concussions rushed past me, beat at my heart and passed. In a moment +Nettie would come out to see. + +First one and then two other wrappered figures came out of the +bungalows to join the first. His arm pointed seaward, and his voice, a +full tenor, rose in explanation. I could hear some of the words. “It’s +a German!” he said. “She’s caught.” + +Some one disputed that, and there followed a little indistinct babble +of argument. I went on slowly in the circuit I had marked out, watching +these people as I went. + +They shouted together with such a common intensity of direction that I +halted and looked seaward. I saw the tall fountain flung by a shot that +had just missed the great warship. A second rose still nearer us, a +third, and a fourth, and then a great uprush of dust, a whirling cloud, +leapt out of the headland whence the rocket had come, and spread with a +slow deliberation right and left. Hard on that an enormous crash, and +the man with the full voice leapt and cried, “Hit!” + +Let me see! Of course, I had to go round beyond the bungalows, and then +come up towards the group from behind. + +A high-pitched woman’s voice called, “Honeymooners! honeymooners! Come +out and see!” + +Something gleamed in the shadow of the nearer bungalow, and a man’s +voice answered from within. What he said I did not catch, but suddenly +I heard Nettie calling very distinctly, “We’ve been bathing.” + +The man who had first come out shouted, “Don’t you hear the guns? +They’re fighting—not five miles from shore.” + +“Eh?” answered the bungalow, and a window opened. + +“Out there!” + +I did not hear the reply, because of the faint rustle of my own +movements. Clearly these people were all too much occupied by the +battle to look in my direction, and so I walked now straight toward the +darkness that held Nettie and the black desire of my heart. + +“Look!” cried some one, and pointed skyward. + +I glanced up, and behold! The sky was streaked with bright green +trails. They radiated from a point halfway between the western horizon +and the zenith, and within the shining clouds of the meteor a streaming +movement had begun, so that it seemed to be pouring both westwardly and +back toward the east, with a crackling sound, as though the whole +heaven was stippled over with phantom pistol-shots. It seemed to me +then as if the meteor was coming to help me, descending with those +thousand pistols like a curtain to fend off this unmeaning foolishness +of the sea. + +“Boom!” went a gun on the big ironclad, and “boom!” and the guns of the +pursuing cruisers flashed in reply. + +To glance up at that streaky, stirring light scum of the sky made one’s +head swim. I stood for a moment dazed, and more than a little giddy. I +had a curious instant of purely speculative thought. Suppose, after +all, the fanatics were right, and the world _was_ coming to an end! +What a score that would be for Parload! + +Then it came into my head that all these things were happening to +consecrate my revenge! The war below, the heavens above, were the +thunderous garment of my deed. I heard Nettie’s voice cry out not fifty +yards away, and my passion surged again. I was to return to her amid +these terrors bearing unanticipated death. I was to possess her, with a +bullet, amidst thunderings and fear. At the thought I lifted up my +voice to a shout that went unheard, and advanced now recklessly, +revolver displayed in my hand. + +It was fifty yards, forty yards, thirty yards—the little group of +people, still heedless of me, was larger and more important now, the +green-shot sky and the fighting ships remoter. Some one darted out from +the bungalow, with an interrupted question, and stopped, suddenly aware +of me. It was Nettie, with some coquettish dark wrap about her, and the +green glare shining on her sweet face and white throat. I could see her +expression, stricken with dismay and terror, at my advance, as though +something had seized her by the heart and held her still—a target for +my shots. + +“Boom!” came the ironclad’s gunshot like a command. “Bang!” the bullet +leapt from my hand. Do you know, I did not want to shoot her then. +Indeed I did not want to shoot her then! Bang! and I had fired again, +still striding on, and—each time it seemed I had missed. + +She moved a step or so toward me, still staring, and then someone +intervened, and near beside her I saw young Verrall. + +A heavy stranger, the man in the hooded bath-gown, a fat, +foreign-looking man, came out of nowhere like a shield before them. He +seemed a preposterous interruption. His face was full of astonishment +and terror. He rushed across my path with arms extended and open hands, +as one might try to stop a runaway horse. He shouted some nonsense. He +seemed to want to dissuade me, as though dissuasion had anything to do +with it now. + +“Not you, you fool!” I said hoarsely. “Not you!” But he hid Nettie +nevertheless. + +By an enormous effort I resisted a mechanical impulse to shoot through +his fat body. Anyhow, I knew I mustn’t shoot him. For a moment I was in +doubt, then I became very active, turned aside abruptly and dodged his +pawing arm to the left, and so found two others irresolutely in my way. +I fired a third shot in the air, just over their heads, and ran at +them. They hastened left and right; I pulled up and faced about within +a yard of a foxy-faced young man coming sideways, who seemed about to +grapple me. At my resolute halt he fell back a pace, ducked, and threw +up a defensive arm, and then I perceived the course was clear, and +ahead of me, young Verrall and Nettie—he was holding her arm to help +her—running away. “Of course!” said I. + +I fired a fourth ineffectual shot, and then in an access of fury at my +misses, started out to run them down and shoot them barrel to backbone. +“These people!” I said, dismissing all these interferences. . . . “A +yard,” I panted, speaking aloud to myself, “a yard! Till then, take +care, you mustn’t—mustn’t shoot again.” + +Some one pursued me, perhaps several people—I do not know, we left them +all behind. . . . + +We ran. For a space I was altogether intent upon the swift monotony of +flight and pursuit. The sands were changed to a whirl of green +moonshine, the air was thunder. A luminous green haze rolled about us. +What did such things matter? We ran. Did I gain or lose? that was the +question. They ran through a gap in a broken fence that sprang up +abruptly out of nothingness and turned to the right. I noted we were in +a road. But this green mist! One seemed to plough through it. They were +fading into it, and at that thought I made a spurt that won a dozen +feet or more. + +She staggered. He gripped her arm, and dragged her forward. They +doubled to the left. We were off the road again and on turf. It felt +like turf. I tripped and fell at a ditch that was somehow full of +smoke, and was up again, but now they were phantoms half gone into the +livid swirls about me. . . . + +Still I ran. + +On, on! I groaned with the violence of my effort. I staggered again and +swore. I felt the concussions of great guns tear past me through the +murk. + +They were gone! Everything was going, but I kept on running. Once more +I stumbled. There was something about my feet that impeded me, tall +grass or heather, but I could not see what it was, only this smoke that +eddied about my knees. There was a noise and spinning in my brain, a +vain resistance to a dark green curtain that was falling, falling, +falling, fold upon fold. Everything grew darker and darker. + +I made one last frantic effort, and raised my revolver, fired my +penultimate shot at a venture, and fell headlong to the ground. And +behold! the green curtain was a black one, and the earth and I and all +things ceased to be. + + + + +BOOK THE SECOND +THE GREEN VAPORS + + + + +CHAPTER THE FIRST +THE CHANGE + + +§ 1 + +I seemed to awaken out of a refreshing sleep. + +I did not awaken with a start, but opened my eyes, and lay very +comfortably looking at a line of extraordinarily scarlet poppies that +glowed against a glowing sky. It was the sky of a magnificent sunrise, +and an archipelago of gold-beached purple islands floated in a sea of +golden green. The poppies too, swan-necked buds, blazing corollas, +translucent stout seed-vessels, stoutly upheld, had a luminous quality, +seemed wrought only from some more solid kind of light. + +I stared unwonderingly at these things for a time, and then there rose +upon my consciousness, intermingling with these, the bristling golden +green heads of growing barley. + +A remote faint question, where I might be, drifted and vanished again +in my mind. Everything was very still. + +Everything was as still as death. + +I felt very light, full of the sense of physical well-being. I +perceived I was lying on my side in a little trampled space in a weedy, +flowering barley field, that was in some inexplicable way saturated +with light and beauty. I sat up, and remained for a long time filled +with the delight and charm of the delicate little convolvulus that +twined among the barley stems, the pimpernel that laced the ground +below. + +Then that question returned. What was this place? How had I come to be +sleeping here? + +I could not remember. + +It perplexed me that somehow my body felt strange to me. It was +unfamiliar—I could not tell how—and the barley, and the beautiful +weeds, and the slowly developing glory of the dawn behind; all those +things partook of the same unfamiliarity. I felt as though I was a +thing in some very luminous painted window, as though this dawn broke +through me. I felt I was part of some exquisite picture painted in +light and joy. + +A faint breeze bent and rustled the barley-heads, and jogged my mind +forward. + +Who was I? That was a good way of beginning. + +I held up my left hand and arm before me, a grubby hand, a frayed cuff; +but with a quality of painted unreality, transfigured as a beggar might +have been by Botticelli. I looked for a time steadfastly at a beautiful +pearl sleeve-link. + +I remembered Willie Leadford, who had owned that arm and hand, as +though he had been some one else. + +Of course! My history—its rough outline rather than the immediate +past—began to shape itself in my memory, very small, very bright and +inaccessible, like a thing watched through a microscope. Clayton and +Swathinglea returned to my mind; the slums and darkness, Dureresque, +minute and in their rich dark colors pleasing, and through them I went +towards my destiny. I sat hands on knees recalling that queer +passionate career that had ended with my futile shot into the growing +darkness of the End. The thought of that shot awoke my emotions again. + +There was something in it now, something absurd, that made me smile +pityingly. + +Poor little angry, miserable creature! Poor little angry, miserable +world! + +I sighed for pity, not only pity for myself, but for all the hot +hearts, the tormented brains, the straining, striving things of hope +and pain, who had found their peace at last beneath the pouring mist +and suffocation of the comet. Because certainly that world was over and +done. They were all so weak and unhappy, and I was now so strong and so +serene. For I felt sure I was dead; no one living could have this +perfect assurance of good, this strong and confident peace. I had made +an end of the fever called living. I was dead, and it was all right, +and these———? + +I felt an inconsistency. + +These, then, must be the barley fields of God!—the still and silent +barley fields of God, full of unfading poppy flowers whose seeds bear +peace. + +§ 2 + + +It was queer to find barley fields in heaven, but no doubt there were +many surprises in store for me. + +How still everything was! Peace! The peace that passeth understanding. +After all it had come to me! But, indeed, everything was very still! No +bird sang. Surely I was alone in the world! No birds sang. Yes, and all +the distant sounds of life had ceased, the lowing of cattle, the +barking of dogs. . . . + +Something that was like fear beatified came into my heart. It was all +right, I knew; but to be alone! I stood up and met the hot summons of +the rising sun, hurrying towards me, as it were, with glad tidings, +over the spikes of the barley. . . . + +Blinded, I made a step. My foot struck something hard, and I looked +down to discover my revolver, a blue-black thing, like a dead snake at +my feet. + +For a moment that puzzled me. + +Then I clean forgot about it. The wonder of the quiet took possession +of my soul. Dawn, and no birds singing! + +How beautiful was the world! How beautiful, but how still! I walked +slowly through the barley towards a line of elder bushes, wayfaring +tree and bramble that made the hedge of the field. I noted as I passed +along a dead shrew mouse, as it seemed to me, among the halms; then a +still toad. I was surprised that this did not leap aside from my +footfalls, and I stooped and picked it up. Its body was limp like life, +but it made no struggle, the brightness of its eye was veiled, it did +not move in my hand. + +It seems to me now that I stood holding that lifeless little creature +for some time. Then very softly I stooped down and replaced it. I was +trembling—trembling with a nameless emotion. I looked with quickened +eyes closely among the barley stems, and behold, now everywhere I saw +beetles, flies, and little creatures that did not move, lying as they +fell when the vapors overcame them; they seemed no more than painted +things. Some were novel creatures to me. I was very unfamiliar with +natural things. “My God!” I cried; “but is it only I———?” + +And then at my next movement something squealed sharply. I turned +about, but I could not see it, only I saw a little stir in a rut and +heard the diminishing rustle of the unseen creature’s flight. And at +that I turned to my toad again, and its eye moved and it stirred. And +presently, with infirm and hesitating gestures, it stretched its limbs +and began to crawl away from me. + +But wonder, that gentle sister of fear, had me now. I saw a little way +ahead a brown and crimson butterfly perched upon a cornflower. I +thought at first it was the breeze that stirred it, and then I saw its +wings were quivering. And even as I watched it, it started into life, +and spread itself, and fluttered into the air. + +I watched it fly, a turn this way, a turn that, until suddenly it +seemed to vanish. And now, life was returning to this thing and that on +every side of me, with slow stretchings and bendings, with twitterings, +with a little start and stir. . . . + +I came slowly, stepping very carefully because of these drugged, feebly +awakening things, through the barley to the hedge. It was a very +glorious hedge, so that it held my eyes. It flowed along and interlaced +like splendid music. It was rich with lupin, honeysuckle, campions, and +ragged robin; bed straw, hops, and wild clematis twined and hung among +its branches, and all along its ditch border the starry stitchwort +lifted its childish faces, and chorused in lines and masses. Never had +I seen such a symphony of note-like flowers and tendrils and leaves. +And suddenly in its depths, I heard a chirrup and the whirr of startled +wings. + +Nothing was dead, but everything had changed to beauty! And I stood for +a time with clean and happy eyes looking at the intricate delicacy +before me and marveling how richly God has made his worlds. . . . . + +“Tweedle-Tweezle,” a lark had shot the stillness with his shining +thread of song; one lark, and then presently another, invisibly in the +air, making out of that blue quiet a woven cloth of gold. . . . + +The earth recreated—only by the reiteration of such phrases may I hope +to give the intense freshness of that dawn. For a time I was altogether +taken up with the beautiful details of being, as regardless of my old +life of jealous passion and impatient sorrow as though I was Adam new +made. I could tell you now with infinite particularity of the shut +flowers that opened as I looked, of tendrils and grass blades, of a +blue-tit I picked up very tenderly—never before had I remarked the +great delicacy of feathers—that presently disclosed its bright black +eye and judged me, and perched, swaying fearlessly, upon my finger, and +spread unhurried wings and flew away, and of a great ebullition of +tadpoles in the ditch; like all the things that lived beneath the +water, they had passed unaltered through the Change. Amid such +incidents, I lived those first great moments, losing for a time in the +wonder of each little part the mighty wonder of the whole. + +A little path ran between hedge and barley, and along this, leisurely +and content and glad, looking at this beautiful thing and that, moving +a step and stopping, then moving on again, I came presently to a stile, +and deep below it, and overgrown, was a lane. + +And on the worn oak of the stile was a round label, and on the label +these words, “Swindells’ G 90 Pills.” + +I sat myself astraddle on the stile, not fully grasping all the +implications of these words. But they perplexed me even more than the +revolver and my dirty cuff. + +About me now the birds lifted up their little hearts and sang, ever +more birds and more. + +I read the label over and over again, and joined it to the fact that I +still wore my former clothes, and that my revolver had been lying at my +feet. One conclusion stared out at me. This was no new planet, no +glorious hereafter such as I had supposed. This beautiful wonderland +was the world, the same old world of my rage and death! But at least it +was like meeting a familiar house-slut, washed and dignified, dressed +in a queen’s robes, worshipful and fine. . . . + +It might be the old world indeed, but something new lay upon all +things, a glowing certitude of health and happiness. It might be the +old world, but the dust and fury of the old life was certainly done. At +least I had no doubt of that. + +I recalled the last phases of my former life, that darkling climax of +pursuit and anger and universal darkness and the whirling green vapors +of extinction. The comet had struck the earth and made an end to all +things; of that too I was assured. + +But afterward? . . . + +And now? + +The imaginations of my boyhood came back as speculative possibilities. +In those days I had believed firmly in the necessary advent of a last +day, a great coming out of the sky, trumpetings and fear, the +Resurrection, and the Judgment. My roving fancy now suggested to me +that this Judgment must have come and passed. That it had passed and in +some manner missed me. I was left alone here, in a swept and garnished +world (except, of course, for this label of Swindells’) to begin again +perhaps. . . . + +No doubt Swindells has got his deserts. + +My mind ran for a time on Swindells, on the imbecile pushfulness of +that extinct creature, dealing in rubbish, covering the country-side +with lies in order to get—what had he sought?—a silly, ugly, great +house, a temper-destroying motor-car, a number of disrespectful, abject +servants; thwarted intrigues for a party-fund baronetcy as the crest of +his life, perhaps. You cannot imagine the littleness of those former +times; their naive, queer absurdities! And for the first time in my +existence I thought of these things without bitterness. In the former +days I had seen wickedness, I had seen tragedy, but now I saw only the +extraordinary foolishness of the old life. The ludicrous side of human +wealth and importance turned itself upon me, a shining novelty, poured +down upon me like the sunrise, and engulfed me in laughter. Swindells! +Swindells, damned! My vision of Judgment became a delightful burlesque. +I saw the chuckling Angel sayer with his face veiled, and the corporeal +presence of Swindells upheld amidst the laughter of the spheres. +“Here’s a thing, and a very pretty thing, and what’s to be done with +this very pretty thing?” I saw a soul being drawn from a rotund, +substantial-looking body like a whelk from its shell. . . . + +I laughed loudly and long. And behold! even as I laughed the keen point +of things accomplished stabbed my mirth, and I was weeping, weeping +aloud, convulsed with weeping, and the tears were pouring down my face. + +§ 3 + + +Everywhere the awakening came with the sunrise. We awakened to the +gladness of the morning; we walked dazzled in a light that was joy. +Everywhere that was so. It was always morning. It was morning because, +until the direct rays of the sun touched it, the changing nitrogen of +our atmosphere did not pass into its permanent phase, and the sleepers +lay as they had fallen. In its intermediate state the air hung inert, +incapable of producing either revival or stupefaction, no longer green, +but not yet changed to the gas that now lives in us. . . . + +To every one, I think, came some parallel to the mental states I have +already sought to describe—a wonder, an impression of joyful novelty. +There was also very commonly a certain confusion of the intelligence, a +difficulty in self-recognition. I remember clearly as I sat on my stile +that presently I had the clearest doubts of my own identity and fell +into the oddest metaphysical questionings. “If this be I,” I said, +“then how is it I am no longer madly seeking Nettie? Nettie is now the +remotest thing—and all my wrongs. Why have I suddenly passed out of all +that passion? Why does not the thought of Verrall quicken my pulses?” . +. . + +I was only one of many millions who that morning had the same doubts. I +suppose one knows one’s self for one’s self when one returns from sleep +or insensibility by the familiarity of one’s bodily sensations, and +that morning all our most intimate bodily sensations were changed. The +intimate chemical processes of life were changed, its nervous metaboly. +For the fluctuating, uncertain, passion-darkened thought and feeling of +the old time came steady, full-bodied, wholesome processes. Touch was +different, sight was different, sound and all the senses were subtler; +had it not been that our thought was steadier and fuller, I believe +great multitudes of men would have gone mad. But, as it was, we +understood. The dominant impression I would convey in this account of +the Change is one of enormous release, of a vast substantial +exaltation. There was an effect, as it were, of light-headedness that +was also clear-headedness, and the alteration in one’s bodily +sensations, instead of producing the mental obfuscation, the loss of +identity that was a common mental trouble under former conditions, gave +simply a new detachment from the tumid passions and entanglements of +the personal life. + +In this story of my bitter, restricted youth that I have been telling +you, I have sought constantly to convey the narrowness, the intensity, +the confusion, muddle, and dusty heat of the old world. It was quite +clear to me, within an hour of my awakening, that all that was, in some +mysterious way, over and done. That, too, was the common experience. +Men stood up; they took the new air into their lungs—a deep long +breath, and the past fell from them; they could forgive, they could +disregard, they could attempt. . . . And it was no new thing, no +miracle that sets aside the former order of the world. It was a change +in material conditions, a change in the atmosphere, that at one bound +had released them. Some of them it had released to death. . . . Indeed, +man himself had changed not at all. We knew before the Change, the +meanest knew, by glowing moments in ourselves and others, by histories +and music and beautiful things, by heroic instances and splendid +stories, how fine mankind could be, how fine almost any human being +could upon occasion be; but the poison in the air, its poverty in all +the nobler elements which made such moments rare and remarkable—all +that has changed. The air was changed, and the Spirit of Man that had +drowsed and slumbered and dreamt dull and evil things, awakened, and +stood with wonder-clean eyes, refreshed, looking again on life. + +§ 4 + + +The miracle of the awakening came to me in solitude, the laughter, and +then the tears. Only after some time did I come upon another man. Until +I heard his voice calling I did not seem to feel there were any other +people in the world. All that seemed past, with all the stresses that +were past. I had come out of the individual pit in which my shy egotism +had lurked, I had overflowed to all humanity, I had seemed to be all +humanity; I had laughed at Swindells as I could have laughed at myself, +and this shout that came to me seemed like the coming of an unexpected +thought in my own mind. But when it was repeated I answered. + +“I am hurt,” said the voice, and I descended into the lane forthwith, +and so came upon Melmount sitting near the ditch with his back to me. + +Some of the incidental sensory impressions of that morning bit so +deeply into my mind that I verily believe, when at last I face the +greater mysteries that lie beyond this life, when the things of this +life fade from me as the mists of the morning fade before the sun, +these irrelevant petty details will be the last to leave me, will be +the last wisps visible of that attenuating veil. I believe, for +instance, I could match the fur upon the collar of his great motoring +coat now, could paint the dull red tinge of his big cheek with his fair +eyelashes just catching the light and showing beyond. His hat was off, +his dome-shaped head, with its smooth hair between red and extreme +fairness, was bent forward in scrutiny of his twisted foot. His back +seemed enormous. And there was something about the mere massive sight +of him that filled me with liking. + +“What’s wrong?” said I. + +“I say,” he said, in his full deliberate tones, straining round to see +me and showing a profile, a well-modeled nose, a sensitive, clumsy, big +lip, known to every caricaturist in the world, “I’m in a fix. I fell +and wrenched my ankle. Where are you?” + +I walked round him and stood looking at his face. I perceived he had +his gaiter and sock and boot off, the motor gauntlets had been cast +aside, and he was kneading the injured part in an exploratory manner +with his thick thumbs. + +“By Jove!” I said, “you’re Melmount!” + +“Melmount!” He thought. “That’s my name,” he said, without looking up. +. . . “But it doesn’t affect my ankle.” + +We remained silent for few moments except for a grunt of pain from him. + +“Do you know?” I asked, “what has happened to things?” + +He seemed to complete his diagnosis. “It’s not broken,” he said. + +“Do you know,” I repeated, “what has happened to everything?” + +“No,” he said, looking up at me incuriously for the first time. + +“There’s some difference———” + +“There’s a difference.” He smiled, a smile of unexpected pleasantness, +and an interest was coming into his eyes. “I’ve been a little +preoccupied with my own internal sensations. I remark an extraordinary +brightness about things. Is that it?” + +“That’s part of it. And a queer feeling, a clear-headedness———” + +He surveyed me and meditated gravely. “I woke up,” he said, feeling his +way in his memory. + +“And I.” + +“I lost my way—I forget quite how. There was a curious green fog.” He +stared at his foot, remembering. “Something to do with a comet. I was +by a hedge in the darkness. Tried to run. . . . Then I must have +pitched into this lane. Look!” He pointed with his head. “There’s a +wooden rail new broken there. I must have stumbled over that out of the +field above.” He scrutinized this and concluded. “Yes. . . .” + +“It was dark,” I said, “and a sort of green gas came out of nothing +everywhere. That is the last _I_ remember.” + +“And then you woke up? So did I. . . . In a state of great +bewilderment. Certainly there’s something odd in the air. I was—I was +rushing along a road in a motor-car, very much excited and preoccupied. +I got down——” He held out a triumphant finger. “Ironclads!” + +“_Now_ I’ve got it! We’d strung our fleet from here to Texel. We’d got +right across them and the Elbe mined. We’d lost the _Lord Warden_. By +Jove, yes. The _Lord Warden!_ A battleship that cost two million +pounds—and that fool Rigby said it didn’t matter! Eleven hundred men +went down. . . . I remember now. We were sweeping up the North Sea like +a net, with the North Atlantic fleet waiting at the Faroes for ‘em—and +not one of ‘em had three days’ coal! Now, was that a dream? No! I told +a lot of people as much—a meeting was it?—to reassure them. They were +warlike but extremely frightened. Queer people—paunchy and bald like +gnomes, most of them. Where? Of course! We had it all over—a big +dinner—oysters!—Colchester. I’d been there, just to show all this raid +scare was nonsense. And I was coming back here. . . . But it doesn’t +seem as though that was—recent. I suppose it was. Yes, of course!—it +was. I got out of my car at the bottom of the rise with the idea of +walking along the cliff path, because every one said one of their +battleships was being chased along the shore. That’s clear! I heard +their guns———” + +He reflected. “Queer I should have forgotten! Did _you_ hear any guns?” + +I said I had heard them. + +“Was it last night?” + +“Late last night. One or two in the morning.” + +He leant back on his hand and looked at me, smiling frankly. “Even +now,” he said, “it’s odd, but the whole of that seems like a silly +dream. Do you think there _was_ a _Lord Warden?_ Do you really believe +we sank all that machinery—for fun? It was a dream. And yet—it +happened.” + +By all the standards of the former time it would have been remarkable +that I talked quite easily and freely with so great a man. “Yes,” I +said; “that’s it. One feels one has awakened—from something more than +that green gas. As though the other things also—weren’t quite real.” + +He knitted his brows and felt the calf of his leg thoughtfully. “I made +a speech at Colchester,” he said. + +I thought he was going to add something more about that, but there +lingered a habit of reticence in the man that held him for the moment. +“It is a very curious thing,” he broke away; “that this pain should be, +on the whole, more interesting than disagreeable.” + +“You are in pain?” + +“My ankle is! It’s either broken or badly sprained—I think sprained; +it’s very painful to move, but personally I’m not in pain. That sort of +general sickness that comes with local injury—not a trace of it! . . .” +He mused and remarked, “I was speaking at Colchester, and saying things +about the war. I begin to see it better. The reporters—scribble, +scribble. Max Sutaine, 1885. Hubbub. Compliments about the oysters. +Mm—mm. . . . What was it? About the war? A war that must needs be long +and bloody, taking toll from castle and cottage, taking toll! . . . +Rhetorical gusto! Was I drunk last night?” + +His eyebrows puckered. He had drawn up his right knee, his elbow rested +thereon and his chin on his fist. The deep-set gray eyes beneath his +thatch of eyebrow stared at unknown things. “My God!” he murmured, “My +God!” with a note of disgust. He made a big brooding figure in the +sunlight, he had an effect of more than physical largeness; he made me +feel that it became me to wait upon his thinking. I had never met a man +of this sort before; I did not know such men existed. . . . + +It is a curious thing, that I cannot now recall any ideas whatever that +I had before the Change about the personalities of statesmen, but I +doubt if ever in those days I thought of them at all as tangible +individual human beings, conceivably of some intellectual complexity. I +believe that my impression was a straightforward blend of caricature +and newspaper leader. I certainly had no respect for them. And now +without servility or any insincerity whatever, as if it were a +first-fruit of the Change, I found myself in the presence of a human +being towards whom I perceived myself inferior and subordinate, before +whom I stood without servility or any insincerity whatever, in an +attitude of respect and attention. My inflamed, my rancid egotism—or +was it after all only the chances of life?—had never once permitted +that before the Change. + +He emerged from his thoughts, still with a faint perplexity in his +manner. “That speech I made last night,” he said, “was damned +mischievous nonsense, you know. Nothing can alter that. Nothing. . . . +No! . . . Little fat gnomes in evening dress—gobbling oysters. Gulp!” + +It was a most natural part of the wonder of that morning that he should +adopt this incredible note of frankness, and that it should abate +nothing from my respect for him. + +“Yes,” he said, “you are right. It’s all indisputable fact, and I can’t +believe it was anything but a dream.” + +§ 5 + + +That memory stands out against the dark past of the world with +extraordinary clearness and brightness. The air, I remember, was full +of the calling and piping and singing of birds. I have a curious +persuasion too that there was a distant happy clamor of pealing bells, +but that I am half convinced is a mistake. Nevertheless, there was +something in the fresh bite of things, in the dewy newness of sensation +that set bells rejoicing in one’s brain. And that big, fair, pensive +man sitting on the ground had beauty even in his clumsy pose, as though +indeed some Great Master of strength and humor had made him. + +And—it is so hard now to convey these things—he spoke to me, a +stranger, without reservations, carelessly, as men now speak to men. +Before those days, not only did we think badly, but what we thought, a +thousand short-sighted considerations, dignity, objective discipline, +discretion, a hundred kindred aspects of shabbiness of soul, made us +muffle before we told it to our fellow-men. + +“It’s all returning now,” he said, and told me half soliloquizingly +what was in his mind. + +I wish I could give every word he said to me; he struck out image after +image to my nascent intelligence, with swift broken fragments of +speech. If I had a precise full memory of that morning I should give it +you, verbatim, minutely. But here, save for the little sharp things +that stand out, I find only blurred general impressions. Throughout I +have to make up again his half-forgotten sentences and speeches, and be +content with giving you the general effect. But I can see and hear him +now as he said, “The dream got worst at the end. The war—a perfectly +horrible business! Horrible! And it was just like a nightmare, you +couldn’t do anything to escape from it—every one was driven!” + +His sense of indiscretion was gone. + +He opened the war out to me—as every one sees it now. Only that morning +it was astonishing. He sat there on the ground, absurdly forgetful of +his bare and swollen foot, treating me as the humblest accessory and as +altogether an equal, talking out to himself the great obsessions of his +mind. “We could have prevented it! Any of us who chose to speak out +could have prevented it. A little decent frankness. What was there to +prevent us being frank with one another? Their emperor—his position was +a pile of ridiculous assumptions, no doubt, but at bottom—he was a sane +man.” He touched off the emperor in a few pithy words, the German +press, the German people, and our own. He put it as we should put it +all now, but with a certain heat as of a man half guilty and wholly +resentful. “Their damned little buttoned-up professors!” he cried, +incidentally. “Were there ever such men? And ours! Some of us might +have taken a firmer line. . . . If a lot of us had taken a firmer line +and squashed that nonsense early. . . .” + +He lapsed into inaudible whisperings, into silence. . . . + +I stood regarding him, understanding him, learning marvelously from +him. It is a fact that for the best part of the morning of the Change I +forgot Nettie and Verrall as completely as though they were no more +than characters in some novel that I had put aside to finish at my +leisure, in order that I might talk to this man. + +“Eh, well,” he said, waking startlingly from his thoughts. “Here we are +awakened! The thing can’t go on now; all this must end. How it ever +began———! My dear boy, how did all those things ever begin? I feel like +a new Adam. . . . Do you think this has happened—generally? Or shall we +find all these gnomes and things? . . . Who cares?” + +He made as if to rise, and remembered his ankle. He suggested I should +help him as far as his bungalow. There seemed nothing strange to either +of us that he should requisition my services or that I should +cheerfully obey. I helped him bandage his ankle, and we set out, I his +crutch, the two of us making up a sort of limping quadruped, along the +winding lane toward the cliffs and the sea. + +§ 6 + + +His bungalow beyond the golf links was, perhaps, a mile and a quarter +from the lane. We went down to the beach margin and along the pallid +wave-smoothed sands, and we got along by making a swaying, hopping, +tripod dance forward until I began to give under him, and then, as soon +as we could, sitting down. His ankle was, in fact, broken, and he could +not put it to the ground without exquisite pain. So that it took us +nearly two hours to get to the house, and it would have taken longer if +his butler-valet had not come out to assist me. They had found +motor-car and chauffeur smashed and still at the bend of the road near +the house, and had been on that side looking for Melmount, or they +would have seen us before. + +For most of that time we were sitting now on turf, now on a chalk +boulder, now on a timber groin, and talking one to the other, with the +frankness proper to the intercourse of men of good intent, without +reservations or aggressions, in the common, open fashion of +contemporary intercourse to-day, but which then, nevertheless, was the +rarest and strangest thing in the world. He for the most part talked, +but at some shape of a question I told him—as plainly as I could tell +of passions that had for a time become incomprehensible to me—of my +murderous pursuit of Nettie and her lover, and how the green vapors +overcame me. He watched me with grave eyes and nodded understandingly, +and afterwards he asked me brief penetrating questions about my +education, my upbringing, my work. There was a deliberation in his +manner, brief full pauses, that had in them no element of delay. + +“Yes,” he said, “yes—of course. What a fool I have been!” and said no +more until we had made another of our tripod struggles along the beach. +At first I did not see the connection of my story with that +self-accusation. + +“Suppose,” he said, panting on the groin, “there had been such a thing +as a statesman! . . .” + +He turned to me. “If one had decided all this muddle shall end! If one +had taken it, as an artist takes his clay, as a man who builds takes +site and stone, and made———” He flung out his big broad hand at the +glories of sky and sea, and drew a deep breath, “something to fit that +setting.” + +He added in explanation, “Then there wouldn’t have been such stories as +yours at all, you know. . . .” + +“Tell me more about it,” he said, “tell me all about yourself. I feel +all these things have passed away, all these things are to be changed +for ever. . . . You won’t be what you have been from this time forth. +All the things you have done—don’t matter now. To us, at any rate, they +don’t matter at all. We have met, who were separated in that darkness +behind us. Tell me. + +“Yes,” he said; and I told my story straight and as frankly as I have +told it to you. “And there, where those little skerries of weed rock +run out to the ebb, beyond the headland, is Bungalow village. What did +you do with your pistol?” + +“I left it lying there—among the barley.” + +He glanced at me from under his light eyelashes. “If others feel like +you and I,” he said, “there’ll be a lot of pistols left among the +barley to-day. . . .” + +So we talked, I and that great, strong man, with the love of brothers +so plain between us it needed not a word. Our souls went out to one +another in stark good faith; never before had I had anything but a +guarded watchfulness for any fellow-man. Still I see him, upon that +wild desolate beach of the ebb tide, I see him leaning against the +shelly buttress of a groin, looking down at the poor drowned sailor +whose body we presently found. For we found a newly drowned man who had +just chanced to miss this great dawn in which we rejoiced. We found him +lying in a pool of water, among brown weeds in the dark shadow of the +timberings. You must not overrate the horrors of the former days; in +those days it was scarcely more common to see death in England than it +would be to-day. This dead man was a sailor from the _Rother Adler_, +the great German battleship that—had we but known it—lay not four miles +away along the coast amidst ploughed-up mountains of chalk ooze, a torn +and battered mass of machinery, wholly submerged at high water, and +holding in its interstices nine hundred drowned brave men, all strong +and skilful, all once capable of doing fine things. . . . + +I remember that poor boy very vividly. He had been drowned during the +anaesthesia of the green gas, his fair young face was quiet and calm, +but the skin of his chest had been crinkled by scalding water and his +right arm was bent queerly back. Even to this needless death and all +its tale of cruelty, beauty and dignity had come. Everything flowed +together to significance as we stood there, I, the ill-clad, cheaply +equipped proletarian, and Melmount in his great fur-trimmed coat—he was +hot with walking but he had not thought to remove it—leaning upon the +clumsy groins and pitying this poor victim of the war he had helped to +make. “Poor lad!” he said, “poor lad! A child we blunderers sent to +death! Do look at the quiet beauty of that face, that body—to be flung +aside like this!” + +(I remember that near this dead man’s hand a stranded star-fish writhed +its slowly feeling limbs, struggling back toward the sea. It left +grooved traces in the sand.) + +“There must be no more of this,” panted Melmount, leaning on my +shoulder, “no more of this. . . .” + +But most I recall Melmount as he talked a little later, sitting upon a +great chalk boulder with the sunlight on his big, perspiration-dewed +face. He made his resolves. “We must end war,” he said, in that full +whisper of his; “it is stupidity. With so many people able to read and +think—even as it is—there is no need of anything of the sort. Gods! +What have we rulers been at? . . . Drowsing like people in a stifling +room, too dull and sleepy and too base toward each other for any one to +get up and open the window. What haven’t we been at?” + +A great powerful figure he sits there still in my memory, perplexed and +astonished at himself and all things. “We must change all this,” he +repeated, and threw out his broad hands in a powerful gesture against +the sea and sky. “We have done so weakly—Heaven alone knows why!” I can +see him now, queer giant that he looked on that dawnlit beach of +splendor, the sea birds flying about us and that crumpled death hard +by, no bad symbol in his clumsiness and needless heat of the unawakened +powers of the former time. I remember it as an integral part of that +picture that far away across the sandy stretches one of those white +estate boards I have described, stuck up a little askew amidst the +yellow-green turf upon the crest of the low cliffs. + +He talked with a sort of wonder of the former things. “Has it ever +dawned upon you to imagine the pettiness—the pettiness!—of every soul +concerned in a declaration of war?” he asked. He went on, as though +speech was necessary to make it credible, to describe Laycock, who +first gave the horror words at the cabinet council, “an undersized +Oxford prig with a tenoring voice and a garbage of Greek—the sort of +little fool who is brought up on the admiration of his elder sisters. . +. . + +“All the time almost,” he said, “I was watching him—thinking what an +ass he was to be trusted with men’s lives. . . . I might have done +better to have thought that of myself. I was doing nothing to prevent +it all! The damned little imbecile was up to his neck in the drama of +the thing, he liked to trumpet it out, he goggled round at us. ‘Then it +is war!’ he said. Richover shrugged his shoulders. I made some slight +protest and gave in. . . . Afterward I dreamt of him. + +“What a lot we were! All a little scared at ourselves—all, as it were, +instrumental. . . . + +“And it’s fools like that lead to things like this!” He jerked his head +at that dead man near by us. + +“It will be interesting to know what has happened to the world. . . . +This green vapor—queer stuff. But I know what has happened to me. It’s +Conversion. I’ve always known. . . . But this is being a fool. Talk! +I’m going to stop it.” + +He motioned to rise with his clumsy outstretched hands. + +“Stop what?” said I, stepping forward instinctively to help him. + +“War,” he said in his great whisper, putting his big hand on my +shoulder but making no further attempt to arise, “I’m going to put an +end to war—to any sort of war! And all these things that must end. The +world is beautiful, life is great and splendid, we had only to lift up +our eyes and see. Think of the glories through which we have been +driving, like a herd of swine in a garden place. The color in life—the +sounds—the shapes! We have had our jealousies, our quarrels, our +ticklish rights, our invincible prejudices, our vulgar enterprise and +sluggish timidities, we have chattered and pecked one another and +fouled the world—like daws in the temple, like unclean birds in the +holy place of God. All my life has been foolishness and pettiness, +gross pleasures and mean discretions—all. I am a meagre dark thing in +this morning’s glow, a penitence, a shame! And, but for God’s mercy, I +might have died this night—like that poor lad there—amidst the squalor +of my sins! No more of this! No more of this!—whether the whole world +has changed or no, matters nothing. _We two have seen this dawn!_ . . +.” + +He paused. + +“I will arise and go unto my Father,” he began presently, “and will say +unto Him———” + +His voice died away in an inaudible whisper. His hand tightened +painfully on my shoulder and he rose. . . . + + + + +CHAPTER THE SECOND +THE AWAKENING + + +§ 1 + +So the great Day came to me. + +And even as I had awakened so in that same dawn the whole world awoke. + +For the whole world of living things had been overtaken by the same +tide of insensibility; in an hour, at the touch of this new gas in the +comet, the shiver of catalytic change had passed about the globe. They +say it was the nitrogen of the air, the old _azote_, that in the +twinkling of an eye was changed out of itself, and in an hour or so +became a respirable gas, differing indeed from oxygen, but helping and +sustaining its action, a bath of strength and healing for nerve and +brain. I do not know the precise changes that occurred, nor the names +our chemists give them, my work has carried me away from such things, +only this I know—I and all men were renewed. + +I picture to myself this thing happening in space, a planetary moment, +the faint smudge, the slender whirl of meteor, drawing nearer to this +planet,—this planet like a ball, like a shaded rounded ball, floating +in the void, with its little, nearly impalpable coat of cloud and air, +with its dark pools of ocean, its gleaming ridges of land. And as that +midge from the void touches it, the transparent gaseous outer shell +clouds in an instant green and then slowly clears again. . . . + +Thereafter, for three hours or more,—we know the minimum time for the +Change was almost exactly three hours because all the clocks and +watches kept going—everywhere, no man nor beast nor bird nor any living +thing that breathes the air stirred at all but lay still. . . . + +Everywhere on earth that day, in the ears of every one who breathed, +there had been the same humming in the air, the same rush of green +vapors, the crepitation, the streaming down of shooting stars. The +Hindoo had stayed his morning’s work in the fields to stare and marvel +and fall, the blue-clothed Chinaman fell head foremost athwart his +midday bowl of rice, the Japanese merchant came out from some +chaffering in his office amazed and presently lay there before his +door, the evening gazers by the Golden Gates were overtaken as they +waited for the rising of the great star. This had happened in every +city of the world, in every lonely valley, in every home and house and +shelter and every open place. On the high seas, the crowding steamship +passengers, eager for any wonder, gaped and marveled, and were suddenly +terror-stricken, and struggled for the gangways and were overcome, the +captain staggered on the bridge and fell, the stoker fell headlong +among his coals, the engines throbbed upon their way untended, the +fishing craft drove by without a hail, with swaying rudder, heeling and +dipping. . . . + +The great voice of material Fate cried Halt! And in the midst of the +play the actors staggered, dropped, and were still. The figure runs +from my pen. In New York that very thing occurred. Most of the +theatrical audiences dispersed, but in two crowded houses the company, +fearing a panic, went on playing amidst the gloom, and the people, +trained by many a previous disaster, stuck to their seats. There they +sat, the back rows only moving a little, and there, in disciplined +lines, they drooped and failed, nodded, and fell forward or slid down +upon the floor. I am told by Parload—though indeed I know nothing of +the reasoning on which his confidence rests—-that within an hour of the +great moment of impact the first green modification of nitrogen had +dissolved and passed away, leaving the air as translucent as ever. The +rest of that wonderful interlude was clear, had any had eyes to see its +clearness. In London it was night, but in New York, for example, people +were in the full bustle of the evening’s enjoyment, in Chicago they +were sitting down to dinner, the whole world was abroad. The moonlight +must have illuminated streets and squares littered with crumpled +figures, through which such electric cars as had no automatic brakes +had ploughed on their way until they were stopped by the fallen bodies. +People lay in their dress clothes, in dining-rooms, restaurants, on +staircases, in halls, everywhere just as they had been overcome. Men +gambling, men drinking, thieves lurking in hidden places, sinful +couples, were caught, to arise with awakened mind and conscience amidst +the disorder of their sin. America the comet reached in the full tide +of evening life, but Britain lay asleep. But as I have told, Britain +did not slumber so deeply but that she was in the full tide of what may +have been battle and a great victory. Up and down the North Sea her +warships swept together like a net about their foes. On land, too, that +night was to have decided great issues. The German camps were under +arms from Redingen to Markirch, their infantry columns were lying in +swathes like mown hay, in arrested night march on every track between +Longuyon and Thiancourt, and between Avricourt and Donen. The hills +beyond Spincourt were dusted thick with hidden French riflemen; the +thin lash of the French skirmishers sprawled out amidst spades and +unfinished rifle-pits in coils that wrapped about the heads of the +German columns, thence along the Vosges watershed and out across the +frontier near Belfort nearly to the Rhine. . . . + +The Hungarian, the Italian peasant, yawned and thought the morning +dark, and turned over to fall into a dreamless sleep; the Mahometan +world spread its carpet and was taken in prayer. And in Sydney, in +Melbourne, in New Zealand, the thing was a fog in the afternoon, that +scattered the crowd on race-courses and cricket-fields, and stopped the +unloading of shipping and brought men out from their afternoon rest to +stagger and litter the streets. . . . + +§ 2 + + +My thoughts go into the woods and wildernesses and jungles of the +world, to the wild life that shared man’s suspension, and I think of a +thousand feral acts interrupted and truncated—as it were frozen, like +the frozen words Pantagruel met at sea. Not only men it was that were +quieted, all living creatures that breathe the air became insensible, +impassive things. Motionless brutes and birds lay amidst the drooping +trees and herbage in the universal twilight, the tiger sprawled beside +his fresh-struck victim, who bled to death in a dreamless sleep. The +very flies came sailing down the air with wings outspread; the spider +hung crumpled in his loaded net; like some gaily painted snowflake the +butterfly drifted to earth and grounded, and was still. And as a queer +contrast one gathers that the fishes in the sea suffered not at all. . +. . + +Speaking of the fishes reminds me of a queer little inset upon that +great world-dreaming. The odd fate of the crew of the submarine vessel +B 94 has always seemed memorable to me. So far as I know, they were the +only men alive who never saw that veil of green drawn across the world. +All the while that the stillness held above, they were working into the +mouth of the Elbe, past the booms and the mines, very slowly and +carefully, a sinister crustacean of steel, explosive crammed, along the +muddy bottom. They trailed a long clue that was to guide their fellows +from the mother ship floating awash outside. Then in the long channel +beyond the forts they came up at last to mark down their victims and +get air. That must have been before the twilight of dawn, for they tell +of the brightness of the stars. They were amazed to find themselves not +three hundred yards from an ironclad that had run ashore in the mud, +and heeled over with the falling tide. It was afire amidships, but no +one heeded that—no one in all that strange clear silence heeded +that—and not only this wrecked vessel, but all the dark ships lying +about them, it seemed to their perplexed and startled minds must be +full of dead men! + +Theirs I think must have been one of the strangest of all experiences; +they were never insensible; at once, and, I am told, with a sudden +catch of laughter, they began to breathe the new air. None of them has +proved a writer; we have no picture of their wonder, no description of +what was said. But we know these men were active and awake for an hour +and a half at least before the general awakening came, and when at last +the Germans stirred and sat up they found these strangers in possession +of their battleship, the submarine carelessly adrift, and the +Englishmen, begrimed and weary, but with a sort of furious exultation, +still busy, in the bright dawn, rescuing insensible enemies from the +sinking conflagration. . . . + +But the thought of certain stokers the sailors of the submarine failed +altogether to save brings me back to the thread of grotesque horror +that runs through all this event, the thread I cannot overlook for all +the splendors of human well-being that have come from it. I cannot +forget the unguided ships that drove ashore, that went down in disaster +with all their sleeping hands, nor how, inland, motor-cars rushed to +destruction upon the roads, and trains upon the railways kept on in +spite of signals, to be found at last by their amazed, reviving drivers +standing on unfamiliar lines, their fires exhausted, or, less lucky, to +be discovered by astonished peasants or awakening porters smashed and +crumpled up into heaps of smoking, crackling ruin. The foundry fires of +the Four Towns still blazed, the smoke of our burning still denied the +sky. Fires burnt indeed the brighter for the Change—and spread. . . . + +§ 3 + + +Picture to yourself what happened between the printing and composing of +the copy of the _New Paper_ that lies before me now. It was the first +newspaper that was printed upon earth after the Great Change. It was +pocket-worn and browned, made of a paper no man ever intended for +preservation. I found it on the arbor table in the inn garden while I +was waiting for Nettie and Verrall, before that last conversation of +which I have presently to tell. As I look at it all that scene comes +back to me, and Nettie stands in her white raiment against a blue-green +background of sunlit garden, scrutinizing my face as I read. . . . + +It is so frayed that the sheet cracks along the folds and comes to +pieces in my hands. It lies upon my desk, a dead souvenir of the dead +ages of the world, of the ancient passions of my heart. I know we +discussed its news, but for the life of me I cannot recall what we +said, only I remember that Nettie said very little, and that Verrall +for a time read it over my shoulder. And I did not like him to read +over my shoulder. . . . + +The document before me must have helped us through the first +awkwardness of that meeting. + +But of all that we said and did then I must tell in a later chapter. . +. . + +It is easy to see the _New Paper_ had been set up overnight, and then +large pieces of the stereo plates replaced subsequently. I do not know +enough of the old methods of printing to know precisely what happened. +The thing gives one an impression of large pieces of type having been +cut away and replaced by fresh blocks. There is something very rough +and ready about it all, and the new portions print darker and more +smudgily than the old, except toward the left, where they have missed +ink and indented. A friend of mine, who knows something of the old +typography, has suggested to me that the machinery actually in use for +the _New Paper_ was damaged that night, and that on the morning of the +Change Banghurst borrowed a neighboring office—perhaps in financial +dependence upon him—to print in. + +The outer pages belong entirely to the old period, the only parts of +the paper that had undergone alteration are the two middle leaves. Here +we found set forth in a curious little four-column oblong of print, +WHAT HAS HAPPENED. This cut across a column with scare headings +beginning, “Great Naval Battle Now in Progress. The Fate of Two Empires +in the Balance. Reported Loss of Two More———” + +These things, one gathered, were beneath notice now. Probably it was +guesswork, and fabricated news in the first instance. + +It is curious to piece together the worn and frayed fragments, and +reread this discolored first intelligence of the new epoch. + +The simple clear statements in the replaced portion of the paper +impressed me at the time, I remember, as bald and strange, in that +framework of shouting bad English. Now they seem like the voice of a +sane man amidst a vast faded violence. But they witness to the prompt +recovery of London from the gas; the new, swift energy of rebound in +that huge population. I am surprised now, as I reread, to note how much +research, experiment, and induction must have been accomplished in the +day that elapsed before the paper was printed. . . . But that is by the +way. As I sit and muse over this partly carbonized sheet, that same +curious remote vision comes again to me that quickened in my mind that +morning, a vision of those newspaper offices I have already described +to you going through the crisis. + +The catalytic wave must have caught the place in full swing, in its +nocturnal high fever, indeed in a quite exceptional state of fever, +what with the comet and the war, and more particularly with the war. +Very probably the Change crept into the office imperceptibly, amidst +the noise and shouting, and the glare of electric light that made the +night atmosphere in that place; even the green flashes may have passed +unobserved there, the preliminary descending trails of green vapor +seemed no more than unseasonable drifting wisps of London fog. (In +those days London even in summer was not safe against dark fogs.) And +then at the last the Change poured in and overtook them. + +If there was any warning at all for them, it must have been a sudden +universal tumult in the street, and then a much more universal quiet. +They could have had no other intimation. + +There was no time to stop the presses before the main development of +green vapor had overwhelmed every one. It must have folded about them, +tumbled them to the earth, masked and stilled them. My imagination is +always curiously stirred by the thought of that, because I suppose it +is the first picture I succeeded in making for myself of what had +happened in the towns. It has never quite lost its strangeness for me +that when the Change came, machinery went on working. I don’t precisely +know why that should have seemed so strange to me, but it did, and +still to a certain extent does. One is so accustomed, I suppose, to +regard machinery as an extension of human personality that the extent +of its autonomy the Change displayed came as a shock to me. The +electric lights, for example, hazy green-haloed nebulas, must have gone +on burning at least for a time; amidst the thickening darkness the huge +presses must have roared on, printing, folding, throwing aside copy +after copy of that fabricated battle report with its quarter column of +scare headlines, and all the place must have still quivered and +throbbed with the familiar roar of the engines. And this though no men +ruled there at all any more! Here and there beneath that thickening fog +the crumpled or outstretched forms of men lay still. + +A wonderful thing that must have seemed, had any man had by chance the +power of resistance to the vapor, and could he have walked amidst it. + +And soon the machines must have exhausted their feed of ink and paper, +and thumped and banged and rattled emptily amidst the general quiet. +Then I suppose the furnaces failed for want of stoking, the steam +pressure fell in the pistons, the machinery slackened, the lights burnt +dim, and came and went with the ebb of energy from the power-station. +Who can tell precisely the sequence of these things now? + +And then, you know, amidst the weakening and terminating noises of men, +the green vapor cleared and vanished, in an hour indeed it had gone, +and it may be a breeze stirred and blew and went about the earth. + +The noises of life were all dying away, but some there were that abated +nothing, that sounded triumphantly amidst the universal ebb. To a +heedless world the church towers tolled out two and then three. Clocks +ticked and chimed everywhere about the earth to deafened ears. . . . + +And then came the first flush of morning, the first rustlings of the +revival. Perhaps in that office the filaments of the lamps were still +glowing, the machinery was still pulsing weakly, when the crumpled, +booted heaps of cloth became men again and began to stir and stare. The +chapel of the printers was, no doubt, shocked to find itself asleep. +Amidst that dazzling dawn the _New Paper_ woke to wonder, stood up and +blinked at its amazing self. . . . + +The clocks of the city churches, one pursuing another, struck four. The +staffs, crumpled and disheveled, but with a strange refreshment in +their veins, stood about the damaged machinery, marveling and +questioning; the editor read his overnight headlines with incredulous +laughter. There was much involuntary laughter that morning. Outside, +the mail men patted the necks and rubbed the knees of their awakening +horses. . . . + +Then, you know, slowly and with much conversation and doubt, they set +about to produce the paper. + +Imagine those bemused, perplexed people, carried on by the inertia of +their old occupations and doing their best with an enterprise that had +suddenly become altogether extraordinary and irrational. They worked +amidst questionings, and yet light-heartedly. At every stage there must +have been interruptions for discussion. The paper only got down to +Menton five days late. + +§ 4 + + +Then let me give you a vivid little impression I received of a certain +prosaic person, a grocer, named Wiggins, and how he passed through the +Change. I heard this man’s story in the post-office at Menton, when, in +the afternoon of the First Day, I bethought me to telegraph to my +mother. The place was also a grocer’s shop, and I found him and the +proprietor talking as I went in. They were trade competitors, and +Wiggins had just come across the street to break the hostile silence of +a score of years. The sparkle of the Change was in their eyes, their +slightly flushed cheeks, their more elastic gestures, spoke of new +physical influences that had invaded their beings. + +“It did us no good, all our hatred,” Mr. Wiggins said to me, explaining +the emotion of their encounter; “it did our customers no good. I’ve +come to tell him that. You bear that in mind, young man, if ever you +come to have a shop of your own. It was a sort of stupid bitterness +possessed us, and I can’t make out we didn’t see it before in that +light. Not so much downright wickedness it wasn’t as stupidity. A +stupid jealousy! Think of it!—two human beings within a stone’s throw, +who have not spoken for twenty years, hardening our hearts against each +other!” + +“I can’t think how we came to such a state, Mr. Wiggins,” said the +other, packing tea into pound packets out of mere habit as he spoke. +“It was wicked pride and obstinacy. We _knew_ it was foolish all the +time.” + +I stood affixing the adhesive stamp to my telegram. + +“Only the other morning,” he went on to me, “I was cutting French eggs. +Selling at a loss to do it. He’d marked down with a great staring +ticket to ninepence a dozen—I saw it as I went past. Here’s my answer!” +He indicated a ticket. “‘Eightpence a dozen—same as sold elsewhere for +ninepence.’ A whole penny down, bang off! Just a touch above cost—if +that—and even then———” He leant over the counter to say impressively, +“_Not the same eggs!_” + +“Now, what people in their senses would do things like that?” said Mr. +Wiggins. + +I sent my telegram—the proprietor dispatched it for me, and while he +did so I fell exchanging experiences with Mr. Wiggins. He knew no more +than I did then the nature of the change that had come over things. He +had been alarmed by the green flashes, he said, so much so that after +watching for a time from behind his bedroom window blind, he had got up +and hastily dressed and made his family get up also, so that they might +be ready for the end. He made them put on their Sunday clothes. They +all went out into the garden together, their minds divided between +admiration at the gloriousness of the spectacle and a great and growing +awe. They were Dissenters, and very religious people out of business +hours, and it seemed to them in those last magnificent moments that, +after all, science must be wrong and the fanatics right. With the green +vapors came conviction, and they prepared to meet their God. . . . + +This man, you must understand, was a common-looking man, in his +shirt-sleeves and with an apron about his paunch, and he told his story +in an Anglian accent that sounded mean and clipped to my Staffordshire +ears; he told his story without a thought of pride, and as it were +incidentally, and yet he gave me a vision of something heroic. + +These people did not run hither and thither as many people did. These +four simple, common people stood beyond their back door in their garden +pathway between the gooseberry bushes, with the terrors of their God +and His Judgments closing in upon them, swiftly and wonderfully—and +there they began to sing. There they stood, father and mother and two +daughters, chanting out stoutly, but no doubt a little flatly after the +manner of their kind— + +“In Zion’s Hope abiding, +My soul in Triumph sings—” + + +until one by one they fell, and lay still. + +The postmaster had heard them in the gathering darkness, “In Zion’s +Hope abiding.” . . . + +It was the most extraordinary thing in the world to hear this flushed +and happy-eyed man telling that story of his recent death. It did not +seem at all possible to have happened in the last twelve hours. It was +minute and remote, these people who went singing through the darkling +to their God. It was like a scene shown to me, very small and very +distinctly painted, in a locket. + +But that effect was not confined to this particular thing. A vast +number of things that had happened before the coming of the comet had +undergone the same transfiguring reduction. Other people, too, I have +learnt since, had the same illusion, a sense of enlargement. It seems +to me even now that the little dark creature who had stormed across +England in pursuit of Nettie and her lover must have been about an inch +high, that all that previous life of ours had been an ill-lit +marionette show, acted in the twilight. . . . + +§ 5 + + +The figure of my mother comes always into my conception of the Change. + +I remember how one day she confessed herself. + +She had been very sleepless that night, she said, and took the reports +of the falling stars for shooting; there had been rioting in Clayton +and all through Swathinglea all day, and so she got out of bed to look. +She had a dim sense that I was in all such troubles. + +But she was not looking when the Change came. + +“When I saw the stars a-raining down, dear,” she said, “and thought of +you out in it, I thought there’d be no harm in saying a prayer for you, +dear? I thought you wouldn’t mind that.” + +And so I got another of my pictures—the green vapors come and go, and +there by her patched coverlet that dear old woman kneels and droops, +still clasping her poor gnarled hands in the attitude of prayer—prayer +to IT—for me! + +Through the meagre curtains and blinds of the flawed refracting window +I see the stars above the chimneys fade, the pale light of dawn creeps +into the sky, and her candle flares and dies. . . . + +That also went with me through the stillness—that silent kneeling +figure, that frozen prayer to God to shield me, silent in a silent +world, rushing through the emptiness of space. . . . + +§ 6 + + +With the dawn that awakening went about the earth. I have told how it +came to me, and how I walked in wonder through the transfigured +cornfields of Shaphambury. It came to every one. Near me, and for the +time, clear forgotten by me, Verrall and Nettie woke—woke near one +another, each heard before all other sounds the other’s voice amidst +the stillness, and the light. And the scattered people who had run to +and fro, and fallen on the beach of Bungalow village, awoke; the +sleeping villagers of Menton started, and sat up in that unwonted +freshness and newness; the contorted figures in the garden, with the +hymn still upon their lips, stirred amidst the flowers, and touched +each other timidly, and thought of Paradise. My mother found herself +crouched against the bed, and rose—rose with a glad invincible +conviction of accepted prayer. . . . + +Already, when it came to us, the soldiers, crowded between the lines of +dusty poplars along the road to Allarmont, were chatting and sharing +coffee with the French riflemen, who had hailed them from their +carefully hidden pits among the vineyards up the slopes of Beauville. A +certain perplexity had come to these marksmen, who had dropped asleep +tensely ready for the rocket that should wake the whirr and rattle of +their magazines. At the sight and sound of the stir and human confusion +in the roadway below, it had come to each man individually that he +could not shoot. One conscript, at least, has told his story of his +awakening, and how curious he thought the rifle there beside him in his +pit, how he took it on his knees to examine. Then, as his memory of its +purpose grew clearer, he dropped the thing, and stood up with a kind of +joyful horror at the crime escaped, to look more closely at the men he +was to have assassinated. “_Brave types_,” he thought, they looked for +such a fate. The summoning rocket never flew. Below, the men did not +fall into ranks again, but sat by the roadside, or stood in groups +talking, discussing with a novel incredulity the ostensible causes of +the war. “The Emperor!” said they; and “Oh, nonsense! We’re civilized +men. Get some one else for this job! . . . Where’s the coffee?” + +The officers held their own horses, and talked to the men frankly, +regardless of discipline. Some Frenchmen out of the rifle-pits came +sauntering down the hill. Others stood doubtfully, rifles still in +hand. Curious faces scanned these latter. Little arguments sprang as: +“Shoot at us! Nonsense! They’re respectable French citizens.” There is +a picture of it all, very bright and detailed in the morning light, in +the battle gallery amidst the ruins at old Nancy, and one sees the +old-world uniform of the “soldier,” the odd caps and belts and boots, +the ammunition-belt, the water-bottle, the sort of tourist’s pack the +men carried, a queer elaborate equipment. The soldiers had awakened one +by one, first one and then another. I wonder sometimes whether, +perhaps, if the two armies had come awake in an instant, the battle, by +mere habit and inertia, might not have begun. But the men who waked +first, sat up, looked about them in astonishment, had time to think a +little. . . . + +§ 7 + + +Everywhere there was laughter, everywhere tears. + +Men and women in the common life, finding themselves suddenly lit and +exalted, capable of doing what had hitherto been impossible, incapable +of doing what had hitherto been irresistible, happy, hopeful, +unselfishly energetic, rejected altogether the supposition that this +was merely a change in the blood and material texture of life. They +denied the bodies God had given them, as once the Upper Nile savages +struck out their canine teeth, because these made them like the beasts. +They declared that this was the coming of a spirit, and nothing else +would satisfy their need for explanations. And in a sense the Spirit +came. The Great Revival sprang directly from the Change—the last, the +deepest, widest, and most enduring of all the vast inundations of +religious emotion that go by that name. + +But indeed it differed essentially from its innumerable predecessors. +The former revivals were a phase of fever, this was the first movement +of health, it was altogether quieter, more intellectual, more private, +more religious than any of those others. In the old time, and more +especially in the Protestant countries where the things of religion +were outspoken, and the absence of confession and well-trained priests +made religious states of emotion explosive and contagious, revivalism +upon various scales was a normal phase in the religious life, revivals +were always going on—now a little disturbance of consciences in a +village, now an evening of emotion in a Mission Room, now a great storm +that swept a continent, and now an organized effort that came to town +with bands and banners and handbills and motor-cars for the saving of +souls. Never at any time did I take part in nor was I attracted by any +of these movements. My nature, although passionate, was too critical +(or sceptical if you like, for it amounts to the same thing) and shy to +be drawn into these whirls; but on several occasions Parload and I sat, +scoffing, but nevertheless disturbed, in the back seats of revivalist +meetings. + +I saw enough of them to understand their nature, and I am not surprised +to learn now that before the comet came, all about the world, even +among savages, even among cannibals, these same, or at any rate closely +similar, periodic upheavals went on. The world was stifling; it was in +a fever, and these phenomena were neither more nor less than the +instinctive struggle of the organism against the ebb of its powers, the +clogging of its veins, the limitation of its life. Invariably these +revivals followed periods of sordid and restricted living. Men obeyed +their base immediate motives until the world grew unendurably bitter. +Some disappointment, some thwarting, lit up for them—darkly indeed, but +yet enough for indistinct vision—the crowded squalor, the dark +inclosure of life. A sudden disgust with the insensate smallness of the +old-world way of living, a realization of sin, a sense of the +unworthiness of all individual things, a desire for something +comprehensive, sustaining, something greater, for wider communions and +less habitual things, filled them. Their souls, which were shaped for +wider issues, cried out suddenly amidst the petty interests, the narrow +prohibitions, of life, “Not this! not this!” A great passion to escape +from the jealous prison of themselves, an inarticulate, stammering, +weeping passion shook them. . . . + +I have seen——— I remember how once in Clayton Calvinistic Methodist +chapel I saw—his spotty fat face strangely distorted under the +flickering gas-flares—old Pallet the ironmonger repent. He went to the +form of repentance, a bench reserved for such exhibitions, and +slobbered out his sorrow and disgust for some sexual indelicacy—he was +a widower—and I can see now how his loose fat body quivered and swayed +with his grief. He poured it out to five hundred people, from whom in +common times he hid his every thought and purpose. And it is a fact, it +shows where reality lay, that we two youngsters laughed not at all at +that blubbering grotesque, we did not even think the distant shadow of +a smile. We two sat grave and intent—perhaps wondering. + +Only afterward and with an effort did we scoff. . . . + +Those old-time revivals were, I say, the convulsive movements of a body +that suffocates. They are the clearest manifestations from before the +Change of a sense in all men that things were not right. But they were +too often but momentary illuminations. Their force spent itself in +inco-ordinated shouting, gesticulations, tears. They were but flashes +of outlook. Disgust of the narrow life, of all baseness, took shape in +narrowness and baseness. The quickened soul ended the night a +hypocrite; prophets disputed for precedence; seductions, it is +altogether indisputable, were frequent among penitents! and Ananias +went home converted and returned with a falsified gift. And it was +almost universal that the converted should be impatient and immoderate, +scornful of reason and a choice of expedients, opposed to balance, +skill, and knowledge. Incontinently full of grace, like thin old +wine-skins overfilled, they felt they must burst if once they came into +contact with hard fact and sane direction. + +So the former revivals spent themselves, but the Great Revival did not +spend itself, but grew to be, for the majority of Christendom at least, +the permanent expression of the Change. For many it has taken the shape +of an outright declaration that this was the Second Advent—it is not +for me to discuss the validity of that suggestion, for nearly all it +has amounted to an enduring broadening of all the issues of life. . . . + +§ 8 + + +One irrelevant memory comes back to me, irrelevant, and yet by some +subtle trick of quality it summarizes the Change for me. It is the +memory of a woman’s very beautiful face, a woman with a flushed face +and tear-bright eyes who went by me without speaking, rapt in some +secret purpose. I passed her when in the afternoon of the first day, +struck by a sudden remorse, I went down to Menton to send a telegram to +my mother telling her all was well with me. Whither this woman went I +do not know, nor whence she came; I never saw her again, and only her +face, glowing with that new and luminous resolve, stands out for me. . +. . + +But that expression was the world’s. + + + + +CHAPTER THE THIRD +THE CABINET COUNCIL + + +§ 1 + +And what a strange unprecedented thing was that cabinet council at +which I was present, the council that was held two days later in +Melmount’s bungalow, and which convened the conference to frame the +constitution of the World State. I was there because it was convenient +for me to stay with Melmount. I had nowhere to go particularly, and +there was no one at his bungalow, to which his broken ankle confined +him, but a secretary and a valet to help him to begin his share of the +enormous labors that evidently lay before the rulers of the world. I +wrote shorthand, and as there was not even a phonograph available, I +went in so soon as his ankle had been dressed, and sat at his desk to +write at his dictation. It is characteristic of the odd slackness that +went with the spasmodic violence of the old epoch, that the secretary +could not use shorthand and that there was no telephone whatever in the +place. Every message had to be taken to the village post-office in that +grocer’s shop at Menton, half a mile away. . . . So I sat in the back +of Melmount’s room, his desk had been thrust aside, and made such +memoranda as were needed. At that time his room seemed to me the most +beautifully furnished in the world, and I could identify now the vivid +cheerfulness of the chintz of the sofa on which the great statesman lay +just in front of me, the fine rich paper, the red sealing-wax, the +silver equipage of the desk I used. I know now that my presence in that +room was a strange and remarkable thing, the open door, even the coming +and going of Parker the secretary, innovations. In the old days a +cabinet council was a secret conclave, secrecy and furtiveness were in +the texture of all public life. In the old days everybody was always +keeping something back from somebody, being wary and cunning, +prevaricating, misleading—for the most part for no reason at all. +Almost unnoticed, that secrecy had dropped out of life. + +I close my eyes and see those men again, hear their deliberating +voices. First I see them a little diffusely in the cold explicitness of +daylight, and then concentrated and drawn together amidst the shadow +and mystery about shaded lamps. Integral to this and very clear is the +memory of biscuit crumbs and a drop of spilt water, that at first stood +shining upon and then sank into the green table-cloth. . . . + +I remember particularly the figure of Lord Adisham. He came to the +bungalow a day before the others, because he was Melmount’s personal +friend. Let me describe this statesman to you, this one of the fifteen +men who made the last war. He was the youngest member of the +Government, and an altogether pleasant and sunny man of forty. He had a +clear profile to his clean gray face, a smiling eye, a friendly, +careful voice upon his thin, clean-shaven lips, an easy disabusing +manner. He had the perfect quality of a man who had fallen easily into +a place prepared for him. He had the temperament of what we used to +call a philosopher—an indifferent, that is to say. The Change had +caught him at his week-end recreation, fly-fishing; and, indeed, he +said, I remember, that he recovered to find himself with his head +within a yard of the water’s brim. In times of crisis Lord Adisham +invariably went fly-fishing at the week-end to keep his mind in tone, +and when there was no crisis then there was nothing he liked so much to +do as fly-fishing, and so, of course, as there was nothing to prevent +it, he fished. He came resolved, among other things, to give up +fly-fishing altogether. I was present when he came to Melmount, and +heard him say as much; and by a more naive route it was evident that he +had arrived at the same scheme of intention as my master. I left them +to talk, but afterward I came back to take down their long telegrams to +their coming colleagues. He was, no doubt, as profoundly affected as +Melmount by the Change, but his tricks of civility and irony and +acceptable humor had survived the Change, and he expressed his altered +attitude, his expanded emotions, in a quaint modification of the +old-time man-of-the-world style, with excessive moderation, with a +trained horror of the enthusiasm that swayed him. + +These fifteen men who ruled the British Empire were curiously unlike +anything I had expected, and I watched them intently whenever my +services were not in request. They made a peculiar class at that time, +these English politicians and statesmen, a class that has now +completely passed away. In some respects they were unlike the statesmen +of any other region of the world, and I do not find that any really +adequate account remains of them. . . . Perhaps you are a reader of the +old books. If so, you will find them rendered with a note of hostile +exaggeration by Dickens in “Bleak House,” with a mingling of gross +flattery and keen ridicule by Disraeli, who ruled among them +accidentally by misunderstanding them and pleasing the court, and all +their assumptions are set forth, portentously, perhaps, but truthfully, +so far as people of the “permanent official” class saw them, in the +novels of Mrs. Humphry Ward. All these books are still in this world +and at the disposal of the curious, and in addition the philosopher +Bagehot and the picturesque historian Macaulay give something of their +method of thinking, the novelist Thackeray skirts the seamy side of +their social life, and there are some good passages of irony, personal +descriptions, and reminiscence to be found in the “Twentieth Century +Garner” from the pens of such writers, for example, as Sidney Low. But +a picture of them as a whole is wanting. Then they were too near and +too great; now, very rapidly, they have become incomprehensible. + +We common people of the old time based our conception of our statesmen +almost entirely on the caricatures that formed the most powerful weapon +in political controversy. Like almost every main feature of the old +condition of things these caricatures were an unanticipated +development, they were a sort of parasitic outgrowth from, which had +finally altogether replaced, the thin and vague aspirations of the +original democratic ideals. They presented not only the personalities +who led our public life, but the most sacred structural conceptions of +that life, in ludicrous, vulgar, and dishonorable aspects that in the +end came near to destroying entirely all grave and honorable emotion or +motive toward the State. The state of Britain was represented nearly +always by a red-faced, purse-proud farmer with an enormous belly, that +fine dream of freedom, the United States, by a cunning, lean-faced +rascal in striped trousers and a blue coat. The chief ministers of +state were pickpockets, washerwomen, clowns, whales, asses, elephants, +and what not, and issues that affected the welfare of millions of men +were dressed and judged like a rally in some idiotic pantomime. A +tragic war in South Africa, that wrecked many thousand homes, +impoverished two whole lands, and brought death and disablement to +fifty thousand men, was presented as a quite comical quarrel between a +violent queer being named Chamberlain, with an eyeglass, an orchid, and +a short temper, and “old Kroojer,” an obstinate and very cunning old +man in a shocking bad hat. The conflict was carried through in a mood +sometimes of brutish irritability and sometimes of lax slovenliness, +the merry peculator plied his trade congenially in that asinine +squabble, and behind these fooleries and masked by them, marched +Fate—until at last the clowning of the booth opened and revealed—hunger +and suffering, brands burning and swords and shame. . . . These men had +come to fame and power in that atmosphere, and to me that day there was +the oddest suggestion in them of actors who have suddenly laid aside +grotesque and foolish parts; the paint was washed from their faces, the +posing put aside. + +Even when the presentation was not frankly grotesque and degrading it +was entirely misleading. When I read of Laycock, for example, there +arises a picture of a large, active, if a little wrong-headed, +intelligence in a compact heroic body, emitting that “Goliath” speech +of his that did so much to precipitate hostilities, it tallies not at +all with the stammering, high-pitched, slightly bald, and very +conscience-stricken personage I saw, nor with Melmount’s contemptuous +first description of him. I doubt if the world at large will ever get a +proper vision of those men as they were before the Change. Each year +they pass more and more incredibly beyond our intellectual sympathy. +Our estrangement cannot, indeed, rob them of their portion in the past, +but it will rob them of any effect of reality. The whole of their +history becomes more and more foreign, more and more like some queer +barbaric drama played in a forgotten tongue. There they strut through +their weird metamorphoses of caricature, those premiers and presidents, +their height preposterously exaggerated by political buskins, their +faces covered by great resonant inhuman masks, their voices couched in +the foolish idiom of public utterance, disguised beyond any semblance +to sane humanity, roaring and squeaking through the public press. There +it stands, this incomprehensible faded show, a thing left on one side, +and now still and deserted by any interest, its many emptinesses as +inexplicable now as the cruelties of medieval Venice, the theology of +old Byzantium. And they ruled and influenced the lives of nearly a +quarter of mankind, these politicians, their clownish conflicts swayed +the world, made mirth perhaps, made excitement, and permitted—infinite +misery. + +I saw these men quickened indeed by the Change, but still wearing the +queer clothing of the old time, the manners and conventions of the old +time; if they had disengaged themselves from the outlook of the old +time they still had to refer back to it constantly as a common +starting-point. My refreshed intelligence was equal to that, so that I +think I did indeed see them. There was Gorrell-Browning, the Chancellor +of the Duchy; I remember him as a big round-faced man, the essential +vanity and foolishness of whose expression, whose habit of voluminous +platitudinous speech, triumphed absurdly once or twice over the roused +spirit within. He struggled with it, he burlesqued himself, and +laughed. Suddenly he said simply, intensely—it was a moment for every +one of clean, clear pain, “I have been a vain and self-indulgent and +presumptuous old man. I am of little use here. I have given myself to +politics and intrigues, and life is gone from me.” Then for a long time +he sat still. There was Carton, the Lord Chancellor, a white-faced man +with understanding, he had a heavy, shaven face that might have stood +among the busts of the Caesars, a slow, elaborating voice, with +self-indulgent, slightly oblique, and triumphant lips, and a momentary, +voluntary, humorous twinkle. “We have to forgive,” he said. “We have to +forgive—even ourselves.” + +These two were at the top corner of the table, so that I saw their +faces well. Madgett, the Home Secretary, a smaller man with wrinkled +eyebrows and a frozen smile on his thin wry mouth, came next to Carton; +he contributed little to the discussion save intelligent comments, and +when the electric lights above glowed out, the shadows deepened queerly +in his eye-sockets and gave him the quizzical expression of an ironical +goblin. Next him was that great peer, the Earl of Richover, whose +self-indulgent indolence had accepted the _rôle_ of a twentieth-century +British Roman patrician of culture, who had divided his time almost +equally between his jockeys, politics, and the composition of literary +studies in the key of his _rôle_. “We have done nothing worth doing,” +he said. “As for me, I have cut a figure!” He reflected—no doubt on his +ample patrician years, on the fine great houses that had been his +setting, the teeming race-courses that had roared his name, the +enthusiastic meetings he had fed with fine hopes, the futile Olympian +beginnings. . . . “I have been a fool,” he said compactly. They heard +him in a sympathetic and respectful silence. + +Gurker, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, was partially occulted, so far +as I was concerned, by the back of Lord Adisham. Ever and again Gurker +protruded into the discussion, swaying forward, a deep throaty voice, a +big nose, a coarse mouth with a drooping everted lower lip, eyes +peering amidst folds and wrinkles. He made his confession for his race. +“We Jews,” he said, “have gone through the system of this world, +creating nothing, consolidating many things, destroying much. Our +racial self-conceit has been monstrous. We seem to have used our ample +coarse intellectuality for no other purpose than to develop and master +and maintain the convention of property, to turn life into a sort of +mercantile chess and spend our winnings grossly. . . . We have had no +sense of service to mankind. Beauty which is godhead—we made it a +possession.” + +These men and these sayings particularly remain in my memory. Perhaps, +indeed, I wrote them down at the time, but that I do not now remember. +How Sir Digby Privet, Revel, Markheimer, and the others sat I do not +now recall; they came in as voices, interruptions, imperfectly assigned +comments. . . . + +One got a queer impression that except perhaps for Gurker or Revel +these men had not particularly wanted the power they held; had desired +to do nothing very much in the positions they had secured. They had +found themselves in the cabinet, and until this moment of illumination +they had not been ashamed; but they had made no ungentlemanly fuss +about the matter. Eight of that fifteen came from the same school, had +gone through an entirely parallel education; some Greek linguistics, +some elementary mathematics, some emasculated “science,” a little +history, a little reading in the silent or timidly orthodox English +literature of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, +all eight had imbibed the same dull gentlemanly tradition of behavior; +essentially boyish, unimaginative—with neither keen swords nor art in +it, a tradition apt to slobber into sentiment at a crisis and make a +great virtue of a simple duty rather clumsily done. None of these eight +had made any real experiments with life, they had lived in blinkers, +they had been passed from nurse to governess, from governess to +preparatory school, from Eton to Oxford, from Oxford to the +politico-social routine. Even their vices and lapses had been according +to certain conceptions of good form. They had all gone to the races +surreptitiously from Eton, had all cut up to town from Oxford to see +life—music-hall life—had all come to heel again. Now suddenly they +discovered their limitations. . . . + +“What are we to do?” asked Melmount. “We have awakened; this empire in +our hands. . . .” I know this will seem the most fabulous of all the +things I have to tell of the old order, but, indeed, I saw it with my +eyes, I heard it with my ears. It is a fact that this group of men who +constituted the Government of one-fifth of the habitable land of the +earth, who ruled over a million of armed men, who had such navies as +mankind had never seen before, whose empire of nations, tongues, +peoples still dazzles in these greater days, had no common idea +whatever of what they meant to do with the world. They had been a +Government for three long years, and before the Change came to them it +had never even occurred to them that it was necessary to have a common +idea. There was no common idea at all. That great empire was no more +than a thing adrift, an aimless thing that ate and drank and slept and +bore arms, and was inordinately proud of itself because it had chanced +to happen. It had no plan, no intention; it meant nothing at all. And +the other great empires adrift, perilously adrift like marine mines, +were in the self-same case. Absurd as a British cabinet council must +seem to you now, it was no whit more absurd than the controlling +ganglion, autocratic council, president’s committee, or what not, of +each of its blind rivals. . . . + +§ 2 + + +I remember as one thing that struck me very forcibly at the time, the +absence of any discussion, any difference of opinion, about the broad +principles of our present state. These men had lived hitherto in a +system of conventions and acquired motives, loyalty to a party, loyalty +to various secret agreements and understandings, loyalty to the Crown; +they had all been capable of the keenest attention to precedence, all +capable of the most complete suppression of subversive doubts and +inquiries, all had their religious emotions under perfect control. They +had seemed protected by invisible but impenetrable barriers from all +the heady and destructive speculations, the socialistic, republican, +and communistic theories that one may still trace through the +literature of the last days of the comet. But now it was as if the very +moment of the awakening those barriers and defences had vanished, as if +the green vapors had washed through their minds and dissolved and swept +away a hundred once rigid boundaries and obstacles. They had admitted +and assimilated at once all that was good in the ill-dressed +propagandas that had clamored so vehemently and vainly at the doors of +their minds in the former days. It was exactly like the awakening from +an absurd and limiting dream. They had come out together naturally and +inevitably upon the broad daylight platform of obvious and reasonable +agreement upon which we and all the order of our world now stand. + +Let me try to give the chief things that had vanished from their minds. +There was, first, the ancient system of “ownership” that made such an +extraordinary tangle of our administration of the land upon which we +lived. In the old time no one believed in that as either just or +ideally convenient, but every one accepted it. The community which +lived upon the land was supposed to have waived its necessary +connection with the land, except in certain limited instances of +highway and common. All the rest of the land was cut up in the maddest +way into patches and oblongs and triangles of various sizes between a +hundred square miles and a few acres, and placed under the nearly +absolute government of a series of administrators called landowners. +They owned the land almost as a man now owns his hat; they bought it +and sold it, and cut it up like cheese or ham; they were free to ruin +it, or leave it waste, or erect upon it horrible and devastating +eyesores. If the community needed a road or a tramway, if it wanted a +town or a village in any position, nay, even if it wanted to go to and +fro, it had to do so by exorbitant treaties with each of the monarchs +whose territory was involved. No man could find foothold on the face of +the earth until he had paid toll and homage to one of them. They had +practically no relations and no duties to the nominal, municipal, or +national Government amidst whose larger areas their own dominions lay. +. . . This sounds, I know, like a lunatic’s dream, but mankind was that +lunatic; and not only in the old countries of Europe and Asia, where +this system had arisen out of the rational delegation of local control +to territorial magnates, who had in the universal baseness of those +times at last altogether evaded and escaped their duties, did it +obtain, but the “new countries,” as we called them then—the United +States of America, the Cape Colony, Australia, and New Zealand—spent +much of the nineteenth century in the frantic giving away of land for +ever to any casual person who would take it. Was there coal, was there +petroleum or gold, was there rich soil or harborage, or the site for a +fine city, these obsessed and witless Governments cried out for +scramblers, and a stream of shabby, tricky, and violent adventurers set +out to found a new section of the landed aristocracy of the world. +After a brief century of hope and pride, the great republic of the +United States of America, the hope as it was deemed of mankind, became +for the most part a drifting crowd of landless men; landlords and +railway lords, food lords (for the land is food) and mineral lords +ruled its life, gave it Universities as one gave coins to a mendicant, +and spent its resources upon such vain, tawdry, and foolish luxuries as +the world had never seen before. Here was a thing none of these +statesmen before the Change would have regarded as anything but the +natural order of the world, which not one of them now regarded as +anything but the mad and vanished illusion of a period of dementia. + +And as it was with the question of the land, so was it also with a +hundred other systems and institutions and complicated and disingenuous +factors in the life of man. They spoke of trade, and I realized for the +first time there could be buying and selling that was no loss to any +man; they spoke of industrial organization, and one saw it under +captains who sought no base advantages. The haze of old associations, +of personal entanglements and habitual recognitions had been dispelled +from every stage and process of the social training of men. Things long +hidden appeared discovered with an amazing clearness and nakedness. +These men who had awakened, laughed dissolvent laughs, and the old +muddle of schools and colleges, books and traditions, the old fumbling, +half-figurative, half-formal teaching of the Churches, the complex of +weakening and confusing suggestions and hints, amidst which the pride +and honor of adolescence doubted and stumbled and fell, became nothing +but a curious and pleasantly faded memory. “There must be a common +training of the young,” said Richover; “a frank initiation. We have not +so much educated them as hidden things from them, and set traps. And it +might have been so easy—it can all be done so easily.” + +That hangs in my memory as the refrain of that council, “It can all be +done so easily,” but when they said it then, it came to my ears with a +quality of enormous refreshment and power. It can all be done so +easily, given frankness, given courage. Time was when these platitudes +had the freshness and wonder of a gospel. + +In this enlarged outlook the war with the Germans—that mythical, +heroic, armed female, Germany, had vanished from men’s imaginations—was +a mere exhausted episode. A truce had already been arranged by +Melmount, and these ministers, after some marveling reminiscences, set +aside the matter of peace as a mere question of particular +arrangements. . . . The whole scheme of the world’s government had +become fluid and provisional in their minds, in small details as in +great, the unanalyzable tangle of wards and vestries, districts and +municipalities, counties, states, boards, and nations, the interlacing, +overlapping, and conflicting authorities, the felt of little interests +and claims, in which an innumerable and insatiable multitude of +lawyers, agents, managers, bosses, organizers lived like fleas in a +dirty old coat, the web of the conflicts, jealousies, heated patchings +up and jobbings apart, of the old order—they flung it all on one side. + +“What are the new needs?” said Melmount. “This muddle is too rotten to +handle. We’re beginning again. Well, let us begin afresh.” + +§ 3 + + +“Let us begin afresh!” This piece of obvious common sense seemed then +to me instinct with courage, the noblest of words. My heart went out to +him as he spoke. It was, indeed, that day as vague as it was valiant; +we did not at all see the forms of what we were thus beginning. All +that we saw was the clear inevitableness that the old order should end. +. . . + +And then in a little space of time mankind in halting but effectual +brotherhood was moving out to make its world anew. Those early years, +those first and second decades of the new epoch, were in their daily +detail a time of rejoicing toil; one saw chiefly one’s own share in +that, and little of the whole. It is only now that I look back at it +all from these ripe years, from this high tower, that I see the +dramatic sequence of its changes, see the cruel old confusions of the +ancient time become clarified, simplified, and dissolve and vanish +away. Where is that old world now? Where is London, that somber city of +smoke and drifting darkness, full of the deep roar and haunting music +of disorder, with its oily, shining, mud-rimmed, barge-crowded river, +its black pinnacles and blackened dome, its sad wildernesses of +smut-grayed houses, its myriads of draggled prostitutes, its millions +of hurrying clerks? The very leaves upon its trees were foul with +greasy black defilements. Where is lime-white Paris, with its green and +disciplined foliage, its hard unflinching tastefulness, its smartly +organized viciousness, and the myriads of workers, noisily shod, +streaming over the bridges in the gray cold light of dawn. Where is New +York, the high city of clangor and infuriated energy, wind swept and +competition swept, its huge buildings jostling one another and +straining ever upward for a place in the sky, the fallen pitilessly +overshadowed. Where are its lurking corners of heavy and costly luxury, +the shameful bludgeoning bribing vice of its ill ruled underways, and +all the gaunt extravagant ugliness of its strenuous life? And where now +is Philadelphia, with its innumerable small and isolated homes, and +Chicago with its interminable blood-stained stockyards, its polyglot +underworld of furious discontent. + +All these vast cities have given way and gone, even as my native +Potteries and the Black Country have gone, and the lives that were +caught, crippled, starved, and maimed amidst their labyrinths, their +forgotten and neglected maladjustments, and their vast, inhuman, +ill-conceived industrial machinery have escaped—to life. Those cities +of growth and accident are altogether gone, never a chimney smokes +about our world to-day, and the sound of the weeping of children who +toiled and hungered, the dull despair of overburdened women, the noise +of brute quarrels in alleys, all shameful pleasures and all the ugly +grossness of wealthy pride have gone with them, with the utter change +in our lives. As I look back into the past I see a vast exultant dust +of house-breaking and removal rise up into the clear air that followed +the hour of the green vapors, I live again the Year of Tents, the Year +of Scaffolding, and like the triumph of a new theme in a piece of +music—the great cities of our new days arise. Come Caerlyon and +Armedon, the twin cities of lower England, with the winding summer city +of the Thames between, and I see the gaunt dirt of old Edinburgh die to +rise again white and tall beneath the shadow of her ancient hill; and +Dublin too, reshaped, returning enriched, fair, spacious, the city of +rich laughter and warm hearts, gleaming gaily in a shaft of sunlight +through the soft warm rain. I see the great cities America has planned +and made; the Golden City, with ever-ripening fruit along its broad +warm ways, and the bell-glad City of a Thousand Spires. I see again as +I have seen, the city of theaters and meeting-places, the City of the +Sunlight Bight, and the new city that is still called Utah; and +dominated by its observatory dome and the plain and dignified lines of +the university façade upon the cliff, Martenābar the great white winter +city of the upland snows. And the lesser places, too, the townships, +the quiet resting-places, villages half forest with a brawl of streams +down their streets, villages laced with avenues of cedar, villages of +garden, of roses and wonderful flowers and the perpetual humming of +bees. And through all the world go our children, our sons the old world +would have made into servile clerks and shopmen, plough drudges and +servants; our daughters who were erst anaemic drudges, prostitutes, +sluts, anxiety-racked mothers or sere, repining failures; they go about +this world glad and brave, learning, living, doing, happy and +rejoicing, brave and free. I think of them wandering in the clear quiet +of the ruins of Rome, among the tombs of Egypt or the temples of +Athens, of their coming to Mainington and its strange happiness, to +Orba and the wonder of its white and slender tower. . . . But who can +tell of the fullness and pleasure of life, who can number all our new +cities in the world?—cities made by the loving hands of men for living +men, cities men weep to enter, so fair they are, so gracious and so +kind. . . . + +Some vision surely of these things must have been vouchsafed me as I +sat there behind Melmount’s couch, but now my knowledge of accomplished +things has mingled with and effaced my expectations. Something indeed I +must have foreseen—or else why was my heart so glad? + + + + +BOOK THE THIRD +THE NEW WORLD + + + + +CHAPTER THE FIRST +LOVE AFTER THE CHANGE + + +§ 1 + +So far I have said nothing of Nettie. I have departed widely from my +individual story. I have tried to give you the effect of the change in +relation to the general framework of human life, its effect of swift, +magnificent dawn, of an overpowering letting in and inundation of +light, and the spirit of living. In my memory all my life before the +Change has the quality of a dark passage, with the dimmest side gleams +of beauty that come and go. The rest is dull pain and darkness. Then +suddenly the walls, the bitter confines, are smitten and vanish, and I +walk, blinded, perplexed, and yet rejoicing, in this sweet, beautiful +world, in its fair incessant variety, its satisfaction, its +opportunities, exultant in this glorious gift of life. Had I the power +of music I would make a world-wide _motif_ swell and amplify, gather to +itself this theme and that, and rise at last to sheer ecstasy of +triumph and rejoicing. It should be all sound, all pride, all the hope +of outsetting in the morning brightness, all the glee of unexpected +happenings, all the gladness of painful effort suddenly come to its +reward; it should be like blossoms new opened and the happy play of +children, like tearful, happy mothers holding their first-born, like +cities building to the sound of music, and great ships, all hung with +flags and wine bespattered, gliding down through cheering multitudes to +their first meeting with the sea. Through it all should march Hope, +confident Hope, radiant and invincible, until at last it would be the +triumph march of Hope the conqueror, coming with trumpetings and +banners through the wide-flung gates of the world. + +And then out of that luminous haze of gladness comes Nettie, +transfigured. + +So she came again to me—amazing, a thing incredibly forgotten. + +She comes back, and Verrall is in her company. She comes back into my +memories now, just as she came back then, rather quaintly at first—at +first not seen very clearly, a little distorted by intervening things, +seen with a doubt, as I saw her through the slightly discolored panes +of crinkled glass in the window of the Menton post-office and grocer’s +shop. It was on the second day after the Change, and I had been sending +telegrams for Melmount, who was making arrangements for his departure +for Downing Street. I saw the two of them at first as small, flawed +figures. The glass made them seem curved, and it enhanced and altered +their gestures and paces. I felt it became me to say “Peace” to them, +and I went out, to the jangling of the door-bell. At the sight of me +they stopped short, and Verrall cried with the note of one who has +sought, “Here he is!” And Nettie cried, “Willie!” + +I went toward them, and all the perspectives of my reconstructed +universe altered as I did so. + +I seemed to see these two for the first time; how fine they were, how +graceful and human. It was as though I had never really looked at them +before, and, indeed, always before I had beheld them through a mist of +selfish passion. They had shared the universal darkness and dwarfing of +the former time; they shared the universal exaltation of the new. Now +suddenly Nettie, and the love of Nettie, a great passion for Nettie, +lived again in me. This change which had enlarged men’s hearts had made +no end to love. Indeed, it had enormously enlarged and glorified love. +She stepped into the center of that dream of world reconstruction that +filled my mind and took possession of it all. A little wisp of hair had +blown across her cheek, her lips fell apart in that sweet smile of +hers; her eyes were full of wonder, of a welcoming scrutiny, of an +infinitely courageous friendliness. + +I took her outstretched hand, and wonder overwhelmed me. “I wanted to +kill you,” I said simply, trying to grasp that idea. It seemed now like +stabbing the stars, or murdering the sunlight. + +“Afterward we looked for you,” said Verrall; “and we could not find +you. . . . We heard another shot.” + +I turned my eyes to him, and Nettie’s hand fell from me. It was then I +thought of how they had fallen together, and what it must have been to +have awakened in that dawn with Nettie by one’s side. I had a vision of +them as I had glimpsed them last amidst the thickening vapors, close +together, hand in hand. The green hawks of the Change spread their +darkling wings above their last stumbling paces. So they fell. And +awoke—lovers together in a morning of Paradise. Who can tell how bright +the sunshine was to them, how fair the flowers, how sweet the singing +of the birds? . . . + +This was the thought of my heart. But my lips were saying, “When I +awoke I threw my pistol away.” Sheer blankness kept my thoughts silent +for a little while; I said empty things. “I am very glad I did not kill +you—that you are here, so fair and well. . . .” + +“I am going away back to Clayton on the day after to-morrow,” I said, +breaking away to explanations. “I have been writing shorthand here for +Melmount, but that is almost over now. . . .” + +Neither of them said a word, and though all facts had suddenly ceased +to matter anything, I went on informatively, “He is to be taken to +Downing Street where there is a proper staff, so that there will be no +need of me. . . . Of course, you’re a little perplexed at my being with +Melmount. You see I met him—by accident—directly I recovered. I found +him with a broken ankle—in that lane. . . . I am to go now to the Four +Towns to help prepare a report. So that I am glad to see you both +again”—I found a catch in my voice—“to say good-bye to you, and wish +you well.” + +This was after the quality of what had come into my mind when first I +saw them through the grocer’s window, but it was not what I felt and +thought as I said it. I went on saying it because otherwise there would +have been a gap. It had come to me that it was going to be hard to part +from Nettie. My words sounded with an effect of unreality. I stopped, +and we stood for a moment in silence looking at one another. + +It was I, I think, who was discovering most. I was realizing for the +first time how little the Change had altered in my essential nature. I +had forgotten this business of love for a time in a world of wonder. +That was all. Nothing was lost from my nature, nothing had gone, only +the power of thought and restraint had been wonderfully increased and +new interests had been forced upon me. The Green Vapors had passed, our +minds were swept and garnished, but we were ourselves still, though +living in a new and finer air. My affinities were unchanged; Nettie’s +personal charm for me was only quickened by the enhancement of my +perceptions. In her presence, meeting her eyes, instantly my desire, no +longer frantic but sane, was awake again. + +It was just like going to Checkshill in the old time, after writing +about socialism. . . . + +I relinquished her hand. It was absurd to part in these terms. + +So we all felt it. We hung awkwardly over our sense of that. It was +Verrall, I think, who shaped the thought for me, and said that +to-morrow then we must meet and say good-bye, and so turned our +encounter into a transitory making of arrangements. We settled we would +come to the inn at Menton, all three of us, and take our midday meal +together. . . . + +Yes, it was clear that was all we had to say now. . . . + +We parted a little awkwardly. I went on down the village street, not +looking back, surprised at myself, and infinitely perplexed. It was as +if I had discovered something overlooked that disarranged all my plans, +something entirely disconcerting. For the first time I went back +preoccupied and without eagerness to Melmount’s work. I wanted to go on +thinking about Nettie; my mind had suddenly become voluminously +productive concerning her and Verrall. + +§ 2 + + +The talk we three had together in the dawn of the new time is very +strongly impressed upon my memory. There was something fresh and simple +about it, something young and flushed and exalted. We took up, we +handled with a certain naive timidity, the most difficult questions the +Change had raised for men to solve. I recall we made little of them. +All the old scheme of human life had dissolved and passed away, the +narrow competitiveness, the greed and base aggression, the jealous +aloofness of soul from soul. Where had it left us? That was what we and +a thousand million others were discussing. . . . + +It chances that this last meeting with Nettie is inseparably +associated—I don’t know why—with the landlady of the Menton inn. + +The Menton inn was one of the rare pleasant corners of the old order; +it was an inn of an unusual prosperity, much frequented by visitors +from Shaphambury, and given to the serving of lunches and teas. It had +a broad mossy bowling-green, and round about it were creeper-covered +arbors amidst beds of snap-dragon, and hollyhock, and blue delphinium, +and many such tall familiar summer flowers. These stood out against a +background of laurels and holly, and above these again rose the gables +of the inn and its signpost—a white-horsed George slaying the +dragon—against copper beeches under the sky. + +While I waited for Nettie and Verrall in this agreeable trysting place, +I talked to the landlady—a broad-shouldered, smiling, freckled +woman—about the morning of the Change. That motherly, abundant, +red-haired figure of health was buoyantly sure that everything in the +world was now to be changed for the better. That confidence, and +something in her voice, made me love her as I talked to her. “Now we’re +awake,” she said, “all sorts of things will be put right that hadn’t +any sense in them. Why? Oh! I’m sure of it.” + +Her kind blue eyes met mine in an infinitude of friendliness. Her lips +in her pauses shaped in a pretty faint smile. + +Old tradition was strong in us; all English inns in those days charged +the unexpected, and I asked what our lunch was to cost. + +“Pay or not,” she said, “and what you like. It’s holiday these days. I +suppose we’ll still have paying and charging, however we manage it, but +it won’t be the worry it has been—that I feel sure. It’s the part I +never had no fancy for. Many a time I peeped through the bushes +worrying to think what was just and right to me and mine, and what +would send ‘em away satisfied. It isn’t the money I care for. There’ll +be mighty changes, be sure of that; but here I’ll stay, and make people +happy—them that go by on the roads. It’s a pleasant place here when +people are merry; it’s only when they’re jealous, or mean, or tired, or +eat up beyond any stomach’s digesting, or when they got the drink in +‘em that Satan comes into this garden. Many’s the happy face I’ve seen +here, and many that come again like friends, but nothing to equal +what’s going to be, now things are being set right.” + +She smiled, that bounteous woman, with the joy of life and hope. “You +shall have an omelet,” she said, “you and your friends; such an +omelet—like they’ll have ‘em in heaven! I feel there’s cooking in me +these days like I’ve never cooked before. I’m rejoiced to have it to +do. . . .” + +It was just then that Nettie and Verrall appeared under a rustic +archway of crimson roses that led out from the inn. Nettie wore white +and a sun-hat, and Verrall was a figure of gray. “Here are my friends,” +I said; but for all the magic of the Change, something passed athwart +the sunlight in my soul like the passing of the shadow of a cloud. “A +pretty couple,” said the landlady, as they crossed the velvet green +toward us. . . . + +They were indeed a pretty couple, but that did not greatly gladden me. +No—I winced a little at that. + +§ 3 + + +This old newspaper, this first reissue of the _New Paper_, desiccated +last relic of a vanished age, is like the little piece of +identification the superstitious of the old days—those queer +religionists who brought a certain black-clad Mrs. Piper to the help of +Christ—used to put into the hand of a clairvoyant. At the crisp touch +of it I look across a gulf of fifty years and see again the three of us +sitting about that table in the arbor, and I smell again the smell of +the sweet-briar that filled the air about us, and hear in our long +pauses the abundant murmuring of bees among the heliotrope of the +borders. + +It is the dawn of the new time, but we bear, all three of us, the marks +and liveries of the old. + +I see myself, a dark, ill-dressed youth, with the bruise Lord Redcar +gave me still blue and yellow beneath my jaw; and young Verrall sits +cornerwise to me, better grown, better dressed, fair and quiet, two +years my senior indeed, but looking no older than I because of his +light complexion; and opposite me is Nettie, with dark eyes upon my +face, graver and more beautiful than I had ever seen her in the former +time. Her dress is still that white one she had worn when I came upon +her in the park, and still about her dainty neck she wears her string +of pearls and that little coin of gold. She is so much the same, she is +so changed; a girl then and now a woman—and all my agony and all the +marvel of the Change between! Over the end of the green table about +which we sit, a spotless cloth is spread, it bears a pleasant lunch +spread out with a simple equipage. Behind me is the liberal sunshine of +the green and various garden. I see it all. Again I sit there, eating +awkwardly, this paper lies upon the table and Verrall talks of the +Change. + +“You can’t imagine,” he says in his sure, fine accents, “how much the +Change has destroyed of me. I still don’t feel awake. Men of my sort +are so tremendously _made;_ I never suspected it before.” + +He leans over the table toward me with an evident desire to make +himself perfectly understood. “I find myself like some creature that is +taken out of its shell—soft and new. I was trained to dress in a +certain way, to behave in a certain way, to think in a certain way; I +see now it’s all wrong and narrow—most of it anyhow—a system of class +shibboleths. We were decent to each other in order to be a gang to the +rest of the world. Gentlemen indeed! But it’s perplexing———” + +I can hear his voice saying that now, and see the lift of his eyebrows +and his pleasant smile. + +He paused. He had wanted to say that, but it was not the thing we had +to say. + +I leant forward a little and took hold of my glass very tightly. “You +two,” I said, “will marry?” + +They looked at one another. + +Nettie spoke very softly. “I did not mean to marry when I came away,” +she said. + +“I know,” I answered. I looked up with a sense of effort and met +Verrall’s eyes. + +He answered me. “I think we two have joined our lives. . . . But the +thing that took us was a sort of madness.” + +I nodded. “All passion,” I said, “is madness.” Then I fell into a +doubting of those words. + +“Why did we do these things?” he said, turning to her suddenly. + +Her hands were clasped under her chin, her eyes downcast. + +“We _had_ to,” she said, with her old trick of inadequate expression. + +Then she seemed to open out suddenly. + +“Willie,” she cried with a sudden directness, with her eyes appealing +to me, “I didn’t mean to treat you badly—indeed I didn’t. I kept +thinking of you—and of father and mother, all the time. Only it didn’t +seem to move me. It didn’t move me not one bit from the way I had +chosen.” + +“Chosen!” I said. + +“Something seemed to have hold of me,” she admitted. “It’s all so +unaccountable. . . .” + +She gave a little gesture of despair. + +Verrall’s fingers played on the cloth for a space. Then he turned his +face to me again. + +“Something said ‘Take her.’ Everything. It was a raging desire—for her. +I don’t know. Everything contributed to that—or counted for nothing. +You———” + +“Go on,” said I. + +“When I knew of you———” + +I looked at Nettie. “You never told him about me?” I said, feeling, as +it were, a sting out of the old time. + +Verrall answered for her. “No. But things dropped; I saw you that +night, my instincts were all awake. I knew it was you.” + +“You triumphed over me? . . . If I could I would have triumphed over +you,” I said. “But go on!” + +“Everything conspired to make it the finest thing in life. It had an +air of generous recklessness. It meant mischief, it might mean failure +in that life of politics and affairs, for which I was trained, which it +was my honor to follow. That made it all the finer. It meant ruin or +misery for Nettie. That made it all the finer. No sane or decent man +would have approved of what we did. That made it more splendid than +ever. I had all the advantages of position and used them basely. That +mattered not at all.” + +“Yes,” I said; “it is true. And the same dark wave that lifted you, +swept me on to follow. With that revolver—and blubbering with hate. And +the word to you, Nettie, what was it? ‘Give?’ Hurl yourself down the +steep?” + +Nettie’s hands fell upon the table. “I can’t tell what it was,” she +said, speaking bare-hearted straight to me. “Girls aren’t trained as +men are trained to look into their minds. I can’t see it yet. All sorts +of mean little motives were there—over and above the ‘must.’ Mean +motives. I kept thinking of his clothes.” She smiled—a flash of +brightness at Verrall. “I kept thinking of being like a lady and +sitting in an hotel—with men like butlers waiting. It’s the dreadful +truth, Willie. Things as mean as that! Things meaner than that!” + +I can see her now pleading with me, speaking with a frankness as bright +and amazing as the dawn of the first great morning. + +“It wasn’t all mean,” I said slowly, after a pause. + +“No!” They spoke together. + +“But a woman chooses more than a man does,” Nettie added. “I saw it all +in little bright pictures. Do you know—that jacket—there’s something——— +You won’t mind my telling you? But you won’t now!” + +I nodded, “No.” + +She spoke as if she spoke to my soul, very quietly and very earnestly, +seeking to give the truth. “Something cottony in that cloth of yours,” +she said. “I know there’s something horrible in being swung round by +things like that, but they did swing me round. In the old time—to have +confessed that! And I hated Clayton—and the grime of it. That kitchen! +Your mother’s dreadful kitchen! And besides, Willie, I was afraid of +you. I didn’t understand you and I did him. It’s different now—but then +I knew what he meant. And there was his voice.” + +“Yes,” I said to Verrall, making these discoveries quietly, “yes, +Verrall, you have a good voice. Queer I never thought of that before!” + +We sat silently for a time before our vivisected passions. + +“Gods!” I cried, “and there was our poor little top-hamper of +intelligence on all these waves of instinct and wordless desire, these +foaming things of touch and sight and feeling, like—like a coop of hens +washed overboard and clucking amidst the seas.” + +Verrall laughed approval of the image I had struck out. “A week ago,” +he said, trying it further, “we were clinging to our chicken coops and +going with the heave and pour. That was true enough a week ago. But +to-day———?” + +“To-day,” I said, “the wind has fallen. The world storm is over. And +each chicken coop has changed by a miracle to a vessel that makes head +against the sea.” + +§ 4 + + +“What are we to do?” asked Verrall. + +Nettie drew a deep crimson carnation from the bowl before us, and began +very neatly and deliberately to turn down the sepals of its calyx and +remove, one by one, its petals. I remember that went on through all our +talk. She put those ragged crimson shreds in a long row and adjusted +them and readjusted them. When at last I was alone with these vestiges +the pattern was still incomplete. + +“Well,” said I, “the matter seems fairly simple. You two”—I swallowed +it—“love one another.” + +I paused. They answered me by silence, by a thoughtful silence. + +“You belong to each other. I have thought it over and looked at it from +many points of view. I happened to want—impossible things. . . . I +behaved badly. I had no right to pursue you.” I turned to Verrall. “You +hold yourself bound to her?” + +He nodded assent. + +“No social influence, no fading out of all this generous clearness in +the air—for that might happen—will change you back . . . ?” + +He answered me with honest eyes meeting mine, “No, Leadford, no!” + +“I did not know you,” I said. “I thought of you as something very +different from this.” + +“I was,” he interpolated. + +“Now,” I said, “it is all changed.” + +Then I halted—for my thread had slipped away from me. + +“As for me,” I went on, and glanced at Nettie’s downcast face, and then +sat forward with my eyes upon the flowers between us, “since I am +swayed and shall be swayed by an affection for Nettie, since that +affection is rich with the seeds of desire, since to see her yours and +wholly yours is not to be endured by me—I must turn about and go from +you; you must avoid me and I you. . . . We must divide the world like +Jacob and Esau. . . . I must direct myself with all the will I have to +other things. After all—this passion is not life! It is perhaps for +brutes and savages, but for men. No! We must part and I must forget. +What else is there but that?” + +I did not look up, I sat very tense with the red petals printing an +indelible memory in my brain, but I felt the assent of Verrall’s pose. +There were some moments of silence. Then Nettie spoke. “But———” she +said, and ceased. + +I waited for a little while. I sighed and leant back in my chair. “It +is perfectly simple,” I smiled, “now that we have cool heads.” + +“But IS it simple?” asked Nettie, and slashed my discourse out of +being. + +I looked up and found her with her eyes on Verrall. “You see,” she +said, “I like Willie. It’s hard to say what one feels—but I don’t want +him to go away like that.” + +“But then,” objected Verrall, “how———?” + +“No,” said Nettie, and swept her half-arranged carnation petals back +into a heap of confusion. She began to arrange them very quickly into +one long straight line. + +“It’s so difficult——— I’ve never before in all my life tried to get to +the bottom of my mind. For one thing, I’ve not treated Willie properly. +He—he counted on me. I know he did. I was his hope. I was a promised +delight—something, something to crown life—better than anything he had +ever had. And a secret pride. . . . He lived upon me. I knew—when we +two began to meet together, you and I——— It was a sort of treachery to +him———” + +“Treachery!” I said. “You were only feeling your way through all these +perplexities.” + +“You thought it treachery.” + +“I don’t now.” + +“I did. In a sense I think so still. For you had need of me.” + +I made a slight protest at this doctrine and fell thinking. + +“And even when he was trying to kill us,” she said to her lover, “I +felt for him down in the bottom of my mind. I can understand all the +horrible things, the humiliation—the humiliation! he went through.” + +“Yes,” I said, “but I don’t see———” + +“_I_ don’t see. I’m only trying to see. But you know, Willie, you are a +part of my life. I have known you longer than I have known Edward. I +know you better. Indeed I know you with all my heart. You think all +your talk was thrown away upon me, that I never understood that side of +you, or your ambitions or anything. I did. More than I thought at the +time. Now—now it is all clear to me. What I had to understand in you +was something deeper than Edward brought me. I have it now. . . . You +are a part of my life, and I don’t want to cut all that off from me now +I have comprehended it, and throw it away.” + +“But you love Verrall.” + +“Love is such a queer thing! . . . Is there one love? I mean, only one +love?” She turned to Verrall. “I know I love you. I can speak out about +that now. Before this morning I couldn’t have done. It’s just as though +my mind had got out of a scented prison. But what is it, this love for +you? It’s a mass of fancies—things about you—ways you look, ways you +have. It’s the senses—and the senses of certain beauties. Flattery too, +things you said, hopes and deceptions for myself. And all that had +rolled up together and taken to itself the wild help of those deep +emotions that slumbered in my body; it seemed everything. But it +wasn’t. How can I describe it? It was like having a very bright lamp +with a thick shade—everything else in the room was hidden. But you take +the shade off and there they are—it is the same light—still there! Only +it lights every one!” + +Her voice ceased. For awhile no one spoke, and Nettie, with a quick +movement, swept the petals into the shape of a pyramid. + +Figures of speech always distract me, and it ran through my mind like +some puzzling refrain, “It is still the same light. . . .” + +“No woman believes these things,” she asserted abruptly. + +“What things?” + +“No woman ever has believed them.” + +“You have to choose a man,” said Verrall, apprehending her before I +did. + +“We’re brought up to that. We’re told—it’s in books, in stories, in the +way people look, in the way they behave—one day there will come a man. +He will be everything, no one else will be anything. Leave everything +else; live in him.” + +“And a man, too, is taught that of some woman,” said Verrall. + +“Only men don’t believe it! They have more obstinate minds. . . . Men +have never behaved as though they believed it. One need not be old to +know that. By nature they don’t believe it. But a woman believes +nothing by nature. She goes into a mold hiding her secret thoughts +almost from herself.” + +“She used to,” I said. + +“You haven’t,” said Verrall, “anyhow.” + +“I’ve come out. It’s this comet. And Willie. And because I never really +believed in the mold at all—even if I thought I did. It’s stupid to +send Willie off—shamed, cast out, never to see him again—when I like +him as much as I do. It is cruel, it is wicked and ugly, to prance over +him as if he was a defeated enemy, and pretend I’m going to be happy +just the same. There’s no sense in a rule of life that prescribes that. +It’s selfish. It’s brutish. It’s like something that has no sense. +I———” there was a sob in her voice: “Willie! I _won’t_.” + +I sat lowering, I mused with my eyes upon her quick fingers. + +“It IS brutish,” I said at last, with a careful unemotional +deliberation. “Nevertheless—it is in the nature of things. . . . No! . +. . You see, after all, we are still half brutes, Nettie. And men, as +you say, are more obstinate than women. The comet hasn’t altered that; +it’s only made it clearer. We have come into being through a tumult of +blind forces. . . . I come back to what I said just now; we have found +our poor reasonable minds, our wills to live well, ourselves, adrift on +a wash of instincts, passions, instinctive prejudices, half animal +stupidities. . . . Here we are like people clinging to something—like +people awakening—upon a raft.” + +“We come back at last to my question,” said Verrall, softly; “what are +we to do?” + +“Part,” I said. “You see, Nettie, these bodies of ours are not the +bodies of angels. They are the same bodies——— I have read somewhere +that in our bodies you can find evidence of the lowliest ancestry; that +about our inward ears—I think it is—and about our teeth, there remains +still something of the fish, that there are bones that recall +little—what is it?—marsupial forebears—and a hundred traces of the ape. +Even your beautiful body, Nettie, carries this taint. No! Hear me out.” +I leant forward earnestly. “Our emotions, our passions, our desires, +the substance of them, like the substance of our bodies, is an animal, +a competing thing, as well as a desiring thing. You speak to us now a +mind to minds—one can do that when one has had exercise and when one +has eaten, when one is not doing anything—but when one turns to live, +one turns again to matter.” + +“Yes,” said Nettie, slowly following me, “but you control it.” + +“Only through a measure of obedience. There is no magic in the +business—to conquer matter, we must divide the enemy, and take matter +as an ally. Nowadays it is indeed true, by faith a man can remove +mountains; he can say to a mountain, Be thou removed and be thou cast +into the sea; but he does it because he helps and trusts his brother +men, because he has the wit and patience and courage to win over to his +side iron, steel, obedience, dynamite, cranes, trucks, the money of +other people. . . . To conquer my desire for you, I must not +perpetually thwart it by your presence; I must go away so that I may +not see you, I must take up other interests, thrust myself into +struggles and discussions———” + +“And forget?” said Nettie. + +“Not forget,” I said; “but anyhow—cease to brood upon you.” + +She hung on that for some moments. + +“No,” she said, demolished her last pattern and looked up at Verrall as +he stirred. + +Verrall leant forward on the table, elbows upon it, and the fingers of +his two hands intertwined. + +“You know,” he said, “I haven’t thought much of these things. At school +and the university, one doesn’t. . . . It was part of the system to +prevent it. They’ll alter all that, no doubt. We seem”—he thought—“to +be skating about over questions that one came to at last in Greek—with +variorum readings—in Plato, but which it never occurred to any one to +translate out of a dead language into living realities. . . .” He +halted and answered some unspoken question from his own mind with, “No. +I think with Leadford, Nettie, that, as he put it, it is in the nature +of things for men to be exclusive. . . . Minds are free things and go +about the world, but only one man can possess a woman. You must dismiss +rivals. We are made for the struggle for existence—we _are_ the +struggle for existence; the things that live are the struggle for +existence incarnate—and that works out that the men struggle for their +mates; for each woman one prevails. The others go away.” + +“Like animals,” said Nettie. + +“Yes. . . .” + +“There are many things in life,” I said, “but that is the rough +universal truth.” + +“But,” said Nettie, “you don’t struggle. That has been altered because +men have minds.” + +“You choose,” I said. + +“If I don’t choose to choose?” + +“You have chosen.” + +She gave a little impatient “Oh! Why are women always the slaves of +sex? Is this great age of Reason and Light that has come to alter +nothing of that? And men too! I think it is all—stupid. I do not +believe this is the right solution of the thing, or anything but the +bad habits of the time that was. . . Instinct! You don’t let your +instincts rule you in a lot of other things. Here am I between you. +Here is Edward. I—love him because he is gay and pleasant, and +because—because I _like_ him! Here is Willie—a part of me—my first +secret, my oldest friend! Why must I not have both? Am I not a mind +that you must think of me as nothing but a woman? imagine me always as +a thing to struggle for?” She paused; then she made her distressful +proposition to me. “Let us three keep together,” she said. “Let us not +part. To part is hate, Willie. Why should we not anyhow keep friends? +Meet and talk?” + +“Talk?” I said. “About this sort of thing?” + +I looked across at Verrall and met his eyes, and we studied one +another. It was the clean, straight scrutiny of honest antagonism. +“No,” I decided. “Between us, nothing of that sort can be.” + +“Ever?” said Nettie. + +“Never,” I said, convinced. + +I made an effort within myself. “We cannot tamper with the law and +customs of these things,” I said; “these passions are too close to +one’s essential self. Better surgery than a lingering disease! From +Nettie my love—asks all. A man’s love is not devotion—it is a demand, a +challenge. And besides”—and here I forced my theme—“I have given myself +now to a new mistress—and it is I, Nettie, who am unfaithful. Behind +you and above you rises the coming City of the World, and I am in that +building. Dear heart! you are only happiness—and that———Indeed that +calls! If it is only that my life blood shall christen the foundation +stones—I could almost hope that should be my part, Nettie—I will join +myself in that.” I threw all the conviction I could into these words. . +. . “No conflict of passion.” I added a little lamely, “must distract +me.” + +There was a pause. + +“Then we must part,” said Nettie, with the eyes of a woman one strikes +in the face. + +I nodded assent. . . . + +There was a little pause, and then I stood up. We stood up, all three. +We parted almost sullenly, with no more memorable words, and I was left +presently in the arbor alone. + +I do not think I watched them go. I only remember myself left there +somehow—horribly empty and alone. I sat down again and fell into a deep +shapeless musing. + +§ 5 + + +Suddenly I looked up. Nettie had come back and stood looking down at +me. + +“Since we talked I have been thinking,” she said. “Edward has let me +come to you alone. And I feel perhaps I can talk better to you alone.” + +I said nothing and that embarrassed her. + +“I don’t think we ought to part,” she said. + +“No—I don’t think we ought to part,” she repeated. + +“One lives,” she said, “in different ways. I wonder if you will +understand what I am saying, Willie. It is hard to say what I feel. But +I want it said. If we are to part for ever I want it said—very plainly. +Always before I have had the woman’s instinct and the woman’s training +which makes one hide. But——— Edward is not all of me. Think of what I +am saying—Edward is not all of me. . . . I wish I could tell you better +how I see it. I am not all of myself. You, at any rate, are a part of +me and I cannot bear to leave you. And I cannot see why I should leave +you. There is a sort of blood link between us, Willie. We grew +together. We are in one another’s bones. I understand you. Now indeed I +understand. In some way I have come to an understanding at a stride. +Indeed I understand you and your dream. I want to help you. +Edward—Edward has no dreams. . . . It is dreadful to me, Willie, to +think we two are to part.” + +“But we have settled that—part we must.” + +“But _why?_” + +“I love you.” + +“Well, and why should I hide it Willie?—I love you. . . .” Our eyes +met. She flushed, she went on resolutely: “You are stupid. The whole +thing is stupid. I love you both.” + +I said, “You do not understand what you say. No!” + +“You mean that I must go.” + +“Yes, yes. Go!” + +For a moment we looked at one another, mute, as though deep down in the +unfathomable darkness below the surface and present reality of things +dumb meanings strove to be. She made to speak and desisted. + +“But _must_ I go?” she said at last, with quivering lips, and the tears +in her eyes were stars. Then she began, “Willie———” + +“Go!” I interrupted her. . . . “Yes.” + +Then again we were still. + +She stood there, a tearful figure of pity, longing for me, pitying me. +Something of that wider love, that will carry our descendants at last +out of all the limits, the hard, clear obligations of our personal +life, moved us, like the first breath of a coming wind out of heaven +that stirs and passes away. I had an impulse to take her hand and kiss +it, and then a trembling came to me, and I knew that if I touched her, +my strength would all pass from me. . . . + +And so, standing at a distance one from the other, we parted, and +Nettie went, reluctant and looking back, with the man she had chosen, +to the lot she had chosen, out of my life—like the sunlight out of my +life. . . . + +Then, you know, I suppose I folded up this newspaper and put it in my +pocket. But my memory of that meeting ends with the face of Nettie +turning to go. + +§ 6 + + +I remember all that very distinctly to this day. I could almost vouch +for the words I have put into our several mouths. Then comes a blank. I +have a dim memory of being back in the house near the Links and the +bustle of Melmount’s departure, of finding Parker’s energy distasteful, +and of going away down the road with a strong desire to say good-bye to +Melmount alone. + +Perhaps I was already doubting my decision to part for ever from +Nettie, for I think I had it in mind to tell him all that had been said +and done. . . . + +I don’t think I had a word with him or anything but a hurried hand +clasp. I am not sure. It has gone out of my mind. But I have a very +clear and certain memory of my phase of bleak desolation as I watched +his car recede and climb and vanish over Mapleborough Hill, and that I +got there my first full and definite intimation that, after all, this +great Change and my new wide aims in life, were not to mean +indiscriminate happiness for me. I had a sense of protest, as against +extreme unfairness, as I saw him go. “It is too soon,” I said to +myself, “to leave me alone.” + +I felt I had sacrificed too much, that after I had said good-bye to the +hot immediate life of passion, to Nettie and desire, to physical and +personal rivalry, to all that was most intensely myself, it was wrong +to leave me alone and sore hearted, to go on at once with these steely +cold duties of the wider life. I felt new born, and naked, and at a +loss. + +“Work!” I said with an effort at the heroic, and turned about with a +sigh, and I was glad that the way I had to go would at least take me to +my mother. . . . + +But, curiously enough, I remember myself as being fairly cheerful in +the town of Birmingham that night, I recall an active and interested +mood. I spent the night in Birmingham because the train service on was +disarranged, and I could not get on. I went to listen to a band that +was playing its brassy old-world music in the public park, and I fell +into conversation with a man who said he had been a reporter upon one +of their minor local papers. He was full and keen upon all the plans of +reconstruction that were now shaping over the lives of humanity, and I +know that something of that noble dream came back to me with his words +and phrases. We walked up to a place called Bourneville by moonlight, +and talked of the new social groupings that must replace the old +isolated homes, and how the people would be housed. + +This Bourneville was germane to that matter. It had been an attempt on +the part of a private firm of manufacturers to improve the housing of +their workers. To our ideas to-day it would seem the feeblest of +benevolent efforts, but at the time it was extraordinary and famous, +and people came long journeys to see its trim cottages with baths sunk +under the kitchen floors (of all conceivable places), and other +brilliant inventions. No one seemed to see the danger to liberty in +that aggressive age, that might arise through making workpeople tenants +and debtors of their employer, though an Act called the Truck Act had +long ago intervened to prevent minor developments in the same +direction. . . . But I and my chance acquaintance seemed that night +always to have been aware of that possibility, and we had no doubt in +our minds of the public nature of the housing duty. Our interest lay +rather in the possibility of common nurseries and kitchens and public +rooms that should economize toil and give people space and freedom. + +It was very interesting, but still a little cheerless, and when I lay +in bed that night I thought of Nettie and the queer modifications of +preference she had made, and among other things and in a way, I prayed. +I prayed that night, let me confess it, to an image I had set up in my +heart, an image that still serves with me as a symbol for things +inconceivable, to a Master Artificer, the unseen captain of all who go +about the building of the world, the making of mankind. + +But before and after I prayed I imagined I was talking and reasoning +and meeting again with Nettie. . . . She never came into the temple of +that worshiping with me. + + + + +CHAPTER THE SECOND +MY MOTHER’S LAST DAYS + + +§ 1 + +Next day I came home to Clayton. + +The new strange brightness of the world was all the brighter there, for +the host of dark distressful memories, of darkened childhood, toilsome +youth, embittered adolescence that wove about the place for me. It +seemed to me that I saw morning there for the first time. No chimneys +smoked that day, no furnaces were burning, the people were busy with +other things. The clear strong sun, the sparkle in the dustless air, +made a strange gaiety in the narrow streets. I passed a number of +smiling people coming home from the public breakfasts that were given +in the Town Hall until better things could be arranged, and happened on +Parload among them. “You were right about that comet,” I sang out at +the sight of him; and he came toward me and clasped my hand. + +“What are people doing here?” said I. + +“They’re sending us food from outside,” he said, “and we’re going to +level all these slums—and shift into tents on to the moors;” and he +began to tell me of many things that were being arranged, the Midland +land committees had got to work with remarkable celerity and directness +of purpose, and the redistribution of population was already in its +broad outlines planned. He was working at an improvised college of +engineering. Until schemes of work were made out, almost every one was +going to school again to get as much technical training as they could +against the demands of the huge enterprise of reconstruction that was +now beginning. + +He walked with me to my door, and there I met old Pettigrew coming down +the steps. He looked dusty and tired, but his eye was brighter than it +used to be, and he carried in a rather unaccustomed manner, a workman’s +tool basket. + +“How’s the rheumatism, Mr. Pettigrew?” I asked. + +“Dietary,” said old Pettigrew, “can work wonders. . . .” He looked me +in the eye. “These houses,” he said, “will have to come down, I +suppose, and our notions of property must undergo very considerable +revision—in the light of reason; but meanwhile I’ve been doing +something to patch that disgraceful roof of mine! To think that I could +have dodged and evaded———” + +He raised a deprecatory hand, drew down the loose corners of his ample +mouth, and shook his old head. + +“The past is past, Mr. Pettigrew.” + +“Your poor dear mother! So good and honest a woman! So simple and kind +and forgiving! To think of it! My dear young man!”—he said it +manfully—“I’m ashamed.” + +“The whole world blushed at dawn the other day, Mr. Pettigrew,” I said, +“and did it very prettily. That’s over now. God knows, who is _not_ +ashamed of all that came before last Tuesday.” + +I held out a forgiving hand, naively forgetful that in this place I was +a thief, and he took it and went his way, shaking his head and +repeating he was ashamed, but I think a little comforted. + +The door opened and my poor old mother’s face, marvelously cleaned, +appeared. “Ah, Willie, boy! _You_. You!” + +I ran up the steps to her, for I feared she might fall. + +How she clung to me in the passage, the dear woman! . . . + +But first she shut the front door. The old habit of respect for my +unaccountable temper still swayed her. “Ah deary!” she said, “ah deary! +But you were sorely tried,” and kept her face close to my shoulder, +lest she should offend me by the sight of the tears that welled within +her. + +She made a sort of gulping noise and was quiet for a while, holding me +very tightly to her heart with her worn, long hands . . . + +She thanked me presently for my telegram, and I put my arm about her +and drew her into the living room. + +“It’s all well with me, mother dear,” I said, “and the dark times are +over—are done with for ever, mother.” + +Whereupon she had courage and gave way and sobbed aloud, none chiding +her. + +She had not let me know she could still weep for five grimy years. . . +. + +§ 2 + + +Dear heart! There remained for her but a very brief while in this world +that had been renewed. I did not know how short that time would be, but +the little I could do—perhaps after all it was not little to her—to +atone for the harshness of my days of wrath and rebellion, I did. I +took care to be constantly with her, for I perceived now her curious +need of me. It was not that we had ideas to exchange or pleasures to +share, but she liked to see me at table, to watch me working, to have +me go to and fro. There was no toil for her any more in the world, but +only such light services as are easy and pleasant for a worn and weary +old woman to do, and I think she was happy even at her end. + +She kept to her queer old eighteenth century version of religion, too, +without a change. She had worn this particular amulet so long it was a +part of her. Yet the Change was evident even in that persistence. I +said to her one day, “But do you still believe in that hell of flame, +dear mother? You—with your tender heart!” + +She vowed she did. + +Some theological intricacy made it necessary to her, but still——— + +She looked thoughtfully at a bank of primulas before her for a time, +and then laid her tremulous hand impressively on my arm. “You know, +Willie, dear,” she said, as though she was clearing up a childish +misunderstanding of mine, “I don’t think any one will _go_ there. I +never _did_ think that. . . .” + +§ 3 + + +That talk stands out in my memory because of that agreeable theological +decision of hers, but it was only one of a great number of talks. It +used to be pleasant in the afternoon, after the day’s work was done and +before one went on with the evening’s study—how odd it would have +seemed in the old time for a young man of the industrial class to be +doing post-graduate work in sociology, and how much a matter of course +it seems now!—to walk out into the gardens of Lowchester House, and +smoke a cigarette or so and let her talk ramblingly of the things that +interested her. . . . Physically the Great Change did not do so very +much to reinvigorate her—she had lived in that dismal underground +kitchen in Clayton too long for any material rejuvenescence—she glowed +out indeed as a dying spark among the ashes might glow under a draught +of fresh air—and assuredly it hastened her end. But those closing days +were very tranquil, full of an effortless contentment. With her, life +was like a rainy, windy day that clears only to show the sunset +afterglow. The light has passed. She acquired no new habits amid the +comforts of the new life, did no new things, but only found a happier +light upon the old. + +She lived with a number of other old ladies belonging to our commune in +the upper rooms of Lowchester House. Those upper apartments were simple +and ample, fine and well done in the Georgian style, and they had been +organized to give the maximum of comfort and conveniences and to +economize the need of skilled attendance. We had taken over the various +“great houses,” as they used to be called, to make communal +dining-rooms and so forth—their kitchens were conveniently large—and +pleasant places for the old people of over sixty whose time of ease had +come, and for suchlike public uses. We had done this not only with Lord +Redcar’s house, but also with Checkshill House—where old Mrs. Verrall +made a dignified and capable hostess,—and indeed with most of the fine +residences in the beautiful wide country between the Four Towns +district and the Welsh mountains. About these great houses there had +usually been good outbuildings, laundries, married servants’ quarters, +stabling, dairies, and the like, suitably masked by trees, we turned +these into homes, and to them we added first tents and wood chalets and +afterward quadrangular residential buildings. In order to be near my +mother I had two small rooms in the new collegiate buildings which our +commune was almost the first to possess, and they were very convenient +for the station of the high-speed electric railway that took me down to +our daily conferences and my secretarial and statistical work in +Clayton. + +Ours had been one of the first modern communes to get in order; we were +greatly helped by the energy of Lord Redcar, who had a fine feeling for +the picturesque associations of his ancestral home—the detour that took +our line through the beeches and bracken and bluebells of the West Wood +and saved the pleasant open wildness of the park was one of his +suggestions; and we had many reasons to be proud of our surroundings. +Nearly all the other communes that sprang up all over the pleasant +parkland round the industrial valley of the Four Towns, as the workers +moved out, came to us to study the architecture of the residential +squares and quadrangles with which we had replaced the back streets +between the great houses and the ecclesiastical residences about the +cathedral, and the way in which we had adapted all these buildings to +our new social needs. Some claimed to have improved on us. But they +could not emulate the rhododendron garden out beyond our shrubberies; +that was a thing altogether our own in our part of England, because of +its ripeness and of the rarity of good peat free from lime. + +These gardens had been planned under the third Lord Redcar, fifty years +ago and more; they abounded in rhododendra and azaleas, and were in +places so well sheltered and sunny that great magnolias flourished and +flowered. There were tall trees smothered in crimson and yellow +climbing roses, and an endless variety of flowering shrubs and fine +conifers, and such pampas grass as no other garden can show. And barred +by the broad shadows of these, were glades and broad spaces of emerald +turf, and here and there banks of pegged roses, and flower-beds, and +banks given over some to spring bulbs, and some to primroses and +primulas and polyanthuses. My mother loved these latter banks and the +little round staring eyes of their innumerable yellow, ruddy brown, and +purple corollas, more than anything else the gardens could show, and in +the spring of the Year of Scaffolding she would go with me day after +day to the seat that showed them in the greatest multitude. + +It gave her, I think, among other agreeable impressions, a sense of +gentle opulence. In the old time she had never known what it was to +have more than enough of anything agreeable in the world at all. + +We would sit and think, or talk—there was a curious effect of complete +understanding between us whether we talked or were still. + +“Heaven,” she said to me one day, “Heaven is a garden.” + +I was moved to tease her a little. “There’s jewels, you know, walls and +gates of jewels—and singing.” + +“For such as like them,” said my mother firmly, and thought for a +while. “There’ll be things for all of us, o’ course. But for me it +couldn’t be Heaven, dear, unless it was a garden—a nice sunny garden. . +. . And feeling such as we’re fond of, are close and handy by.” + +You of your happier generation cannot realize the wonderfulness of +those early days in the new epoch, the sense of security, the +extraordinary effects of contrast. In the morning, except in high +summer, I was up before dawn, and breakfasted upon the swift, smooth +train, and perhaps saw the sunrise as I rushed out of the little tunnel +that pierced Clayton Crest, and so to work like a man. Now that we had +got all the homes and schools and all the softness of life away from +our coal and iron ore and clay, now that a thousand obstructive +“rights” and timidities had been swept aside, we could let ourselves +go, we merged this enterprise with that, cut across this or that +anciently obstructive piece of private land, joined and separated, +effected gigantic consolidations and gigantic economies, and the +valley, no longer a pit of squalid human tragedies and meanly +conflicting industries, grew into a sort of beauty of its own, a savage +inhuman beauty of force and machinery and flames. One was a Titan in +that Etna. Then back one came at midday to bathe and change in the +train, and so to the leisurely gossiping lunch in the club dining-room +in Lowchester House, and the refreshment of these green and sunlit +afternoon tranquillities. + +Sometimes in her profounder moments my mother doubted whether all this +last phase of her life was not a dream. + +“A dream,” I used to say, “a dream indeed—but a dream that is one step +nearer awakening than that nightmare of the former days.” + +She found great comfort and assurance in my altered clothes—she liked +the new fashions of dress, she alleged. It was not simply altered +clothes. I did grow two inches, broaden some inches round my chest, and +increase in weight three stones before I was twenty-three. I wore a +soft brown cloth and she would caress my sleeve and admire it +greatly—she had the woman’s sense of texture very strong in her. + +Sometimes she would muse upon the past, rubbing together her poor rough +hands—they never got softened—one over the other. She told me much I +had not heard before about my father, and her own early life. It was +like finding flat and faded flowers in a book still faintly sweet, to +realize that once my mother had been loved with passion; that my remote +father had once shed hot tears of tenderness in her arms. And she would +sometimes even speak tentatively in those narrow, old-world phrases +that her lips could rob of all their bitter narrowness, of Nettie. + +“She wasn’t worthy of you, dear,” she would say abruptly, leaving me to +guess the person she intended. + +“No man is worthy of a woman’s love,” I answered. “No woman is worthy +of a man’s. I love her, dear mother, and that you cannot alter.” + +“There’s others,” she would muse. + +“Not for me,” I said. “No! I didn’t fire a shot that time; I burnt my +magazine. I can’t begin again, mother, not from the beginning.” + +She sighed and said no more then. + +At another time she said—I think her words were: “You’ll be lonely when +I’m gone dear.” + +“You’ll not think of going, then,” I said. + +“Eh, dear! but man and maid should come together.” + +I said nothing to that. + +“You brood overmuch on Nettie, dear. If I could see you married to some +sweet girl of a woman, some good, _kind_ girl———” + +“Dear mother, I’m married enough. Perhaps some day——— Who knows? I can +wait.” + +“But to have nothing to do with women!” + +“I have my friends. Don’t you trouble, mother. There’s plentiful work +for a man in this world though the heart of love is cast out from him. +Nettie was life and beauty for me—is—will be. Don’t think I’ve lost too +much, mother.” + +(Because in my heart I told myself the end had still to come.) + +And once she sprang a question on me suddenly that surprised me. + +“Where are they now?” she asked. + +“Who?” + +“Nettie and—him.” + +She had pierced to the marrow of my thoughts. “I don’t know,” I said +shortly. + +Her shriveled hand just fluttered into touch of mine. + +“It’s better so,” she said, as if pleading. “Indeed . . . it is better +so.” + +There was something in her quivering old voice that for a moment took +me back across an epoch, to the protests of the former time, to those +counsels of submission, those appeals not to offend It, that had always +stirred an angry spirit of rebellion within me. + +“That is the thing I doubt,” I said, and abruptly I felt I could talk +no more to her of Nettie. I got up and walked away from her, and came +back after a while, to speak of other things, with a bunch of daffodils +for her in my hand. + +But I did not always spend my afternoons with her. There were days when +my crushed hunger for Nettie rose again, and then I had to be alone; I +walked, or bicycled, and presently I found a new interest and relief in +learning to ride. For the horse was already very swiftly reaping the +benefit to the Change. Hardly anywhere was the inhumanity of horse +traction to be found after the first year of the new epoch, everywhere +lugging and dragging and straining was done by machines, and the horse +had become a beautiful instrument for the pleasure and carriage of +youth. I rode both in the saddle and, what is finer, naked and +barebacked. I found violent exercises were good for the states of +enormous melancholy that came upon me, and when at last horse riding +palled, I went and joined the aviators who practised soaring upon +aeroplanes beyond Horsemarden Hill. . . . But at least every alternate +day I spent with my mother, and altogether I think I gave her +two-thirds of my afternoons. + +§ 4 + + +When presently that illness, that fading weakness that made an +euthanasia for so many of the older people in the beginning of the new +time, took hold upon my mother, there came Anna Reeves to daughter +her—after our new custom. She chose to come. She was already known to +us a little from chance meetings and chance services she had done my +mother in the garden; she sought to give her help. She seemed then just +one of those plainly good girls the world at its worst has never failed +to produce, who were indeed in the dark old times the hidden antiseptic +of all our hustling, hating, faithless lives. They made their secret +voiceless worship, they did their steadfast, uninspired, unthanked, +unselfish work as helpful daughters, as nurses, as faithful servants, +as the humble providences of homes. She was almost exactly three years +older than I. At first I found no beauty in her, she was short but +rather sturdy and ruddy, with red-tinged hair, and fair hairy brows and +red-brown eyes. But her freckled hands I found, were full of apt help, +her voice carried good cheer. . . . + +At first she was no more than a blue-clad, white-aproned benevolence, +that moved in the shadows behind the bed on which my old mother lay and +sank restfully to death. She would come forward to anticipate some +little need, to proffer some simple comfort, and always then my mother +smiled on her. In a little while I discovered the beauty of that +helpful poise of her woman’s body, I discovered the grace of untiring +goodness, the sweetness of a tender pity, and the great riches of her +voice, of her few reassuring words and phrases. I noted and remembered +very clearly how once my mother’s lean old hand patted the firm +gold-flecked strength of hers, as it went by upon its duties with the +coverlet. + +“She is a good girl to me,” said my mother one day. “A good girl. Like +a daughter should be. . . . I never had a daughter—really.” She mused +peacefully for a space. “Your little sister died,” she said. + +I had never heard of that little sister. + +“November the tenth,” said my mother. “Twenty-nine months and three +days. . . . I cried. I cried. That was before you came, dear. So long +ago—and I can see it now. I was a young wife then, and your father was +very kind. But I can see its hands, its dear little quiet hands. . . . +Dear, they say that now—now they will not let the little children die.” + +“No, dear mother,” I said. “We shall do better now.” + +“The club doctor could not come. Your father went twice. There was some +one else, some one who paid. So your father went on into Swathinglea, +and that man wouldn’t come unless he had his fee. And your father had +changed his clothes to look more respectful and he hadn’t any money, +not even his tram fare home. It seemed cruel to be waiting there with +my baby thing in pain. . . . And I can’t help thinking perhaps we might +have saved her. . . . But it was like that with the poor always in the +bad old times—always. When the doctor came at last he was angry. ‘Why +wasn’t I called before?’ he said, and he took no pains. He was angry +because some one hadn’t explained. I begged him—but it was too late.” + +She said these things very quietly with drooping eyelids, like one who +describes a dream. “We are going to manage all these things better +now,” I said, feeling a strange resentment at this pitiful little story +her faded, matter-of-fact voice was telling me. + +“She talked,” my mother went on. “She talked for her age wonderfully. . +. . Hippopotamus.” + +“Eh?” I said. + +“Hippopotamus, dear—quite plainly one day, when her father was showing +her pictures. . . And her little prayers. ‘Now I lay me. . . . down to +sleep.’ . . . I made her little socks. Knitted they was, dear, and the +heel most difficult.” + +Her eyes were closed now. She spoke no longer to me but to herself. She +whispered other vague things, little sentences, ghosts of long dead +moments. . . . Her words grew less distinct. + +Presently she was asleep and I got up and went out of the room, but my +mind was queerly obsessed by the thought of that little life that had +been glad and hopeful only to pass so inexplicably out of hope again +into nonentity, this sister of whom I had never heard before. . . . + +And presently I was in a black rage at all the irrecoverable sorrows of +the past, of that great ocean of avoidable suffering of which this was +but one luminous and quivering red drop. I walked in the garden and the +garden was too small for me; I went out to wander on the moors. “The +past is past,” I cried, and all the while across the gulf of five and +twenty years I could hear my poor mother’s heart-wrung weeping for that +daughter baby who had suffered and died. Indeed that old spirit of +rebellion has not altogether died in me, for all the transformation of +the new time. . . . I quieted down at last to a thin and austere +comfort in thinking that the whole is not told to us, that it cannot +perhaps be told to such minds as ours; and anyhow, and what was far +more sustaining, that now we have strength and courage and this new +gift of wise love, whatever cruel and sad things marred the past, none +of these sorrowful things that made the very warp and woof of the old +life, need now go on happening. We could foresee, we could prevent and +save. “The past is past,” I said, between sighing and resolve, as I +came into view again on my homeward way of the hundred sunset-lit +windows of old Lowchester House. “Those sorrows are sorrows no more.” + +But I could not altogether cheat that common sadness of the new time, +that memory, and insoluble riddle of the countless lives that had +stumbled and failed in pain and darkness before our air grew clear. + + + + +CHAPTER THE THIRD +BELTANE AND NEW YEAR’S EVE + + +§ 1 + +In the end my mother died rather suddenly, and her death came as a +shock to me. Diagnosis was still very inadequate at that time. The +doctors were, of course, fully alive to the incredible defects of their +common training and were doing all they could to supply its +deficiencies, but they were still extraordinarily ignorant. Some +unintelligently observed factor of her illness came into play with her, +and she became feverish and sank and died very quickly. I do not know +what remedial measures were attempted. I hardly knew what was happening +until the whole thing was over. + +At that time my attention was much engaged by the stir of the great +Beltane festival that was held on May-day in the Year of Scaffolding. +It was the first of the ten great rubbish burnings that opened the new +age. Young people nowadays can scarcely hope to imagine the enormous +quantities of pure litter and useless accumulation with which we had to +deal; had we not set aside a special day and season, the whole world +would have been an incessant reek of small fires; and it was, I think, +a happy idea to revive this ancient festival of the May and November +burnings. It was inevitable that the old idea of purification should +revive with the name, it was felt to be a burning of other than +material encumbrances, innumerable quasi-spiritual things, deeds, +documents, debts, vindictive records, went up on those great flares. +People passed praying between the fires, and it was a fine symbol of +the new and wiser tolerance that had come to men, that those who still +found their comfort in the orthodox faiths came hither unpersuaded, to +pray that all hate might be burnt out of their professions. For even in +the fires of Baal, now that men have done with base hatred, one may +find the living God. + +Endless were the things we had to destroy in those great purgings. +First, there were nearly all the houses and buildings of the old time. +In the end we did not save in England one building in five thousand +that was standing when the comet came. Year by year, as we made our +homes afresh in accordance with the saner needs of our new social +families, we swept away more and more of those horrible structures, the +ancient residential houses, hastily built, without imagination, without +beauty, without common honesty, without even comfort or convenience, in +which the early twentieth century had sheltered until scarcely one +remained; we saved nothing but what was beautiful or interesting out of +all their gaunt and melancholy abundance. The actual houses, of course, +we could not drag to our fires, but we brought all their ill-fitting +deal doors, their dreadful window sashes, their servant-tormenting +staircases, their dank, dark cupboards, the verminous papers from their +scaly walls, their dust and dirt-sodden carpets, their ill-designed and +yet pretentious tables and chairs, sideboards and chests of drawers, +the old dirt-saturated books, their ornaments—their dirty, decayed, and +altogether painful ornaments—amidst which I remember there were +sometimes even _stuffed dead birds!_—we burnt them all. The +paint-plastered woodwork, with coat above coat of nasty paint, that in +particular blazed finely. I have already tried to give you an +impression of old-world furniture, of Parload’s bedroom, my mother’s +room, Mr. Gabbitas’s sitting-room, but, thank Heaven! there is nothing +in life now to convey the peculiar dinginess of it all. For one thing, +there is no more imperfect combustion of coal going on everywhere, and +no roadways like grassless open scars along the earth from which dust +pours out perpetually. We burnt and destroyed most of our private +buildings and all the woodwork, all our furniture, except a few score +thousand pieces of distinct and intentional beauty, from which our +present forms have developed, nearly all our hangings and carpets, and +also we destroyed almost every scrap of old-world clothing. Only a few +carefully disinfected types and vestiges of that remain now in our +museums. + +One writes now with a peculiar horror of the dress of the old world. +The men’s clothes were worn without any cleansing process at all, +except an occasional superficial brushing, for periods of a year or so; +they were made of dark obscurely mixed patterns to conceal the stage of +defilement they had reached, and they were of a felted and porous +texture admirably calculated to accumulate drifting matter. Many women +wore skirts of similar substances, and of so long and inconvenient a +form that they inevitably trailed among all the abomination of our +horse-frequented roads. It was our boast in England that the whole of +our population was booted—their feet were for the most part ugly enough +to need it,—but it becomes now inconceivable how they could have +imprisoned their feet in the amazing cases of leather and imitations of +leather they used. I have heard it said that a large part of the +physical decline that was apparent in our people during the closing +years of the nineteenth century, though no doubt due in part to the +miscellaneous badness of the food they ate, was in the main +attributable to the vileness of the common footwear. They shirked +open-air exercise altogether because their boots wore out ruinously and +pinched and hurt them if they took it. I have mentioned, I think, the +part my own boots played in the squalid drama of my adolescence. I had +a sense of unholy triumph over a fallen enemy when at last I found +myself steering truck after truck of cheap boots and shoes (unsold +stock from Swathinglea) to the run-off by the top of the Glanville +blast furnaces. + +“Plup!” they would drop into the cone when Beltane came, and the roar +of their burning would fill the air. Never a cold would come from the +saturation of their brown paper soles, never a corn from their foolish +shapes, never a nail in them get home at last in suffering flesh. . . . + +Most of our public buildings we destroyed and burnt as we reshaped our +plan of habitation, our theater sheds, our banks, and inconvenient +business warrens, our factories (these in the first year of all), and +all the “unmeaning repetition” of silly little sham Gothic churches and +meeting-houses, mean looking shells of stone and mortar without love, +invention, or any beauty at all in them, that men had thrust into the +face of their sweated God, even as they thrust cheap food into the +mouths of their sweated workers; all these we also swept away in the +course of that first decade. Then we had the whole of the superseded +steam-railway system to scrap and get rid of, stations, signals, +fences, rolling stock; a plant of ill-planned, smoke-distributing +nuisance apparatus, that would, under former conditions, have +maintained an offensive dwindling obstructive life for perhaps half a +century. Then also there was a great harvest of fences, notice boards, +hoardings, ugly sheds, all the corrugated iron in the world, and +everything that was smeared with tar, all our gas works and petroleum +stores, all our horse vehicles and vans and lorries had to be erased. . +. . But I have said enough now perhaps to give some idea of the bulk +and quality of our great bonfires, our burnings up, our meltings down, +our toil of sheer wreckage, over and above the constructive effort, in +those early years. + +But these were the coarse material bases of the Phœnix fires of the +world. These were but the outward and visible signs of the innumerable +claims, rights, adhesions, debts, bills, deeds, and charters that were +cast upon the fires; a vast accumulation of insignia and uniforms +neither curious enough nor beautiful enough to preserve, went to swell +the blaze, and all (saving a few truly glorious trophies and memories) +of our symbols, our apparatus and material of war. Then innumerable +triumphs of our old, bastard, half-commercial, fine-art were presently +condemned, great oil paintings, done to please the half-educated +middle-class, glared for a moment and were gone, Academy marbles +crumbled to useful lime, a gross multitude of silly statuettes and +decorative crockery, and hangings, and embroideries, and bad music, and +musical instruments shared this fate. And books, countless books, too, +and bales of newspapers went also to these pyres. From the private +houses in Swathinglea alone—which I had deemed, perhaps not unjustly, +altogether illiterate—we gathered a whole dust-cart full of cheap +ill-printed editions of the minor English classics—for the most part +very dull stuff indeed and still clean—and about a truckload of thumbed +and dog-eared penny fiction, watery base stuff, the dropsy of our +nation’s mind. . . . And it seemed to me that when we gathered those +books and papers together, we gathered together something more than +print and paper, we gathered warped and crippled ideas and contagious +base suggestions, the formulae of dull tolerances and stupid +impatiences, the mean defensive ingenuities of sluggish habits of +thinking and timid and indolent evasions. There was more than a touch +of malignant satisfaction for me in helping gather it all together. + +I was so busy, I say, with my share in this dustman’s work that I did +not notice, as I should otherwise have done, the little indications of +change in my mother’s state. Indeed, I thought her a little stronger; +she was slightly flushed, slightly more talkative. . . . + +On Beltane Eve, and our Lowchester rummage being finished, I went along +the valley to the far end of Swathinglea to help sort the stock of the +detached group of potbanks there—their chief output had been mantel +ornaments in imitation of marble, and there was very little sorting, I +found, to be done—and there it was nurse Anna found me at last by +telephone, and told me my mother had died in the morning suddenly and +very shortly after my departure. + +For a while I did not seem to believe it; this obviously imminent event +stunned me when it came, as though I had never had an anticipatory +moment. For a while I went on working, and then almost apathetically, +in a mood of half-reluctant curiosity, I started for Lowchester. + +When I got there the last offices were over, and I was shown my old +mother’s peaceful white face, very still, but a little cold and stern +to me, a little unfamiliar, lying among white flowers. + +I went in alone to her, into that quiet room, and stood for a long time +by her bedside. I sat down then and thought. . . . + +Then at last, strangely hushed, and with the deeps of my loneliness +opening beneath me, I came out of that room and down into the world +again, a bright-eyed, active world, very noisy, happy, and busy with +its last preparations for the mighty cremation of past and superseded +things. + +§ 2 + + +I remember that first Beltane festival as the most terribly lonely +night in my life. It stands in my mind in fragments, fragments of +intense feeling with forgotten gaps between. + +I recall very distinctly being upon the great staircase of Lowchester +House (though I don’t remember getting there from the room in which my +mother lay), and how upon the landing I met Anna ascending as I came +down. She had but just heard of my return, and she was hurrying +upstairs to me. She stopped and so did I, and we stood and clasped +hands, and she scrutinized my face in the way women sometimes do. So we +remained for a second or so. I could say nothing to her at all, but I +could feel the wave of her emotion. I halted, answered the earnest +pressure of her hand, relinquished it, and after a queer second of +hesitation went on down, returning to my own preoccupations. It did not +occur to me at all then to ask myself what she might be thinking or +feeling. + +I remember the corridor full of mellow evening light, and how I went +mechanically some paces toward the dining-room. Then at the sight of +the little tables, and a gusty outburst of talking voices as some one +in front of me swung the door open and to, I remembered that I did not +want to eat. . . . After that comes an impression of myself walking +across the open grass in front of the house, and the purpose I had of +getting alone upon the moors, and how somebody passing me said +something about a hat. I had come out without my hat. + +A fragment of thought has linked itself with an effect of long shadows +upon turf golden with the light of the sinking sun. The world was +singularly empty, I thought, without either Nettie or my mother. There +wasn’t any sense in it any more. Nettie was already back in my mind +then. . . . + +Then I am out on the moors. I avoided the crests where the bonfires +were being piled, and sought the lonely places. . . . + +I remember very clearly sitting on a gate beyond the park, in a fold +just below the crest, that hid the Beacon Hill bonfire and its crowd, +and I was looking at and admiring the sunset. The golden earth and sky +seemed like a little bubble that floated in the globe of human +futility. . . . Then in the twilight I walked along an unknown, +bat-haunted road between high hedges. + +I did not sleep under a roof that night. But I hungered and ate. I ate +near midnight at a little inn over toward Birmingham, and miles away +from my home. Instinctively I had avoided the crests where the bonfire +crowds gathered, but here there were many people, and I had to share a +table with a man who had some useless mortgage deeds to burn. I talked +to him about them—but my soul stood at a great distance behind my lips. +. . . + +Soon each hilltop bore a little tulip-shaped flame flower. Little black +figures clustered round and dotted the base of its petals, and as for +the rest of the multitude abroad, the kindly night swallowed them up. +By leaving the roads and clear paths and wandering in the fields I +contrived to keep alone, though the confused noise of voices and the +roaring and crackling of great fires was always near me. + +I wandered into a lonely meadow, and presently in a hollow of deep +shadows I lay down to stare at the stars. I lay hidden in the darkness, +and ever and again the sough and uproar of the Beltane fires that were +burning up the sere follies of a vanished age, and the shouting of the +people passing through the fires and praying to be delivered from the +prison of themselves, reached my ears. . . . + +And I thought of my mother, and then of my new loneliness and the +hunger of my heart for Nettie. + +I thought of many things that night, but chiefly of the overflowing +personal love and tenderness that had come to me in the wake of the +Change, of the greater need, the unsatisfied need in which I stood, for +this one person who could fulfil all my desires. So long as my mother +had lived, she had in a measure held my heart, given me a food these +emotions could live upon, and mitigated that emptiness of spirit, but +now suddenly that one possible comfort had left me. There had been many +at the season of the Change who had thought that this great enlargement +of mankind would abolish personal love; but indeed it had only made it +finer, fuller, more vitally necessary. They had thought that, seeing +men now were all full of the joyful passion to make and do, and glad +and loving and of willing service to all their fellows, there would be +no need of the one intimate trusting communion that had been the finest +thing of the former life. And indeed, so far as this was a matter of +advantage and the struggle for existence, they were right. But so far +as it was a matter of the spirit and the fine perceptions of life, it +was altogether wrong. + +We had indeed not eliminated personal love, we had but stripped it of +its base wrappings, of its pride, its suspicions, its mercenary and +competitive elements, until at last it stood up in our minds stark, +shining and invincible. Through all the fine, divaricating ways of the +new life, it grew ever more evident, there were for every one certain +persons, mysteriously and indescribably in the key of one’s self, whose +mere presence gave pleasure, whose mere existence was interest, whose +idiosyncrasy blended with accident to make a completing and predominant +harmony for their predestined lovers. They were the essential thing in +life. Without them the fine brave show of the rejuvenated world was a +caparisoned steed without a rider, a bowl without a flower, a theater +without a play. . . . And to me that night of Beltane, it was as clear +as white flames that Nettie, and Nettie alone, roused those harmonies +in me. And she had gone! I had sent her from me; I knew not whither she +had gone. I had in my first virtuous foolishness cut her out of my life +for ever! + +So I saw it then, and I lay unseen in the darkness and called upon +Nettie, and wept for her, lay upon my face and wept for her, while the +glad people went to and fro, and the smoke streamed thick across the +distant stars, and the red reflections, the shadows and the fluctuating +glares, danced over the face of the world. + +No! the Change had freed us from our baser passions indeed, from +habitual and mechanical concupiscence and mean issues and coarse +imaginings, but from the passions of love it had not freed us. It had +but brought the lord of life, Eros, to his own. All through the long +sorrow of that night I, who had rejected him, confessed his sway with +tears and inappeasable regrets. . . . + +I cannot give the remotest guess of when I rose up, nor of my tortuous +wanderings in the valleys between the midnight fires, nor how I evaded +the laughing and rejoicing multitudes who went streaming home between +three and four, to resume their lives, swept and garnished, stripped +and clean. But at dawn, when the ashes of the world’s gladness were +ceasing to glow—it was a bleak dawn that made me shiver in my thin +summer clothes—I came across a field to a little copse full of dim blue +hyacinths. A queer sense of familiarity arrested my steps, and I stood +puzzled. Then I was moved to go a dozen paces from the path, and at +once a singularly misshapen tree hitched itself into a notch in my +memory. This was the place! Here I had stood, there I had placed my old +kite, and shot with my revolver, learning to use it, against the day +when I should encounter Verrall. + +Kite and revolver had gone now, and all my hot and narrow past, its +last vestiges had shriveled and vanished in the whirling gusts of the +Beltane fires. So I walked through a world of gray ashes at last, back +to the great house in which the dead, deserted image of my dear lost +mother lay. + +§ 3 + + +I came back to Lowchester House very tired, very wretched; exhausted by +my fruitless longing for Nettie. I had no thought of what lay before +me. + +A miserable attraction drew me into the great house to look again on +the stillness that had been my mother’s face, and as I came into that +room, Anna, who had been sitting by the open window, rose to meet me. +She had the air of one who waits. She, too, was pale with watching; all +night she had watched between the dead within and the Beltane fires +abroad, and longed for my coming. I stood mute between her and the +bedside. . . . + +“Willie,” she whispered, and eyes and body seemed incarnate pity. + +An unseen presence drew us together. My mother’s face became resolute, +commanding. I turned to Anna as a child may turn to its nurse. I put my +hands about her strong shoulders, she folded me to her, and my heart +gave way. I buried my face in her breast and clung to her weakly, and +burst into a passion of weeping. . . . + +She held me with hungry arms. She whispered to me, “There, there!” as +one whispers comfort to a child. . . . Suddenly she was kissing me. She +kissed me with a hungry intensity of passion, on my cheeks, on my lips. +She kissed me on my lips with lips that were salt with tears. And I +returned her kisses. . . . + +Then abruptly we desisted and stood apart—looking at one another. + +§ 4 + + +It seems to me as if the intense memory of Nettie vanished utterly out +of my mind at the touch of Anna’s lips. I loved Anna. + +We went to the council of our group—commune it was then called—and she +was given me in marriage, and within a year she had borne me a son. We +saw much of one another, and talked ourselves very close together. My +faithful friend she became and has been always, and for a time we were +passionate lovers. Always she has loved me and kept my soul full of +tender gratitude and love for her; always when we met our hands and +eyes clasped in friendly greeting, all through our lives from that hour +we have been each other’s secure help and refuge, each other’s +ungrudging fastness of help and sweetly frank and open speech. . . . +And after a little while my love and desire for Nettie returned as +though it had never faded away. + +No one will have a difficulty now in understanding how that could be, +but in the evil days of the world malaria, that would have been held to +be the most impossible thing. I should have had to crush that second +love out of my thoughts, to have kept it secret from Anna, to have lied +about it to all the world. The old-world theory was there was only one +love—we who float upon a sea of love find that hard to understand. The +whole nature of a man was supposed to go out to the one girl or woman +who possessed him, her whole nature to go out to him. Nothing was left +over—it was a discreditable thing to have any overplus at all. They +formed a secret secluded system of two, two and such children as she +bore him. All other women he was held bound to find no beauty in, no +sweetness, no interest; and she likewise, in no other man. The old-time +men and women went apart in couples, into defensive little houses, like +beasts into little pits, and in these “homes” they sat down purposing +to love, but really coming very soon to jealous watching of this +extravagant mutual proprietorship. All freshness passed very speedily +out of their love, out of their conversation, all pride out of their +common life. To permit each other freedom was blank dishonor. That I +and Anna should love, and after our love-journey together, go about our +separate lives and dine at the public tables, until the advent of her +motherhood, would have seemed a terrible strain upon our unmitigable +loyalty. And that I should have it in me to go on loving Nettie—who +loved in different manner both Verrall and me—would have outraged the +very quintessence of the old convention. + +In the old days love was a cruel proprietary thing. But now Anna could +let Nettie live in the world of my mind, as freely as a rose will +suffer the presence of white lilies. If I could hear notes that were +not in her compass, she was glad, because she loved me, that I should +listen to other music than hers. And she, too, could see the beauty of +Nettie. Life is so rich and generous now, giving friendship, and a +thousand tender interests and helps and comforts, that no one stints +another of the full realization of all possibilities of beauty. For me +from the beginning Nettie was the figure of beauty, the shape and color +of the divine principle that lights the world. For every one there are +certain types, certain faces and forms, gestures, voices and +intonations that have that inexplicable unanalyzable quality. These +come through the crowd of kindly friendly fellow-men and women—one’s +own. These touch one mysteriously, stir deeps that must otherwise +slumber, pierce and interpret the world. To refuse this interpretation +is to refuse the sun, to darken and deaden all life. . . . I loved +Nettie, I loved all who were like her, in the measure that they were +like her, in voice, or eyes, or form, or smile. And between my wife and +me there was no bitterness that the great goddess, the life-giver, +Aphrodite, Queen of the living Seas, came to my imagination so. It +qualified our mutual love not at all, since now in our changed world +love is unstinted; it is a golden net about our globe that nets all +humanity together. + +I thought of Nettie much, and always movingly beautiful things restored +me to her, all fine music, all pure deep color, all tender and solemn +things. The stars were hers, and the mystery of moonlight; the sun she +wore in her hair, powdered finely, beaten into gleams and threads of +sunlight in the wisps and strands of her hair. . . . Then suddenly one +day a letter came to me from her, in her unaltered clear handwriting, +but in a new language of expression, telling me many things. She had +learnt of my mother’s death, and the thought of me had grown so strong +as to pierce the silence I had imposed on her. We wrote to one +another—like common friends with a certain restraint between us at +first, and with a great longing to see her once more arising in my +heart. For a time I left that hunger unexpressed, and then I was moved +to tell it to her. And so on New Year’s Day in the Year Four, she came +to Lowchester and me. How I remember that coming, across the gulf of +fifty years! I went out across the park to meet her, so that we should +meet alone. The windless morning was clear and cold, the ground new +carpeted with snow, and all the trees motionless lace and glitter of +frosty crystals. The rising sun had touched the white with a spirit of +gold, and my heart beat and sang within me. I remember now the snowy +shoulder of the down, sunlit against the bright blue sky. And presently +I saw the woman I loved coming through the white still trees. . . . + +I had made a goddess of Nettie, and behold she was a fellow-creature! +She came, warm-wrapped and tremulous, to me, with the tender promise of +tears in her eyes, with her hands outstretched and that dear smile +quivering upon her lips. She stepped out of the dream I had made of +her, a thing of needs and regrets and human kindliness. Her hands as I +took them were a little cold. The goddess shone through her indeed, +glowed in all her body, she was a worshipful temple of love for me—yes. +But I could feel, like a thing new discovered, the texture and sinews +of her living, her dear personal and mortal hands. . . . + + + + +THE EPILOGUE +THE WINDOW OF THE TOWER + + +This was as much as this pleasant-looking, gray-haired man had written. +I had been lost in his story throughout the earlier portions of it, +forgetful of the writer and his gracious room, and the high tower in +which he was sitting. But gradually, as I drew near the end, the sense +of strangeness returned to me. It was more and more evident to me that +this was a different humanity from any I had known, unreal, having +different customs, different beliefs, different interpretations, +different emotions. It was no mere change in conditions and +institutions the comet had wrought. It had made a change of heart and +mind. In a manner it had dehumanized the world, robbed it of its +spites, its little intense jealousies, its inconsistencies, its humor. +At the end, and particularly after the death of his mother, I felt his +story had slipped away from my sympathies altogether. Those Beltane +fires had burnt something in him that worked living still and unsubdued +in me, that rebelled in particular at that return of Nettie. I became a +little inattentive. I no longer felt with him, nor gathered a sense of +complete understanding from his phrases. His Lord Eros indeed! He and +these transfigured people—they were beautiful and noble people, like +the people one sees in great pictures, like the gods of noble +sculpture, but they had no nearer fellowship than these to men. As the +change was realized, with every stage of realization the gulf widened +and it was harder to follow his words. + +I put down the last fascicle of all, and met his friendly eyes. It was +hard to dislike him. + +I felt a subtle embarrassment in putting the question that perplexed +me. And yet it seemed so material to me I had to put it. “And did +you—?” I asked. “Were you—lovers?” + +His eyebrows rose. “Of course.” + +“But your wife—?” + +It was manifest he did not understand me. + +I hesitated still more. I was perplexed by a conviction of baseness. +“But—” I began. “You remained lovers?” + +“Yes.” I had grave doubts if I understood him. Or he me. + +I made a still more courageous attempt. “And had Nettie no other +lovers?” + +“A beautiful woman like that! I know not how many loved beauty in her, +nor what she found in others. But we four from that time were very +close, you understand, we were friends, helpers, personal lovers in a +world of lovers.” + +“Four?” + +“There was Verrall.” + +Then suddenly it came to me that the thoughts that stirred in my mind +were sinister and base, that the queer suspicions, the coarseness and +coarse jealousies of my old world were over and done for these more +finely living souls. “You made,” I said, trying to be liberal minded, +“a home together.” + +“A home!” He looked at me, and, I know not why, I glanced down at my +feet. What a clumsy, ill-made thing a boot is, and how hard and +colorless seemed my clothing! How harshly I stood out amidst these +fine, perfected things. I had a moment of rebellious detestation. I +wanted to get out of all this. After all, it wasn’t my style. I wanted +intensely to say something that would bring him down a peg, make sure, +as it were, of my suspicions by launching an offensive accusation. I +looked up and he was standing. + +“I forgot,” he said. “You are pretending the old world is still going +on. A home!” + +He put out his hand, and quite noiselessly the great window widened +down to us, and the splendid nearer prospect of that dreamland city was +before me. There for one clear moment I saw it; its galleries and open +spaces, its trees of golden fruit and crystal waters, its music and +rejoicing, love and beauty without ceasing flowing through its varied +and intricate streets. And the nearer people I saw now directly and +plainly, and no longer in the distorted mirror that hung overhead. They +really did not justify my suspicions, and yet—! They were such people +as one sees on earth—save that they were changed. How can I express +that change? As a woman is changed in the eyes of her lover, as a woman +is changed by the love of a lover. They were exalted. . . . + +I stood up beside him and looked out. I was a little flushed, my ears a +little reddened, by the inconvenience of my curiosities, and by my +uneasy sense of profound moral differences. He was taller than I. . . . + +“This is our home,” he said smiling, and with thoughtful eyes on me. + + + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IN THE DAYS OF THE COMET *** + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will +be renamed. + +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the +United States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. 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G. Wells</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and +most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions +whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms +of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online +at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you +are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the +country where you are located before using this eBook. +</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: In the Days of the Comet</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: H. G. Wells</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: 09, 2001 [eBook #3797]<br /> +[Most recently updated: November 14, 2020]</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Judy Boss</div> +<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IN THE DAYS OF THE COMET ***</div> + +<div class="fig" style="width:60%;"> +<img src="images/cover.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="[Illustration]" /> +</div> + +<h1>In the Days of the Comet</h1> + +<h2 class="no-break">by H. G. Wells</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +“The World’s Great Age begins anew,<br /> + The Golden Years return,<br /> +The Earth doth like a Snake renew<br /> + Her Winter Skin outworn:<br /> +Heaven smiles, and Faiths and Empires gleam<br /> +Like Wrecks of a Dissolving Dream.” +</p> + +<hr /> + +<h2>Contents</h2> + +<table summary="" style=""> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#part01"><b>PROLOGUE</b></a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#part01">THE MAN WHO WROTE IN THE TOWER</a><br /><br /></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#part02"><b>BOOK THE FIRST — THE COMET</b></a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap01">I. DUST IN THE SHADOWS</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap02">II. NETTIE</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap03">III. THE REVOLVER</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap04">IV. WAR</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap05">V. THE PURSUIT OF THE TWO LOVERS</a><br /><br /></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#part03"><b>BOOK THE SECOND — THE GREEN VAPORS</b></a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap06">I. THE CHANGE</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap07">II. THE AWAKENING</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap08">III. THE CABINET COUNCIL</a><br /><br /></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#part04"><b>BOOK THE THIRD — THE NEW WORLD</b></a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap09">I. LOVE AFTER THE CHANGE</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap10">II. MY MOTHER’S LAST DAYS</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap11">III. BELTANE AND NEW YEAR’S EVE</a><br /><br /></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#part05"><b>EPILOGUE</b></a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#part05">THE WINDOW OF THE TOWER</a></td> +</tr> + +</table> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="part01"></a>PROLOGUE<br /> +THE MAN WHO WROTE IN THE TOWER</h2> + +<p> +I saw a gray-haired man, a figure of hale age, sitting at a desk and writing. +</p> + +<p> +He seemed to be in a room in a tower, very high, so that through the tall +window on his left one perceived only distances, a remote horizon of sea, a +headland and that vague haze and glitter in the sunset that many miles away +marks a city. All the appointments of this room were orderly and beautiful, and +in some subtle quality, in this small difference and that, new to me and +strange. They were in no fashion I could name, and the simple costume the man +wore suggested neither period nor country. It might, I thought, be the Happy +Future, or Utopia, or the Land of Simple Dreams; an errant mote of memory, +Henry James’s phrase and story of “The Great Good Place,” +twinkled across my mind, and passed and left no light. +</p> + +<p> +The man I saw wrote with a thing like a fountain pen, a modern touch that +prohibited any historical retrospection, and as he finished each sheet, writing +in an easy flowing hand, he added it to a growing pile upon a graceful little +table under the window. His last done sheets lay loose, partly covering others +that were clipped together into fascicles. +</p> + +<p> +Clearly he was unaware of my presence, and I stood waiting until his pen should +come to a pause. Old as he certainly was he wrote with a steady hand. . . . +</p> + +<p> +I discovered that a concave speculum hung slantingly high over his head; a +movement in this caught my attention sharply, and I looked up to see, distorted +and made fantastic but bright and beautifully colored, the magnified, +reflected, evasive rendering of a palace, of a terrace, of the vista of a great +roadway with many people, people exaggerated, impossible-looking because of the +curvature of the mirror, going to and fro. I turned my head quickly that I +might see more clearly through the window behind me, but it was too high for me +to survey this nearer scene directly, and after a momentary pause I came back +to that distorting mirror again. +</p> + +<p> +But now the writer was leaning back in his chair. He put down his pen and +sighed the half resentful sigh—“ah! you, work, you! how you gratify +and tire me!”—of a man who has been writing to his satisfaction. +</p> + +<p> +“What is this place,” I asked, “and who are you?” +</p> + +<p> +He looked around with the quick movement of surprise. +</p> + +<p> +“What is this place?” I repeated, “and where am I?” +</p> + +<p> +He regarded me steadfastly for a moment under his wrinkled brows, and then his +expression softened to a smile. He pointed to a chair beside the table. +“I am writing,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“About this?” +</p> + +<p> +“About the change.” +</p> + +<p> +I sat down. It was a very comfortable chair, and well placed under the light. +</p> + +<p> +“If you would like to read—” he said. +</p> + +<p> +I indicated the manuscript. “This explains?” I asked. +</p> + +<p> +“That explains,” he answered. +</p> + +<p> +He drew a fresh sheet of paper toward him as he looked at me. +</p> + +<p> +I glanced from him about his apartment and back to the little table. A fascicle +marked very distinctly “1” caught my attention, and I took it up. I +smiled in his friendly eyes. “Very well,” said I, suddenly at my +ease, and he nodded and went on writing. And in a mood between confidence and +curiosity, I began to read. +</p> + +<p> +This is the story that happy, active-looking old man in that pleasant place had +written. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="part02"></a>BOOK THE FIRST<br />THE COMET</h2> + + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap01"></a>CHAPTER THE FIRST<br />DUST IN THE SHADOWS</h2> + +<p class="center"> +§ 1 +</p> + +<p> +I have set myself to write the story of the Great Change, so far as it has +affected my own life and the lives of one or two people closely connected with +me, primarily to please myself. +</p> + +<p> +Long ago in my crude unhappy youth, I conceived the desire of writing a book. +To scribble secretly and dream of authorship was one of my chief alleviations, +and I read with a sympathetic envy every scrap I could get about the world of +literature and the lives of literary people. It is something, even amidst this +present happiness, to find leisure and opportunity to take up and partially +realize these old and hopeless dreams. But that alone, in a world where so much +of vivid and increasing interest presents itself to be done, even by an old +man, would not, I think, suffice to set me at this desk. I find some such +recapitulation of my past as this will involve, is becoming necessary to my own +secure mental continuity. The passage of years brings a man at last to +retrospection; at seventy-two one’s youth is far more important than it +was at forty. And I am out of touch with my youth. The old life seems so cut +off from the new, so alien and so unreasonable, that at times I find it +bordering upon the incredible. The data have gone, the buildings and places. I +stopped dead the other afternoon in my walk across the moor, where once the +dismal outskirts of Swathinglea straggled toward Leet, and asked, “Was it +here indeed that I crouched among the weeds and refuse and broken crockery and +loaded my revolver ready for murder? Did ever such a thing happen in my life? +Was such a mood and thought and intention ever possible to me? Rather, has not +some queer nightmare spirit out of dreamland slipped a pseudo-memory into the +records of my vanished life?” There must be many alive still who have the +same perplexities. And I think too that those who are now growing up to take +our places in the great enterprise of mankind, will need many such narratives +as mine for even the most partial conception of the old world of shadows that +came before our day. It chances too that my case is fairly typical of the +Change; I was caught midway in a gust of passion; and a curious accident put me +for a time in the very nucleus of the new order. +</p> + +<p> +My memory takes me back across the interval of fifty years to a little ill-lit +room with a sash window open to a starry sky, and instantly there returns to me +the characteristic smell of that room, the penetrating odor of an ill-trimmed +lamp, burning cheap paraffin. Lighting by electricity had then been perfected +for fifteen years, but still the larger portion of the world used these lamps. +All this first scene will go, in my mind at least, to that olfactory +accompaniment. That was the evening smell of the room. By day it had a more +subtle aroma, a closeness, a peculiar sort of faint pungency that I +associate—I know not why—with dust. +</p> + +<p> +Let me describe this room to you in detail. It was perhaps eight feet by seven +in area and rather higher than either of these dimensions; the ceiling was of +plaster, cracked and bulging in places, gray with the soot of the lamp, and in +one place discolored by a system of yellow and olive-green stains caused by the +percolation of damp from above. The walls were covered with dun-colored paper, +upon which had been printed in oblique reiteration a crimson shape, something +of the nature of a curly ostrich feather, or an acanthus flower, that had in +its less faded moments a sort of dingy gaiety. There were several big +plaster-rimmed wounds in this, caused by Parload’s ineffectual attempts +to get nails into the wall, whereby there might hang pictures. One nail had hit +between two bricks and got home, and from this depended, sustained a little +insecurely by frayed and knotted blind-cord, Parload’s hanging +bookshelves, planks painted over with a treacly blue enamel and further +decorated by a fringe of pinked American cloth insecurely fixed by tacks. Below +this was a little table that behaved with a mulish vindictiveness to any knee +that was thrust beneath it suddenly; it was covered with a cloth whose pattern +of red and black had been rendered less monotonous by the accidents of +Parload’s versatile ink bottle, and on it, <i>leit motif</i> of the +whole, stood and stank the lamp. This lamp, you must understand, was of some +whitish translucent substance that was neither china nor glass, it had a shade +of the same substance, a shade that did not protect the eyes of a reader in any +measure, and it seemed admirably adapted to bring into pitiless prominence the +fact that, after the lamp’s trimming, dust and paraffin had been smeared +over its exterior with a reckless generosity. +</p> + +<p> +The uneven floor boards of this apartment were covered with scratched enamel of +chocolate hue, on which a small island of frayed carpet dimly blossomed in the +dust and shadows. +</p> + +<p> +There was a very small grate, made of cast-iron in one piece and painted buff, +and a still smaller misfit of a cast-iron fender that confessed the gray stone +of the hearth. No fire was laid, only a few scraps of torn paper and the bowl +of a broken corn-cob pipe were visible behind the bars, and in the corner and +rather thrust away was an angular japanned coal-box with a damaged hinge. It +was the custom in those days to warm every room separately from a separate +fireplace, more prolific of dirt than heat, and the rickety sash window, the +small chimney, and the loose-fitting door were expected to organize the +ventilation of the room among themselves without any further direction. +</p> + +<p> +Parload’s truckle bed hid its gray sheets beneath an old patchwork +counterpane on one side of the room, and veiled his boxes and suchlike +oddments, and invading the two corners of the window were an old whatnot and +the washhandstand, on which were distributed the simple appliances of his +toilet. +</p> + +<p> +This washhandstand had been made of deal by some one with an excess of turnery +appliances in a hurry, who had tried to distract attention from the rough +economies of his workmanship by an arresting ornamentation of blobs and bulbs +upon the joints and legs. Apparently the piece had then been placed in the +hands of some person of infinite leisure equipped with a pot of ocherous paint, +varnish, and a set of flexible combs. This person had first painted the +article, then, I fancy, smeared it with varnish, and then sat down to work with +the combs to streak and comb the varnish into a weird imitation of the grain of +some nightmare timber. The washhandstand so made had evidently had a prolonged +career of violent use, had been chipped, kicked, splintered, punched, stained, +scorched, hammered, desiccated, damped, and defiled, had met indeed with almost +every possible adventure except a conflagration or a scrubbing, until at last +it had come to this high refuge of Parload’s attic to sustain the simple +requirements of Parload’s personal cleanliness. There were, in chief, a +basin and a jug of water and a slop-pail of tin, and, further, a piece of +yellow soap in a tray, a tooth-brush, a rat-tailed shaving brush, one huckaback +towel, and one or two other minor articles. In those days only very prosperous +people had more than such an equipage, and it is to be remarked that every drop +of water Parload used had to be carried by an unfortunate servant +girl,—the “slavey,” Parload called her—up from the +basement to the top of the house and subsequently down again. Already we begin +to forget how modern an invention is personal cleanliness. It is a fact that +Parload had never stripped for a swim in his life; never had a simultaneous +bath all over his body since his childhood. Not one in fifty of us did in the +days of which I am telling you. +</p> + +<p> +A chest, also singularly grained and streaked, of two large and two small +drawers, held Parload’s reserve of garments, and pegs on the door carried +his two hats and completed this inventory of a “bed-sitting-room” +as I knew it before the Change. But I had forgotten—there was also a +chair with a “squab” that apologized inadequately for the defects +of its cane seat. I forgot that for the moment because I was sitting on the +chair on the occasion that best begins this story. +</p> + +<p> +I have described Parload’s room with such particularity because it will +help you to understand the key in which my earlier chapters are written, but +you must not imagine that this singular equipment or the smell of the lamp +engaged my attention at that time to the slightest degree. I took all this +grimy unpleasantness as if it were the most natural and proper setting for +existence imaginable. It was the world as I knew it. My mind was entirely +occupied then by graver and intenser matters, and it is only now in the distant +retrospect that I see these details of environment as being remarkable, as +significant, as indeed obviously the outward visible manifestations of the old +world disorder in our hearts. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p class="center"> +§ 2 +</p> + +<p> +Parload stood at the open window, opera-glass in hand, and sought and found and +was uncertain about and lost again, the new comet. +</p> + +<p> +I thought the comet no more than a nuisance then because I wanted to talk of +other matters. But Parload was full of it. My head was hot, I was feverish with +interlacing annoyances and bitterness, I wanted to open my heart to +him—at least I wanted to relieve my heart by some romantic rendering of +my troubles—and I gave but little heed to the things he told me. It was +the first time I had heard of this new speck among the countless specks of +heaven, and I did not care if I never heard of the thing again. +</p> + +<p> +We were two youths much of an age together, Parload was two and twenty, and +eight months older than I. He was—I think his proper definition was +“engrossing clerk” to a little solicitor in Overcastle, while I was +third in the office staff of Rawdon’s pot-bank in Clayton. We had met +first in the “Parliament” of the Young Men’s Christian +Association of Swathinglea; we had found we attended simultaneous classes in +Overcastle, he in science and I in shorthand, and had started a practice of +walking home together, and so our friendship came into being. (Swathinglea, +Clayton, and Overcastle were contiguous towns, I should mention, in the great +industrial area of the Midlands.) We had shared each other’s secret of +religious doubt, we had confided to one another a common interest in Socialism, +he had come twice to supper at my mother’s on a Sunday night, and I was +free of his apartment. He was then a tall, flaxen-haired, gawky youth, with a +disproportionate development of neck and wrist, and capable of vast enthusiasm; +he gave two evenings a week to the evening classes of the organized science +school in Overcastle, physiography was his favorite “subject,” and +through this insidious opening of his mind the wonder of outer space had come +to take possession of his soul. He had commandeered an old opera-glass from his +uncle who farmed at Leet over the moors, he had bought a cheap paper +planisphere and <i>Whitaker’s Almanac</i>, and for a time day and +moonlight were mere blank interruptions to the one satisfactory reality in his +life—star-gazing. It was the deeps that had seized him, the immensities, +and the mysterious possibilities that might float unlit in that unplumbed +abyss. With infinite labor and the help of a very precise article in <i>The +Heavens</i>, a little monthly magazine that catered for those who were under +this obsession, he had at last got his opera-glass upon the new visitor to our +system from outer space. He gazed in a sort of rapture upon that quivering +little smudge of light among the shining pin-points—and gazed. My +troubles had to wait for him. +</p> + +<p> +“Wonderful,” he sighed, and then as though his first emphasis did +not satisfy him, “wonderful!” +</p> + +<p> +He turned to me. “Wouldn’t you like to see?” +</p> + +<p> +I had to look, and then I had to listen, how that this scarce-visible intruder +was to be, was presently to be, one of the largest comets this world has ever +seen, how that its course must bring it within at most—so many score of +millions of miles from the earth, a mere step, Parload seemed to think that; +how that the spectroscope was already sounding its chemical secrets, perplexed +by the unprecedented band in the green, how it was even now being photographed +in the very act of unwinding—in an unusual direction—a sunward tail +(which presently it wound up again), and all the while in a sort of undertow I +was thinking first of Nettie Stuart and the letter she had just written me, and +then of old Rawdon’s detestable face as I had seen it that afternoon. Now +I planned answers to Nettie and now belated repartees to my employer, and then +again “Nettie” was blazing all across the background of my +thoughts. . . . +</p> + +<p> +Nettie Stuart was daughter of the head gardener of the rich Mr. Verrall’s +widow, and she and I had kissed and become sweethearts before we were eighteen +years old. My mother and hers were second cousins and old schoolfellows, and +though my mother had been widowed untimely by a train accident, and had been +reduced to letting lodgings (she was the Clayton curate’s landlady), a +position esteemed much lower than that of Mrs. Stuart, a kindly custom of +occasional visits to the gardener’s cottage at Checkshill Towers still +kept the friends in touch. Commonly I went with her. And I remember it was in +the dusk of one bright evening in July, one of those long golden evenings that +do not so much give way to night as admit at last, upon courtesy, the moon and +a choice retinue of stars, that Nettie and I, at the pond of goldfish where the +yew-bordered walks converged, made our shy beginners’ vow. I remember +still—something will always stir in me at that memory—the tremulous +emotion of that adventure. Nettie was dressed in white, her hair went off in +waves of soft darkness from above her dark shining eyes; there was a little +necklace of pearls about her sweetly modeled neck, and a little coin of gold +that nestled in her throat. I kissed her half-reluctant lips, and for three +years of my life thereafter—nay! I almost think for all the rest of her +life and mine—I could have died for her sake. +</p> + +<p> +You must understand—and every year it becomes increasingly difficult to +understand—how entirely different the world was then from what it is now. +It was a dark world; it was full of preventable disorder, preventable diseases, +and preventable pain, of harshness and stupid unpremeditated cruelties; but +yet, it may be even by virtue of the general darkness, there were moments of a +rare and evanescent beauty that seem no longer possible in my experience. The +great Change has come for ever more, happiness and beauty are our atmosphere, +there is peace on earth and good will to all men. None would dare to dream of +returning to the sorrows of the former time, and yet that misery was pierced, +ever and again its gray curtain was stabbed through and through by joys of an +intensity, by perceptions of a keenness that it seems to me are now altogether +gone out of life. Is it the Change, I wonder, that has robbed life of its +extremes, or is it perhaps only this, that youth has left me—even the +strength of middle years leaves me now—and taken its despairs and +raptures, leaving me judgment, perhaps, sympathy, memories? +</p> + +<p> +I cannot tell. One would need to be young now and to have been young then as +well, to decide that impossible problem. +</p> + +<p> +Perhaps a cool observer even in the old days would have found little beauty in +our grouping. I have our two photographs at hand in this bureau as I write, and +they show me a gawky youth in ill-fitting ready-made clothing, and +Nettie—Indeed Nettie is badly dressed, and her attitude is more than a +little stiff; but I can see her through the picture, and her living brightness +and something of that mystery of charm she had for me, comes back again to my +mind. Her face has triumphed over the photographer—or I would long ago +have cast this picture away. +</p> + +<p> +The reality of beauty yields itself to no words. I wish that I had the sister +art and could draw in my margin something that escapes description. There was a +sort of gravity in her eyes. There was something, a matter of the minutest +difference, about her upper lip so that her mouth closed sweetly and broke very +sweetly to a smile. That grave, sweet smile! +</p> + +<p> +After we had kissed and decided not to tell our parents for awhile of the +irrevocable choice we had made, the time came for us to part, shyly and before +others, and I and my mother went off back across the moonlit park—the +bracken thickets rustling with startled deer—to the railway station at +Checkshill and so to our dingy basement in Clayton, and I saw no more of +Nettie—except that I saw her in my thoughts—for nearly a year. But +at our next meeting it was decided that we must correspond, and this we did +with much elaboration of secrecy, for Nettie would have no one at home, not +even her only sister, know of her attachment. So I had to send my precious +documents sealed and under cover by way of a confidential schoolfellow of hers +who lived near London. . . . I could write that address down now, though house +and street and suburb have gone beyond any man’s tracing. +</p> + +<p> +Our correspondence began our estrangement, because for the first time we came +into more than sensuous contact and our minds sought expression. +</p> + +<p> +Now you must understand that the world of thought in those days was in the +strangest condition, it was choked with obsolete inadequate formulae, it was +tortuous to a maze-like degree with secondary contrivances and adaptations, +suppressions, conventions, and subterfuges. Base immediacies fouled the truth +on every man’s lips. I was brought up by my mother in a quaint +old-fashioned narrow faith in certain religious formulae, certain rules of +conduct, certain conceptions of social and political order, that had no more +relevance to the realities and needs of everyday contemporary life than if they +were clean linen that had been put away with lavender in a drawer. Indeed, her +religion did actually smell of lavender; on Sundays she put away all the things +of reality, the garments and even the furnishings of everyday, hid her hands, +that were gnarled and sometimes chapped with scrubbing, in black, carefully +mended gloves, assumed her old black silk dress and bonnet and took me, +unnaturally clean and sweet also, to church. There we sang and bowed and heard +sonorous prayers and joined in sonorous responses, and rose with a +congregational sigh refreshed and relieved when the doxology, with its opening +“Now to God the Father, God the Son,” bowed out the tame, brief +sermon. There was a hell in that religion of my mother’s, a red-haired +hell of curly flames that had once been very terrible; there was a devil, who +was also <i>ex officio</i> the British King’s enemy, and much +denunciation of the wicked lusts of the flesh; we were expected to believe that +most of our poor unhappy world was to atone for its muddle and trouble here by +suffering exquisite torments for ever after, world without end, Amen. But +indeed those curly flames looked rather jolly. The whole thing had been +mellowed and faded into a gentle unreality long before my time; if it had much +terror even in my childhood I have forgotten it, it was not so terrible as the +giant who was killed by the Beanstalk, and I see it all now as a setting for my +poor old mother’s worn and grimy face, and almost lovingly as a part of +her. And Mr. Gabbitas, our plump little lodger, strangely transformed in his +vestments and lifting his voice manfully to the quality of those Elizabethan +prayers, seemed, I think, to give her a special and peculiar interest with God. +She radiated her own tremulous gentleness upon Him, and redeemed Him from all +the implications of vindictive theologians; she was in truth, had I but +perceived it, the effectual answer to all she would have taught me. +</p> + +<p> +So I see it now, but there is something harsh in the earnest intensity of +youth, and having at first taken all these things quite seriously, the fiery +hell and God’s vindictiveness at any neglect, as though they were as much +a matter of fact as Bladden’s iron-works and Rawdon’s pot-bank, I +presently with an equal seriousness flung them out of my mind again. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Gabbitas, you see, did sometimes, as the phrase went, “take +notice” of me, he had induced me to go on reading after I left school, +and with the best intentions in the world and to anticipate the poison of the +times, he had lent me Burble’s “Scepticism Answered,” and +drawn my attention to the library of the Institute in Clayton. +</p> + +<p> +The excellent Burble was a great shock to me. It seemed clear from his answers +to the sceptic that the case for doctrinal orthodoxy and all that faded and by +no means awful hereafter, which I had hitherto accepted as I accepted the sun, +was an extremely poor one, and to hammer home that idea the first book I got +from the Institute happened to be an American edition of the collected works of +Shelley, his gassy prose as well as his atmospheric verse. I was soon ripe for +blatant unbelief. And at the Young Men’s Christian Association I +presently made the acquaintance of Parload, who told me, under promises of the +most sinister secrecy, that he was “a Socialist out and out.” He +lent me several copies of a periodical with the clamant title of <i>The +Clarion</i>, which was just taking up a crusade against the accepted religion. +The adolescent years of any fairly intelligent youth lie open, and will always +lie healthily open, to the contagion of philosophical doubts, of scorns and new +ideas, and I will confess I had the fever of that phase badly. Doubt, I say, +but it was not so much doubt—which is a complex thing—as startled +emphatic denial. “Have I believed <i>this!</i>” And I was also, you +must remember, just beginning love-letters to Nettie. +</p> + +<p> +We live now in these days, when the Great Change has been in most things +accomplished, in a time when every one is being educated to a sort of +intellectual gentleness, a gentleness that abates nothing from our vigor, and +it is hard to understand the stifled and struggling manner in which my +generation of common young men did its thinking. To think at all about certain +questions was an act of rebellion that set one oscillating between the furtive +and the defiant. People begin to find Shelley—for all his +melody—noisy and ill conditioned now because his Anarchs have vanished, +yet there was a time when novel thought HAD to go to that tune of breaking +glass. It becomes a little difficult to imagine the yeasty state of mind, the +disposition to shout and say, “Yah!” at constituted authority, to +sustain a persistent note of provocation such as we raw youngsters displayed. I +began to read with avidity such writing as Carlyle, Browning, and Heine have +left for the perplexity of posterity, and not only to read and admire but to +imitate. My letters to Nettie, after one or two genuinely intended displays of +perfervid tenderness, broke out toward theology, sociology, and the cosmos in +turgid and startling expressions. No doubt they puzzled her extremely. +</p> + +<p> +I retain the keenest sympathy and something inexplicably near to envy for my +own departed youth, but I should find it difficult to maintain my case against +any one who would condemn me altogether as having been a very silly, posturing, +emotional hobbledehoy indeed and quite like my faded photograph. And when I try +to recall what exactly must have been the quality and tenor of my more +sustained efforts to write memorably to my sweetheart, I confess I shiver. . . +Yet I wish they were not all destroyed. +</p> + +<p> +Her letters to me were simple enough, written in a roundish, unformed hand and +badly phrased. Her first two or three showed a shy pleasure in the use of the +word “dear,” and I remember being first puzzled and then, when I +understood, delighted, because she had written “Willie +<i>asthore</i>” under my name. “Asthore,” I gathered, meant +“darling.” But when the evidences of my fermentation began, her +answers were less happy. +</p> + +<p> +I will not weary you with the story of how we quarreled in our silly youthful +way, and how I went the next Sunday, all uninvited, to Checkshill, and made it +worse, and how afterward I wrote a letter that she thought was +“lovely,” and mended the matter. Nor will I tell of all our +subsequent fluctuations of misunderstanding. Always I was the offender and the +final penitent until this last trouble that was now beginning; and in between +we had some tender near moments, and I loved her very greatly. There was this +misfortune in the business, that in the darkness, and alone, I thought with +great intensity of her, of her eyes, of her touch, of her sweet and delightful +presence, but when I sat down to write I thought of Shelley and Burns and +myself, and other such irrelevant matters. When one is in love, in this +fermenting way, it is harder to make love than it is when one does not love at +all. And as for Nettie, she loved, I know, not me but those gentle mysteries. +It was not my voice should rouse her dreams to passion. . . So our letters +continued to jar. Then suddenly she wrote me one doubting whether she could +ever care for any one who was a Socialist and did not believe in Church, and +then hard upon it came another note with unexpected novelties of phrasing. She +thought we were not suited to each other, we differed so in tastes and ideas, +she had long thought of releasing me from our engagement. In fact, though I +really did not apprehend it fully at the first shock, I was dismissed. Her +letter had reached me when I came home after old Rawdon’s none too civil +refusal to raise my wages. On this particular evening of which I write, +therefore, I was in a state of feverish adjustment to two new and amazing, two +nearly overwhelming facts, that I was neither indispensable to Nettie nor at +Rawdon’s. And to talk of comets! +</p> + +<p> +Where did I stand? +</p> + +<p> +I had grown so accustomed to think of Nettie as inseparably mine—the +whole tradition of “true love” pointed me to that—that for +her to face about with these precise small phrases toward abandonment, after we +had kissed and whispered and come so close in the little adventurous +familiarities of the young, shocked me profoundly. I! I! And Rawdon +didn’t find me indispensable either. I felt I was suddenly repudiated by +the universe and threatened with effacement, that in some positive and emphatic +way I must at once assert myself. There was no balm in the religion I had +learnt, or in the irreligion I had adopted, for wounded self-love. +</p> + +<p> +Should I fling up Rawdon’s place at once and then in some extraordinary, +swift manner make the fortune of Frobisher’s adjacent and closely +competitive pot-bank? +</p> + +<p> +The first part of that program, at any rate, would be easy of accomplishment, +to go to Rawdon and say, “You will hear from me again,” but for the +rest, Frobisher might fail me. That, however, was a secondary issue. The +predominant affair was with Nettie. I found my mind thick-shot with flying +fragments of rhetoric that might be of service in the letter I would write her. +Scorn, irony, tenderness—what was it to be? +</p> + +<p> +“Brother!” said Parload, suddenly. +</p> + +<p> +“What?” said I. +</p> + +<p> +“They’re firing up at Bladden’s iron-works, and the smoke +comes right across my bit of sky.” +</p> + +<p> +The interruption came just as I was ripe to discharge my thoughts upon him. +</p> + +<p> +“Parload,” said I, “very likely I shall have to leave all +this. Old Rawdon won’t give me a rise in my wages, and after having asked +I don’t think I can stand going on upon the old terms anymore. See? So I +may have to clear out of Clayton for good and all.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p class="center"> +§ 3 +</p> + +<p> +That made Parload put down the opera-glass and look at me. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s a bad time to change just now,” he said after a little +pause. +</p> + +<p> +Rawdon had said as much, in a less agreeable tone. +</p> + +<p> +But with Parload I felt always a disposition to the heroic note. +“I’m tired,” I said, “of humdrum drudgery for other +men. One may as well starve one’s body out of a place as to starve +one’s soul in one.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know about that altogether,” began Parload, slowly. +. . . +</p> + +<p> +And with that we began one of our interminable conversations, one of those +long, wandering, intensely generalizing, diffusely personal talks that will be +dear to the hearts of intelligent youths until the world comes to an end. The +Change has not abolished that, anyhow. +</p> + +<p> +It would be an incredible feat of memory for me now to recall all that +meandering haze of words, indeed I recall scarcely any of it, though its +circumstances and atmosphere stand out, a sharp, clear picture in my mind. I +posed after my manner and behaved very foolishly no doubt, a wounded, smarting +egotist, and Parload played his part of the philosopher preoccupied with the +deeps. +</p> + +<p> +We were presently abroad, walking through the warm summer’s night and +talking all the more freely for that. But one thing that I said I can remember. +“I wish at times,” said I, with a gesture at the heavens, +“that comet of yours or some such thing would indeed strike this +world—and wipe us all away, strikes, wars, tumults, loves, jealousies, +and all the wretchedness of life!” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah!” said Parload, and the thought seemed to hang about him. +</p> + +<p> +“It could only add to the miseries of life,” he said irrelevantly, +when presently I was discoursing of other things. +</p> + +<p> +“What would?” +</p> + +<p> +“Collision with a comet. It would only throw things back. It would only +make what was left of life more savage than it is at present.” +</p> + +<p> +“But why should <i>anything</i> be left of life?” said I. . . . +</p> + +<p> +That was our style, you know, and meanwhile we walked together up the narrow +street outside his lodging, up the stepway and the lanes toward Clayton Crest +and the high road. +</p> + +<p> +But my memories carry me back so effectually to those days before the Change +that I forget that now all these places have been altered beyond recognition, +that the narrow street and the stepway and the view from Clayton Crest, and +indeed all the world in which I was born and bred and made, has vanished clean +away, out of space and out of time, and wellnigh out of the imagination of all +those who are younger by a generation than I. You cannot see, as I can see, the +dark empty way between the mean houses, the dark empty way lit by a bleary +gas-lamp at the corner, you cannot feel the hard checkered pavement under your +boots, you cannot mark the dimly lit windows here and there, and the shadows +upon the ugly and often patched and crooked blinds of the people cooped within. +Nor can you presently pass the beerhouse with its brighter gas and its queer, +screening windows, nor get a whiff of foul air and foul language from its door, +nor see the crumpled furtive figure—some rascal child—that slinks +past us down the steps. +</p> + +<p> +We crossed the longer street, up which a clumsy steam tram, vomiting smoke and +sparks, made its clangorous way, and adown which one saw the greasy brilliance +of shop fronts and the naphtha flares of hawkers’ barrows dripping fire +into the night. A hazy movement of people swayed along that road, and we heard +the voice of an itinerant preacher from a waste place between the houses. You +cannot see these things as I can see them, nor can you figure—unless you +know the pictures that great artist Hyde has left the world—the effect of +the great hoarding by which we passed, lit below by a gas-lamp and towering up +to a sudden sharp black edge against the pallid sky. +</p> + +<p> +Those hoardings! They were the brightest colored things in all that vanished +world. Upon them, in successive layers of paste and paper, all the rough +enterprises of that time joined in chromatic discord; pill vendors and +preachers, theaters and charities, marvelous soaps and astonishing pickles, +typewriting machines and sewing machines, mingled in a sort of visualized +clamor. And passing that there was a muddy lane of cinders, a lane without a +light, that used its many puddles to borrow a star or so from the sky. We +splashed along unheeding as we talked. +</p> + +<p> +Then across the allotments, a wilderness of cabbages and evil-looking sheds, +past a gaunt abandoned factory, and so to the high road. The high road ascended +in a curve past a few houses and a beerhouse or so, and round until all the +valley in which four industrial towns lay crowded and confluent was overlooked. +</p> + +<p> +I will admit that with the twilight there came a spell of weird magnificence +over all that land and brooded on it until dawn. The horrible meanness of its +details was veiled, the hutches that were homes, the bristling multitudes of +chimneys, the ugly patches of unwilling vegetation amidst the makeshift fences +of barrel-stave and wire. The rusty scars that framed the opposite ridges where +the iron ore was taken and the barren mountains of slag from the blast furnaces +were veiled; the reek and boiling smoke and dust from foundry, pot-bank, and +furnace, transfigured and assimilated by the night. The dust-laden atmosphere +that was gray oppression through the day became at sundown a mystery of deep +translucent colors, of blues and purples, of somber and vivid reds, of strange +bright clearnesses of green and yellow athwart the darkling sky. Each upstart +furnace, when its monarch sun had gone, crowned itself with flames, the dark +cinder heaps began to glow with quivering fires, and each pot-bank squatted +rebellious in a volcanic coronet of light. The empire of the day broke into a +thousand feudal baronies of burning coal. The minor streets across the valley +picked themselves out with gas-lamps of faint yellow, that brightened and +mingled at all the principal squares and crossings with the greenish pallor of +incandescent mantles and the high cold glare of the electric arc. The +interlacing railways lifted bright signal-boxes over their intersections, and +signal stars of red and green in rectangular constellations. The trains became +articulated black serpents breathing fire. +</p> + +<p> +Moreover, high overhead, like a thing put out of reach and near forgotten, +Parload had rediscovered a realm that was ruled by neither sun nor furnace, the +universe of stars. +</p> + +<p> +This was the scene of many a talk we two had held together. And if in the +daytime we went right over the crest and looked westward there was farmland, +there were parks and great mansions, the spire of a distant cathedral, and +sometimes when the weather was near raining, the crests of remote mountains +hung clearly in the sky. Beyond the range of sight indeed, out beyond, there +was Checkshill; I felt it there always, and in the darkness more than I did by +day. Checkshill, and Nettie! +</p> + +<p> +And to us two youngsters as we walked along the cinder path beside the rutted +road and argued out our perplexities, it seemed that this ridge gave us +compendiously a view of our whole world. +</p> + +<p> +There on the one hand in a crowded darkness, about the ugly factories and +work-places, the workers herded together, ill clothed, ill nourished, ill +taught, badly and expensively served at every occasion in life, uncertain even +of their insufficient livelihood from day to day, the chapels and churches and +public-houses swelling up amidst their wretched homes like saprophytes amidst a +general corruption, and on the other, in space, freedom, and dignity, scarce +heeding the few cottages, as overcrowded as they were picturesque, in which the +laborers festered, lived the landlords and masters who owned pot-banks and +forge and farm and mine. Far away, distant, beautiful, irrelevant, from out of +a little cluster of secondhand bookshops, ecclesiastical residences, and the +inns and incidentals of a decaying market town, the cathedral of Lowchester +pointed a beautiful, unemphatic spire to vague incredible skies. So it seemed +to us that the whole world was planned in those youthful first impressions. +</p> + +<p> +We saw everything simple, as young men will. We had our angry, confident +solutions, and whosoever would criticize them was a friend of the robbers. It +was a clear case of robbery, we held, visibly so; there in those great houses +lurked the Landlord and the Capitalist, with his scoundrel the Lawyer, with his +cheat the Priest, and we others were all the victims of their deliberate +villainies. No doubt they winked and chuckled over their rare wines, amidst +their dazzling, wickedly dressed women, and plotted further grinding for the +faces of the poor. And amidst all the squalor on the other hand, amidst +brutalities, ignorance, and drunkenness, suffered multitudinously their +blameless victim, the Working Man. And we, almost at the first glance, had +found all this out, it had merely to be asserted now with sufficient rhetoric +and vehemence to change the face of the whole world. The Working Man would +arise—in the form of a Labor Party, and with young men like Parload and +myself to represent him—and come to his own, and +then———? +</p> + +<p> +Then the robbers would get it hot, and everything would be extremely +satisfactory. +</p> + +<p> +Unless my memory plays me strange tricks that does no injustice to the creed of +thought and action that Parload and I held as the final result of human wisdom. +We believed it with heat, and rejected with heat the most obvious qualification +of its harshness. At times in our great talks we were full of heady hopes for +the near triumph of our doctrine, more often our mood was hot resentment at the +wickedness and stupidity that delayed so plain and simple a reconstruction of +the order of the world. Then we grew malignant, and thought of barricades and +significant violence. I was very bitter, I know, upon this night of which I am +now particularly telling, and the only face upon the hydra of Capitalism and +Monopoly that I could see at all clearly, smiled exactly as old Rawdon had +smiled when he refused to give me more than a paltry twenty shillings a week. +</p> + +<p> +I wanted intensely to salve my self-respect by some revenge upon him, and I +felt that if that could be done by slaying the hydra, I might drag its carcass +to the feet of Nettie, and settle my other trouble as well. “What do you +think of me <i>now</i>, Nettie?” +</p> + +<p> +That at any rate comes near enough to the quality of my thinking, then, for you +to imagine how I gesticulated and spouted to Parload that night. You figure us +as little black figures, unprepossessing in the outline, set in the midst of +that desolating night of flaming industrialism, and my little voice with a +rhetorical twang protesting, denouncing. . . . +</p> + +<p> +You will consider those notions of my youth poor silly violent stuff; +particularly if you are of the younger generation born since the Change you +will be of that opinion. Nowadays the whole world thinks clearly, thinks with +deliberation, pellucid certainties, you find it impossible to imagine how any +other thinking could have been possible. Let me tell you then how you can bring +yourself to something like the condition of our former state. In the first +place you must get yourself out of health by unwise drinking and eating, and +out of condition by neglecting your exercise, then you must contrive to be +worried very much and made very anxious and uncomfortable, and then you must +work very hard for four or five days and for long hours every day at something +too petty to be interesting, too complex to be mechanical, and without any +personal significance to you whatever. This done, get straightway into a room +that is not ventilated at all, and that is already full of foul air, and there +set yourself to think out some very complicated problem. In a very little while +you will find yourself in a state of intellectual muddle, annoyed, impatient, +snatching at the obvious presently in choosing and rejecting conclusions +haphazard. Try to play chess under such conditions and you will play stupidly +and lose your temper. Try to do anything that taxes the brain or temper and you +will fail. +</p> + +<p> +Now, the whole world before the Change was as sick and feverish as that, it was +worried and overworked and perplexed by problems that would not get stated +simply, that changed and evaded solution, it was in an atmosphere that had +corrupted and thickened past breathing; there was no thorough cool thinking in +the world at all. There was nothing in the mind of the world anywhere but +half-truths, hasty assumptions, hallucinations, and emotions. Nothing. . . . +</p> + +<p> +I know it seems incredible, that already some of the younger men are beginning +to doubt the greatness of the Change our world has undergone, but +read—read the newspapers of that time. Every age becomes mitigated and a +little ennobled in our minds as it recedes into the past. It is the part of +those who like myself have stories of that time to tell, to supply, by a +scrupulous spiritual realism, some antidote to that glamour. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p class="center"> +§ 4 +</p> + +<p> +Always with Parload I was chief talker. +</p> + +<p> +I can look back upon myself with, I believe, an almost perfect detachment, +things have so changed that indeed now I am another being, with scarce anything +in common with that boastful foolish youngster whose troubles I recall. I see +him vulgarly theatrical, egotistical, insincere, indeed I do not like him save +with that instinctive material sympathy that is the fruit of incessant +intimacy. Because he was myself I may be able to feel and write understandingly +about motives that will put him out of sympathy with nearly every reader, but +why should I palliate or defend his quality? +</p> + +<p> +Always, I say, I did the talking, and it would have amazed me beyond measure if +any one had told me that mine was not the greater intelligence in these wordy +encounters. Parload was a quiet youth, and stiff and restrained in all things, +while I had that supreme gift for young men and democracies, the gift of +copious expression. Parload I diagnosed in my secret heart as a trifle dull; he +posed as pregnant quiet, I thought, and was obsessed by the congenial notion of +“scientific caution.” I did not remark that while my hands were +chiefly useful for gesticulation or holding a pen Parload’s hands could +do all sorts of things, and I did not think therefore that fibers must run from +those fingers to something in his brain. Nor, though I bragged perpetually of +my shorthand, of my literature, of my indispensable share in Rawdon’s +business, did Parload lay stress on the conics and calculus he +“mugged” in the organized science school. Parload is a famous man +now, a great figure in a great time, his work upon intersecting radiations has +broadened the intellectual horizon of mankind for ever, and I, who am at best a +hewer of intellectual wood, a drawer of living water, can smile, and he can +smile, to think how I patronized and posed and jabbered over him in the +darkness of those early days. +</p> + +<p> +That night I was shrill and eloquent beyond measure. Rawdon was, of course, the +hub upon which I went round—Rawdon and the Rawdonesque employer and the +injustice of “wages slavery” and all the immediate conditions of +that industrial blind alley up which it seemed our lives were thrust. But ever +and again I glanced at other things. Nettie was always there in the background +of my mind, regarding me enigmatically. It was part of my pose to Parload that +I had a romantic love-affair somewhere away beyond the sphere of our +intercourse, and that note gave a Byronic resonance to many of the nonsensical +things I produced for his astonishment. +</p> + +<p> +I will not weary you with too detailed an account of the talk of a foolish +youth who was also distressed and unhappy, and whose voice was balm for the +humiliations that smarted in his eyes. Indeed, now in many particulars I cannot +disentangle this harangue of which I tell from many of the things I may have +said in other talks to Parload. For example, I forget if it was then or before +or afterwards that, as it were by accident, I let out what might be taken as an +admission that I was addicted to drugs. +</p> + +<p> +“You shouldn’t do that,” said Parload, suddenly. “It +won’t do to poison your brains with that.” +</p> + +<p> +My brains, my eloquence, were to be very important assets to our party in the +coming revolution. . . . +</p> + +<p> +But one thing does clearly belong to this particular conversation I am +recalling. When I started out it was quite settled in the back of my mind that +I must not leave Rawdon’s. I simply wanted to abuse my employer to +Parload. But I talked myself quite out of touch with all the cogent reasons +there were for sticking to my place, and I got home that night irrevocably +committed to a spirited—not to say a defiant—policy with my +employer. +</p> + +<p> +“I can’t stand Rawdon’s much longer,” I said to Parload +by way of a flourish. +</p> + +<p> +“There’s hard times coming,” said Parload. +</p> + +<p> +“Next winter.” +</p> + +<p> +“Sooner. The Americans have been overproducing, and they mean to dump. +The iron trade is going to have convulsions.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t care. Pot-banks are steady.” +</p> + +<p> +“With a corner in borax? No. I’ve heard—” +</p> + +<p> +“What have you heard?” +</p> + +<p> +“Office secrets. But it’s no secret there’s trouble coming to +potters. There’s been borrowing and speculation. The masters don’t +stick to one business as they used to do. I can tell that much. Half the valley +may be ‘playing’ before two months are out.” Parload +delivered himself of this unusually long speech in his most pithy and weighty +manner. +</p> + +<p> +“Playing” was our local euphemism for a time when there was no work +and no money for a man, a time of stagnation and dreary hungry loafing day +after day. Such interludes seemed in those days a necessary consequence of +industrial organization. +</p> + +<p> +“You’d better stick to Rawdon’s,” said Parload. +</p> + +<p> +“Ugh,” said I, affecting a noble disgust. +</p> + +<p> +“There’ll be trouble,” said Parload. +</p> + +<p> +“Who cares?” said I. “Let there be trouble—the more the +better. This system has got to end, sooner or later. These capitalists with +their speculation and corners and trusts make things go from bad to worse. Why +should I cower in Rawdon’s office, like a frightened dog, while hunger +walks the streets? Hunger is the master revolutionary. When he comes we ought +to turn out and salute him. Anyway, <i>I’m</i> going to do so now.” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s all very well,” began Parload. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m tired of it,” I said. “I want to come to grips +with all these Rawdons. I think perhaps if I was hungry and savage I could talk +to hungry men—” +</p> + +<p> +“There’s your mother,” said Parload, in his slow judicial +way. +</p> + +<p> +That <i>was</i> a difficulty. +</p> + +<p> +I got over it by a rhetorical turn. “Why should one sacrifice the future +of the world—why should one even sacrifice one’s own +future—because one’s mother is totally destitute of +imagination?” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p class="center"> +§ 5 +</p> + +<p> +It was late when I parted from Parload and came back to my own home. +</p> + +<p> +Our house stood in a highly respectable little square near the Clayton parish +church. Mr. Gabbitas, the curate of all work, lodged on our ground floor, and +upstairs there was an old lady, Miss Holroyd, who painted flowers on china and +maintained her blind sister in an adjacent room; my mother and I lived in the +basement and slept in the attics. The front of the house was veiled by a +Virginian creeper that defied the Clayton air and clustered in untidy dependent +masses over the wooden porch. +</p> + +<p> +As I came up the steps I had a glimpse of Mr. Gabbitas printing photographs by +candle light in his room. It was the chief delight of his little life to spend +his holiday abroad in the company of a queer little snap-shot camera, and to +return with a great multitude of foggy and sinister negatives that he had made +in beautiful and interesting places. These the camera company would develop for +him on advantageous terms, and he would spend his evenings the year through in +printing from them in order to inflict copies upon his undeserving friends. +There was a long frameful of his work in the Clayton National School, for +example, inscribed in old English lettering, “Italian Travel Pictures, by +the Rev. E. B. Gabbitas.” For this it seemed he lived and traveled and +had his being. It was his only real joy. By his shaded light I could see his +sharp little nose, his little pale eyes behind his glasses, his mouth pursed up +with the endeavor of his employment. +</p> + +<p> +“Hireling Liar,” I muttered, for was not he also part of the +system, part of the scheme of robbery that made wages serfs of Parload and +me?—though his share in the proceedings was certainly small. +</p> + +<p> +“Hireling Liar,” said I, standing in the darkness, outside even his +faint glow of traveled culture. . . +</p> + +<p> +My mother let me in. +</p> + +<p> +She looked at me, mutely, because she knew there was something wrong and that +it was no use for her to ask what. +</p> + +<p> +“Good night, mummy,” said I, and kissed her a little roughly, and +lit and took my candle and went off at once up the staircase to bed, not +looking back at her. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve kept some supper for you, dear.” +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t want any supper.” +</p> + +<p> +“But, dearie———” +</p> + +<p> +“Good night, mother,” and I went up and slammed my door upon her, +blew out my candle, and lay down at once upon my bed, lay there a long time +before I got up to undress. +</p> + +<p> +There were times when that dumb beseeching of my mother’s face irritated +me unspeakably. It did so that night. I felt I had to struggle against it, that +I could not exist if I gave way to its pleadings, and it hurt me and divided me +to resist it, almost beyond endurance. It was clear to me that I had to think +out for myself religious problems, social problems, questions of conduct, +questions of expediency, that her poor dear simple beliefs could not help me at +all—and she did not understand! Hers was the accepted religion, her only +social ideas were blind submissions to the accepted order—to laws, to +doctors, to clergymen, lawyers, masters, and all respectable persons in +authority over us, and with her to believe was to fear. She knew from a +thousand little signs—though still at times I went to church with +her—that I was passing out of touch of all these things that ruled her +life, into some terrible unknown. From things I said she could infer such +clumsy concealments as I made. She felt my socialism, felt my spirit in revolt +against the accepted order, felt the impotent resentments that filled me with +bitterness against all she held sacred. Yet, you know, it was not her dear gods +she sought to defend so much as me! She seemed always to be wanting to say to +me, “Dear, I know it’s hard—but revolt is harder. Don’t +make war on it, dear—don’t! Don’t do anything to offend it. +I’m sure it will hurt you if you do—it will hurt you if you +do.” +</p> + +<p> +She had been cowed into submission, as so many women of that time had been, by +the sheer brutality of the accepted thing. The existing order dominated her +into a worship of abject observances. It had bent her, aged her, robbed her of +eyesight so that at fifty-five she peered through cheap spectacles at my face, +and saw it only dimly, filled her with a habit of anxiety, made her +hands——— Her poor dear hands! Not in the whole world now +could you find a woman with hands so grimy, so needle-worn, so misshapen by +toil, so chapped and coarsened, so evilly entreated. . . . At any rate, there +is this I can say for myself, that my bitterness against the world and fortune +was for her sake as well as for my own. +</p> + +<p> +Yet that night I pushed by her harshly. I answered her curtly, left her +concerned and perplexed in the passage, and slammed my door upon her. +</p> + +<p> +And for a long time I lay raging at the hardship and evil of life, at the +contempt of Rawdon, and the loveless coolness of Nettie’s letter, at my +weakness and insignificance, at the things I found intolerable, and the things +I could not mend. Over and over went my poor little brain, tired out and unable +to stop on my treadmill of troubles. Nettie. Rawdon. My mother. Gabbitas. +Nettie. . . +</p> + +<p> +Suddenly I came upon emotional exhaustion. Some clock was striking midnight. +After all, I was young; I had these quick transitions. I remember quite +distinctly, I stood up abruptly, undressed very quickly in the dark, and had +hardly touched my pillow again before I was asleep. +</p> + +<p> +But how my mother slept that night I do not know. +</p> + +<p> +Oddly enough, I do not blame myself for behaving like this to my mother, though +my conscience blames me acutely for my arrogance to Parload. I regret my +behavior to my mother before the days of the Change, it is a scar among my +memories that will always be a little painful to the end of my days, but I do +not see how something of the sort was to be escaped under those former +conditions. In that time of muddle and obscurity people were overtaken by needs +and toil and hot passions before they had the chance of even a year or so of +clear thinking; they settled down to an intense and strenuous application to +some partial but immediate duty, and the growth of thought ceased in them. They +set and hardened into narrow ways. Few women remained capable of a new idea +after five and twenty, few men after thirty-one or two. Discontent with the +thing that existed was regarded as immoral, it was certainly an annoyance, and +the only protest against it, the only effort against that universal tendency in +all human institutions to thicken and clog, to work loosely and badly, to rust +and weaken towards catastrophes, came from the young—the crude unmerciful +young. It seemed in those days to thoughtful men the harsh law of +being—that either we must submit to our elders and be stifled, or +disregard them, disobey them, thrust them aside, and make our little step of +progress before we too ossified and became obstructive in our turn. +</p> + +<p> +My pushing past my mother, my irresponsive departure to my own silent +meditations, was, I now perceive, a figure of the whole hard relationship +between parents and son in those days. There appeared no other way; that +perpetually recurring tragedy was, it seemed, part of the very nature of the +progress of the world. We did not think then that minds might grow ripe without +growing rigid, or children honor their parents and still think for themselves. +We were angry and hasty because we stifled in the darkness, in a poisoned and +vitiated air. That deliberate animation of the intelligence which is now the +universal quality, that vigor with consideration, that judgment with confident +enterprise which shine through all our world, were things disintegrated and +unknown in the corrupting atmosphere of our former state. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +(So the first fascicle ended. I put it aside and looked for the second. +</p> + +<p> +“Well?” said the man who wrote. +</p> + +<p> +“This is fiction?” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s my story.” +</p> + +<p> +“But you— Amidst this beauty— You are not this +ill-conditioned, squalidly bred lad of whom I have been reading?” +</p> + +<p> +He smiled. “There intervenes a certain Change,” he said. +“Have I not hinted at that?” +</p> + +<p> +I hesitated upon a question, then saw the second fascicle at hand, and picked +it up.) +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap02"></a>CHAPTER THE SECOND<br /> +NETTIE</h2> + +<p class="center"> +§ 1 +</p> + +<p> +I cannot now remember (<i>the story resumed</i>), what interval separated that +evening on which Parload first showed me the comet—I think I only +pretended to see it then—and the Sunday afternoon I spent at Checkshill. +</p> + +<p> +Between the two there was time enough for me to give notice and leave +Rawdon’s, to seek for some other situation very strenuously in vain, to +think and say many hard and violent things to my mother and to Parload, and to +pass through some phases of very profound wretchedness. There must have been a +passionate correspondence with Nettie, but all the froth and fury of that has +faded now out of my memory. All I have clear now is that I wrote one +magnificent farewell to her, casting her off forever, and that I got in reply a +prim little note to say, that even if there was to be an end to everything, +that was no excuse for writing such things as I had done, and then I think I +wrote again in a vein I considered satirical. To that she did not reply. That +interval was at least three weeks, and probably four, because the comet which +had been on the first occasion only a dubious speck in the sky, certainly +visible only when it was magnified, was now a great white presence, brighter +than Jupiter, and casting a shadow on its own account. It was now actively +present in the world of human thought, every one was talking about it, every +one was looking for its waxing splendor as the sun went down—the papers, +the music-halls, the hoardings, echoed it. +</p> + +<p> +Yes; the comet was already dominant before I went over to make everything clear +to Nettie. And Parload had spent two hoarded pounds in buying himself a +spectroscope, so that he could see for himself, night after night, that +mysterious, that stimulating line—the unknown line in the green. How many +times I wonder did I look at the smudgy, quivering symbol of the unknown things +that were rushing upon us out of the inhuman void, before I rebelled? But at +last I could stand it no longer, and I reproached Parload very bitterly for +wasting his time in “astronomical dilettantism.” +</p> + +<p> +“Here,” said I. “We’re on the verge of the biggest +lock-out in the history of this countryside; here’s distress and hunger +coming, here’s all the capitalistic competitive system like a wound +inflamed, and you spend your time gaping at that damned silly streak of nothing +in the sky!” +</p> + +<p> +Parload stared at me. “Yes, I do,” he said slowly, as though it was +a new idea. “Don’t I? . . . I wonder why.” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>I</i> want to start meetings of an evening on Howden’s +Waste.” +</p> + +<p> +“You think they’d listen?” +</p> + +<p> +“They’d listen fast enough now.” +</p> + +<p> +“They didn’t before,” said Parload, looking at his pet +instrument. +</p> + +<p> +“There was a demonstration of unemployed at Swathinglea on Sunday. They +got to stone throwing.” +</p> + +<p> +Parload said nothing for a little while and I said several things. He seemed to +be considering something. +</p> + +<p> +“But, after all,” he said at last, with an awkward movement towards +his spectroscope, “that does signify something.” +</p> + +<p> +“The comet?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes.” +</p> + +<p> +“What can it signify? You don’t want me to believe in astrology. +What does it matter what flames in the heavens—when men are starving on +earth?” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s—it’s science.” +</p> + +<p> +“Science! What we want now is socialism—not science.” +</p> + +<p> +He still seemed reluctant to give up his comet. +</p> + +<p> +“Socialism’s all right,” he said, “but if that thing up +there <i>was</i> to hit the earth it might matter.” +</p> + +<p> +“Nothing matters but human beings.” +</p> + +<p> +“Suppose it killed them all.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh,” said I, “that’s Rot,” +</p> + +<p> +“I wonder,” said Parload, dreadfully divided in his allegiance. +</p> + +<p> +He looked at the comet. He seemed on the verge of repeating his growing +information about the nearness of the paths of the earth and comet, and all +that might ensue from that. So I cut in with something I had got out of a now +forgotten writer called Ruskin, a volcano of beautiful language and nonsensical +suggestions, who prevailed very greatly with eloquent excitable young men in +those days. Something it was about the insignificance of science and the +supreme importance of Life. Parload stood listening, half turned towards the +sky with the tips of his fingers on his spectroscope. He seemed to come to a +sudden decision. +</p> + +<p> +“No. I don’t agree with you, Leadford,” he said. “You +don’t understand about science.” +</p> + +<p> +Parload rarely argued with that bluntness of opposition. I was so used to +entire possession of our talk that his brief contradiction struck me like a +blow. “Don’t agree with me!” I repeated. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said Parload +</p> + +<p> +“But how?” +</p> + +<p> +“I believe science is of more importance than socialism,” he said. +“Socialism’s a theory. Science—science is something +more.” +</p> + +<p> +And that was really all he seemed to be able to say. +</p> + +<p> +We embarked upon one of those queer arguments illiterate young men used always +to find so heating. Science or Socialism? It was, of course, like arguing which +is right, left handedness or a taste for onions, it was altogether impossible +opposition. But the range of my rhetoric enabled me at last to exasperate +Parload, and his mere repudiation of my conclusions sufficed to exasperate me, +and we ended in the key of a positive quarrel. “Oh, very well!” +said I. “So long as I know where we are!” +</p> + +<p> +I slammed his door as though I dynamited his house, and went raging down the +street, but I felt that he was already back at the window worshiping his +blessed line in the green, before I got round the corner. +</p> + +<p> +I had to walk for an hour or so, before I was cool enough to go home. +</p> + +<p> +And it was Parload who had first introduced me to socialism! +</p> + +<p> +Recreant! +</p> + +<p> +The most extraordinary things used to run through my head in those days. I will +confess that my mind ran persistently that evening upon revolutions after the +best French pattern, and I sat on a Committee of Safety and tried backsliders. +Parload was there, among the prisoners, backsliderissimus, aware too late of +the error of his ways. His hands were tied behind his back ready for the +shambles; through the open door one heard the voice of justice, the rude +justice of the people. I was sorry, but I had to do my duty. +</p> + +<p> +“If we punish those who would betray us to Kings,” said I, with a +sorrowful deliberation, “how much the more must we punish those who would +give over the State to the pursuit of useless knowledge”; and so with a +gloomy satisfaction sent him off to the guillotine. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, Parload! Parload! If only you’d listened to me earlier, +Parload. . . .” +</p> + +<p> +None the less that quarrel made me extremely unhappy. Parload was my only +gossip, and it cost me much to keep away from him and think evil of him with no +one to listen to me, evening after evening. +</p> + +<p> +That was a very miserable time for me, even before my last visit to Checkshill. +My long unemployed hours hung heavily on my hands. I kept away from home all +day, partly to support a fiction that I was sedulously seeking another +situation, and partly to escape the persistent question in my mother’s +eyes. “Why did you quarrel with Mr. Rawdon? Why DID you? Why do you keep +on going about with a sullen face and risk offending IT more?” I spent +most of the morning in the newspaper-room of the public library, writing +impossible applications for impossible posts—I remember that among other +things of the sort I offered my services to a firm of private detectives, a +sinister breed of traders upon base jealousies now happily vanished from the +world, and wrote apropos of an advertisement for “stevedores” that +I did not know what the duties of a stevedore might be, but that I was apt and +willing to learn—and in the afternoons and evenings I wandered through +the strange lights and shadows of my native valley and hated all created +things. Until my wanderings were checked by the discovery that I was wearing +out my boots. +</p> + +<p> +The stagnant inconclusive malaria of that time! +</p> + +<p> +I perceive that I was an evil-tempered, ill-disposed youth with a great +capacity for hatred, <i>but</i>— +</p> + +<p> +There was an excuse for hate. +</p> + +<p> +It was wrong of me to hate individuals, to be rude, harsh, and vindictive to +this person or that, but indeed it would have been equally wrong to have taken +the manifest offer life made me, without resentment. I see now clearly and +calmly, what I then felt obscurely and with an unbalanced intensity, that my +conditions were intolerable. My work was tedious and laborious and it took up +an unreasonable proportion of my time, I was ill clothed, ill fed, ill housed, +ill educated and ill trained, my will was suppressed and cramped to the pitch +of torture, I had no reasonable pride in myself and no reasonable chance of +putting anything right. It was a life hardly worth living. That a large +proportion of the people about me had no better a lot, that many had a worse, +does not affect these facts. It was a life in which contentment would have been +disgraceful. If some of them were contented or resigned, so much the worse for +every one. No doubt it was hasty and foolish of me to throw up my situation, +but everything was so obviously aimless and foolish in our social organization +that I do not feel disposed to blame myself even for that, except in so far as +it pained my mother and caused her anxiety. +</p> + +<p> +Think of the one comprehensive fact of the lock-out! +</p> + +<p> +That year was a bad year, a year of world-wide economic disorganization. +Through their want of intelligent direction the great “Trust” of +American ironmasters, a gang of energetic, narrow-minded furnace owners, had +smelted far more iron than the whole world had any demand for. (In those days +there existed no means of estimating any need of that sort beforehand.) They +had done this without even consulting the ironmasters of any other country. +During their period of activity they had drawn into their employment a great +number of workers, and had erected a huge productive plant. It is manifestly +just that people who do headlong stupid things of this sort should suffer, but +in the old days it was quite possible, it was customary for the real blunderers +in such disasters, to shift nearly all the consequences of their incapacity. No +one thought it wrong for a light-witted “captain of industry” who +had led his workpeople into overproduction, into the disproportionate +manufacture, that is to say, of some particular article, to abandon and dismiss +them, nor was there anything to prevent the sudden frantic underselling of some +trade rival in order to surprise and destroy his trade, secure his customers +for one’s own destined needs, and shift a portion of one’s +punishment upon him. This operation of spasmodic underselling was known as +“dumping.” The American ironmasters were now dumping on the British +market. The British employers were, of course, taking their loss out of their +workpeople as much as possible, but in addition they were agitating for some +legislation that would prevent—not stupid relative excess in production, +but “dumping”—not the disease, but the consequences of the +disease. The necessary knowledge to prevent either dumping or its causes, the +uncorrelated production of commodities, did not exist, but this hardly weighed +with them at all, and in answer to their demands there had arisen a curious +party of retaliatory-protectionists who combined vague proposals for spasmodic +responses to these convulsive attacks from foreign manufacturers, with the very +evident intention of achieving financial adventures. The dishonest and reckless +elements were indeed so evident in this movement as to add very greatly to the +general atmosphere of distrust and insecurity, and in the recoil from the +prospect of fiscal power in the hands of the class of men known as the +“New Financiers,” one heard frightened old-fashioned statesmen +asserting with passion that “dumping” didn’t occur, or that +it was a very charming sort of thing to happen. Nobody would face and handle +the rather intricate truth of the business. The whole effect upon the mind of a +cool observer was of a covey of unsubstantial jabbering minds drifting over a +series of irrational economic cataclysms, prices and employment tumbled about +like towers in an earthquake, and amidst the shifting masses were the common +work-people going on with their lives as well as they could, suffering, +perplexed, unorganized, and for anything but violent, fruitless protests, +impotent. You cannot hope now to understand the infinite want of adjustment in +the old order of things. At one time there were people dying of actual +starvation in India, while men were burning unsalable wheat in America. It +sounds like the account of a particularly mad dream, does it not? It was a +dream, a dream from which no one on earth expected an awakening. +</p> + +<p> +To us youngsters with the positiveness, the rationalism of youth, it seemed +that the strikes and lockouts, the overproduction and misery could not possibly +result simply from ignorance and want of thought and feeling. We needed more +dramatic factors than these mental fogs, these mere atmospheric devils. We fled +therefore to that common refuge of the unhappy ignorant, a belief in callous +insensate plots—we called them “plots”—against the +poor. +</p> + +<p> +You can still see how we figured it in any museum by looking up the caricatures +of capital and labor that adorned the German and American socialistic papers of +the old time. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p class="center"> +§ 2 +</p> + +<p> +I had cast Nettie off in an eloquent epistle, had really imagined the affair +was over forever—“I’ve done with women,” I said to +Parload—and then there was silence for more than a week. +</p> + +<p> +Before that week was over I was wondering with a growing emotion what next +would happen between us. +</p> + +<p> +I found myself thinking constantly of Nettie, picturing her—sometimes +with stern satisfaction, sometimes with sympathetic remorse—mourning, +regretting, realizing the absolute end that had come between us. At the bottom +of my heart I no more believed that there was an end between us, than that an +end would come to the world. Had we not kissed one another, had we not achieved +an atmosphere of whispering nearness, breached our virgin shyness with one +another? Of course she was mine, of course I was hers, and separations and +final quarrels and harshness and distance were no more than flourishes upon +that eternal fact. So at least I felt the thing, however I shaped my thoughts. +</p> + +<p> +Whenever my imagination got to work as that week drew to its close, she came in +as a matter of course, I thought of her recurrently all day and dreamt of her +at night. On Saturday night I dreamt of her very vividly. Her face was flushed +and wet with tears, her hair a little disordered, and when I spoke to her she +turned away. In some manner this dream left in my mind a feeling of distress +and anxiety. In the morning I had a raging thirst to see her. +</p> + +<p> +That Sunday my mother wanted me to go to church very particularly. She had a +double reason for that; she thought that it would certainly exercise a +favorable influence upon my search for a situation throughout the next week, +and in addition Mr. Gabbitas, with a certain mystery behind his glasses, had +promised to see what he could do for me, and she wanted to keep him up to that +promise. I half consented, and then my desire for Nettie took hold of me. I +told my mother I wasn’t going to church, and set off about eleven to walk +the seventeen miles to Checkshill. +</p> + +<p> +It greatly intensified the fatigue of that long tramp that the sole of my boot +presently split at the toe, and after I had cut the flapping portion off, a +nail worked through and began to torment me. However, the boot looked all right +after that operation and gave no audible hint of my discomfort. I got some +bread and cheese at a little inn on the way, and was in Checkshill park about +four. I did not go by the road past the house and so round to the gardens, but +cut over the crest beyond the second keeper’s cottage, along a path +Nettie used to call her own. It was a mere deer track. It led up a miniature +valley and through a pretty dell in which we had been accustomed to meet, and +so through the hollies and along a narrow path close by the wall of the +shrubbery to the gardens. +</p> + +<p> +In my memory that walk through the park before I came upon Nettie stands out +very vividly. The long tramp before it is foreshortened to a mere effect of +dusty road and painful boot, but the bracken valley and sudden tumult of doubts +and unwonted expectations that came to me, stands out now as something +significant, as something unforgettable, something essential to the meaning of +all that followed. Where should I meet her? What would she say? I had asked +these questions before and found an answer. Now they came again with a trail of +fresh implications and I had no answer for them at all. As I approached Nettie +she ceased to be the mere butt of my egotistical self-projection, the custodian +of my sexual pride, and drew together and became over and above this a +personality of her own, a personality and a mystery, a sphinx I had evaded only +to meet again. +</p> + +<p> +I find a little difficulty in describing the quality of the old-world +love-making so that it may be understandable now. +</p> + +<p> +We young people had practically no preparation at all for the stir and emotions +of adolescence. Towards the young the world maintained a conspiracy of +stimulating silences. There came no initiation. There were books, stories of a +curiously conventional kind that insisted on certain qualities in every love +affair and greatly intensified one’s natural desire for them, perfect +trust, perfect loyalty, lifelong devotion. Much of the complex essentials of +love were altogether hidden. One read these things, got accidental glimpses of +this and that, wondered and forgot, and so one grew. Then strange emotions, +novel alarming desires, dreams strangely charged with feeling; an inexplicable +impulse of self-abandonment began to tickle queerly amongst the familiar purely +egotistical and materialistic things of boyhood and girlhood. We were like +misguided travelers who had camped in the dry bed of a tropical river. +Presently we were knee deep and neck deep in the flood. Our beings were +suddenly going out from ourselves seeking other beings—we knew not why. +This novel craving for abandonment to some one of the other sex, bore us away. +We were ashamed and full of desire. We kept the thing a guilty secret, and were +resolved to satisfy it against all the world. In this state it was we drifted +in the most accidental way against some other blindly seeking creature, and +linked like nascent atoms. +</p> + +<p> +We were obsessed by the books we read, by all the talk about us that once we +had linked ourselves we were linked for life. Then afterwards we discovered +that other was also an egotism, a thing of ideas and impulses, that failed to +correspond with ours. +</p> + +<p> +So it was, I say, with the young of my class and most of the young people in +our world. So it came about that I sought Nettie on the Sunday afternoon and +suddenly came upon her, light bodied, slenderly feminine, hazel eyed, with her +soft sweet young face under the shady brim of her hat of straw, the pretty +Venus I had resolved should be wholly and exclusively mine. +</p> + +<p> +There, all unaware of me still, she stood, my essential feminine, the +embodiment of the inner thing in life for me—and moreover an unknown +other, a person like myself. +</p> + +<p> +She held a little book in her hand, open as if she were walking along and +reading it. That chanced to be her pose, but indeed she was standing quite +still, looking away towards the gray and lichenous shrubbery wall and, as I +think now, listening. Her lips were a little apart, curved to that faint, sweet +shadow of a smile. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p class="center"> +§ 3 +</p> + +<p> +I recall with a vivid precision her queer start when she heard the rustle of my +approaching feet, her surprise, her eyes almost of dismay for me. I could +recollect, I believe, every significant word she spoke during our meeting, and +most of what I said to her. At least, it seems I could, though indeed I may +deceive myself. But I will not make the attempt. We were both too ill-educated +to speak our full meanings, we stamped out our feelings with clumsy stereotyped +phrases; you who are better taught would fail to catch our intention. The +effect would be inanity. But our first words I may give you, because though +they conveyed nothing to me at the time, afterwards they meant much. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>You</i>, Willie!” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“I have come,” I said—forgetting in the instant all the +elaborate things I had intended to say. “I thought I would surprise +you—” +</p> + +<p> +“Surprise me?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes.” +</p> + +<p> +She stared at me for a moment. I can see her pretty face now as it looked at +me—her impenetrable dear face. She laughed a queer little laugh and her +color went for a moment, and then so soon as she had spoken, came back again. +</p> + +<p> +“Surprise me at what?” she said with a rising note. +</p> + +<p> +I was too intent to explain myself to think of what might lie in that. +</p> + +<p> +“I wanted to tell you,” I said, “that I didn’t mean +quite . . . the things I put in my letter.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p class="center"> +§ 4 +</p> + +<p> +When I and Nettie had been sixteen we had been just of an age and +contemporaries altogether. Now we were a year and three-quarters older, and +she—her metamorphosis was almost complete, and I was still only at the +beginning of a man’s long adolescence. +</p> + +<p> +In an instant she grasped the situation. The hidden motives of her quick +ripened little mind flashed out their intuitive scheme of action. She treated +me with that neat perfection of understanding a young woman has for a boy. +</p> + +<p> +“But how did you come?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +I told her I had walked. +</p> + +<p> +“Walked!” In an instant she was leading me towards the gardens. I +<i>must</i> be tired. I must come home with her at once and sit down. Indeed it +was near tea-time (the Stuarts had tea at the old-fashioned hour of five). +Every one would be <i>so</i> surprised to see me. Fancy walking! Fancy! But she +supposed a man thought nothing of seventeen miles. When <i>could</i> I have +started! +</p> + +<p> +All the while, keeping me at a distance, without even the touch of her hand. +</p> + +<p> +“But, Nettie! I came over to talk to you!” +</p> + +<p> +“My dear boy! Tea first, if you please! And besides—aren’t we +talking?” +</p> + +<p> +The “dear boy” was a new note, that sounded oddly to me. +</p> + +<p> +She quickened her pace a little. +</p> + +<p> +“I wanted to explain—” I began. +</p> + +<p> +Whatever I wanted to explain I had no chance to do so. I said a few discrepant +things that she answered rather by her intonation than her words. +</p> + +<p> +When we were well past the shrubbery, she slackened a little in her urgency, +and so we came along the slope under the beeches to the garden. She kept her +bright, straightforward-looking girlish eyes on me as we went; it seemed she +did so all the time, but now I know, better than I did then, that every now and +then she glanced over me and behind me towards the shrubbery. And all the +while, behind her quick breathless inconsecutive talk she was thinking. +</p> + +<p> +Her dress marked the end of her transition. +</p> + +<p> +Can I recall it? +</p> + +<p> +Not, I am afraid, in the terms a woman would use. But her bright brown hair, +which had once flowed down her back in a jolly pig-tail tied with a bit of +scarlet ribbon, was now caught up into an intricacy of pretty curves above her +little ear and cheek, and the soft long lines of her neck; her white dress had +descended to her feet; her slender waist, which had once been a mere +geographical expression, an imaginary line like the equator, was now a thing of +flexible beauty. A year ago she had been a pretty girl’s face sticking +out from a little unimportant frock that was carried upon an extremely active +and efficient pair of brown-stockinged legs. Now there was coming a strange new +body that flowed beneath her clothes with a sinuous insistence. Every movement, +and particularly the novel droop of her hand and arm to the unaccustomed skirts +she gathered about her, and a graceful forward inclination that had come to +her, called softly to my eyes. A very fine scarf—I suppose you would call +it a scarf—of green gossamer, that some new wakened instinct had told her +to fling about her shoulders, clung now closely to the young undulations of her +body, and now streamed fluttering out for a moment in a breath of wind, and +like some shy independent tentacle with a secret to impart, came into momentary +contact with my arm. +</p> + +<p> +She caught it back and reproved it. +</p> + +<p> +We went through the green gate in the high garden wall. I held it open for her +to pass through, for this was one of my restricted stock of stiff politenesses, +and then for a second she was near touching me. So we came to the trim array of +flower-beds near the head gardener’s cottage and the vistas of +“glass” on our left. We walked between the box edgings and beds of +begonias and into the shadow of a yew hedge within twenty yards of that very +pond with the gold-fish, at whose brim we had plighted our vows, and so we came +to the wistaria-smothered porch. +</p> + +<p> +The door was wide open, and she walked in before me. “Guess who has come +to see us!” she cried. +</p> + +<p> +Her father answered indistinctly from the parlor, and a chair creaked. I judged +he was disturbed in his nap. +</p> + +<p> +“Mother!” she called in her clear young voice. “Puss!” +</p> + +<p> +Puss was her sister. +</p> + +<p> +She told them in a marveling key that I had walked all the way from Clayton, +and they gathered about me and echoed her notes of surprise. +</p> + +<p> +“You’d better sit down, Willie,” said her father; “now +you have got here. How’s your mother?” +</p> + +<p> +He looked at me curiously as he spoke. +</p> + +<p> +He was dressed in his Sunday clothes, a sort of brownish tweeds, but the +waistcoat was unbuttoned for greater comfort in his slumbers. He was a +brown-eyed ruddy man, and I still have now in my mind the bright effect of the +red-golden hairs that started out from his cheek to flow down into his beard. +He was short but strongly built, and his beard and mustache were the biggest +things about him. She had taken all the possibility of beauty he possessed, his +clear skin, his bright hazel-brown eyes, and wedded them to a certain quickness +she got from her mother. Her mother I remember as a sharp-eyed woman of great +activity; she seems to me now to have been perpetually bringing in or taking +out meals or doing some such service, and to me—for my mother’s +sake and my own—she was always welcoming and kind. Puss was a youngster +of fourteen perhaps, of whom a hard bright stare, and a pale skin like her +mother’s, are the chief traces on my memory. All these people were very +kind to me, and among them there was a common recognition, sometimes very +agreeably finding expression, that I was—“clever.” They all +stood about me as if they were a little at a loss. +</p> + +<p> +“Sit down!” said her father. “Give him a chair, Puss.” +</p> + +<p> +We talked a little stiffly—they were evidently surprised by my sudden +apparition, dusty, fatigued, and white faced; but Nettie did not remain to keep +the conversation going. +</p> + +<p> +“There!” she cried suddenly, as if she were vexed. “I +declare!” and she darted out of the room. +</p> + +<p> +“Lord! what a girl it is!” said Mrs. Stuart. “I don’t +know what’s come to her.” +</p> + +<p> +It was half an hour before Nettie came back. It seemed a long time to me, and +yet she had been running, for when she came in again she was out of breath. In +the meantime, I had thrown out casually that I had given up my place at +Rawdon’s. “I can do better than that,” I said. +</p> + +<p> +“I left my book in the dell,” she said, panting. “Is tea +ready?” and that was her apology. . . +</p> + +<p> +We didn’t shake down into comfort even with the coming of the tea-things. +Tea at the gardener’s cottage was a serious meal, with a big cake and +little cakes, and preserves and fruit, a fine spread upon a table. You must +imagine me, sullen, awkward, and preoccupied, perplexed by the something that +was inexplicably unexpected in Nettie, saying little, and glowering across the +cake at her, and all the eloquence I had been concentrating for the previous +twenty-four hours, miserably lost somewhere in the back of my mind. +Nettie’s father tried to set me talking; he had a liking for my gift of +ready speech, for his own ideas came with difficulty, and it pleased and +astonished him to hear me pouring out my views. Indeed, over there I was, I +think, even more talkative than with Parload, though to the world at large I +was a shy young lout. “You ought to write it out for the +newspapers,” he used to say. “That’s what you ought to do. +<i>I</i> never heard such nonsense.” +</p> + +<p> +Or, “You’ve got the gift of the gab, young man. We ought to +ha’ made a lawyer of you.” +</p> + +<p> +But that afternoon, even in his eyes, I didn’t shine. Failing any other +stimulus, he reverted to my search for a situation, but even that did not +engage me. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p class="center"> +§ 5 +</p> + +<p> +For a long time I feared I should have to go back to Clayton without another +word to Nettie, she seemed insensible to the need I felt for a talk with her, +and I was thinking even of a sudden demand for that before them all. It was a +transparent manoeuver of her mother’s who had been watching my face, that +sent us out at last together to do something—I forget now what—in +one of the greenhouses. Whatever that little mission may have been it was the +merest, most barefaced excuse, a door to shut, or a window to close, and I +don’t think it got done. +</p> + +<p> +Nettie hesitated and obeyed. She led the way through one of the hot-houses. It +was a low, steamy, brick-floored alley between staging that bore a close crowd +of pots and ferns, and behind big branching plants that were spread and nailed +overhead so as to make an impervious cover of leaves, and in that close green +privacy she stopped and turned on me suddenly like a creature at bay. +</p> + +<p> +“Isn’t the maidenhair fern lovely?” she said, and looked at +me with eyes that said, “<i>Now</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +“Nettie,” I began, “I was a fool to write to you as I +did.” +</p> + +<p> +She startled me by the assent that flashed out upon her face. But she said +nothing, and stood waiting. +</p> + +<p> +“Nettie,” I plunged, “I can’t do without you. I—I +love you.” +</p> + +<p> +“If you loved me,” she said trimly, watching the white fingers she +plunged among the green branches of a selaginella, “could you write the +things you do to me?” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t mean them,” I said. “At least not +always.” +</p> + +<p> +I thought really they were very good letters, and that Nettie was stupid to +think otherwise, but I was for the moment clearly aware of the impossibility of +conveying that to her. +</p> + +<p> +“You wrote them.” +</p> + +<p> +“But then I tramp seventeen miles to say I don’t mean them.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes. But perhaps you do.” +</p> + +<p> +I think I was at a loss; then I said, not very clearly, “I +don’t.” +</p> + +<p> +“You think you—you love me, Willie. But you don’t.” +</p> + +<p> +“I do. Nettie! You know I do.” +</p> + +<p> +For answer she shook her head. +</p> + +<p> +I made what I thought was a most heroic plunge. “Nettie,” I said, +“I’d rather have you than—than my own opinions.” +</p> + +<p> +The selaginella still engaged her. “You think so now,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +I broke out into protestations. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” she said shortly. “It’s different now.” +</p> + +<p> +“But why should two letters make so much difference?” I said. +</p> + +<p> +“It isn’t only the letters. But it is different. It’s +different for good.” +</p> + +<p> +She halted a little with that sentence, seeking her expression. She looked up +abruptly into my eyes and moved, indeed slightly, but with the intimation that +she thought our talk might end. +</p> + +<p> +But I did not mean it to end like that. +</p> + +<p> +“For good?” said I. “No! . . Nettie! Nettie! You don’t +mean that!” +</p> + +<p> +“I do,” she said deliberately, still looking at me, and with all +her pose conveying her finality. She seemed to brace herself for the outbreak +that must follow. +</p> + +<p> +Of course I became wordy. But I did not submerge her. She stood entrenched, +firing her contradictions like guns into my scattered discursive attack. I +remember that our talk took the absurd form of disputing whether I could be in +love with her or not. And there was I, present in evidence, in a deepening and +widening distress of soul because she could stand there, defensive, brighter +and prettier than ever, and in some inexplicable way cut off from me and +inaccessible. +</p> + +<p> +You know, we had never been together before without little enterprises of +endearment, without a faintly guilty, quite delightful excitement. +</p> + +<p> +I pleaded, I argued. I tried to show that even my harsh and difficult letters +came from my desire to come wholly into contact with her. I made exaggerated +fine statements of the longing I felt for her when I was away, of the shock and +misery of finding her estranged and cool. She looked at me, feeling the emotion +of my speech and impervious to its ideas. I had no doubt—whatever poverty +in my words, coolly written down now—that I was eloquent then. I meant +most intensely what I said, indeed I was wholly concentrated upon it. I was set +upon conveying to her with absolute sincerity my sense of distance, and the +greatness of my desire. I toiled toward her painfully and obstinately through a +jungle of words. +</p> + +<p> +Her face changed very slowly—by such imperceptible degrees as when at +dawn light comes into a clear sky. I could feel that I touched her, that her +hardness was in some manner melting, her determination softening toward +hesitations. The habit of an old familiarity lurked somewhere within her. But +she would not let me reach her. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” she cried abruptly, starting into motion. +</p> + +<p> +She laid a hand on my arm. A wonderful new friendliness came into her voice. +“It’s impossible, Willie. Everything is different +now—everything. We made a mistake. We two young sillies made a mistake +and everything is different for ever. Yes, yes.” +</p> + +<p> +She turned about. +</p> + +<p> +“Nettie!” cried I, and still protesting, pursued her along the +narrow alley between the staging toward the hot-house door. I pursued her like +an accusation, and she went before me like one who is guilty and ashamed. So I +recall it now. +</p> + +<p> +She would not let me talk to her again. +</p> + +<p> +Yet I could see that my talk to her had altogether abolished the clear-cut +distance of our meeting in the park. Ever and again I found her hazel eyes upon +me. They expressed something novel—a surprise, as though she realized an +unwonted relationship, and a sympathetic pity. And still—something +defensive. +</p> + +<p> +When we got back to the cottage, I fell talking rather more freely with her +father about the nationalization of railways, and my spirits and temper had so +far mended at the realization that I could still produce an effect upon Nettie, +that I was even playful with Puss. Mrs. Stuart judged from that that things +were better with me than they were, and began to beam mightily. +</p> + +<p> +But Nettie remained thoughtful and said very little. She was lost in +perplexities I could not fathom, and presently she slipped away from us and +went upstairs. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p class="center"> +§ 6 +</p> + +<p> +I was, of course, too footsore to walk back to Clayton, but I had a shilling +and a penny in my pocket for the train between Checkshill and Two-Mile Stone, +and that much of the distance I proposed to do in the train. And when I got +ready to go, Nettie amazed me by waking up to the most remarkable solicitude +for me. I must, she said, go by the road. It was altogether too dark for the +short way to the lodge gates. +</p> + +<p> +I pointed out that it was moonlight. “With the comet thrown in,” +said old Stuart. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” she insisted, “you <i>must</i> go by the road.” +</p> + +<p> +I still disputed. +</p> + +<p> +She was standing near me. “To please <i>me</i>,” she urged, in a +quick undertone, and with a persuasive look that puzzled me. Even in the moment +I asked myself why should this please her? +</p> + +<p> +I might have agreed had she not followed that up with, “The hollies by +the shrubbery are as dark as pitch. And there’s the deer-hounds.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m not afraid of the dark,” said I. “Nor of the +deer-hounds, either.” +</p> + +<p> +“But those dogs! Supposing one was loose!” +</p> + +<p> +That was a girl’s argument, a girl who still had to understand that fear +is an overt argument only for her own sex. I thought too of those grisly lank +brutes straining at their chains and the chorus they could make of a night when +they heard belated footsteps along the edge of the Killing Wood, and the +thought banished my wish to please her. Like most imaginative natures I was +acutely capable of dreads and retreats, and constantly occupied with their +suppression and concealment, and to refuse the short cut when it might appear +that I did it on account of half a dozen almost certainly chained dogs was +impossible. +</p> + +<p> +So I set off in spite of her, feeling valiant and glad to be so easily brave, +but a little sorry that she should think herself crossed by me. +</p> + +<p> +A thin cloud veiled the moon, and the way under the beeches was dark and +indistinct. I was not so preoccupied with my love-affairs as to neglect what I +will confess was always my custom at night across that wild and lonely park. I +made myself a club by fastening a big flint to one end of my twisted +handkerchief and tying the other about my wrist, and with this in my pocket, +went on comforted. +</p> + +<p> +And it chanced that as I emerged from the hollies by the corner of the +shrubbery I was startled to come unexpectedly upon a young man in evening dress +smoking a cigar. +</p> + +<p> +I was walking on turf, so that the sound I made was slight. He stood clear in +the moonlight, his cigar glowed like a blood-red star, and it did not occur to +me at the time that I advanced towards him almost invisibly in an impenetrable +shadow. +</p> + +<p> +“Hullo,” he cried, with a sort of amiable challenge. +“I’m here first!” +</p> + +<p> +I came out into the light. “Who cares if you are?” said I. +</p> + +<p> +I had jumped at once to an interpretation of his words. I knew that there was +an intermittent dispute between the House people and the villager public about +the use of this track, and it is needless to say where my sympathies fell in +that dispute. +</p> + +<p> +“Eh?” he cried in surprise. +</p> + +<p> +“Thought I would run away, I suppose,” said I, and came close up to +him. +</p> + +<p> +All my enormous hatred of his class had flared up at the sight of his costume, +at the fancied challenge of his words. I knew him. He was Edward Verrall, son +of the man who owned not only this great estate but more than half of +Rawdon’s pot-bank, and who had interests and possessions, collieries and +rents, all over the district of the Four Towns. He was a gallant youngster, +people said, and very clever. Young as he was there was talk of parliament for +him; he had been a great success at the university, and he was being sedulously +popularized among us. He took with a light confidence, as a matter of course, +advantages that I would have faced the rack to get, and I firmly believed +myself a better man than he. He was, as he stood there, a concentrated figure +of all that filled me with bitterness. One day he had stopped in a motor +outside our house, and I remember the thrill of rage with which I had noted the +dutiful admiration in my mother’s eyes as she peered through her blind at +him. “That’s young Mr. Verrall,” she said. “They say +he’s very clever.” +</p> + +<p> +“They would,” I answered. “Damn them and him!” +</p> + +<p> +But that is by the way. +</p> + +<p> +He was clearly astonished to find himself face to face with a man. His note +changed. +</p> + +<p> +“Who the devil are <i>you?</i>” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +My retort was the cheap expedient of re-echoing, “Who the devil are +you?” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Well</i>,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m coming along this path if I like,” I said. “See? +It’s a public path—just as this used to be public land. +You’ve stolen the land—you and yours, and now you want to steal the +right of way. You’ll ask us to get off the face of the earth next. I +sha’n’t oblige. See?” +</p> + +<p> +I was shorter and I suppose a couple of years younger than he, but I had the +improvised club in my pocket gripped ready, and I would have fought with him +very cheerfully. But he fell a step backward as I came toward him. +</p> + +<p> +“Socialist, I presume?” he said, alert and quiet and with the +faintest note of badinage. +</p> + +<p> +“One of many.” +</p> + +<p> +“We’re all socialists nowadays,” he remarked philosophically, +“and I haven’t the faintest intention of disputing your right of +way.” +</p> + +<p> +“You’d better not,” I said. +</p> + +<p> +“No!” +</p> + +<p> +“No.” +</p> + +<p> +He replaced his cigar, and there was a brief pause. “Catching a +train?” he threw out. +</p> + +<p> +It seemed absurd not to answer. “Yes,” I said shortly. +</p> + +<p> +He said it was a pleasant evening for a walk. +</p> + +<p> +I hovered for a moment and there was my path before me, and he stood aside. +There seemed nothing to do but go on. “Good night,” said he, as +that intention took effect. +</p> + +<p> +I growled a surly good-night. +</p> + +<p> +I felt like a bombshell of swearing that must presently burst with some +violence as I went on my silent way. He had so completely got the best of our +encounter. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p class="center"> +§ 7 +</p> + +<p> +There comes a memory, an odd intermixture of two entirely divergent things, +that stands out with the intensest vividness. +</p> + +<p> +As I went across the last open meadow, following the short cut to Checkshill +station, I perceived I had two shadows. +</p> + +<p> +The thing jumped into my mind and stopped its tumid flow for a moment. I +remember the intelligent detachment of my sudden interest. I turned sharply, +and stood looking at the moon and the great white comet, that the drift of the +clouds had now rather suddenly unveiled. +</p> + +<p> +The comet was perhaps twenty degrees from the moon. What a wonderful thing it +looked floating there, a greenish-white apparition in the dark blue deeps! It +looked brighter than the moon because it was smaller, but the shadow it cast, +though clearer cut, was much fainter than the moon’s shadow. . . I went +on noting these facts, watching my two shadows precede me. +</p> + +<p> +I am totally unable to account for the sequence of my thoughts on this +occasion. But suddenly, as if I had come on this new fact round a corner, the +comet was out of my mind again, and I was face to face with an absolutely new +idea. I wonder sometimes if the two shadows I cast, one with a sort of feminine +faintness with regard to the other and not quite so tall, may not have +suggested the word or the thought of an assignation to my mind. All that I have +clear is that with the certitude of intuition I knew what it was that had +brought the youth in evening dress outside the shrubbery. Of course! He had +come to meet Nettie! +</p> + +<p> +Once the mental process was started it took no time at all. The day which had +been full of perplexities for me, the mysterious invisible thing that had held +Nettie and myself apart, the unaccountable strange something in her manner, was +revealed and explained. +</p> + +<p> +I knew now why she had looked guilty at my appearance, what had brought her out +that afternoon, why she had hurried me in, the nature of the “book” +she had run back to fetch, the reason why she had wanted me to go back by the +high-road, and why she had pitied me. It was all in the instant clear to me. +</p> + +<p> +You must imagine me a black little creature, suddenly stricken still—for +a moment standing rigid—and then again suddenly becoming active with an +impotent gesture, becoming audible with an inarticulate cry, with two little +shadows mocking my dismay, and about this figure you must conceive a great wide +space of moonlit grass, rimmed by the looming suggestion of distant +trees—trees very low and faint and dim, and over it all the domed +serenity of that wonderful luminous night. +</p> + +<p> +For a little while this realization stunned my mind. My thoughts came to a +pause, staring at my discovery. Meanwhile my feet and my previous direction +carried me through the warm darkness to Checkshill station with its little +lights, to the ticket-office window, and so to the train. +</p> + +<p> +I remember myself as it were waking up to the thing—I was alone in one of +the dingy “third-class” compartments of that time—and the +sudden nearly frantic insurgence of my rage. I stood up with the cry of an +angry animal, and smote my fist with all my strength against the panel of wood +before me. . . . +</p> + +<p> +Curiously enough I have completely forgotten my mood after that for a little +while, but I know that later, for a minute perhaps, I hung for a time out of +the carriage with the door open, contemplating a leap from the train. It was to +be a dramatic leap, and then I would go storming back to her, denounce her, +overwhelm her; and I hung, urging myself to do it. I don’t remember how +it was I decided not to do this, at last, but in the end I didn’t. +</p> + +<p> +When the train stopped at the next station I had given up all thoughts of going +back. I was sitting in the corner of the carriage with my bruised and wounded +hand pressed under my arm, and still insensible to its pain, trying to think +out clearly a scheme of action—action that should express the monstrous +indignation that possessed me. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap03"></a>CHAPTER THE THIRD<br /> +THE REVOLVER</h2> + +<p class="center"> +§ 1 +</p> + +<p> +“That comet is going to hit the earth!” +</p> + +<p> +So said one of the two men who got into the train and settled down. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah!” said the other man. +</p> + +<p> +“They do say that it is made of gas, that comet. We sha’n’t +blow up, shall us?”. . . +</p> + +<p> +What did it matter to me? +</p> + +<p> +I was thinking of revenge—revenge against the primary conditions of my +being. I was thinking of Nettie and her lover. I was firmly resolved he should +not have her—though I had to kill them both to prevent it. I did not care +what else might happen, if only that end was ensured. All my thwarted passions +had turned to rage. I would have accepted eternal torment that night without a +second thought, to be certain of revenge. A hundred possibilities of action, a +hundred stormy situations, a whirl of violent schemes, chased one another +through my shamed, exasperated mind. The sole prospect I could endure was of +some gigantic, inexorably cruel vindication of my humiliated self. +</p> + +<p> +And Nettie? I loved Nettie still, but now with the intensest jealousy, with the +keen, unmeasuring hatred of wounded pride, and baffled, passionate desire. +</p> + +<p class="center"> +§ 2 +</p> + +<p> +As I came down the hill from Clayton Crest—for my shilling and a penny +only permitted my traveling by train as far as Two-Mile Stone, and thence I had +to walk over the hill—I remember very vividly a little man with a shrill +voice who was preaching under a gas-lamp against a hoarding to a thin crowd of +Sunday evening loafers. He was a short man, bald, with a little fair curly +beard and hair and watery blue eyes, and he was preaching that the end of the +world drew near. +</p> + +<p> +I think that is the first time I heard any one link the comet with the end of +the world. He had got that jumbled up with international politics and +prophecies from the Book of Daniel. +</p> + +<p> +I stopped to hear him only for a moment or so. I do not think I should have +halted at all but his crowd blocked my path, and the sight of his queer wild +expression, the gesture of his upward-pointing finger, held me. +</p> + +<p> +“There is the end of all your Sins and Follies,” he bawled. +“There! There is the Star of Judgments, the Judgments of the most High +God! It is appointed unto all men to die—unto all men to +die”—his voice changed to a curious flat chant—“and +after death, the Judgment! The Judgment!” +</p> + +<p> +I pushed and threaded my way through the bystanders and went on, and his +curious harsh flat voice pursued me. I went on with the thoughts that had +occupied me before—where I could buy a revolver, and how I might master +its use—and probably I should have forgotten all about him had he not +taken a part in the hideous dream that ended the little sleep I had that night. +For the most part I lay awake thinking of Nettie and her lover. +</p> + +<p> +Then came three strange days—three days that seem now to have been wholly +concentrated upon one business. +</p> + +<p> +This dominant business was the purchase of my revolver. I held myself +resolutely to the idea that I must either restore myself by some extraordinary +act of vigor and violence in Nettie’s eyes or I must kill her. I would +not let myself fall away from that. I felt that if I let this matter pass, my +last shred of pride and honor would pass with it, that for the rest of my life +I should never deserve the slightest respect or any woman’s love. Pride +kept me to my purpose between my gusts of passion. +</p> + +<p> +Yet it was not easy to buy that revolver. +</p> + +<p> +I had a kind of shyness of the moment when I should have to face the shopman, +and I was particularly anxious to have a story ready if he should see fit to +ask questions why I bought such a thing. I determined to say I was going to +Texas, and I thought it might prove useful there. Texas in those days had the +reputation of a wild lawless land. As I knew nothing of caliber or impact, I +wanted also to be able to ask with a steady face at what distance a man or +woman could be killed by the weapon that might be offered me. I was pretty +cool-headed in relation to such practical aspects of my affair. I had some +little difficulty in finding a gunsmith. In Clayton there were some rook-rifles +and so forth in a cycle shop, but the only revolvers these people had impressed +me as being too small and toylike for my purpose. It was in a pawnshop window +in the narrow High Street of Swathinglea that I found my choice, a reasonably +clumsy and serious-looking implement ticketed “As used in the American +army.” +</p> + +<p> +I had drawn out my balance from the savings bank, matter of two pounds and +more, to make this purchase, and I found it at last a very easy transaction. +The pawnbroker told me where I could get ammunition, and I went home that night +with bulging pockets, an armed man. +</p> + +<p> +The purchase of my revolver was, I say, the chief business of those days, but +you must not think I was so intent upon it as to be insensible to the stirring +things that were happening in the streets through which I went seeking the +means to effect my purpose. They were full of murmurings: the whole region of +the Four Towns scowled lowering from its narrow doors. The ordinary healthy +flow of people going to work, people going about their business, was chilled +and checked. Numbers of men stood about the streets in knots and groups, as +corpuscles gather and catch in the blood-vessels in the opening stages of +inflammation. The women looked haggard and worried. The ironworkers had refused +the proposed reduction of their wages, and the lockout had begun. They were +already at “play.” The Conciliation Board was doing its best to +keep the coal-miners and masters from a breach, but young Lord Redcar, the +greatest of our coal owners and landlord of all Swathinglea and half Clayton, +was taking a fine upstanding attitude that made the breach inevitable. He was a +handsome young man, a gallant young man; his pride revolted at the idea of +being dictated to by a “lot of bally miners,” and he meant, he +said, to make a fight for it. The world had treated him sumptuously from his +earliest years; the shares in the common stock of five thousand people had gone +to pay for his handsome upbringing, and large, romantic, expensive ambitions +filled his generously nurtured mind. He had early distinguished himself at +Oxford by his scornful attitude towards democracy. There was something that +appealed to the imagination in his fine antagonism to the crowd—on the +one hand, was the brilliant young nobleman, picturesquely alone; on the other, +the ugly, inexpressive multitude, dressed inelegantly in shop-clothes, +under-educated, under-fed, envious, base, and with a wicked disinclination for +work and a wicked appetite for the good things it could so rarely get. For +common imaginative purposes one left out the policeman from the design, the +stalwart policeman protecting his lordship, and ignored the fact that while +Lord Redcar had his hands immediately and legally on the workman’s +shelter and bread, they could touch him to the skin only by some violent breach +of the law. +</p> + +<p> +He lived at Lowchester House, five miles or so beyond Checkshill; but partly to +show how little he cared for his antagonists, and partly no doubt to keep +himself in touch with the negotiations that were still going on, he was visible +almost every day in and about the Four Towns, driving that big motor car of his +that could take him sixty miles an hour. The English passion for fair play one +might have thought sufficient to rob this bold procedure of any dangerous +possibilities, but he did not go altogether free from insult, and on one +occasion at least an intoxicated Irish woman shook her fist at him. . . . +</p> + +<p> +A dark, quiet crowd, that was greater each day, a crowd more than half women, +brooded as a cloud will sometimes brood permanently upon a mountain crest, in +the market-place outside the Clayton Town Hall, where the conference was held. +. . . +</p> + +<p> +I consider myself justified in regarding Lord Redcar’s passing automobile +with a special animosity because of the leaks in our roof. +</p> + +<p> +We held our little house on lease; the owner was a mean, saving old man named +Pettigrew, who lived in a villa adorned with plaster images of dogs and goats, +at Overcastle, and in spite of our specific agreement, he would do no repairs +for us at all. He rested secure in my mother’s timidity. Once, long ago, +she had been behind-hand with her rent, with half of her quarter’s rent, +and he had extended the days of grace a month; her sense that some day she +might need the same mercy again made her his abject slave. She was afraid even +to ask that he should cause the roof to be mended for fear he might take +offence. But one night the rain poured in on her bed and gave her a cold, and +stained and soaked her poor old patchwork counterpane. Then she got me to +compose an excessively polite letter to old Pettigrew, begging him as a favor +to perform his legal obligations. It is part of the general imbecility of those +days that such one-sided law as existed was a profound mystery to the common +people, its provisions impossible to ascertain, its machinery impossible to set +in motion. Instead of the clearly written code, the lucid statements of rules +and principles that are now at the service of every one, the law was the muddle +secret of the legal profession. Poor people, overworked people, had constantly +to submit to petty wrongs because of the intolerable uncertainty not only of +law but of cost, and of the demands upon time and energy, proceedings might +make. There was indeed no justice for any one too poor to command a good +solicitor’s deference and loyalty; there was nothing but rough police +protection and the magistrate’s grudging or eccentric advice for the mass +of the population. The civil law, in particular, was a mysterious upper-class +weapon, and I can imagine no injustice that would have been sufficient to +induce my poor old mother to appeal to it. +</p> + +<p> +All this begins to sound incredible. I can only assure you that it was so. +</p> + +<p> +But I, when I learned that old Pettigrew had been down to tell my mother all +about his rheumatism, to inspect the roof, and to allege that nothing was +needed, gave way to my most frequent emotion in those days, a burning +indignation, and took the matter into my own hands. I wrote and asked him, with +a withering air of technicality, to have the roof repaired “as per +agreement,” and added, “if not done in one week from now we shall +be obliged to take proceedings.” I had not mentioned this high line of +conduct to my mother at first, and so when old Pettigrew came down in a state +of great agitation with my letter in his hand, she was almost equally agitated. +</p> + +<p> +“How could you write to old Mr. Pettigrew like that?” she asked me. +</p> + +<p> +I said that old Pettigrew was a shameful old rascal, or words to that effect, +and I am afraid I behaved in a very undutiful way to her when she said that she +had settled everything with him—she wouldn’t say how, but I could +guess well enough—and that I was to promise her, promise her faithfully, +to do nothing more in the matter. I wouldn’t promise her. +</p> + +<p> +And—having nothing better to employ me then—I presently went raging +to old Pettigrew in order to put the whole thing before him in what I +considered the proper light. Old Pettigrew evaded my illumination; he saw me +coming up his front steps—I can still see his queer old nose and the +crinkled brow over his eye and the little wisp of gray hair that showed over +the corner of his window-blind—and he instructed his servant to put up +the chain when she answered the door, and to tell me that he would not see me. +So I had to fall back upon my pen. +</p> + +<p> +Then it was, as I had no idea what were the proper “proceedings” to +take, the brilliant idea occurred to me of appealing to Lord Redcar as the +ground landlord, and, as it were, our feudal chief, and pointing out to him +that his security for his rent was depreciating in old Pettigrew’s hands. +I added some general observations on leaseholds, the taxation of ground rents, +and the private ownership of the soil. And Lord Redcar, whose spirit revolted +at democracy, and who cultivated a pert humiliating manner with his inferiors +to show as much, earned my distinguished hatred for ever by causing his +secretary to present his compliments to me, and his request that I would mind +my own business and leave him to manage his. At which I was so greatly enraged +that I first tore this note into minute innumerable pieces, and then dashed it +dramatically all over the floor of my room—from which, to keep my mother +from the job, I afterward had to pick it up laboriously on all-fours. +</p> + +<p> +I was still meditating a tremendous retort, an indictment of all Lord +Redcar’s class, their manners, morals, economic and political crimes, +when my trouble with Nettie arose to swamp all minor troubles. Yet, not so +completely but that I snarled aloud when his lordship’s motor-car whizzed +by me, as I went about upon my long meandering quest for a weapon. And I +discovered after a time that my mother had bruised her knee and was lame. +Fearing to irritate me by bringing the thing before me again, she had set +herself to move her bed out of the way of the drip without my help, and she had +knocked her knee. All her poor furnishings, I discovered, were cowering now +close to the peeling bedroom walls; there had come a vast discoloration of the +ceiling, and a washing-tub was in occupation of the middle of her chamber. . . +. +</p> + +<p> +It is necessary that I should set these things before you, should give the key +of inconvenience and uneasiness in which all things were arranged, should +suggest the breath of trouble that stirred along the hot summer streets, the +anxiety about the strike, the rumors and indignations, the gatherings and +meetings, the increasing gravity of the policemen’s faces, the combative +headlines of the local papers, the knots of picketers who scrutinized any one +who passed near the silent, smokeless forges, but in my mind, you must +understand, such impressions came and went irregularly; they made a moving +background, changing undertones, to my preoccupation by that darkly shaping +purpose to which a revolver was so imperative an essential. +</p> + +<p> +Along the darkling streets, amidst the sullen crowds, the thought of Nettie, my +Nettie, and her gentleman lover made ever a vivid inflammatory spot of purpose +in my brain. +</p> + +<p class="center"> +§ 3 +</p> + +<p> +It was three days after this—on Wednesday, that is to say—that the +first of those sinister outbreaks occurred that ended in the bloody affair of +Peacock Grove and the flooding out of the entire line of the Swathinglea +collieries. It was the only one of these disturbances I was destined to see, +and at most a mere trivial preliminary of that struggle. +</p> + +<p> +The accounts that have been written of this affair vary very widely. To read +them is to realize the extraordinary carelessness of truth that dishonored the +press of those latter days. In my bureau I have several files of the daily +papers of the old time—I collected them, as a matter of fact—and +three or four of about that date I have just this moment taken out and looked +through to refresh my impression of what I saw. They lie before me—queer, +shriveled, incredible things; the cheap paper has already become brittle and +brown and split along the creases, the ink faded or smeared, and I have to +handle them with the utmost care when I glance among their raging headlines. As +I sit here in this serene place, their quality throughout, their arrangement, +their tone, their arguments and exhortations, read as though they came from +drugged and drunken men. They give one the effect of faded bawling, of screams +and shouts heard faintly in a little gramophone. . . . It is only on Monday I +find, and buried deep below the war news, that these publications contain any +intimation that unusual happenings were forward in Clayton and Swathinglea. +</p> + +<p> +What I saw was towards evening. I had been learning to shoot with my new +possession. I had walked out with it four or five miles across a patch of +moorland and down to a secluded little coppice full of blue-bells, halfway +along the high-road between Leet and Stafford. Here I had spent the afternoon, +experimenting and practising with careful deliberation and grim persistence. I +had brought an old kite-frame of cane with me, that folded and unfolded, and +each shot-hole I made I marked and numbered to compare with my other endeavors. +At last I was satisfied that I could hit a playing-card at thirty paces nine +times out of ten; the light was getting too bad for me to see my penciled +bull’s-eye, and in that state of quiet moodiness that sometimes comes +with hunger to passionate men, I returned by the way of Swathinglea towards my +home. +</p> + +<p> +The road I followed came down between banks of wretched-looking +working-men’s houses, in close-packed rows on either side, and took upon +itself the <i>rôle</i> of Swathinglea High Street, where, at a lamp and a +pillar-box, the steam-trams began. So far that dirty hot way had been unusually +quiet and empty, but beyond the corner, where the first group of beershops +clustered, it became populous. It was very quiet still, even the children were +a little inactive, but there were a lot of people standing dispersedly in +little groups, and with a general direction towards the gates of the Bantock +Burden coalpit. +</p> + +<p> +The place was being picketed, although at that time the miners were still +nominally at work, and the conferences between masters and men still in session +at Clayton Town Hall. But one of the men employed at the Bantock Burden pit, +Jack Briscoe, was a socialist, and he had distinguished himself by a violent +letter upon the crisis to the leading socialistic paper in England, <i>The +Clarion</i>, in which he had adventured among the motives of Lord Redcar. The +publication of this had been followed by instant dismissal. As Lord Redcar +wrote a day or so later to the <i>Times</i>—I have that <i>Times</i>, I +have all the London papers of the last month before the Change— +</p> + +<p> +“The man was paid off and kicked out. Any self-respecting employer would +do the same.” The thing had happened overnight, and the men did not at +once take a clear line upon what was, after all, a very intricate and debatable +occasion. But they came out in a sort of semiofficial strike from all Lord +Redcar’s collieries beyond the canal that besets Swathinglea. They did so +without formal notice, committing a breach of contract by this sudden +cessation. But in the long labor struggles of the old days the workers were +constantly putting themselves in the wrong and committing illegalities through +that overpowering craving for dramatic promptness natural to uneducated minds. +</p> + +<p> +All the men had not come out of the Bantock Burden pit. Something was wrong +there, an indecision if nothing else; the mine was still working, and there was +a rumor that men from Durham had been held in readiness by Lord Redcar, and +were already in the mine. Now, it is absolutely impossible to ascertain +certainly how things stood at that time. The newspapers say this and that, but +nothing trustworthy remains. +</p> + +<p> +I believe I should have gone striding athwart the dark stage of that stagnant +industrial drama without asking a question, if Lord Redcar had not chanced to +come upon the scene about the same time as myself and incontinently end its +stagnation. +</p> + +<p> +He had promised that if the men wanted a struggle he would put up the best +fight they had ever had, and he had been active all that afternoon in meeting +the quarrel half way, and preparing as conspicuously as possible for the +scratch force of “blacklegs”—as we called them—who +were, he said and we believed, to replace the strikers in his pits. +</p> + +<p> +I was an eye-witness of the whole of the affair outside the Bantock Burden pit, +and—I do not know what happened. +</p> + +<p> +Picture to yourself how the thing came to me. +</p> + +<p> +I was descending a steep, cobbled, excavated road between banked-up footways, +perhaps six feet high, upon which, in a monotonous series, opened the living +room doors of rows of dark, low cottages. The perspective of squat blue slate +roofs and clustering chimneys drifted downward towards the irregular open space +before the colliery—a space covered with coaly, wheel-scarred mud, with a +patch of weedy dump to the left and the colliery gates to the right. Beyond, +the High Street with shops resumed again in good earnest and went on, and the +lines of the steam-tramway that started out from before my feet, and were here +shining and acutely visible with reflected skylight and here lost in a shadow, +took up for one acute moment the greasy yellow irradiation of a newly lit +gaslamp as they vanished round the bend. Beyond, spread a darkling marsh of +homes, an infinitude of little smoking hovels, and emergent, meager churches, +public-houses, board schools, and other buildings amidst the prevailing +chimneys of Swathinglea. To the right, very clear and relatively high, the +Bantock Burden pit-mouth was marked by a gaunt lattice bearing a great black +wheel, very sharp and distinct in the twilight, and beyond, in an irregular +perspective, were others following the lie of the seams. The general effect, as +one came down the hill, was of a dark compressed life beneath a very high and +wide and luminous evening sky, against which these pit-wheels rose. And ruling +the calm spaciousness of that heaven was the great comet, now green-white, and +wonderful for all who had eyes to see. +</p> + +<p> +The fading afterglow of the sunset threw up all the contours and skyline to the +west, and the comet rose eastward out of the pouring tumult of smoke from +Bladden’s forges. The moon had still to rise. +</p> + +<p> +By this time the comet had begun to assume the cloudlike form still familiar +through the medium of a thousand photographs and sketches. At first it had been +an almost telescopic speck; it had brightened to the dimensions of the greatest +star in the heavens; it had still grown, hour by hour, in its incredibly swift, +its noiseless and inevitable rush upon our earth, until it had equaled and +surpassed the moon. Now it was the most splendid thing this sky of earth has +ever held. I have never seen a photograph that gave a proper idea of it. Never +at any time did it assume the conventional tailed outline, comets are supposed +to have. Astronomers talked of its double tail, one preceding it and one +trailing behind it, but these were foreshortened to nothing, so that it had +rather the form of a bellying puff of luminous smoke with an intenser, brighter +heart. It rose a hot yellow color, and only began to show its distinctive +greenness when it was clear of the mists of the evening. +</p> + +<p> +It compelled attention for a space. For all my earthly concentration of mind, I +could but stare at it for a moment with a vague anticipation that, after all, +in some way so strange and glorious an object must have significance, could not +possibly be a matter of absolute indifference to the scheme and values of my +life. +</p> + +<p> +But how? +</p> + +<p> +I thought of Parload. I thought of the panic and uneasiness that was spreading +in this very matter, and the assurances of scientific men that the thing +weighed so little—at the utmost a few hundred tons of thinly diffused gas +and dust—that even were it to smite this earth fully, nothing could +possibly ensue. And, after all, said I, what earthly significance has any one +found in the stars? +</p> + +<p> +Then, as one still descended, the houses and buildings rose up, the presence of +those watching groups of people, the tension of the situation; and one forgot +the sky. +</p> + +<p> +Preoccupied with myself and with my dark dream about Nettie and my honor, I +threaded my course through the stagnating threat of this gathering, and was +caught unawares, when suddenly the whole scene flashed into drama. . . . +</p> + +<p> +The attention of every one swung round with an irresistible magnetism towards +the High Street, and caught me as a rush of waters might catch a wisp of hay. +Abruptly the whole crowd was sounding one note. It was not a word, it was a +sound that mingled threat and protest, something between a prolonged +“Ah!” and “Ugh!” Then with a hoarse intensity of anger +came a low heavy booing, “Boo! boo—oo!” a note stupidly +expressive of animal savagery. “Toot, toot!” said Lord +Redcar’s automobile in ridiculous repartee. “Toot, toot!” One +heard it whizzing and throbbing as the crowd obliged it to slow down. +</p> + +<p> +Everybody seemed in motion towards the colliery gates, I, too, with the others. +</p> + +<p> +I heard a shout. Through the dark figures about me I saw the motor-car stop and +move forward again, and had a glimpse of something writhing on the ground. +</p> + +<p> +It was alleged afterwards that Lord Redcar was driving, and that he quite +deliberately knocked down a little boy who would not get out of his way. It is +asserted with equal confidence that the boy was a man who tried to pass across +the front of the motor-car as it came slowly through the crowd, who escaped by +a hair’s breadth, and then slipped on the tram-rail and fell down. I have +both accounts set forth, under screaming headlines, in two of these sere +newspapers upon my desk. No one could ever ascertain the truth. Indeed, in such +a blind tumult of passion, could there be any truth? +</p> + +<p> +There was a rush forward, the horn of the car sounded, everything swayed +violently to the right for perhaps ten yards or so, and there was a report like +a pistol-shot. +</p> + +<p> +For a moment every one seemed running away. A woman, carrying a shawl-wrapped +child, blundered into me, and sent me reeling back. Every one thought of +firearms, but, as a matter of fact, something had gone wrong with the motor, +what in those old-fashioned contrivances was called a backfire. A thin puff of +bluish smoke hung in the air behind the thing. The majority of the people +scattered back in a disorderly fashion, and left a clear space about the +struggle that centered upon the motor-car. +</p> + +<p> +The man or boy who had fallen was lying on the ground with no one near him, a +black lump, an extended arm and two sprawling feet. The motor-car had stopped, +and its three occupants were standing up. Six or seven black figures surrounded +the car, and appeared to be holding on to it as if to prevent it from starting +again; one—it was Mitchell, a well-known labor leader—argued in +fierce low tones with Lord Redcar. I could not hear anything they said, I was +not near enough. Behind me the colliery gates were open, and there was a sense +of help coming to the motor-car from that direction. There was an unoccupied +muddy space for fifty yards, perhaps, between car and gate, and then the wheels +and head of the pit rose black against the sky. I was one of a rude semicircle +of people that hung as yet indeterminate in action about this dispute. +</p> + +<p> +It was natural, I suppose, that my fingers should close upon the revolver in my +pocket. +</p> + +<p> +I advanced with the vaguest intentions in the world, and not so quickly but +that several men hurried past me to join the little knot holding up the car. +</p> + +<p> +Lord Redcar, in his big furry overcoat, towered up over the group about him; +his gestures were free and threatening, and his voice loud. He made a fine +figure there, I must admit; he was a big, fair, handsome young man with a fine +tenor voice and an instinct for gallant effect. My eyes were drawn to him at +first wholly. He seemed a symbol, a triumphant symbol, of all that the theory +of aristocracy claims, of all that filled my soul with resentment. His +chauffeur sat crouched together, peering at the crowd under his +lordship’s arm. But Mitchell showed as a sturdy figure also, and his +voice was firm and loud. +</p> + +<p> +“You’ve hurt that lad,” said Mitchell, over and over again. +“You’ll wait here till you see if he’s hurt.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll wait here or not as I please,” said Redcar; and to the +chauffeur, “Here! get down and look at it!” +</p> + +<p> +“You’d better not get down,” said Mitchell; and the chauffeur +stood bent and hesitating on the step. +</p> + +<p> +The man on the back seat stood up, leant forward, and spoke to Lord Redcar, and +for the first time my attention was drawn to him. It was young Verrall! His +handsome face shone clear and fine in the green pallor of the comet. +</p> + +<p> +I ceased to hear the quarrel that was raising the voice of Mitchell and Lord +Redcar. This new fact sent them spinning into the background. Young Verrall! +</p> + +<p> +It was my own purpose coming to meet me half way. +</p> + +<p> +There was to be a fight here, it seemed certain to come to a scuffle, and here +we were— +</p> + +<p> +What was I to do? I thought very swiftly. Unless my memory cheats me, I acted +with swift decision. My hand tightened on my revolver, and then I remembered it +was unloaded. I had thought my course out in an instant. I turned round and +pushed my way out of the angry crowd that was now surging back towards the +motor-car. +</p> + +<p> +It would be quiet and out of sight, I thought, among the dump heaps across the +road, and there I might load unobserved. . . +</p> + +<p> +A big young man striding forward with his fists clenched, halted for one second +at the sight of me. +</p> + +<p> +“What!” said he. “Ain’t afraid of them, are you?” +</p> + +<p> +I glanced over my shoulder and back at him, was near showing him my pistol, and +the expression changed in his eyes. He hung perplexed at me. Then with a grunt +he went on. +</p> + +<p> +I heard the voices growing loud and sharp behind me. +</p> + +<p> +I hesitated, half turned towards the dispute, then set off running towards the +heaps. Some instinct told me not to be detected loading. I was cool enough +therefore to think of the aftermath of the thing I meant to do. +</p> + +<p> +I looked back once again towards the swaying discussion—or was it a fight +now? and then I dropped into the hollow, knelt among the weeds, and loaded with +eager trembling fingers. I loaded one chamber, got up and went back a dozen +paces, thought of possibilities, vacillated, returned and loaded all the +others. I did it slowly because I felt a little clumsy, and at the end came a +moment of inspection—had I forgotten any thing? And then for a few +seconds I crouched before I rose, resisting the first gust of reaction against +my impulse. I took thought, and for a moment that great green-white meteor +overhead swam back into my conscious mind. For the first time then I linked it +clearly with all the fierce violence that had crept into human life. I joined +up that with what I meant to do. I was going to shoot young Verrall as it were +under the benediction of that green glare. +</p> + +<p> +But about Nettie? +</p> + +<p> +I found it impossible to think out that obvious complication. +</p> + +<p> +I came up over the heap again, and walked slowly back towards the wrangle. +</p> + +<p> +Of course I had to kill him. . . . +</p> + +<p> +Now I would have you believe I did not want to murder young Verrall at all at +that particular time. I had not pictured such circumstances as these, I had +never thought of him in connection with Lord Redcar and our black industrial +world. He was in that distant other world of Checkshill, the world of parks and +gardens, the world of sunlit emotions and Nettie. His appearance here was +disconcerting. I was taken by surprise. I was too tired and hungry to think +clearly, and the hard implication of our antagonism prevailed with me. In the +tumult of my passed emotions I had thought constantly of conflicts, +confrontations, deeds of violence, and now the memory of these things took +possession of me as though they were irrevocable resolutions. +</p> + +<p> +There was a sharp exclamation, the shriek of a woman, and the crowd came +surging back. The fight had begun. +</p> + +<p> +Lord Redcar, I believe, had jumped down from his car and felled Mitchell, and +men were already running out to his assistance from the colliery gates. +</p> + +<p> +I had some difficulty in shoving through the crowd; I can still remember very +vividly being jammed at one time between two big men so that my arms were +pinned to my sides, but all the other details are gone out of my mind until I +found myself almost violently projected forward into the “scrap.” +</p> + +<p> +I blundered against the corner of the motor-car, and came round it face to face +with young Verrall, who was descending from the back compartment. His face was +touched with orange from the automobile’s big lamps, which conflicted +with the shadows of the comet light, and distorted him oddly. That effect +lasted but an instant, but it put me out. Then he came a step forward, and the +ruddy lights and queerness vanished. +</p> + +<p> +I don’t think he recognized me, but he perceived immediately I meant +attacking. He struck out at once at me a haphazard blow, and touched me on the +cheek. +</p> + +<p> +Instinctively I let go of the pistol, snatched my right hand out of my pocket +and brought it up in a belated parry, and then let out with my left full in his +chest. +</p> + +<p> +It sent him staggering, and as he went back I saw recognition mingle with +astonishment in his face. +</p> + +<p> +“You know me, you swine,” I cried and hit again. +</p> + +<p> +Then I was spinning sideways, half-stunned, with a huge lump of a fist under my +jaw. I had an impression of Lord Redcar as a great furry bulk, towering like +some Homeric hero above the fray. I went down before him—it made him seem +to rush up—and he ignored me further. His big flat voice counseled young +Verrall— +</p> + +<p> +“Cut, Teddy! It won’t do. The picketa’s got i’on bahs. +. . .” +</p> + +<p> +Feet swayed about me, and some hobnailed miner kicked my ankle and went +stumbling. There were shouts and curses, and then everything had swept past me. +I rolled over on my face and beheld the chauffeur, young Verrall, and Lord +Redcar—the latter holding up his long skirts of fur, and making a +grotesque figure—one behind the other, in full bolt across a coldly +comet-lit interval, towards the open gates of the colliery. +</p> + +<p> +I raised myself up on my hands. +</p> + +<p> +Young Verrall! +</p> + +<p> +I had not even drawn my revolver—I had forgotten it. I was covered with +coaly mud—knees, elbows, shoulders, back. I had not even drawn my +revolver! . . . +</p> + +<p> +A feeling of ridiculous impotence overwhelmed me. I struggled painfully to my +feet. +</p> + +<p> +I hesitated for a moment towards the gates of the colliery, and then went +limping homeward, thwarted, painful, confused, and ashamed. I had not the heart +nor desire to help in the wrecking and burning of Lord Redcar’s motor. +</p> + +<p class="center"> +§ 4 +</p> + +<p> +In the night, fever, pain, fatigue—it may be the indigestion of my supper +of bread and cheese—roused me at last out of a hag-rid sleep to face +despair. I was a soul lost amidst desolations and shame, dishonored, evilly +treated, hopeless. I raged against the God I denied, and cursed him as I lay. +</p> + +<p> +And it was in the nature of my fever, which was indeed only half fatigue and +illness, and the rest the disorder of passionate youth, that Nettie, a +strangely distorted Nettie, should come through the brief dreams that marked +the exhaustions of that vigil, to dominate my misery. I was sensible, with an +exaggerated distinctness, of the intensity of her physical charm for me, of her +every grace and beauty; she took to herself the whole gamut of desire in me and +the whole gamut of pride. She, bodily, was my lost honor. It was not only loss +but disgrace to lose her. She stood for life and all that was denied; she +mocked me as a creature of failure and defeat. My spirit raised itself towards +her, and then the bruise upon my jaw glowed with a dull heat, and I rolled in +the mud again before my rivals. +</p> + +<p> +There were times when something near madness took me, and I gnashed my teeth +and dug my nails into my hands and ceased to curse and cry out only by reason +of the insufficiency of words. And once towards dawn I got out of bed, and sat +by my looking-glass with my revolver loaded in my hand. I stood up at last and +put it carefully in my drawer and locked it—out of reach of any gusty +impulse. After that I slept for a little while. +</p> + +<p> +Such nights were nothing rare and strange in that old order of the world. Never +a city, never a night the whole year round, but amidst those who slept were +those who waked, plumbing the deeps of wrath and misery. Countless thousands +there were so ill, so troubled, they agonize near to the very border-line of +madness, each one the center of a universe darkened and lost. . . +</p> + +<p> +The next day I spent in gloomy lethargy. +</p> + +<p> +I had intended to go to Checkshill that day, but my bruised ankle was too +swollen for that to be possible. I sat indoors in the ill-lit downstairs +kitchen, with my foot bandaged, and mused darkly and read. My dear old mother +waited on me, and her brown eyes watched me and wondered at my black silences, +my frowning preoccupations. I had not told her how it was my ankle came to be +bruised and my clothes muddy. She had brushed my clothes in the morning before +I got up. +</p> + +<p> +Ah well! Mothers are not treated in that way now. That I suppose must console +me. I wonder how far you will be able to picture that dark, grimy, untidy room, +with its bare deal table, its tattered wall paper, the saucepans and kettle on +the narrow, cheap, but by no means economical range, the ashes under the +fireplace, the rust-spotted steel fender on which my bandaged feet rested; I +wonder how near you can come to seeing the scowling pale-faced hobbledehoy I +was, unshaven and collarless, in the Windsor chair, and the little timid, +dirty, devoted old woman who hovered about me with love peering out from her +puckered eyelids. . . +</p> + +<p> +When she went out to buy some vegetables in the middle of the morning she got +me a half-penny journal. It was just such a one as these upon my desk, only +that the copy I read was damp from the press, and these are so dry and brittle, +they crack if I touch them. I have a copy of the actual issue I read that +morning; it was a paper called emphatically the <i>New Paper</i>, but everybody +bought it and everybody called it the “yell.” It was full that +morning of stupendous news and still more stupendous headlines, so stupendous +that for a little while I was roused from my egotistical broodings to wider +interests. For it seemed that Germany and England were on the brink of war. +</p> + +<p> +Of all the monstrous irrational phenomena of the former time, war was certainly +the most strikingly insane. In reality it was probably far less mischievous +than such quieter evil as, for example, the general acquiescence in the private +ownership of land, but its evil consequences showed so plainly that even in +those days of stifling confusion one marveled at it. On no conceivable grounds +was there any sense in modern war. Save for the slaughter and mangling of a +multitude of people, the destruction of vast quantities of material, and the +waste of innumerable units of energy, it effected nothing. The old war of +savage and barbaric nations did at least change humanity, you assumed +yourselves to be a superior tribe in physique and discipline, you demonstrated +this upon your neighbors, and if successful you took their land and their women +and perpetuated and enlarged your superiority. The new war changed nothing but +the color of maps, the design of postage stamps, and the relationship of a few +accidentally conspicuous individuals. In one of the last of these international +epileptic fits, for example, the English, with much dysentery and bad poetry, +and a few hundred deaths in battle, conquered the South African Boers at a +gross cost of about three thousand pounds per head—they could have bought +the whole of that preposterous imitation of a nation for a tenth of that +sum—and except for a few substitutions of personalities, this group of +partially corrupt officials in the place of that, and so forth, the permanent +change was altogether insignificant. (But an excitable young man in Austria +committed suicide when at length the Transvaal ceased to be a +“nation.”) Men went through the seat of that war after it was all +over, and found humanity unchanged, except for a general impoverishment, and +the convenience of an unlimited supply of empty ration tins and barbed wire and +cartridge cases—unchanged and resuming with a slight perplexity all its +old habits and misunderstandings, the nigger still in his slum-like kraal, the +white in his ugly ill-managed shanty. . . +</p> + +<p> +But we in England saw all these things, or did not see them, through the mirage +of the <i>New Paper</i>, in a light of mania. All my adolescence from fourteen +to seventeen went to the music of that monstrous resonating futility, the +cheering, the anxieties, the songs and the waving of flags, the wrongs of +generous Buller and the glorious heroism of De Wet—who <i>always</i> got +away; that was the great point about the heroic De Wet—and it never +occurred to us that the total population we fought against was less than half +the number of those who lived cramped ignoble lives within the compass of the +Four Towns. +</p> + +<p> +But before and after that stupid conflict of stupidities, a greater antagonism +was coming into being, was slowly and quietly defining itself as a thing +inevitable, sinking now a little out of attention only to resume more +emphatically, now flashing into some acute definitive expression and now +percolating and pervading some new region of thought, and that was the +antagonism of Germany and Great Britain. +</p> + +<p> +When I think of that growing proportion of readers who belong entirely to the +new order, who are growing up with only the vaguest early memories of the old +world, I find the greatest difficulty in writing down the unintelligible +confusions that were matter of fact to their fathers. +</p> + +<p> +Here were we British, forty-one millions of people, in a state of almost +indescribably aimless, economic, and moral muddle that we had neither the +courage, the energy, nor the intelligence to improve, that most of us had +hardly the courage to think about, and with our affairs hopelessly entangled +with the entirely different confusions of three hundred and fifty million other +persons scattered about the globe, and here were the Germans over against us, +fifty-six millions, in a state of confusion no whit better than our own, and +the noisy little creatures who directed papers and wrote books and gave +lectures, and generally in that time of world-dementia pretended to be the +national mind, were busy in both countries, with a sort of infernal unanimity, +exhorting—and not only exhorting but successfully persuading—the +two peoples to divert such small common store of material, moral and +intellectual energy as either possessed, into the purely destructive and +wasteful business of war. And—I have to tell you these things even if you +do not believe them, because they are vital to my story—there was not a +man alive who could have told you of any real permanent benefit, of anything +whatever to counterbalance the obvious waste and evil, that would result from a +war between England and Germany, whether England shattered Germany or was +smashed and overwhelmed, or whatever the end might be. +</p> + +<p> +The thing was, in fact, an enormous irrational obsession, it was, in the +microcosm of our nation, curiously parallel to the egotistical wrath and +jealousy that swayed my individual microcosm. It measured the excess of common +emotion over the common intelligence, the legacy of inordinate passion we have +received from the brute from which we came. Just as I had become the slave of +my own surprise and anger and went hither and thither with a loaded revolver, +seeking and intending vague fluctuating crimes, so these two nations went about +the earth, hot eared and muddle headed, with loaded navies and armies terribly +ready at hand. Only there was not even a Nettie to justify their stupidity. +There was nothing but quiet imaginary thwarting on either side. +</p> + +<p> +And the press was the chief instrument that kept these two huge multitudes of +people directed against one another. +</p> + +<p> +The press—those newspapers that are now so strange to us—like the +“Empires,” the “Nations,” the Trusts, and all the other +great monstrous shapes of that extraordinary time—was in the nature of an +unanticipated accident. It had happened, as weeds happen in abandoned gardens, +just as all our world has happened,—because there was no clear Will in +the world to bring about anything better. Towards the end this +“press” was almost entirely under the direction of youngish men of +that eager, rather unintelligent type, that is never able to detect itself +aimless, that pursues nothing with incredible pride and zeal, and if you would +really understand this mad era the comet brought to an end, you must keep in +mind that every phase in the production of these queer old things was pervaded +by a strong aimless energy and happened in a concentrated rush. +</p> + +<p> +Let me describe to you, very briefly, a newspaper day. +</p> + +<p> +Figure first, then, a hastily erected and still more hastily designed building +in a dirty, paper-littered back street of old London, and a number of shabbily +dressed men coming and going in this with projectile swiftness, and within this +factory companies of printers, tensely active with nimble fingers—they +were always speeding up the printers—ply their type-setting machines, and +cast and arrange masses of metal in a sort of kitchen inferno, above which, in +a beehive of little brightly lit rooms, disheveled men sit and scribble. There +is a throbbing of telephones and a clicking of telegraph needles, a rushing of +messengers, a running to and fro of heated men, clutching proofs and copy. Then +begins a clatter roar of machinery catching the infection, going faster and +faster, and whizzing and banging,—engineers, who have never had time to +wash since their birth, flying about with oil-cans, while paper runs off its +rolls with a shudder of haste. The proprietor you must suppose arriving +explosively on a swift motor-car, leaping out before the thing is at a +standstill, with letters and documents clutched in his hand, rushing in, +resolute to “hustle,” getting wonderfully in everybody’s way. +At the sight of him even the messenger boys who are waiting, get up and scamper +to and fro. Sprinkle your vision with collisions, curses, incoherencies. You +imagine all the parts of this complex lunatic machine working hysterically +toward a crescendo of haste and excitement as the night wears on. At last the +only things that seem to travel slowly in all those tearing vibrating premises +are the hands of the clock. +</p> + +<p> +Slowly things draw on toward publication, the consummation of all those +stresses. Then in the small hours, into the now dark and deserted streets comes +a wild whirl of carts and men, the place spurts paper at every door, bales, +heaps, torrents of papers, that are snatched and flung about in what looks like +a free fight, and off with a rush and clatter east, west, north, and south. The +interest passes outwardly; the men from the little rooms are going homeward, +the printers disperse yawning, the roaring presses slacken. The paper exists. +Distribution follows manufacture, and we follow the bundles. +</p> + +<p> +Our vision becomes a vision of dispersal. You see those bundles hurling into +stations, catching trains by a hair’s breadth, speeding on their way, +breaking up, smaller bundles of them hurled with a fierce accuracy out upon the +platforms that rush by, and then everywhere a division of these smaller bundles +into still smaller bundles, into dispersing parcels, into separate papers, and +the dawn happens unnoticed amidst a great running and shouting of boys, a +shoving through letter slots, openings of windows, spreading out upon +book-stalls. For the space of a few hours you must figure the whole country +dotted white with rustling papers—placards everywhere vociferating the +hurried lie for the day; men and women in trains, men and women eating and +reading, men by study-fenders, people sitting up in bed, mothers and sons and +daughters waiting for father to finish—a million scattered people +reading—reading headlong—or feverishly ready to read. It is just as +if some vehement jet had sprayed that white foam of papers over the surface of +the land. . . +</p> + +<p> +And then you know, wonderfully gone—gone utterly, vanished as foam might +vanish upon the sand. +</p> + +<p> +Nonsense! The whole affair a noisy paroxysm of nonsense, unreasonable +excitement, witless mischief, and waste of strength—signifying nothing. . +. . +</p> + +<p> +And one of those white parcels was the paper I held in my hands, as I sat with +a bandaged foot on the steel fender in that dark underground kitchen of my +mother’s, clean roused from my personal troubles by the yelp of the +headlines. She sat, sleeves tucked up from her ropy arms, peeling potatoes as I +read. +</p> + +<p> +It was like one of a flood of disease germs that have invaded a body, that +paper. There I was, one corpuscle in the big amorphous body of the English +community, one of forty-one million such corpuscles and, for all my +preoccupations, these potent headlines, this paper ferment, caught me and swung +me about. And all over the country that day, millions read as I read, and came +round into line with me, under the same magnetic spell, came round—how +did we say it?—Ah!—“to face the foe.” +</p> + +<p> +The comet had been driven into obscurity overleaf. The column headed +“Distinguished Scientist says Comet will Strike our Earth. Does it +Matter?” went unread. “Germany”—I usually figured this +mythical malignant creature as a corseted stiff-mustached Emperor enhanced by +heraldic black wings and a large sword—had insulted our flag. That was +the message of the <i>New Paper</i>, and the monster towered over me, +threatening fresh outrages, visibly spitting upon my faultless country’s +colors. Somebody had hoisted a British flag on the right bank of some tropical +river I had never heard of before, and a drunken German officer under ambiguous +instructions had torn it down. Then one of the convenient abundant natives of +the country, a British subject indisputably, had been shot in the leg. But the +facts were by no means clear. Nothing was clear except that we were not going +to stand any nonsense from Germany. Whatever had or had not happened we meant +to have an apology for, and apparently they did not mean apologizing. +</p> + +<p class="center"> +“HAS WAR COME AT LAST?” +</p> + +<p> +That was the headline. One’s heart leapt to assent. . . . +</p> + +<p> +There were hours that day when I clean forgot Nettie, in dreaming of battles +and victories by land and sea, of shell fire, and entrenchments, and the heaped +slaughter of many thousands of men. +</p> + +<p> +But the next morning I started for Checkshill, started, I remember, in a +curiously hopeful state of mind, oblivious of comets, strikes, and wars. +</p> + +<p class="center"> +§ 5 +</p> + +<p> +You must understand that I had no set plan of murder when I walked over to +Checkshill. I had no set plan of any sort. There was a great confusion of +dramatically conceived intentions in my head, scenes of threatening and +denunciation and terror, but I did not mean to kill. The revolver was to turn +upon my rival my disadvantage in age and physique. . . . +</p> + +<p> +But that was not it really! The revolver!—I took the revolver because I +had the revolver and was a foolish young lout. It was a dramatic sort of thing +to take. I had, I say, no plan at all. +</p> + +<p> +Ever and again during that second trudge to Checkshill I was irradiated with a +novel unreasonable hope. I had awakened in the morning with the hope, it may +have been the last unfaded trail of some obliterated dream, that after all +Nettie might relent toward me, that her heart was kind toward me in spite of +all that I imagined had happened. I even thought it possible that I might have +misinterpreted what I had seen. Perhaps she would explain everything. My +revolver was in my pocket for all that. +</p> + +<p> +I limped at the outset, but after the second mile my ankle warmed to +forgetfulness, and the rest of the way I walked well. Suppose, after all, I was +wrong? +</p> + +<p> +I was still debating that, as I came through the park. By the corner of the +paddock near the keeper’s cottage, I was reminded by some belated blue +hyacinths of a time when I and Nettie had gathered them together. It seemed +impossible that we could really have parted ourselves for good and all. A wave +of tenderness flowed over me, and still flooded me as I came through the little +dell and drew towards the hollies. But there the sweet Nettie of my boy’s +love faded, and I thought of the new Nettie of desire and the man I had come +upon in the moonlight, I thought of the narrow, hot purpose that had grown so +strongly out of my springtime freshness, and my mood darkened to night. +</p> + +<p> +I crossed the beech wood and came towards the gardens with a resolute and +sorrowful heart. When I reached the green door in the garden wall I was seized +for a space with so violent a trembling that I could not grip the latch to lift +it, for I no longer had any doubt how this would end. That trembling was +succeeded by a feeling of cold, and whiteness, and self-pity. I was astonished +to find myself grimacing, to feel my cheeks wet, and thereupon I gave way +completely to a wild passion of weeping. I must take just a little time before +the thing was done. . . . I turned away from the door and stumbled for a little +distance, sobbing loudly, and lay down out of sight among the bracken, and so +presently became calm again. I lay there some time. I had half a mind to +desist, and then my emotion passed like the shadow of a cloud, and I walked +very coolly into the gardens. +</p> + +<p> +Through the open door of one of the glass houses I saw old Stuart. He was +leaning against the staging, his hands in his pockets, and so deep in thought +he gave no heed to me. +</p> + +<p> +I hesitated and went on towards the cottage, slowly. +</p> + +<p> +Something struck me as unusual about the place, but I could not tell at first +what it was. One of the bedroom windows was open, and the customary short +blind, with its brass upper rail partly unfastened, drooped obliquely across +the vacant space. It looked negligent and odd, for usually everything about the +cottage was conspicuously trim. +</p> + +<p> +The door was standing wide open, and everything was still. But giving that +usually orderly hall an odd look—it was about half-past two in the +afternoon—was a pile of three dirty plates, with used knives and forks +upon them, on one of the hall chairs. +</p> + +<p> +I went into the hall, looked into either room, and hesitated. +</p> + +<p> +Then I fell to upon the door-knocker and gave a loud rat-tat-too, and followed +this up with an amiable “Hel-lo!” +</p> + +<p> +For a time no one answered me, and I stood listening and expectant, with my +fingers about my weapon. Some one moved about upstairs presently, and was still +again. The tension of waiting seemed to brace my nerves. +</p> + +<p> +I had my hand on the knocker for the second time, when Puss appeared in the +doorway. +</p> + +<p> +For a moment we remained staring at one another without speaking. Her hair was +disheveled, her face dirty, tear-stained, and irregularly red. Her expression +at the sight of me was pure astonishment. I thought she was about to say +something, and then she had darted away out of the house again. +</p> + +<p> +“I say, Puss!” I said. “Puss!” +</p> + +<p> +I followed her out of the door. “Puss! What’s the matter? +Where’s Nettie?” +</p> + +<p> +She vanished round the corner of the house. +</p> + +<p> +I hesitated, perplexed whether I should pursue her. What did it all mean? Then +I heard some one upstairs. +</p> + +<p> +“Willie!” cried the voice of Mrs. Stuart. “Is that +you?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” I answered. “Where’s every one? Where’s +Nettie? I want to have a talk with her.” +</p> + +<p> +She did not answer, but I heard her dress rustle as she moved. I Judged she was +upon the landing overhead. +</p> + +<p> +I paused at the foot of the stairs, expecting her to appear and come down. +</p> + +<p> +Suddenly came a strange sound, a rush of sounds, words jumbled and hurrying, +confused and shapeless, borne along upon a note of throaty distress that at +last submerged the words altogether and ended in a wail. Except that it came +from a woman’s throat it was exactly the babbling sound of a weeping +child with a grievance. “I can’t,” she said, “I +can’t,” and that was all I could distinguish. It was to my young +ears the strangest sound conceivable from a kindly motherly little woman, whom +I had always thought of chiefly as an unparalleled maker of cakes. It +frightened me. I went upstairs at once in a state of infinite alarm, and there +she was upon the landing, leaning forward over the top of the chest of drawers +beside her open bedroom door, and weeping. I never saw such weeping. One thick +strand of black hair had escaped, and hung with a spiral twist down her back; +never before had I noticed that she had gray hairs. +</p> + +<p> +As I came up upon the landing her voice rose again. “Oh that I should +have to tell you, Willie! Oh that I should have to tell you!” She dropped +her head again, and a fresh gust of tears swept all further words away. +</p> + +<p> +I said nothing, I was too astonished; but I drew nearer to her, and waited. . . +. +</p> + +<p> +I never saw such weeping; the extraordinary wetness of her dripping +handkerchief abides with me to this day. +</p> + +<p> +“That I should have lived to see this day!” she wailed. “I +had rather a thousand times she was struck dead at my feet.” +</p> + +<p> +I began to understand. +</p> + +<p> +“Mrs. Stuart,” I said, clearing my throat; “what has become +of Nettie?” +</p> + +<p> +“That I should have lived to see this day!” she said by way of +reply. +</p> + +<p> +I waited till her passion abated. +</p> + +<p> +There came a lull. I forgot the weapon in my pocket. I said nothing, and +suddenly she stood erect before me, wiping her swollen eyes. +“Willie,” she gulped, “she’s gone!” +</p> + +<p> +“Nettie?” +</p> + +<p> +“Gone! . . . Run away. . . . Run away from her home. Oh, Willie, Willie! +The shame of it! The sin and shame of it!” +</p> + +<p> +She flung herself upon my shoulder, and clung to me, and began again to wish +her daughter lying dead at our feet. +</p> + +<p> +“There, there,” said I, and all my being was a-tremble. +“Where has she gone?” I said as softly as I could. +</p> + +<p> +But for the time she was preoccupied with her own sorrow, and I had to hold her +there, and comfort her with the blackness of finality spreading over my soul. +</p> + +<p> +“Where has she gone?” I asked for the fourth time. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know—we don’t know. And oh, Willie, she went +out yesterday morning! I said to her, ‘Nettie,’ I said to her, +‘you’re mighty fine for a morning call.’ ‘Fine +clo’s for a fine day,’ she said, and that was her last words to +me!—Willie!—the child I suckled at my breast!” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, yes. But where has she gone?” I said. +</p> + +<p> +She went on with sobs, and now telling her story with a sort of fragmentary +hurry: “She went out bright and shining, out of this house for ever. She +was smiling, Willie—as if she was glad to be going. (“Glad to be +going,” I echoed with soundless lips.) ‘You’re mighty fine +for the morning,’ I says; ‘mighty fine.’ ‘Let the girl +be pretty,’ says her father, ‘while she’s young!’ And +somewhere she’d got a parcel of her things hidden to pick up, and she was +going off—out of this house for ever!” +</p> + +<p> +She became quiet. +</p> + +<p> +“Let the girl be pretty,” she repeated; “let the girl be +pretty while she’s young. . . . Oh! how can we go on <i>living</i>, +Willie? He doesn’t show it, but he’s like a stricken beast. +He’s wounded to the heart. She was always his favorite. He never seemed +to care for Puss like he did for her. And she’s wounded him—” +</p> + +<p> +“Where has she gone?” I reverted at last to that. +</p> + +<p> +“We don’t know. She leaves her own blood, she trusts herself— +Oh, Willie, it’ll kill me! I wish she and me together were lying in our +graves.” +</p> + +<p> +“But”—I moistened my lips and spoke slowly—“she +may have gone to marry.” +</p> + +<p> +“If that was so! I’ve prayed to God it might be so, Willie. +I’ve prayed that he’d take pity on her—him, I mean, +she’s with.” +</p> + +<p> +I jerked out: “Who’s that?” +</p> + +<p> +“In her letter, she said he was a gentleman. She did say he was a +gentleman.” +</p> + +<p> +“In her letter. Has she written? Can I see her letter?” +</p> + +<p> +“Her father took it.” +</p> + +<p> +“But if she writes— When did she write?” +</p> + +<p> +“It came this morning.” +</p> + +<p> +“But where did it come from? You can tell—” +</p> + +<p> +“She didn’t say. She said she was happy. She said love took one +like a storm—” +</p> + +<p> +“Curse that! Where is her letter? Let me see it. And as for this +gentleman—” +</p> + +<p> +She stared at me. +</p> + +<p> +“You know who it is.” +</p> + +<p> +“Willie!” she protested. +</p> + +<p> +“You know who it is, whether she said or not?” Her eyes made a mute +unconfident denial. +</p> + +<p> +“Young Verrall?” +</p> + +<p> +She made no answer. “All I could do for you, Willie,” she began +presently. +</p> + +<p> +“Was it young Verrall?” I insisted. +</p> + +<p> +For a second, perhaps, we faced one another in stark understanding. . . . Then +she plumped back to the chest of drawers, and her wet pocket-handkerchief, and +I knew she sought refuge from my relentless eyes. +</p> + +<p> +My pity for her vanished. She knew it was her mistress’s son as well as +I! And for some time she had known, she had felt. +</p> + +<p> +I hovered over her for a moment, sick with amazed disgust. I suddenly bethought +me of old Stuart, out in the greenhouse, and turned and went downstairs. As I +did so, I looked up to see Mrs. Stuart moving droopingly and lamely back into +her own room. +</p> + +<p class="center"> +§ 6 +</p> + +<p> +Old Stuart was pitiful. +</p> + +<p> +I found him still inert in the greenhouse where I had first seen him. He did +not move as I drew near him; he glanced at me, and then stared hard again at +the flowerpots before him. +</p> + +<p> +“Eh, Willie,” he said, “this is a black day for all of +us.” +</p> + +<p> +“What are you going to do?” I asked. +</p> + +<p> +“The missus takes on so,” he said. “I came out here.” +</p> + +<p> +“What do you mean to do?” +</p> + +<p> +“What <i>is</i> a man to do in such a case?” +</p> + +<p> +“Do!” I cried, “why— Do!” +</p> + +<p> +“He ought to marry her,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“By God, yes!” I cried. “He must do that anyhow.” +</p> + +<p> +“He ought to. It’s—it’s cruel. But what am <i>I</i> to +do? Suppose he won’t? Likely he won’t. What then?” +</p> + +<p> +He drooped with an intensified despair. +</p> + +<p> +“Here’s this cottage,” he said, pursuing some contracted +argument. “We’ve lived here all our lives, you might say. . . . +Clear out. At my age. . . . One can’t die in a slum.” +</p> + +<p> +I stood before him for a space, speculating what thoughts might fill the gaps +between these broken words. I found his lethargy, and the dimly shaped mental +attitudes his words indicated, abominable. I said abruptly, “You have her +letter?” +</p> + +<p> +He dived into his breast-pocket, became motionless for ten seconds, then woke +up again and produced her letter. He drew it clumsily from its envelope, and +handed it to me silently. +</p> + +<p> +“Why!” he cried, looking at me for the first time, +“What’s come to your chin, Willie?” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s nothing,” I said. “It’s a bruise;” +and I opened the letter. +</p> + +<p> +It was written on greenish tinted fancy note-paper, and with all and more than +Nettie’s usual triteness and inadequacy of expression. Her handwriting +bore no traces of emotion; it was round and upright and clear as though it had +been done in a writing lesson. Always her letters were like masks upon her +image; they fell like curtains before the changing charm of her face; one +altogether forgot the sound of her light clear voice, confronted by a +perplexing stereotyped thing that had mysteriously got a hold upon one’s +heart and pride. How did that letter run?— +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +“M<small>Y</small> D<small>EAR</small> M<small>OTHER</small>,<br /> + “Do not be distressed at my going away. I have gone somewhere safe, +and with some one who cares for me very much. I am sorry for your sakes, but it +seems that it had to be. Love is a very difficult thing, and takes hold of one +in ways one does not expect. Do not think I am ashamed about this, I glory in +my love, and you must not trouble too much about me. I am very, very happy +(deeply underlined). +</p> + +<p class="right"> +“Fondest love to Father and Puss.<br /> +“Your loving<br /> +“Nettie.” +</p> + +<p> +That queer little document! I can see it now for the childish simple thing it +was, but at the time I read it in a suppressed anguish of rage. It plunged me +into a pit of hopeless shame; there seemed to remain no pride for me in life +until I had revenge. I stood staring at those rounded upstanding letters, not +trusting myself to speak or move. At last I stole a glance at Stuart. +</p> + +<p> +He held the envelope in his hand, and stared down at the postmark between his +horny thumbnails. +</p> + +<p> +“You can’t even tell where she is,” he said, turning the +thing round in a hopeless manner, and then desisting. “It’s hard on +us, Willie. Here she is; she hadn’t anything to complain of; a sort of +pet for all of us. Not even made to do her share of the ‘ousework. And +she goes off and leaves us like a bird that’s learnt to fly. Can’t +<i>trust</i> us, that’s what takes me. Puts ‘erself— But +there! What’s to happen to her?” +</p> + +<p> +“What’s to happen to him?” +</p> + +<p> +He shook his head to show that problem was beyond him. +</p> + +<p> +“You’ll go after her,” I said in an even voice; +“you’ll make him marry her?” +</p> + +<p> +“Where am I to go?” he asked helplessly, and held out the envelope +with a gesture; “and what could I do? Even if I knew— How could I +leave the gardens?” +</p> + +<p> +“Great God!” I cried, “not leave these gardens! It’s +your Honor, man! If she was my daughter—if she was my +daughter—I’d tear the world to pieces!” . . I choked. +“You mean to stand it?” +</p> + +<p> +“What can I do?” +</p> + +<p> +“Make him marry her! Horsewhip him! Horsewhip him, I say!—I’d +strangle him!” +</p> + +<p> +He scratched slowly at his hairy cheek, opened his mouth, and shook his head. +Then, with an intolerable note of sluggish gentle wisdom, he said, +“People of our sort, Willie, can’t do things like that.” +</p> + +<p> +I came near to raving. I had a wild impulse to strike him in the face. Once in +my boyhood I happened upon a bird terribly mangled by some cat, and killed it +in a frenzy of horror and pity. I had a gust of that same emotion now, as this +shameful mutilated soul fluttered in the dust, before me. Then, you know, I +dismissed him from the case. +</p> + +<p> +“May I look?” I asked. +</p> + +<p> +He held out the envelope reluctantly. +</p> + +<p> +“There it is,” he said, and pointing with his garden-rough +forefinger. “I.A.P.A.M.P. What can you make of that?” +</p> + +<p> +I took the thing in my hands. The adhesive stamp customary in those days was +defaced by a circular postmark, which bore the name of the office of departure +and the date. The impact in this particular case had been light or made without +sufficient ink, and half the letters of the name had left no impression. I +could distinguish— +</p> + +<p class="center"> +I A P A M P +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +and very faintly below D.S.O. +</p> + +<p> +I guessed the name in an instant flash of intuition. It was Shaphambury. The +very gaps shaped that to my mind. Perhaps in a sort of semi-visibility other +letters were there, at least hinting themselves. It was a place somewhere on +the east coast, I knew, either in Norfolk or Suffolk. +</p> + +<p> +“Why!” cried I—and stopped. +</p> + +<p> +What was the good of telling him? +</p> + +<p> +Old Stuart had glanced up sharply, I am inclined to think almost fearfully, +into my face. “You—you haven’t got it?” he said. +</p> + +<p> +Shaphambury—I should remember that. +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t think you got it?” he said. +</p> + +<p> +I handed the envelope back to him. +</p> + +<p> +“For a moment I thought it might be Hampton,” I said. +</p> + +<p> +“Hampton,” he repeated. “Hampton. How could you make +Hampton?” He turned the envelope about. “H.A.M.—why, Willie, +you’re a worse hand at the job than me!” +</p> + +<p> +He replaced the letter in the envelope and stood erect to put this back in his +breast pocket. +</p> + +<p> +I did not mean to take any risks in this affair. I drew a stump of pencil from +my waistcoat pocket, turned a little away from him and wrote +“Shaphambury” very quickly on my frayed and rather grimy shirt +cuff. +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” said I, with an air of having done nothing remarkable. +</p> + +<p> +I turned to him with some unimportant observation—I have forgotten what. +</p> + +<p> +I never finished whatever vague remark I commenced. +</p> + +<p> +I looked up to see a third person waiting at the greenhouse door. +</p> + +<p class="center"> +§ 7 +</p> + +<p> +It was old Mrs. Verrall. +</p> + +<p> +I wonder if I can convey the effect of her to you. She was a little old lady +with extraordinarily flaxen hair, her weak aquiline features were pursed up +into an assumption of dignity, and she was richly dressed. I would like to +underline that “richly dressed,” or have the words printed in +florid old English or Gothic lettering. No one on earth is now quite so richly +dressed as she was, no one old or young indulges in so quiet and yet so +profound a sumptuosity. But you must not imagine any extravagance of outline or +any beauty or richness of color. The predominant colors were black and fur +browns, and the effect of richness was due entirely to the extreme costliness +of the materials employed. She affected silk brocades with rich and elaborate +patterns, priceless black lace over creamy or purple satin, intricate trimmings +through which threads and bands of velvet wriggled, and in the winter rare +furs. Her gloves fitted exquisitely, and ostentatiously simple chains of fine +gold and pearls, and a great number of bracelets, laced about her little +person. One was forced to feel that the slightest article she wore cost more +than all the wardrobe of a dozen girls like Nettie; her bonnet affected the +simplicity that is beyond rubies. Richness, that is the first quality about +this old lady that I would like to convey to you, and the second was +cleanliness. You felt that old Mrs. Verrall was exquisitely clean. If you had +boiled my poor dear old mother in soda for a month you couldn’t have got +her so clean as Mrs. Verrall constantly and manifestly was. And pervading all +her presence shone her third great quality, her manifest confidence in the +respectful subordination of the world. +</p> + +<p> +She was pale and a little out of breath that day, but without any loss of her +ultimate confidence, and it was clear to me that she had come to interview +Stuart upon the outbreak of passion that had bridged the gulf between their +families. +</p> + +<p> +And here again I find myself writing in an unknown language, so far as my +younger readers are concerned. You who know only the world that followed the +Great Change will find much that I am telling inconceivable. Upon these points +I cannot appeal, as I have appealed for other confirmations, to the old +newspapers; these were the things that no one wrote about because every one +understood and every one had taken up an attitude. There were in England and +America, and indeed throughout the world, two great informal divisions of human +beings—the Secure and the Insecure. There was not and never had been in +either country a nobility—it was and remains a common error that the +British peers were noble—neither in law nor custom were there noble +families, and we altogether lacked the edification one found in Russia, for +example, of a poor nobility. A peerage was an hereditary possession that, like +the family land, concerned only the eldest sons of the house; it radiated no +luster of <i>noblesse oblige</i>. The rest of the world were in law and +practice common—and all America was common. But through the private +ownership of land that had resulted from the neglect of feudal obligations in +Britain and the utter want of political foresight in the Americas, large masses +of property had become artificially stable in the hands of a small minority, to +whom it was necessary to mortgage all new public and private enterprises, and +who were held together not by any tradition of service and nobility but by the +natural sympathy of common interests and a common large scale of living. It was +a class without any very definite boundaries; vigorous individualities, by +methods for the most part violent and questionable, were constantly thrusting +themselves from insecurity to security, and the sons and daughters of secure +people, by marrying insecurity or by wild extravagance or flagrant vice, would +sink into the life of anxiety and insufficiency which was the ordinary life of +man. The rest of the population was landless and, except by working directly or +indirectly for the Secure, had no legal right to exist. And such was the +shallowness and insufficiency of our thought, such the stifled egotism of all +our feelings before the Last Days, that very few indeed of the Secure could be +found to doubt that this was the natural and only conceivable order of the +world. +</p> + +<p> +It is the life of the Insecure under the old order that I am displaying, and I +hope that I am conveying something of its hopeless bitterness to you, but you +must not imagine that the Secure lived lives of paradisiacal happiness. The pit +of insecurity below them made itself felt, even though it was not comprehended. +Life about them was ugly; the sight of ugly and mean houses, of ill-dressed +people, the vulgar appeals of the dealers in popular commodities, were not to +be escaped. There was below the threshold of their minds an uneasiness; they +not only did not think clearly about social economy but they displayed an +instinctive disinclination to think. Their security was not so perfect that +they had not a dread of falling towards the pit, they were always lashing +themselves by new ropes, their cultivation of “connexions,” of +interests, their desire to confirm and improve their positions, was a constant +ignoble preoccupation. You must read Thackeray to get the full flavor of their +lives. Then the bacterium was apt to disregard class distinctions, and they +were never really happy in their servants. Read their surviving books. Each +generation bewails the decay of that “fidelity” of servants, no +generation ever saw. A world that is squalid in one corner is squalid +altogether, but that they never understood. They believed there was not enough +of anything to go round, they believed that this was the intention of God and +an incurable condition of life, and they held passionately and with a sense of +right to their disproportionate share. They maintained a common intercourse as +“Society” of all who were practically secure, and their choice of +that word is exhaustively eloquent of the quality of their philosophy. But, if +you can master these alien ideas upon which the old system rested, just in the +same measure will you understand the horror these people had for marriages with +the Insecure. In the case of their girls and women it was extraordinarily rare, +and in the case of either sex it was regarded as a disastrous social crime. +Anything was better than that. +</p> + +<p> +You are probably aware of the hideous fate that was only too probably the lot, +during those last dark days, of every girl of the insecure classes who loved +and gave way to the impulse of self-abandonment without marriage, and so you +will understand the peculiar situation of Nettie with young Verrall. One or +other had to suffer. And as they were both in a state of great emotional +exaltation and capable of strange generosities toward each other, it was an +open question and naturally a source of great anxiety to a mother in Mrs. +Verrall’s position, whether the sufferer might not be her +son—whether as the outcome of that glowing irresponsible commerce Nettie +might not return prospective mistress of Checkshill Towers. The chances were +greatly against that conclusion, but such things did occur. +</p> + +<p> +These laws and customs sound, I know, like a record of some nasty-minded +lunatic’s inventions. They were invincible facts in that vanished world +into which, by some accident, I had been born, and it was the dream of any +better state of things that was scouted as lunacy. Just think of it! This girl +I loved with all my soul, for whom I was ready to sacrifice my life, was not +good enough to marry young Verrall. And I had only to look at his even, +handsome, characterless face to perceive a creature weaker and no better than +myself. She was to be his pleasure until he chose to cast her aside, and the +poison of our social system had so saturated her nature—his evening +dress, his freedom and his money had seemed so fine to her and I so clothed in +squalor—that to that prospect she had consented. And to resent the social +conventions that created their situation, was called “class envy,” +and gently born preachers reproached us for the mildest resentment against an +injustice no living man would now either endure or consent to profit by. +</p> + +<p> +What was the sense of saying “peace” when there was no peace? If +there was one hope in the disorders of that old world it lay in revolt and +conflict to the death. +</p> + +<p> +But if you can really grasp the shameful grotesqueness of the old life, you +will begin to appreciate the interpretation of old Mrs. Verrall’s +appearance that leapt up at once in my mind. +</p> + +<p> +She had come to compromise the disaster! +</p> + +<p> +And the Stuarts <i>would</i> compromise! I saw that only too well. +</p> + +<p> +An enormous disgust at the prospect of the imminent encounter between Stuart +and his mistress made me behave in a violent and irrational way. I wanted to +escape seeing that, seeing even Stuart’s first gesture in that, at any +cost. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m off,” said I, and turned my back on him without any +further farewell. +</p> + +<p> +My line of retreat lay by the old lady, and so I advanced toward her. +</p> + +<p> +I saw her expression change, her mouth fell a little way open, her forehead +wrinkled, and her eyes grew round. She found me a queer customer even at the +first sight, and there was something in the manner of my advance that took away +her breath. +</p> + +<p> +She stood at the top of the three or four steps that descended to the level of +the hothouse floor. She receded a pace or two, with a certain offended dignity +at the determination of my rush. +</p> + +<p> +I gave her no sort of salutation. +</p> + +<p> +Well, as a matter of fact, I did give her a sort of salutation. There is no +occasion for me to begin apologizing now for the thing I said to her—I +strip these things before you—if only I can get them stark enough you +will understand and forgive. I was filled with a brutal and overpowering desire +to insult her. +</p> + +<p> +And so I addressed this poor little expensive old woman in the following terms, +converting her by a violent metonymy into a comprehensive plural. “You +infernal land thieves!” I said point-blank into her face. “<i>Have +you come to offer them money?</i>” +</p> + +<p> +And without waiting to test her powers of repartee I passed rudely beyond her +and vanished, striding with my fists clenched, out of her world again. . . +</p> + +<p> +I have tried since to imagine how the thing must have looked to her. So far as +her particular universe went I had not existed at all, or I had existed only as +a dim black thing, an insignificant speck, far away across her park in +irrelevant, unimportant transit, until this moment when she came, sedately +troubled, into her own secure gardens and sought for Stuart among the +greenhouses. Then abruptly I flashed into being down that green-walled, +brick-floored vista as a black-avised, ill-clad young man, who first stared and +then advanced scowling toward her. Once in existence I developed rapidly. I +grew larger in perspective and became more and more important and sinister +every moment. I came up the steps with inconceivable hostility and disrespect +in my bearing, towered over her, becoming for an instant at least a sort of +second French Revolution, and delivered myself with the intensest concentration +of those wicked and incomprehensible words. Just for a second I threatened +annihilation. Happily that was my climax. +</p> + +<p> +And then I had gone by, and the Universe was very much as it had always been +except for the wild swirl in it, and the faint sense of insecurity my episode +left in its wake. +</p> + +<p> +The thing that never entered my head in those days was that a large proportion +of the rich were rich in absolute good faith. I thought they saw things exactly +as I saw them, and wickedly denied. But indeed old Mrs. Verrall was no more +capable of doubting the perfection of her family’s right to dominate a +wide country side, than she was of examining the Thirty-nine Articles or +dealing with any other of the adamantine pillars upon which her universe rested +in security. +</p> + +<p> +No doubt I startled and frightened her tremendously. But she could not +understand. +</p> + +<p> +None of her sort of people ever did seem to understand such livid flashes of +hate, as ever and again lit the crowded darkness below their feet. The thing +leapt out of the black for a moment and vanished, like a threatening figure by +a desolate roadside lit for a moment by one’s belated carriage-lamp and +then swallowed up by the night. They counted it with nightmares, and did their +best to forget what was evidently as insignificant as it was disturbing. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap04"></a>CHAPTER THE FOURTH<br />WAR</h2> + +<p class="center"> +§ 1 +</p> + +<p> +From that moment when I insulted old Mrs. Verrall I became representative, I +was a man who stood for all the disinherited of the world. I had no hope of +pride or pleasure left in me, I was raging rebellion against God and mankind. +There were no more vague intentions swaying me this way and that; I was +perfectly clear now upon what I meant to do. I would make my protest and die. +</p> + +<p> +I would make my protest and die. I was going to kill Nettie—Nettie who +had smiled and promised and given herself to another, and who stood now for all +the conceivable delightfulnesses, the lost imaginations of the youthful heart, +the unattainable joys in life; and Verrall who stood for all who profited by +the incurable injustice of our social order. I would kill them both. And that +being done I would blow my brains out and see what vengeance followed my blank +refusal to live. +</p> + +<p> +So indeed I was resolved. I raged monstrously. And above me, abolishing the +stars, triumphant over the yellow waning moon that followed it below, the giant +meteor towered up towards the zenith. +</p> + +<p> +“Let me only kill!” I cried. “Let me only kill!” +</p> + +<p> +So I shouted in my frenzy. I was in a fever that defied hunger and fatigue; for +a long time I had prowled over the heath towards Lowchester talking to myself, +and now that night had fully come I was tramping homeward, walking the long +seventeen miles without a thought of rest. And I had eaten nothing since the +morning. +</p> + +<p> +I suppose I must count myself mad, but I can recall my ravings. +</p> + +<p> +There were times when I walked weeping through that brightness that was neither +night nor day. There were times when I reasoned in a topsy-turvy fashion with +what I called the Spirit of All Things. But always I spoke to that white glory +in the sky. +</p> + +<p> +“Why am I here only to suffer ignominies?” I asked. “Why have +you made me with pride that cannot be satisfied, with desires that turn and +rend me? Is it a jest, this world—a joke you play on your guests? +I—even I—have a better humor than that!” +</p> + +<p> +“Why not learn from me a certain decency of mercy? Why not undo? Have I +ever tormented—day by day, some wretched worm—making filth for it +to trail through, filth that disgusts it, starving it, bruising it, mocking it? +Why should you? Your jokes are clumsy. Try—try some milder fun up there; +do you hear? Something that doesn’t hurt so infernally.” +</p> + +<p> +“You say this is your purpose—your purpose with me. You are making +something with me—birth pangs of a soul. Ah! How can I believe you? You +forget I have eyes for other things. Let my own case go, but what of that frog +beneath the cart-wheel, God?—and the bird the cat had torn?” +</p> + +<p> +And after such blasphemies I would fling out a ridiculous little debating +society hand. “Answer me that!” +</p> + +<p> +A week ago it had been moonlight, white and black and hard across the spaces of +the park, but now the light was livid and full of the quality of haze. An +extraordinarily low white mist, not three feet above the ground, drifted +broodingly across the grass, and the trees rose ghostly out of that phantom +sea. Great and shadowy and strange was the world that night, no one seemed +abroad; I and my little cracked voice drifted solitary through the silent +mysteries. Sometimes I argued as I have told, sometimes I tumbled along in +moody vacuity, sometimes my torment was vivid and acute. +</p> + +<p> +Abruptly out of apathy would come a boiling paroxysm of fury, when I thought of +Nettie mocking me and laughing, and of her and Verrall clasped in one +another’s arms. +</p> + +<p> +“I will not have it so!” I screamed. “I will not have it +so!” +</p> + +<p> +And in one of these raving fits I drew my revolver from my pocket and fired +into the quiet night. Three times I fired it. +</p> + +<p> +The bullets tore through the air, the startled trees told one another in +diminishing echoes the thing I had done, and then, with a slow finality, the +vast and patient night healed again to calm. My shots, my curses and +blasphemies, my prayers—for anon I prayed—that Silence took them +all. +</p> + +<p> +It was—how can I express it?—a stifled outcry tranquilized, lost, +amid the serene assumptions, the overwhelming empire of that brightness. The +noise of my shots, the impact upon things, had for the instant been enormous, +then it had passed away. I found myself standing with the revolver held up, +astonished, my emotions penetrated by something I could not understand. Then I +looked up over my shoulder at the great star, and remained staring at it. +</p> + +<p> +“Who are <i>you</i>?” I said at last. +</p> + +<p> +I was like a man in a solitary desert who has suddenly heard a voice. . . . +</p> + +<p> +That, too, passed. +</p> + +<p> +As I came over Clayton Crest I recalled that I missed the multitude that now +night after night walked out to stare at the comet, and the little preacher in +the waste beyond the hoardings, who warned sinners to repent before the +Judgment, was not in his usual place. +</p> + +<p> +It was long past midnight, and every one had gone home. But I did not think of +this at first, and the solitude perplexed me and left a memory behind. The +gas-lamps were all extinguished because of the brightness of the comet, and +that too was unfamiliar. The little newsagent in the still High Street had shut +up and gone to bed, but one belated board had been put out late and forgotten, +and it still bore its placard. +</p> + +<p> +The word upon it—there was but one word upon it in staring +letters—was: “WAR.” +</p> + +<p> +You figure that empty mean street, emptily echoing to my footsteps—no +soul awake and audible but me. Then my halt at the placard. And amidst that +sleeping stillness, smeared hastily upon the board, a little askew and +crumpled, but quite distinct beneath that cool meteoric glare, preposterous and +appalling, the measureless evil of that word— +</p> + +<p> +“WAR!” +</p> + +<p class="center"> +§ 2 +</p> + +<p> +I awoke in that state of equanimity that so often follows an emotional +drenching. +</p> + +<p> +It was late, and my mother was beside my bed. She had some breakfast for me on +a battered tray. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t get up yet, dear,” she said. “You’ve been +sleeping. It was three o’clock when you got home last night. You must +have been tired out.” +</p> + +<p> +“Your poor face,” she went on, “was as white as a sheet and +your eyes shining. . . . It frightened me to let you in. And you stumbled on +the stairs.” +</p> + +<p> +My eyes went quietly to my coat pocket, where something still bulged. She +probably had not noticed. “I went to Checkshill,” I said. +“You know—perhaps—?” +</p> + +<p> +“I got a letter last evening, dear,” and as she bent near me to put +the tray upon my knees, she kissed my hair softly. For a moment we both +remained still, resting on that, her cheek just touching my head. +</p> + +<p> +I took the tray from her to end the pause. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t touch my clothes, mummy,” I said sharply, as she moved +towards them. “I’m still equal to a clothes-brush.” +</p> + +<p> +And then, as she turned away, I astonished her by saying, “You dear +mother, you! A little—I understand. Only—now—dear mother; oh! +let me be! Let me be!” +</p> + +<p> +And, with the docility of a good servant, she went from me. Dear heart of +submission that the world and I had used so ill! +</p> + +<p> +It seemed to me that morning that I could never give way to a gust of passion +again. A sorrowful firmness of the mind possessed me. My purpose seemed now as +inflexible as iron; there was neither love nor hate nor fear left in +me—only I pitied my mother greatly for all that was still to come. I ate +my breakfast slowly, and thought where I could find out about Shaphambury, and +how I might hope to get there. I had not five shillings in the world. +</p> + +<p> +I dressed methodically, choosing the least frayed of my collars, and shaving +much more carefully than was my wont; then I went down to the Public Library to +consult a map. +</p> + +<p> +Shaphambury was on the coast of Essex, a long and complicated journey from +Clayton. I went to the railway-station and made some memoranda from the +time-tables. The porters I asked were not very clear about Shaphambury, but the +booking-office clerk was helpful, and we puzzled out all I wanted to know. Then +I came out into the coaly street again. At the least I ought to have two +pounds. +</p> + +<p> +I went back to the Public Library and into the newspaper room to think over +this problem. +</p> + +<p> +A fact intruded itself upon me. People seemed in an altogether exceptional stir +about the morning journals, there was something unusual in the air of the room, +more people and more talking than usual, and for a moment I was puzzled. Then I +bethought me: “This war with Germany, of course!” A naval battle +was supposed to be in progress in the North Sea. Let them! I returned to the +consideration of my own affairs. +</p> + +<p> +Parload? +</p> + +<p> +Could I go and make it up with him, and then borrow? I weighed the chances of +that. Then I thought of selling or pawning something, but that seemed +difficult. My winter overcoat had not cost a pound when it was new, my watch +was not likely to fetch many shillings. Still, both these things might be +factors. I thought with a certain repugnance of the little store my mother was +probably making for the rent. She was very secretive about that, and it was +locked in an old tea-caddy in her bedroom. I knew it would be almost impossible +to get any of that money from her willingly, and though I told myself that in +this issue of passion and death no detail mattered, I could not get rid of +tormenting scruples whenever I thought of that tea-caddy. Was there no other +course? Perhaps after every other source had been tapped I might supplement +with a few shillings frankly begged from her. “These others,” I +said to myself, thinking without passion for once of the sons of the Secure, +“would find it difficult to run their romances on a pawnshop basis. +However, we must manage it.” +</p> + +<p> +I felt the day was passing on, but I did not get excited about that. +“Slow is swiftest,” Parload used to say, and I meant to get +everything thought out completely, to take a long aim and then to act as a +bullet flies. +</p> + +<p> +I hesitated at a pawnshop on my way home to my midday meal, but I determined +not to pledge my watch until I could bring my overcoat also. +</p> + +<p> +I ate silently, revolving plans. +</p> + +<p class="center"> +§ 3 +</p> + +<p> +After our midday dinner—it was a potato-pie, mostly potato with some +scraps of cabbage and bacon—I put on my overcoat and got it out of the +house while my mother was in the scullery at the back. +</p> + +<p> +A scullery in the old world was, in the case of such houses as ours, a damp, +unsavory, mainly subterranean region behind the dark living-room kitchen, that +was rendered more than typically dirty in our case by the fact that into it the +coal-cellar, a yawning pit of black uncleanness, opened, and diffused small +crunchable particles about the uneven brick floor. It was the region of +“washing-up,” that greasy, damp function that followed every meal; +its atmosphere had ever a cooling steaminess and the memory of boiled cabbage, +and the sooty black stains where saucepan or kettle had been put down for a +minute, scraps of potato-peel caught by the strainer of the escape-pipe, and +rags of a quite indescribable horribleness of acquisition, called +“dish-clouts,” rise in my memory at the name. The altar of this +place was the “sink,” a tank of stone, revolting to a refined +touch, grease-filmed and unpleasant to see, and above this was a tap for cold +water, so arranged that when the water descended it splashed and wetted whoever +had turned it on. This tap was our water supply. And in such a place you must +fancy a little old woman, rather incompetent and very gentle, a soul of +unselfishness and sacrifice, in dirty clothes, all come from their original +colors to a common dusty dark gray, in worn, ill-fitting boots, with hands +distorted by ill use, and untidy graying hair—my mother. In the winter +her hands would be “chapped,” and she would have a cough. And while +she washes up I go out, to sell my overcoat and watch in order that I may +desert her. +</p> + +<p> +I gave way to queer hesitations in pawning my two negotiable articles. A weakly +indisposition to pawn in Clayton, where the pawnbroker knew me, carried me to +the door of the place in Lynch Street, Swathinglea, where I had bought my +revolver. Then came an idea that I was giving too many facts about myself to +one man, and I came back to Clayton after all. I forget how much money I got, +but I remember that it was rather less than the sum I had made out to be the +single fare to Shaphambury. Still deliberate, I went back to the Public Library +to find out whether it was possible, by walking for ten or twelve miles +anywhere, to shorten the journey. My boots were in a dreadful state, the sole +of the left one also was now peeling off, and I could not help perceiving that +all my plans might be wrecked if at this crisis I went on shoe leather in which +I could only shuffle. So long as I went softly they would serve, but not for +hard walking. I went to the shoemaker in Hacker Street, but he would not +promise any repairs for me under forty-eight hours. +</p> + +<p> +I got back home about five minutes to three, resolved to start by the five +train for Birmingham in any case, but still dissatisfied about my money. I +thought of pawning a book or something of that sort, but I could think of +nothing of obvious value in the house. My mother’s silver—two +gravy-spoons and a salt-cellar—had been pawned for some weeks, since, in +fact, the June quarter day. But my mind was full of hypothetical opportunities. +</p> + +<p> +As I came up the steps to our door, I remarked that Mr. Gabbitas looked at me +suddenly round his dull red curtains with a sort of alarmed resolution in his +eye and vanished, and as I walked along the passage he opened his door upon me +suddenly and intercepted me. +</p> + +<p> +You are figuring me, I hope, as a dark and sullen lout in shabby, cheap, +old-world clothes that are shiny at all the wearing surfaces, and with a +discolored red tie and frayed linen. My left hand keeps in my pocket as though +there is something it prefers to keep a grip upon there. Mr. Gabbitas was +shorter than I, and the first note he struck in the impression he made upon any +one was of something bright and birdlike. I think he wanted to be birdlike, he +possessed the possibility of an avian charm, but, as a matter of fact, there +was nothing of the glowing vitality of the bird in his being. And a bird is +never out of breath and with an open mouth. He was in the clerical dress of +that time, that costume that seems now almost the strangest of all our +old-world clothing, and he presented it in its cheapest form—black of a +poor texture, ill-fitting, strangely cut. Its long skirts accentuated the +tubbiness of his body, the shortness of his legs. The white tie below his +all-round collar, beneath his innocent large-spectacled face, was a little +grubby, and between his not very clean teeth he held a briar pipe. His +complexion was whitish, and although he was only thirty-three or four perhaps, +his sandy hair was already thinning from the top of his head. +</p> + +<p> +To your eye, now, he would seem the strangest figure, in the utter disregard of +all physical beauty or dignity about him. You would find him extraordinarily +odd, but in the old days he met not only with acceptance but respect. He was +alive until within a year or so ago, but his later appearance changed. As I saw +him that afternoon he was a very slovenly, ungainly little human being indeed, +not only was his clothing altogether ugly and queer, but had you stripped the +man stark, you would certainly have seen in the bulging paunch that comes from +flabby muscles and flabbily controlled appetites, and in the rounded shoulders +and flawed and yellowish skin, the same failure of any effort toward clean +beauty. You had an instinctive sense that so he had been from the beginning. +You felt he was not only drifting through life, eating what came in his way, +believing what came in his way, doing without any vigor what came in his way, +but that <i>into</i> life also he had drifted. You could not believe him the +child of pride and high resolve, or of any splendid passion of love. He had +just <i>happened</i>. . . But we all happened then. Why am I taking this tone +over this poor little curate in particular? +</p> + +<p> +“Hello!” he said, with an assumption of friendly ease. +“Haven’t seen you for weeks! Come in and have a gossip.” +</p> + +<p> +An invitation from the drawing-room lodger was in the nature of a command. I +would have liked very greatly to have refused it, never was invitation more +inopportune, but I had not the wit to think of an excuse. “All +right,” I said awkwardly, and he held the door open for me. +</p> + +<p> +“I’d be very glad if you would,” he amplified. “One +doesn’t get much opportunity of intelligent talk in this parish.” +</p> + +<p> +What the devil was he up to, was my secret preoccupation. He fussed about me +with a nervous hospitality, talking in jumpy fragments, rubbing his hands +together, and taking peeps at me over and round his glasses. As I sat down in +his leather-covered armchair, I had an odd memory of the one in the Clayton +dentist’s operating-room—I know not why. +</p> + +<p> +“They’re going to give us trouble in the North Sea, it +seems,” he remarked with a sort of innocent zest. “I’m glad +they mean fighting.” +</p> + +<p> +There was an air of culture about his room that always cowed me, and that made +me constrained even on this occasion. The table under the window was littered +with photographic material and the later albums of his continental souvenirs, +and on the American cloth trimmed shelves that filled the recesses on either +side of the fireplace were what I used to think in those days a quite +incredible number of books—perhaps eight hundred altogether, including +the reverend gentleman’s photograph albums and college and school +text-books. This suggestion of learning was enforced by the little wooden +shield bearing a college coat-of-arms that hung over the looking-glass, and by +a photograph of Mr. Gabbitas in cap and gown in an Oxford frame that adorned +the opposite wall. And in the middle of that wall stood his writing-desk, which +I knew to have pigeon-holes when it was open, and which made him seem not +merely cultured but literary. At that he wrote sermons, composing them himself! +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” he said, taking possession of the hearthrug, “the war +had to come sooner or later. If we smash their fleet for them now; well, +there’s an end to the matter!” +</p> + +<p> +He stood on his toes and then bumped down on his heels, and looked blandly +through his spectacles at a water-color by his sister—the subject was a +bunch of violets—above the sideboard which was his pantry and tea-chest +and cellar. “Yes,” he said as he did so. +</p> + +<p> +I coughed, and wondered how I might presently get away. +</p> + +<p> +He invited me to smoke—that queer old practice!—and then when I +declined, began talking in a confidential tone of this “dreadful +business” of the strikes. “The war won’t improve <i>that</i> +outlook,” he said, and was very grave for a moment. +</p> + +<p> +He spoke of the want of thought for their wives and children shown by the +colliers in striking merely for the sake of the union, and this stirred me to +controversy, and distracted me a little from my resolution to escape. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t quite agree with that,” I said, clearing my throat. +“If the men didn’t strike for the union now, if they let that be +broken up, where would they be when the pinch of reductions did come?” +</p> + +<p> +To which he replied that they couldn’t expect to get top-price wages when +the masters were selling bottom-price coal. I replied, “That isn’t +it. The masters don’t treat them fairly. They have to protect +themselves.” +</p> + +<p> +To which Mr. Gabbitas answered, “Well, I don’t know. I’ve +been in the Four Towns some time, and I must say I don’t think the +balance of injustice falls on the masters’ side.” +</p> + +<p> +“It falls on the men,” I agreed, wilfully misunderstanding him. +</p> + +<p> +And so we worked our way toward an argument. “Confound this +argument!” I thought; but I had no skill in self-extraction, and my +irritation crept into my voice. Three little spots of color came into the +cheeks and nose of Mr. Gabbitas, but his voice showed nothing of his ruffled +temper. +</p> + +<p> +“You see,” I said, “I’m a socialist. I don’t +think this world was made for a small minority to dance on the faces of every +one else.” +</p> + +<p> +“My dear fellow,” said the Rev. Gabbitas, “<i>I’m</i> a +socialist too. Who isn’t. But that doesn’t lead me to class +hatred.” +</p> + +<p> +“You haven’t felt the heel of this confounded system. <i>I</i> +have.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah!” said he; and catching him on that note came a rap at the +front door, and, as he hung suspended, the sound of my mother letting some one +in and a timid rap. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Now</i>,” thought I, and stood up, resolutely, but he would not +let me. “No, no, no!” said he. “It’s only for the +Dorcas money.” +</p> + +<p> +He put his hand against my chest with an effect of physical compulsion, and +cried, “Come in!” +</p> + +<p> +“Our talk’s just getting interesting,” he protested; and +there entered Miss Ramell, an elderly little young lady who was mighty in +Church help in Clayton. +</p> + +<p> +He greeted her—she took no notice of me—and went to his bureau, and +I remained standing by my chair but unable to get out of the room. +“I’m not interrupting?” asked Miss Ramell. +</p> + +<p> +“Not in the least,” he said; drew out the carriers and opened his +desk. I could not help seeing what he did. +</p> + +<p> +I was so fretted by my impotence to leave him that at the moment it did not +connect at all with the research of the morning that he was taking out money. I +listened sullenly to his talk with Miss Ramell, and saw only, as they say in +Wales, with the front of my eyes, the small flat drawer that had, it seemed, +quite a number of sovereigns scattered over its floor. “They’re so +unreasonable,” complained Miss Ramell. Who could be otherwise in a social +organization that bordered on insanity? +</p> + +<p> +I turned away from them, put my foot on the fender, stuck my elbow on the +plush-fringed mantelboard, and studied the photographs, pipes, and ash-trays +that adorned it. What was it I had to think out before I went to the station? +</p> + +<p> +Of course! My mind made a queer little reluctant leap—it felt like being +forced to leap over a bottomless chasm—and alighted upon the sovereigns +that were just disappearing again as Mr. Gabbitas shut his drawer. +</p> + +<p> +“I won’t interrupt your talk further,” said Miss Ramell, +receding doorward. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Gabbitas played round her politely, and opened the door for her and +conducted her into the passage, and for a moment or so I had the fullest sense +of proximity to those—it seemed to me there must be ten or +twelve—sovereigns. . . . +</p> + +<p> +The front door closed and he returned. My chance of escape had gone. +</p> + +<p class="center"> +§ 4 +</p> + +<p> +“<i>I must</i> be going,” I said, with a curiously reinforced +desire to get away out of that room. +</p> + +<p> +“My dear chap!” he insisted, “I can’t think of it. +Surely—there’s nothing to call you away.” Then with an +evident desire to shift the venue of our talk, he asked, “You never told +me what you thought of Burble’s little book.” +</p> + +<p> +I was now, beneath my dull display of submission, furiously angry with him. It +occurred to me to ask myself why I should defer and qualify my opinions to him. +Why should I pretend a feeling of intellectual and social inferiority toward +him. He asked what I thought of Burble. I resolved to tell him—if +necessary with arrogance. Then perhaps he would release me. I did not sit down +again, but stood by the corner of the fireplace. +</p> + +<p> +“That was the little book you lent me last summer?” I said. +</p> + +<p> +“He reasons closely, eh?” he said, and indicated the armchair with +a flat hand, and beamed persuasively. +</p> + +<p> +I remained standing. “I didn’t think much of his reasoning +powers,” I said. +</p> + +<p> +“He was one of the cleverest bishops London ever had.” +</p> + +<p> +“That may be. But he was dodging about in a jolly feeble case,” +said I. +</p> + +<p> +“You mean?” +</p> + +<p> +“That he’s wrong. I don’t think he proves his case. I +don’t think Christianity is true. He knows himself for the pretender he +is. His reasoning’s—Rot.” +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Gabbitas went, I think, a shade paler than his wont, and propitiation +vanished from his manner. His eyes and mouth were round, his face seemed to get +round, his eyebrows curved at my remarks. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m sorry you think that,” he said at last, with a catch in +his breath. +</p> + +<p> +He did not repeat his suggestion that I should sit. He made a step or two +toward the window and turned. “I suppose you will admit—” he +began, with a faintly irritating note of intellectual condescension. . . . . +</p> + +<p> +I will not tell you of his arguments or mine. You will find if you care to look +for them, in out-of-the-way corners of our book museums, the shriveled cheap +publications—the publications of the Rationalist Press Association, for +example—on which my arguments were based. Lying in that curious limbo +with them, mixed up with them and indistinguishable, are the endless +“Replies” of orthodoxy, like the mixed dead in some hard-fought +trench. All those disputes of our fathers, and they were sometimes furious +disputes, have gone now beyond the range of comprehension. You younger people, +I know, read them with impatient perplexity. You cannot understand how sane +creatures could imagine they had joined issue at all in most of these +controversies. All the old methods of systematic thinking, the queer +absurdities of the Aristotelian logic, have followed magic numbers and mystical +numbers, and the Rumpelstiltskin magic of names now into the blackness of the +unthinkable. You can no more understand our theological passions than you can +understand the fancies that made all ancient peoples speak of their gods only +by circumlocutions, that made savages pine away and die because they had been +photographed, or an Elizabethan farmer turn back from a day’s expedition +because he had met three crows. Even I, who have been through it all, recall +our controversies now with something near incredulity. +</p> + +<p> +Faith we can understand to-day, all men live by faith, but in the old time +every one confused quite hopelessly Faith and a forced, incredible Belief in +certain pseudo-concrete statements. I am inclined to say that neither believers +nor unbelievers had faith as we understand it—they had insufficient +intellectual power. They could not trust unless they had something to see and +touch and say, like their barbarous ancestors who could not make a bargain +without exchange of tokens. If they no longer worshipped stocks and stones, or +eked out their needs with pilgrimages and images, they still held fiercely to +audible images, to printed words and formulae. +</p> + +<p> +But why revive the echoes of the ancient logomachies? +</p> + +<p> +Suffice it that we lost our tempers very readily in pursuit of God and Truth, +and said exquisitely foolish things on either side. And on the whole—from +the impartial perspective of my three and seventy years—I adjudicate that +if my dialectic was bad, that of the Rev. Gabbitas was altogether worse. +</p> + +<p> +Little pink spots came into his cheeks, a squealing note into his voice. We +interrupted each other more and more rudely. We invented facts and appealed to +authorities whose names I mispronounced; and, finding Gabbitas shy of the +higher criticism and the Germans, I used the names of Karl Marx and Engels as +Bible exegetes with no little effect. A silly wrangle! a preposterous +wrangle!—you must imagine our talk becoming louder, with a developing +quarrelsome note—my mother no doubt hovering on the staircase and +listening in alarm as who should say, “My dear, don’t offend it! +Oh, don’t offend it! Mr. Gabbitas enjoys its friendship. Try to think +whatever Mr. Gabbitas says”—though we still kept in touch with a +pretence of mutual deference. The ethical superiority of Christianity to all +other religions came to the fore—I know not how. We dealt with the matter +in bold, imaginative generalizations, because of the insufficiency of our +historical knowledge. I was moved to denounce Christianity as the ethic of +slaves, and declare myself a disciple of a German writer of no little vogue in +those days, named Nietzsche. +</p> + +<p> +For a disciple I must confess I was particularly ill acquainted with the works +of the master. Indeed, all I knew of him had come to me through a two-column +article in <i>The Clarion</i> for the previous week. . . . But the Rev. +Gabbitas did not read <i>The Clarion</i>. +</p> + +<p> +I am, I know, putting a strain upon your credulity when I tell you that I now +have little doubt that the Rev. Gabbitas was absolutely ignorant even of the +name of Nietzsche, although that writer presented a separate and distinct +attitude of attack upon the faith that was in the reverend gentleman’s +keeping. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m a disciple of Nietzsche,” said I, with an air of +extensive explanation. +</p> + +<p> +He shied away so awkwardly at the name that I repeated it at once. +</p> + +<p> +“But do you know what Nietzsche says?” I pressed him viciously. +</p> + +<p> +“He has certainly been adequately answered,” said he, still trying +to carry it off. +</p> + +<p> +“Who by?” I rapped out hotly. “Tell me that!” and +became mercilessly expectant. +</p> + +<p class="center"> +§ 5 +</p> + +<p> +A happy accident relieved Mr. Gabbitas from the embarrassment of that +challenge, and carried me another step along my course of personal disaster. +</p> + +<p> +It came on the heels of my question in the form of a clatter of horses without, +and the gride and cessation of wheels. I glimpsed a straw-hatted coachman and a +pair of grays. It seemed an incredibly magnificent carriage for Clayton. +</p> + +<p> +“Eh!” said the Rev. Gabbitas, going to the window. “Why, +it’s old Mrs. Verrall! It’s old Mrs. Verrall. Really! What +<i>can</i> she want with me?” +</p> + +<p> +He turned to me, and the flush of controversy had passed and his face shone +like the sun. It was not every day, I perceived, that Mrs. Verrall came to see +him. +</p> + +<p> +“I get so many interruptions,” he said, almost grinning. “You +must excuse me a minute! Then—then I’ll tell you about that fellow. +But don’t go. I pray you don’t go. I can assure you. . . . +<i>most</i> interesting.” +</p> + +<p> +He went out of the room waving vague prohibitory gestures. +</p> + +<p> +“I <i>must</i> go,” I cried after him. +</p> + +<p> +“No, no, no!” in the passage. “I’ve got your +answer,” I think it was he added, and “quite mistaken;” and I +saw him running down the steps to talk to the old lady. +</p> + +<p> +I swore. I made three steps to the window, and this brought me within a yard of +that accursed drawer. +</p> + +<p> +I glanced at it, and then at that old woman who was so absolutely powerful, and +instantly her son and Nettie’s face were flaming in my brain. The Stuarts +had, no doubt, already accepted accomplished facts. And I too— +</p> + +<p> +What was I doing here? +</p> + +<p> +What was I doing here while judgment escaped me? +</p> + +<p> +I woke up. I was injected with energy. I took one reassuring look at the +curate’s obsequious back, at the old lady’s projected nose and +quivering hand, and then with swift, clean movements I had the little drawer +open, four sovereigns in my pocket, and the drawer shut again. Then again at +the window—they were still talking. +</p> + +<p> +That was all right. He might not look in that drawer for hours. I glanced at +his clock. Twenty minutes still before the Birmingham train. Time to buy a pair +of boots and get away. But how I was to get to the station? +</p> + +<p> +I went out boldly into the passage, and took my hat and stick. . . . Walk past +him? +</p> + +<p> +Yes. That was all right! He could not argue with me while so important a person +engaged him. . . . I came boldly down the steps. +</p> + +<p> +“I want a list made, Mr. Gabbitas, of all the really <i>deserving</i> +cases,” old Mrs. Verrall was saying. +</p> + +<p> +It is curious, but it did not occur to me that here was a mother whose son I +was going to kill. I did not see her in that aspect at all. Instead, I was +possessed by a realization of the blazing imbecility of a social system that +gave this palsied old woman the power to give or withhold the urgent +necessities of life from hundreds of her fellow-creatures just according to her +poor, foolish old fancies of desert. +</p> + +<p> +“We could make a <i>provisional</i> list of that sort,” he was +saying, and glanced round with a preoccupied expression at me. +</p> + +<p> +“I <i>must</i> go,” I said at his flash of inquiry, and added, +“I’ll be back in twenty minutes,” and went on my way. He +turned again to his patroness as though he forgot me on the instant. Perhaps +after all he was not sorry. +</p> + +<p> +I felt extraordinarily cool and capable, exhilarated, if anything, by this +prompt, effectual theft. After all, my great determination would achieve +itself. I was no longer oppressed by a sense of obstacles, I felt I could grasp +accidents and turn them to my advantage. I would go now down Hacker Street to +the little shoemaker’s—get a sound, good pair of boots—ten +minutes—and then to the railway-station—five minutes more—and +off! I felt as efficient and non-moral as if I was Nietzsche’s Over-man +already come. It did not occur to me that the curate’s clock might have a +considerable margin of error. +</p> + +<p class="center"> +§ 6 +</p> + +<p> +I missed the train. +</p> + +<p> +Partly that was because the curate’s clock was slow, and partly it was +due to the commercial obstinacy of the shoemaker, who would try on another pair +after I had declared my time was up. I bought the final pair however, gave him +a wrong address for the return of the old ones, and only ceased to feel like +the Nietzschean Over-man, when I saw the train running out of the station. +</p> + +<p> +Even then I did not lose my head. It occurred to me almost at once that, in the +event of a prompt pursuit, there would be a great advantage in not taking a +train from Clayton; that, indeed, to have done so would have been an error from +which only luck had saved me. As it was, I had already been very indiscreet in +my inquiries about Shaphambury; for once on the scent the clerk could not fail +to remember me. Now the chances were against his coming into the case. I did +not go into the station therefore at all, I made no demonstration of having +missed the train, but walked quietly past, down the road, crossed the iron +footbridge, and took the way back circuitously by White’s brickfields and +the allotments to the way over Clayton Crest to Two-Mile Stone, where I +calculated I should have an ample margin for the 6.13 train. +</p> + +<p> +I was not very greatly excited or alarmed then. Suppose, I reasoned, that by +some accident the curate goes to that drawer at once: will he be certain to +miss four out of ten or eleven sovereigns? If he does, will he at once think I +have taken them? If he does, will he act at once or wait for my return? If he +acts at once, will he talk to my mother or call in the police? Then there are a +dozen roads and even railways out of the Clayton region, how is he to know +which I have taken? Suppose he goes straight at once to the right station, they +will not remember my departure for the simple reason that I didn’t +depart. But they may remember about Shaphambury? It was unlikely. +</p> + +<p> +I resolved not to go directly to Shaphambury from Birmingham, but to go thence +to Monkshampton, thence to Wyvern, and then come down on Shaphambury from the +north. That might involve a night at some intermediate stopping-place but it +would effectually conceal me from any but the most persistent pursuit. And this +was not a case of murder yet, but only the theft of four sovereigns. +</p> + +<p> +I had argued away all anxiety before I reached Clayton Crest. +</p> + +<p> +At the Crest I looked back. What a world it was! And suddenly it came to me +that I was looking at this world for the last time. If I overtook the fugitives +and succeeded, I should die with them—or hang. I stopped and looked back +more attentively at that wide ugly valley. +</p> + +<p> +It was my native valley, and I was going out of it, I thought never to return, +and yet in that last prospect, the group of towns that had borne me and dwarfed +and crippled and made me, seemed, in some indefinable manner, strange. I was, +perhaps, more used to seeing it from this comprehensive view-point when it was +veiled and softened by night; now it came out in all its weekday reek, under a +clear afternoon sun. That may account a little for its unfamiliarity. And +perhaps, too, there was something in the emotions through which I had been +passing for a week and more, to intensify my insight, to enable me to pierce +the unusual, to question the accepted. But it came to me then, I am sure, for +the first time, how promiscuous, how higgledy-piggledy was the whole of that +jumble of mines and homes, collieries and potbanks, railway yards, canals, +schools, forges and blast furnaces, churches, chapels, allotment hovels, a vast +irregular agglomeration of ugly smoking accidents in which men lived as happy +as frogs in a dustbin. Each thing jostled and damaged the other things about +it, each thing ignored the other things about it; the smoke of the furnace +defiled the potbank clay, the clatter of the railway deafened the worshipers in +church, the public-house thrust corruption at the school doors, the dismal +homes squeezed miserably amidst the monstrosities of industrialism, with an +effect of groping imbecility. Humanity choked amidst its products, and all its +energy went in increasing its disorder, like a blind stricken thing that +struggles and sinks in a morass. +</p> + +<p> +I did not think these things clearly that afternoon. Much less did I ask how I, +with my murderous purpose, stood to them all. I write down that realization of +disorder and suffocation here and now as though I had thought it, but indeed +then I only felt it, felt it transitorily as I looked back, and then stood with +the thing escaping from my mind. +</p> + +<p> +I should never see that country-side again. +</p> + +<p> +I came back to that. At any rate I wasn’t sorry. The chances were I +should die in sweet air, under a clean sky. +</p> + +<p> +From distant Swathinglea came a little sound, the minute undulation of a remote +crowd, and then rapidly three shots. +</p> + +<p> +That held me perplexed for a space. . . . Well, anyhow I was leaving it all! +Thank God I was leaving it all! Then, as I turned to go on, I thought of my +mother. +</p> + +<p> +It seemed an evil world in which to leave one’s mother. My thoughts +focused upon her very vividly for a moment. Down there, under that afternoon +light, she was going to and fro, unaware as yet that she had lost me, bent and +poking about in the darkling underground kitchen, perhaps carrying a lamp into +the scullery to trim, or sitting patiently, staring into the fire, waiting tea +for me. A great pity for her, a great remorse at the blacker troubles that +lowered over her innocent head, came to me. Why, after all, was I doing this +thing? +</p> + +<p> +Why? +</p> + +<p> +I stopped again dead, with the hill crest rising between me and home. I had +more than half a mind to return to her. +</p> + +<p> +Then I thought of the curate’s sovereigns. If he has missed them already, +what should I return to? And, even if I returned, how could I put them back? +</p> + +<p> +And what of the night after I renounced my revenge? What of the time when young +Verrall came back? And Nettie? +</p> + +<p> +No! The thing had to be done. +</p> + +<p> +But at least I might have kissed my mother before I came away, left her some +message, reassured her at least for a little while. All night she would listen +and wait for me. . . . . +</p> + +<p> +Should I send her a telegram from Two-Mile Stone? +</p> + +<p> +It was no good now; too late, too late. To do that would be to tell the course +I had taken, to bring pursuit upon me, swift and sure, if pursuit there was to +be. No. My mother must suffer! +</p> + +<p> +I went on grimly toward Two-Mile Stone, but now as if some greater will than +mine directed my footsteps thither. +</p> + +<p> +I reached Birmingham before darkness came, and just caught the last train for +Monkshampton, where I had planned to pass the night. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap05"></a>CHAPTER THE FIFTH<br /> +THE PURSUIT OF THE TWO LOVERS</h2> + +<p class="center"> +§ 1 +</p> + +<p> +As the train carried me on from Birmingham to Monkshampton, it carried me not +only into a country where I had never been before, but out of the commonplace +daylight and the touch and quality of ordinary things, into the strange +unprecedented night that was ruled by the giant meteor of the last days. +</p> + +<p> +There was at that time a curious accentuation of the common alternation of +night and day. They became separated with a widening difference of value in +regard to all mundane affairs. During the day, the comet was an item in the +newspapers, it was jostled by a thousand more living interests, it was as +nothing in the skirts of the war storm that was now upon us. It was an +astronomical phenomenon, somewhere away over China, millions of miles away in +the deeps. We forgot it. But directly the sun sank one turned ever and again +toward the east, and the meteor resumed its sway over us. +</p> + +<p> +One waited for its rising, and yet each night it came as a surprise. Always it +rose brighter than one had dared to think, always larger and with some +wonderful change in its outline, and now with a strange, less luminous, greener +disk upon it that grew with its growth, the umbra of the earth. It shone also +with its own light, so that this shadow was not hard or black, but it shone +phosphorescently and with a diminishing intensity where the stimulus of the +sun’s rays was withdrawn. As it ascended toward the zenith, as the last +trailing daylight went after the abdicating sun, its greenish white +illumination banished the realities of day, diffused a bright ghostliness over +all things. It changed the starless sky about it to an extraordinary deep blue, +the profoundest color in the world, such as I have never seen before or since. +I remember, too, that as I peered from the train that was rattling me along to +Monkshampton, I perceived and was puzzled by a coppery red light that mingled +with all the shadows that were cast by it. +</p> + +<p> +It turned our ugly English industrial towns to phantom cities. Everywhere the +local authorities discontinued street lighting—one could read small print +in the glare,—and so at Monkshampton I went about through pale, white, +unfamiliar streets, whose electric globes had shadows on the path. Lit windows +here and there burnt ruddy orange, like holes cut in some dream curtain that +hung before a furnace. A policeman with noiseless feet showed me an inn woven +of moonshine, a green-faced man opened to us, and there I abode the night. And +the next morning it opened with a mighty clatter, and was a dirty little +beerhouse that stank of beer, and there was a fat and grimy landlord with red +spots upon his neck, and much noisy traffic going by on the cobbles outside. +</p> + +<p> +I came out, after I had paid my bill, into a street that echoed to the bawlings +of two newsvendors and to the noisy yappings of a dog they had raised to +emulation. They were shouting: “Great British disaster in the North Sea. +A battleship lost with all hands!” +</p> + +<p> +I bought a paper, went on to the railway station reading such details as were +given of this triumph of the old civilization, of the blowing up of this great +iron ship, full of guns and explosives and the most costly and beautiful +machinery of which that time was capable, together with nine hundred +able-bodied men, all of them above the average, by a contact mine towed by a +German submarine. I read myself into a fever of warlike emotions. Not only did +I forget the meteor, but for a time I forgot even the purpose that took me on +to the railway station, bought my ticket, and was now carrying me onward to +Shaphambury. +</p> + +<p> +So the hot day came to its own again, and people forgot the night. +</p> + +<p> +Each night, there shone upon us more and more insistently, beauty, wonder, the +promise of the deeps, and we were hushed, and marveled for a space. And at the +first gray sounds of dawn again, at the shooting of bolts and the noise of +milk-carts, we forgot, and the dusty habitual day came yawning and stretching +back again. The stains of coal smoke crept across the heavens, and we rose to +the soiled disorderly routine of life. +</p> + +<p> +“Thus life has always been,” we said; “thus it will always +be.” +</p> + +<p> +The glory of those nights was almost universally regarded as spectacular +merely. It signified nothing to us. So far as western Europe went, it was only +a small and ignorant section of the lower classes who regarded the comet as a +portent of the end of the world. Abroad, where there were peasantries, it was +different, but in England the peasantry had already disappeared. Every one +read. The newspaper, in the quiet days before our swift quarrel with Germany +rushed to its climax, had absolutely dispelled all possibilities of a panic in +this matter. The very tramps upon the high-roads, the children in the nursery, +had learnt that at the utmost the whole of that shining cloud could weigh but a +few score tons. This fact had been shown quite conclusively by the enormous +deflections that had at last swung it round squarely at our world. It had +passed near three of the smallest asteroids without producing the minutest +perceptible deflection in their course; while, on its own part, it had +described a course through nearly three degrees. When it struck our earth there +was to be a magnificent spectacle, no doubt, for those who were on the right +side of our planet to see, but beyond that nothing. It was doubtful whether we +were on the right side. The meteor would loom larger and larger in the sky, but +with the umbra of our earth eating its heart of brightness out, and at last it +would be the whole sky, a sky of luminous green clouds, with a white brightness +about the horizon, west and east. Then a pause—a pause of not very +exactly definite duration—and then, no doubt, a great blaze of shooting +stars. They might be of some unwonted color because of the unknown element that +line in the green revealed. For a little while the zenith would spout shooting +stars. Some, it was hoped, would reach the earth and be available for analysis. +</p> + +<p> +That, science said, would be all. The green clouds would whirl and vanish, and +there might be thunderstorms. But through the attenuated wisps of comet shine, +the old sky, the old stars, would reappear, and all would be as it had been +before. And since this was to happen between one and eleven in the morning of +the approaching Tuesday—I slept at Monkshampton on Saturday +night,—it would be only partially visible, if visible at all, on our side +of the earth. Perhaps, if it came late, one would see no more than a shooting +star low down in the sky. All this we had with the utmost assurances of +science. Still it did not prevent the last nights being the most beautiful and +memorable of human experiences. +</p> + +<p> +The nights had become very warm, and when next day I had ranged Shaphambury in +vain, I was greatly tormented, as that unparalleled glory of the night +returned, to think that under its splendid benediction young Verrall and Nettie +made love to one another. +</p> + +<p> +I walked backward and forward, backward and forward, along the sea front, +peering into the faces of the young couples who promenaded, with my hand in my +pocket ready, and a curious ache in my heart that had no kindred with rage. +Until at last all the promenaders had gone home to bed, and I was alone with +the star. +</p> + +<p> +My train from Wyvern to Shaphambury that morning was a whole hour late; they +said it was on account of the movement of troops to meet a possible raid from +the Elbe. +</p> + +<p class="center"> +§ 2 +</p> + +<p> +Shaphambury seemed an odd place to me even then. But something was quickening +in me at that time to feel the oddness of many accepted things. Now in the +retrospect I see it as intensely queer. The whole place was strange to my +untraveled eyes; the sea even was strange. Only twice in my life had I been at +the seaside before, and then I had gone by excursion to places on the Welsh +coast whose great cliffs of rock and mountain backgrounds made the effect of +the horizon very different from what it is upon the East Anglian seaboard. Here +what they call a cliff was a crumbling bank of whitey-brown earth not fifty +feet high. +</p> + +<p> +So soon as I arrived I made a systematic exploration of Shaphambury. To this +day I retain the clearest memories of the plan I shaped out then, and how my +inquiries were incommoded by the overpowering desire of every one to talk of +the chances of a German raid, before the Channel Fleet got round to us. I slept +at a small public-house in a Shaphambury back street on Sunday night. I did not +get on to Shaphambury from Wyvern until two in the afternoon, because of the +infrequency of Sunday trains, and I got no clue whatever until late in the +afternoon of Monday. As the little local train bumped into sight of the place +round the curve of a swelling hill, one saw a series of undulating grassy +spaces, amidst which a number of conspicuous notice-boards appealed to the eye +and cut up the distant sea horizon. Most of these referred to comestibles or to +remedies to follow the comestibles; and they were colored with a view to be +memorable rather than beautiful, to “stand out” amidst the gentle +grayish tones of the east coast scenery. The greater number, I may remark, of +the advertisements that were so conspicuous a factor in the life of those days, +and which rendered our vast tree-pulp newspapers possible, referred to foods, +drinks, tobacco, and the drugs that promised a restoration of the equanimity +these other articles had destroyed. Wherever one went one was reminded in +glaring letters that, after all, man was little better than a worm, that +eyeless, earless thing that burrows and lives uncomplainingly amidst nutritious +dirt, “an alimentary canal with the subservient appendages +thereto.” But in addition to such boards there were also the big black +and white boards of various grandiloquently named “estates.” The +individualistic enterprise of that time had led to the plotting out of nearly +all the country round the seaside towns into roads and building-plots—all +but a small portion of the south and east coast was in this condition, and had +the promises of those schemes been realized the entire population of the island +might have been accommodated upon the sea frontiers. Nothing of the sort +happened, of course; the whole of this uglification of the coast-line was done +to stimulate a little foolish gambling in plots, and one saw everywhere +agents’ boards in every state of freshness and decay, ill-made +exploitation roads overgrown with grass, and here and there, at a corner, a +label, “Trafalgar Avenue,” or “Sea View Road.” Here and +there, too, some small investor, some shopman with “savings,” had +delivered his soul to the local builders and built himself a house, and there +it stood, ill-designed, mean-looking, isolated, ill-placed on a cheaply fenced +plot, athwart which his domestic washing fluttered in the breeze amidst a bleak +desolation of enterprise. Then presently our railway crossed a high road, and a +row of mean yellow brick houses—workmen’s cottages, and the filthy +black sheds that made the “allotments” of that time a universal +eyesore, marked our approach to the more central areas of—I quote the +local guidebook—“one of the most delightful resorts in the East +Anglian poppy-land.” Then more mean houses, the gaunt ungainliness of the +electric force station—it had a huge chimney, because no one understood +how to make combustion of coal complete—and then we were in the railway +station, and barely three-quarters of a mile from the center of this haunt of +health and pleasure. +</p> + +<p> +I inspected the town thoroughly before I made my inquiries. The road began +badly with a row of cheap, pretentious, insolvent-looking shops, a +public-house, and a cab-stand, but, after an interval of little red villas that +were partly hidden amidst shrubbery gardens, broke into a confusedly bright but +not unpleasing High Street, shuttered that afternoon and sabbatically still. +Somewhere in the background a church bell jangled, and children in bright, +new-looking clothes were going to Sunday-school. Thence through a square of +stuccoed lodging-houses, that seemed a finer and cleaner version of my native +square, I came to a garden of asphalt and euonymus—the Sea Front. I sat +down on a cast-iron seat, and surveyed first of all the broad stretches of +muddy, sandy beach, with its queer wheeled bathing machines, painted with the +advertisements of somebody’s pills—and then at the house fronts +that stared out upon these visceral counsels. Boarding-houses, private hotels, +and lodging-houses in terraces clustered closely right and left of me, and then +came to an end; in one direction scaffolding marked a building enterprise in +progress, in the other, after a waste interval, rose a monstrous bulging red +shape, a huge hotel, that dwarfed all other things. Northward were low pale +cliffs with white denticulations of tents, where the local volunteers, all +under arms, lay encamped, and southward, a spreading waste of sandy dunes, with +occasional bushes and clumps of stunted pine and an advertisement board or so. +A hard blue sky hung over all this prospect, the sunshine cast inky shadows, +and eastward was a whitish sea. It was Sunday, and the midday meal still held +people indoors. +</p> + +<p> +A queer world! thought I even then—to you now it must seem impossibly +queer,—and after an interval I forced myself back to my own affair. +</p> + +<p> +How was I to ask? What was I to ask for? I puzzled for a long time over +that—at first I was a little tired and indolent—and then presently +I had a flow of ideas. +</p> + +<p> +My solution was fairly ingenious. I invented the following story. I happened to +be taking a holiday in Shaphambury, and I was making use of the opportunity to +seek the owner of a valuable feather boa, which had been left behind in the +hotel of my uncle at Wyvern by a young lady, traveling with a young +gentleman—no doubt a youthful married couple. They had reached +Shaphambury somewhen on Thursday. I went over the story many times, and gave my +imaginary uncle and his hotel plausible names. At any rate this yarn would +serve as a complete justification for all the questions I might wish to ask. +</p> + +<p> +I settled that, but I still sat for a time, wanting the energy to begin. Then I +turned toward the big hotel. Its gorgeous magnificence seemed to my inexpert +judgment to indicate the very place a rich young man of good family would +select. +</p> + +<p> +Huge draught-proof doors were swung round for me by an ironically polite +under-porter in a magnificent green uniform, who looked at my clothes as he +listened to my question and then with a German accent referred me to a gorgeous +head porter, who directed me to a princely young man behind a counter of brass +and polish, like a bank—like several banks. This young man, while he +answered me, kept his eye on my collar and tie—and I knew that they were +abominable. +</p> + +<p> +“I want to find a lady and gentleman who came to Shaphambury on +Tuesday,” I said. +</p> + +<p> +“Friends of yours?” he asked with a terrible fineness of irony. +</p> + +<p> +I made out at last that here at any rate the young people had not been. They +might have lunched there, but they had had no room. But I went out—door +opened again for me obsequiously—in a state of social discomfiture, and +did not attack any other establishment that afternoon. +</p> + +<p> +My resolution had come to a sort of ebb. More people were promenading, and +their Sunday smartness abashed me. I forgot my purpose in an acute sense of +myself. I felt that the bulge of my pocket caused by the revolver was +conspicuous, and I was ashamed. I went along the sea front away from the town, +and presently lay down among pebbles and sea poppies. This mood of reaction +prevailed with me all that afternoon. In the evening, about sundown, I went to +the station and asked questions of the outporters there. But outporters, I +found, were a class of men who remembered luggage rather than people, and I had +no sort of idea what luggage young Verrall and Nettie were likely to have with +them. +</p> + +<p> +Then I fell into conversation with a salacious wooden-legged old man with a +silver ring, who swept the steps that went down to the beach from the parade. +He knew much about young couples, but only in general terms, and nothing of the +particular young couple I sought. He reminded me in the most disagreeable way +of the sensuous aspects of life, and I was not sorry when presently a gunboat +appeared in the offing signalling the coastguard and the camp, and cut short +his observations upon holidays, beaches, and morals. +</p> + +<p> +I went, and now I was past my ebb, and sat in a seat upon the parade, and +watched the brightening of those rising clouds of chilly fire that made the +ruddy west seem tame. My midday lassitude was going, my blood was running +warmer again. And as the twilight and that filmy brightness replaced the dusty +sunlight and robbed this unfamiliar place of all its matter-of-fact queerness, +its sense of aimless materialism, romance returned to me, and passion, and my +thoughts of honor and revenge. I remember that change of mood as occurring very +vividly on this occasion, but I fancy that less distinctly I had felt this +before many times. In the old times, night and the starlight had an effect of +intimate reality the daytime did not possess. The daytime—as one saw it +in towns and populous places—had hold of one, no doubt, but only as an +uproar might, it was distracting, conflicting, insistent. Darkness veiled the +more salient aspects of those agglomerations of human absurdity, and one could +exist—one could imagine. +</p> + +<p> +I had a queer illusion that night, that Nettie and her lover were close at +hand, that suddenly I should come on them. I have already told how I went +through the dusk seeking them in every couple that drew near. And I dropped +asleep at last in an unfamiliar bedroom hung with gaudily decorated texts, +cursing myself for having wasted a day. +</p> + +<p class="center"> +§ 3 +</p> + +<p> +I sought them in vain the next morning, but after midday I came in quick +succession on a perplexing multitude of clues. After failing to find any young +couple that corresponded to young Verrall and Nettie, I presently discovered an +unsatisfactory quartette of couples. +</p> + +<p> +Any of these four couples might have been the one I sought; with regard to none +of them was there conviction. They had all arrived either on Wednesday or +Thursday. Two couples were still in occupation of their rooms, but neither of +these were at home. Late in the afternoon I reduced my list by eliminating a +young man in drab, with side whiskers and long cuffs, accompanied by a lady, of +thirty or more, of consciously ladylike type. I was disgusted at the sight of +them; the other two young people had gone for a long walk, and though I watched +their boarding-house until the fiery cloud shone out above, sharing and +mingling in an unusually splendid sunset, I missed them. Then I discovered them +dining at a separate table in the bow window, with red-shaded candles between +them, peering out ever and again at this splendor that was neither night nor +day. The girl in her pink evening dress looked very light and pretty to +me—pretty enough to enrage me,—she had well shaped arms and white, +well-modeled shoulders, and the turn of her cheek and the fair hair about her +ears was full of subtle delights; but she was not Nettie, and the happy man +with her was that odd degenerate type our old aristocracy produced with such +odd frequency, chinless, large bony nose, small fair head, languid expression, +and a neck that had demanded and received a veritable sleeve of collar. I stood +outside in the meteor’s livid light, hating them and cursing them for +having delayed me so long. I stood until it was evident they remarked me, a +black shape of envy, silhouetted against the glare. +</p> + +<p> +That finished Shaphambury. The question I now had to debate was which of the +remaining couples I had to pursue. +</p> + +<p> +I walked back to the parade trying to reason my next step out, and muttering to +myself, because there was something in that luminous wonderfulness that touched +one’s brain, and made one feel a little light-headed. +</p> + +<p> +One couple had gone to London; the other had gone to the Bungalow village at +Bone Cliff. Where, I wondered, was Bone Cliff? +</p> + +<p> +I came upon my wooden-legged man at the top of his steps. +</p> + +<p> +“Hullo,” said I. +</p> + +<p> +He pointed seaward with his pipe, his silver ring shone in the sky light. +</p> + +<p> +“Rum,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“What is?” I asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Search-lights! Smoke! Ships going north! If it wasn’t for this +blasted Milky Way gone green up there, we might see.” +</p> + +<p> +He was too intent to heed my questions for a time. Then he vouchsafed over his +shoulder— +</p> + +<p> +“Know Bungalow village?—rather. Artis’ and such. Nice goings +on! Mixed bathing—something scandalous. Yes.” +</p> + +<p> +“But where is it?” I said, suddenly exasperated. +</p> + +<p> +“There!” he said. “What’s that flicker? A +gunflash—or I’m a lost soul!” +</p> + +<p> +“You’d hear,” I said, “long before it was near enough +to see a flash.” +</p> + +<p> +He didn’t answer. Only by making it clear I would distract him until he +told me what I wanted to know could I get him to turn from his absorbed +contemplation of that phantom dance between the sea rim and the shine. Indeed I +gripped his arm and shook him. Then he turned upon me cursing. +</p> + +<p> +“Seven miles,” he said, “along this road. And now go to +‘ell with yer!” +</p> + +<p> +I answered with some foul insult by way of thanks, and so we parted, and I set +off towards the bungalow village. +</p> + +<p> +I found a policeman, standing star-gazing, a little way beyond the end of the +parade, and verified the wooden-legged man’s directions. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s a lonely road, you know,” he called after me. . . . +</p> + +<p> +I had an odd intuition that now at last I was on the right track. I left the +dark masses of Shaphambury behind me, and pushed out into the dim pallor of +that night, with the quiet assurance of a traveler who nears his end. +</p> + +<p> +The incidents of that long tramp I do not recall in any orderly succession, the +one progressive thing is my memory of a growing fatigue. The sea was for the +most part smooth and shining like a mirror, a great expanse of reflecting +silver, barred by slow broad undulations, but at one time a little breeze +breathed like a faint sigh and ruffled their long bodies into faint scaly +ripples that never completely died out again. The way was sometimes sandy, +thick with silvery colorless sand, and sometimes chalky and lumpy, with lumps +that had shining facets; a black scrub was scattered, sometimes in thickets, +sometimes in single bunches, among the somnolent hummocks of sand. At one place +came grass, and ghostly great sheep looming up among the gray. After a time +black pinewoods intervened, and made sustained darknesses along the road, woods +that frayed out at the edges to weirdly warped and stunted trees. Then isolated +pine witches would appear, and make their rigid gestures at me as I passed. +Grotesquely incongruous amidst these forms, I presently came on estate boards, +appealing, “Houses can be built to suit purchaser,” to the silence, +to the shadows, and the glare. +</p> + +<p> +Once I remember the persistent barking of a dog from somewhere inland of me, +and several times I took out and examined my revolver very carefully. I must, +of course, have been full of my intention when I did that, I must have been +thinking of Nettie and revenge, but I cannot now recall those emotions at all. +Only I see again very distinctly the greenish gleams that ran over lock and +barrel as I turned the weapon in my hand. +</p> + +<p> +Then there was the sky, the wonderful, luminous, starless, moonless sky, and +the empty blue deeps of the edge of it, between the meteor and the sea. And +once—strange phantoms!—I saw far out upon the shine, and very small +and distant, three long black warships, without masts, or sails, or smoke, or +any lights, dark, deadly, furtive things, traveling very swiftly and keeping an +equal distance. And when I looked again they were very small, and then the +shine had swallowed them up. +</p> + +<p> +Then once a flash and what I thought was a gun, until I looked up and saw a +fading trail of greenish light still hanging in the sky. And after that there +was a shiver and whispering in the air, a stronger throbbing in one’s +arteries, a sense of refreshment, a renewal of purpose. . . . +</p> + +<p> +Somewhere upon my way the road forked, but I do not remember whether that was +near Shaphambury or near the end of my walk. The hesitation between two rutted +unmade roads alone remains clear in my mind. +</p> + +<p> +At last I grew weary. I came to piled heaps of decaying seaweed and cart tracks +running this way and that, and then I had missed the road and was stumbling +among sand hummocks quite close to the sea. I came out on the edge of the dimly +glittering sandy beach, and something phosphorescent drew me to the +water’s edge. I bent down and peered at the little luminous specks that +floated in the ripples. +</p> + +<p> +Presently with a sigh I stood erect, and contemplated the lonely peace of that +last wonderful night. The meteor had now trailed its shining nets across the +whole space of the sky and was beginning to set; in the east the blue was +coming to its own again; the sea was an intense edge of blackness, and now, +escaped from that great shine, and faint and still tremulously valiant, one +weak elusive star could just be seen, hovering on the verge of the invisible. +</p> + +<p> +How beautiful it was! how still and beautiful! Peace! peace!—the peace +that passeth understanding, robed in light descending! . . . +</p> + +<p> +My heart swelled, and suddenly I was weeping. +</p> + +<p> +There was something new and strange in my blood. It came to me that indeed I +did not want to kill. +</p> + +<p> +I did not want to kill. I did not want to be the servant of my passions any +more. A great desire had come to me to escape from life, from the daylight +which is heat and conflict and desire, into that cool night of +eternity—and rest. I had played—I had done. +</p> + +<p> +I stood upon the edge of the great ocean, and I was filled with an inarticulate +spirit of prayer, and I desired greatly—peace from myself. +</p> + +<p> +And presently, there in the east, would come again the red discoloring curtain +over these mysteries, the finite world again, the gray and growing harsh +certainties of dawn. My resolve I knew would take up with me again. This was a +rest for me, an interlude, but to-morrow I should be William Leadford once +more, ill-nourished, ill-dressed, ill-equipped and clumsy, a thief and shamed, +a wound upon the face of life, a source of trouble and sorrow even to the +mother I loved; no hope in life left for me now but revenge before my death. +</p> + +<p> +Why this paltry thing, revenge? It entered into my thoughts that I might end +the matter now and let these others go. +</p> + +<p> +To wade out into the sea, into this warm lapping that mingled the natures of +water and light, to stand there breast-high, to thrust my revolver barrel into +my mouth———? +</p> + +<p> +Why not? +</p> + +<p> +I swung about with an effort. I walked slowly up the beach thinking. . . . +</p> + +<p> +I turned and looked back at the sea. No! Something within me said, +“No!” +</p> + +<p> +I must think. +</p> + +<p> +It was troublesome to go further because the hummocks and the tangled bushes +began. I sat down amidst a black cluster of shrubs, and rested, chin on hand. I +drew my revolver from my pocket and looked at it, and held it in my hand. Life? +Or Death? . . . +</p> + +<p> +I seemed to be probing the very deeps of being, but indeed imperceptibly I fell +asleep, and sat dreaming. +</p> + +<p class="center"> +§ 4 +</p> + +<p> +Two people were bathing in the sea. +</p> + +<p> +I had awakened. It was still that white and wonderful night, and the blue band +of clear sky was no wider than before. These people must have come into sight +as I fell asleep, and awakened me almost at once. They waded breast-deep in the +water, emerging, coming shoreward, a woman, with her hair coiled about her +head, and in pursuit of her a man, graceful figures of black and silver, with a +bright green surge flowing off from them, a pattering of flashing wavelets +about them. He smote the water and splashed it toward her, she retaliated, and +then they were knee-deep, and then for an instant their feet broke the long +silver margin of the sea. +</p> + +<p> +Each wore a tightly fitting bathing dress that hid nothing of the shining, +dripping beauty of their youthful forms. +</p> + +<p> +She glanced over her shoulder and found him nearer than she thought, started, +gesticulated, gave a little cry that pierced me to the heart, and fled up the +beach obliquely toward me, running like the wind, and passed me, vanished +amidst the black distorted bushes, and was gone—she and her pursuer, in a +moment, over the ridge of sand. +</p> + +<p> +I heard him shout between exhaustion and laughter. . . . +</p> + +<p> +And suddenly I was a thing of bestial fury, standing up with hands held up and +clenched, rigid in gesture of impotent threatening, against the sky. . . . +</p> + +<p> +For this striving, swift thing of light and beauty was Nettie—and this +was the man for whom I had been betrayed! +</p> + +<p> +And, it blazed upon me, I might have died there by the sheer ebbing of my +will—unavenged! +</p> + +<p> +In another moment I was running and stumbling, revolver in hand, in quiet +unsuspected pursuit of them, through the soft and noiseless sand. +</p> + +<p class="center"> +§ 5 +</p> + +<p> +I came up over the little ridge and discovered the bungalow village I had been +seeking, nestling in a crescent lap of dunes. A door slammed, the two runners +had vanished, and I halted staring. +</p> + +<p> +There was a group of three bungalows nearer to me than the others. Into one of +these three they had gone, and I was too late to see which. All had doors and +windows carelessly open, and none showed a light. +</p> + +<p> +This place, upon which I had at last happened, was a fruit of the reaction of +artistic-minded and carelessly living people against the costly and +uncomfortable social stiffness of the more formal seaside resorts of that time. +It was, you must understand, the custom of the steam-railway companies to sell +their carriages after they had been obsolete for a sufficient length of years, +and some genius had hit upon the possibility of turning these into little +habitable cabins for the summer holiday. The thing had become a fashion with a +certain Bohemian-spirited class; they added cabin to cabin, and these little +improvised homes, gaily painted and with broad verandas and supplementary +leantos added to their accommodation, made the brightest contrast conceivable +to the dull rigidities of the decorous resorts. Of course there were many +discomforts in such camping that had to be faced cheerfully, and so this broad +sandy beach was sacred to high spirits and the young. Art muslin and banjoes, +Chinese lanterns and frying, are leading “notes,” I find, in the +impression of those who once knew such places well. But so far as I was +concerned this odd settlement of pleasure-squatters was a mystery as well as a +surprise, enhanced rather than mitigated by an imaginative suggestion or so I +had received from the wooden-legged man at Shaphambury. I saw the thing as no +gathering of light hearts and gay idleness, but grimly—after the manner +of poor men poisoned by the suppression of all their cravings after joy. To the +poor man, to the grimy workers, beauty and cleanness were absolutely denied; +out of a life of greasy dirt, of muddied desires, they watched their happier +fellows with a bitter envy and foul, tormenting suspicions. Fancy a world in +which the common people held love to be a sort of beastliness, own sister to +being drunk! . . . +</p> + +<p> +There was in the old time always something cruel at the bottom of this business +of sexual love. At least that is the impression I have brought with me across +the gulf of the great Change. To succeed in love seemed such triumph as no +other success could give, but to fail was as if one was tainted. . . . +</p> + +<p> +I felt no sense of singularity that this thread of savagery should run through +these emotions of mine and become now the whole strand of these emotions. I +believed, and I think I was right in believing, that the love of all true +lovers was a sort of defiance then, that they closed a system in each +other’s arms and mocked the world without. You loved against the world, +and these two loved AT me. They had their business with one another, under the +threat of a watchful fierceness. A sword, a sharp sword, the keenest edge in +life, lay among their roses. +</p> + +<p> +Whatever may be true of this for others, for me and my imagination, at any +rate, it was altogether true. I was never for dalliance, I was never a jesting +lover. I wanted fiercely; I made love impatiently. Perhaps I had written +irrelevant love-letters for that very reason; because with this stark theme I +could not play. . . +</p> + +<p> +The thought of Nettie’s shining form, of her shrinking bold abandon to +her easy conqueror, gave me now a body of rage that was nearly too strong for +my heart and nerves and the tense powers of my merely physical being. I came +down among the pale sand-heaps slowly toward that queer village of careless +sensuality, and now within my puny body I was coldly sharpset for pain and +death, a darkly gleaming hate, a sword of evil, drawn. +</p> + +<p class="center"> +§ 6 +</p> + +<p> +I halted, and stood planning what I had to do. +</p> + +<p> +Should I go to bungalow after bungalow until one of the two I sought answered +to my rap? But suppose some servant intervened! +</p> + +<p> +Should I wait where I was—perhaps until morning—watching? And +meanwhile——— +</p> + +<p> +All the nearer bungalows were very still now. If I walked softly to them, from +open windows, from something seen or overheard, I might get a clue to guide me. +Should I advance circuitously, creeping upon them, or should I walk straight to +the door? It was bright enough for her to recognize me clearly at a distance of +many paces. +</p> + +<p> +The difficulty to my mind lay in this, that if I involved other people by +questions, I might at last confront my betrayers with these others close about +me, ready to snatch my weapon and seize my hands. Besides, what names might +they bear here? +</p> + +<p> +“Boom!” the sound crept upon my senses, and then again it came. +</p> + +<p> +I turned impatiently as one turns upon an impertinence, and beheld a great +ironclad not four miles out, steaming fast across the dappled silver, and from +its funnels sparks, intensely red, poured out into the night. As I turned, came +the hot flash of its guns, firing seaward, and answering this, red flashes and +a streaming smoke in the line between sea and sky. So I remembered it, and I +remember myself staring at it—in a state of stupid arrest. It was an +irrelevance. What had these things to do with me? +</p> + +<p> +With a shuddering hiss, a rocket from a headland beyond the village leapt up +and burst hot gold against the glare, and the sound of the third and fourth +guns reached me. +</p> + +<p> +The windows of the dark bungalows, one after another, leapt out, squares of +ruddy brightness that flared and flickered and became steadily bright. Dark +heads appeared looking seaward, a door opened, and sent out a brief lane of +yellow to mingle and be lost in the comet’s brightness. That brought me +back to the business in hand. +</p> + +<p> +“Boom! boom!” and when I looked again at the great ironclad, a +little torchlike spurt of flame wavered behind her funnels. I could hear the +throb and clangor of her straining engines. . . . +</p> + +<p> +I became aware of the voices of people calling to one another in the village. A +white-robed, hooded figure, some man in a bathing wrap, absurdly suggestive of +an Arab in his burnous, came out from one of the nearer bungalows, and stood +clear and still and shadowless in the glare. +</p> + +<p> +He put his hands to shade his seaward eyes, and shouted to people within. +</p> + +<p> +The people within—<i>my</i> people! My fingers tightened on my revolver. +What was this war nonsense to me? I would go round among the hummocks with the +idea of approaching the three bungalows inconspicuously from the flank. This +fight at sea might serve my purpose—except for that, it had no interest +for me at all. Boom! boom! The huge voluminous concussions rushed past me, beat +at my heart and passed. In a moment Nettie would come out to see. +</p> + +<p> +First one and then two other wrappered figures came out of the bungalows to +join the first. His arm pointed seaward, and his voice, a full tenor, rose in +explanation. I could hear some of the words. “It’s a German!” +he said. “She’s caught.” +</p> + +<p> +Some one disputed that, and there followed a little indistinct babble of +argument. I went on slowly in the circuit I had marked out, watching these +people as I went. +</p> + +<p> +They shouted together with such a common intensity of direction that I halted +and looked seaward. I saw the tall fountain flung by a shot that had just +missed the great warship. A second rose still nearer us, a third, and a fourth, +and then a great uprush of dust, a whirling cloud, leapt out of the headland +whence the rocket had come, and spread with a slow deliberation right and left. +Hard on that an enormous crash, and the man with the full voice leapt and +cried, “Hit!” +</p> + +<p> +Let me see! Of course, I had to go round beyond the bungalows, and then come up +towards the group from behind. +</p> + +<p> +A high-pitched woman’s voice called, “Honeymooners! honeymooners! +Come out and see!” +</p> + +<p> +Something gleamed in the shadow of the nearer bungalow, and a man’s voice +answered from within. What he said I did not catch, but suddenly I heard Nettie +calling very distinctly, “We’ve been bathing.” +</p> + +<p> +The man who had first come out shouted, “Don’t you hear the guns? +They’re fighting—not five miles from shore.” +</p> + +<p> +“Eh?” answered the bungalow, and a window opened. +</p> + +<p> +“Out there!” +</p> + +<p> +I did not hear the reply, because of the faint rustle of my own movements. +Clearly these people were all too much occupied by the battle to look in my +direction, and so I walked now straight toward the darkness that held Nettie +and the black desire of my heart. +</p> + +<p> +“Look!” cried some one, and pointed skyward. +</p> + +<p> +I glanced up, and behold! The sky was streaked with bright green trails. They +radiated from a point halfway between the western horizon and the zenith, and +within the shining clouds of the meteor a streaming movement had begun, so that +it seemed to be pouring both westwardly and back toward the east, with a +crackling sound, as though the whole heaven was stippled over with phantom +pistol-shots. It seemed to me then as if the meteor was coming to help me, +descending with those thousand pistols like a curtain to fend off this +unmeaning foolishness of the sea. +</p> + +<p> +“Boom!” went a gun on the big ironclad, and “boom!” and +the guns of the pursuing cruisers flashed in reply. +</p> + +<p> +To glance up at that streaky, stirring light scum of the sky made one’s +head swim. I stood for a moment dazed, and more than a little giddy. I had a +curious instant of purely speculative thought. Suppose, after all, the fanatics +were right, and the world <i>was</i> coming to an end! What a score that would +be for Parload! +</p> + +<p> +Then it came into my head that all these things were happening to consecrate my +revenge! The war below, the heavens above, were the thunderous garment of my +deed. I heard Nettie’s voice cry out not fifty yards away, and my passion +surged again. I was to return to her amid these terrors bearing unanticipated +death. I was to possess her, with a bullet, amidst thunderings and fear. At the +thought I lifted up my voice to a shout that went unheard, and advanced now +recklessly, revolver displayed in my hand. +</p> + +<p> +It was fifty yards, forty yards, thirty yards—the little group of people, +still heedless of me, was larger and more important now, the green-shot sky and +the fighting ships remoter. Some one darted out from the bungalow, with an +interrupted question, and stopped, suddenly aware of me. It was Nettie, with +some coquettish dark wrap about her, and the green glare shining on her sweet +face and white throat. I could see her expression, stricken with dismay and +terror, at my advance, as though something had seized her by the heart and held +her still—a target for my shots. +</p> + +<p> +“Boom!” came the ironclad’s gunshot like a command. +“Bang!” the bullet leapt from my hand. Do you know, I did not want +to shoot her then. Indeed I did not want to shoot her then! Bang! and I had +fired again, still striding on, and—each time it seemed I had missed. +</p> + +<p> +She moved a step or so toward me, still staring, and then someone intervened, +and near beside her I saw young Verrall. +</p> + +<p> +A heavy stranger, the man in the hooded bath-gown, a fat, foreign-looking man, +came out of nowhere like a shield before them. He seemed a preposterous +interruption. His face was full of astonishment and terror. He rushed across my +path with arms extended and open hands, as one might try to stop a runaway +horse. He shouted some nonsense. He seemed to want to dissuade me, as though +dissuasion had anything to do with it now. +</p> + +<p> +“Not you, you fool!” I said hoarsely. “Not you!” But he +hid Nettie nevertheless. +</p> + +<p> +By an enormous effort I resisted a mechanical impulse to shoot through his fat +body. Anyhow, I knew I mustn’t shoot him. For a moment I was in doubt, +then I became very active, turned aside abruptly and dodged his pawing arm to +the left, and so found two others irresolutely in my way. I fired a third shot +in the air, just over their heads, and ran at them. They hastened left and +right; I pulled up and faced about within a yard of a foxy-faced young man +coming sideways, who seemed about to grapple me. At my resolute halt he fell +back a pace, ducked, and threw up a defensive arm, and then I perceived the +course was clear, and ahead of me, young Verrall and Nettie—he was +holding her arm to help her—running away. “Of course!” said +I. +</p> + +<p> +I fired a fourth ineffectual shot, and then in an access of fury at my misses, +started out to run them down and shoot them barrel to backbone. “These +people!” I said, dismissing all these interferences. . . . “A +yard,” I panted, speaking aloud to myself, “a yard! Till then, take +care, you mustn’t—mustn’t shoot again.” +</p> + +<p> +Some one pursued me, perhaps several people—I do not know, we left them +all behind. . . . +</p> + +<p> +We ran. For a space I was altogether intent upon the swift monotony of flight +and pursuit. The sands were changed to a whirl of green moonshine, the air was +thunder. A luminous green haze rolled about us. What did such things matter? We +ran. Did I gain or lose? that was the question. They ran through a gap in a +broken fence that sprang up abruptly out of nothingness and turned to the +right. I noted we were in a road. But this green mist! One seemed to plough +through it. They were fading into it, and at that thought I made a spurt that +won a dozen feet or more. +</p> + +<p> +She staggered. He gripped her arm, and dragged her forward. They doubled to the +left. We were off the road again and on turf. It felt like turf. I tripped and +fell at a ditch that was somehow full of smoke, and was up again, but now they +were phantoms half gone into the livid swirls about me. . . . +</p> + +<p> +Still I ran. +</p> + +<p> +On, on! I groaned with the violence of my effort. I staggered again and swore. +I felt the concussions of great guns tear past me through the murk. +</p> + +<p> +They were gone! Everything was going, but I kept on running. Once more I +stumbled. There was something about my feet that impeded me, tall grass or +heather, but I could not see what it was, only this smoke that eddied about my +knees. There was a noise and spinning in my brain, a vain resistance to a dark +green curtain that was falling, falling, falling, fold upon fold. Everything +grew darker and darker. +</p> + +<p> +I made one last frantic effort, and raised my revolver, fired my penultimate +shot at a venture, and fell headlong to the ground. And behold! the green +curtain was a black one, and the earth and I and all things ceased to be. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="part03"></a>BOOK THE SECOND<br /> +THE GREEN VAPORS</h2> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap06"></a>CHAPTER THE FIRST<br /> +THE CHANGE</h2> + +<p class="center"> +§ 1 +</p> + +<p> +I seemed to awaken out of a refreshing sleep. +</p> + +<p> +I did not awaken with a start, but opened my eyes, and lay very comfortably +looking at a line of extraordinarily scarlet poppies that glowed against a +glowing sky. It was the sky of a magnificent sunrise, and an archipelago of +gold-beached purple islands floated in a sea of golden green. The poppies too, +swan-necked buds, blazing corollas, translucent stout seed-vessels, stoutly +upheld, had a luminous quality, seemed wrought only from some more solid kind +of light. +</p> + +<p> +I stared unwonderingly at these things for a time, and then there rose upon my +consciousness, intermingling with these, the bristling golden green heads of +growing barley. +</p> + +<p> +A remote faint question, where I might be, drifted and vanished again in my +mind. Everything was very still. +</p> + +<p> +Everything was as still as death. +</p> + +<p> +I felt very light, full of the sense of physical well-being. I perceived I was +lying on my side in a little trampled space in a weedy, flowering barley field, +that was in some inexplicable way saturated with light and beauty. I sat up, +and remained for a long time filled with the delight and charm of the delicate +little convolvulus that twined among the barley stems, the pimpernel that laced +the ground below. +</p> + +<p> +Then that question returned. What was this place? How had I come to be sleeping +here? +</p> + +<p> +I could not remember. +</p> + +<p> +It perplexed me that somehow my body felt strange to me. It was +unfamiliar—I could not tell how—and the barley, and the beautiful +weeds, and the slowly developing glory of the dawn behind; all those things +partook of the same unfamiliarity. I felt as though I was a thing in some very +luminous painted window, as though this dawn broke through me. I felt I was +part of some exquisite picture painted in light and joy. +</p> + +<p> +A faint breeze bent and rustled the barley-heads, and jogged my mind forward. +</p> + +<p> +Who was I? That was a good way of beginning. +</p> + +<p> +I held up my left hand and arm before me, a grubby hand, a frayed cuff; but +with a quality of painted unreality, transfigured as a beggar might have been +by Botticelli. I looked for a time steadfastly at a beautiful pearl +sleeve-link. +</p> + +<p> +I remembered Willie Leadford, who had owned that arm and hand, as though he had +been some one else. +</p> + +<p> +Of course! My history—its rough outline rather than the immediate +past—began to shape itself in my memory, very small, very bright and +inaccessible, like a thing watched through a microscope. Clayton and +Swathinglea returned to my mind; the slums and darkness, Dureresque, minute and +in their rich dark colors pleasing, and through them I went towards my destiny. +I sat hands on knees recalling that queer passionate career that had ended with +my futile shot into the growing darkness of the End. The thought of that shot +awoke my emotions again. +</p> + +<p> +There was something in it now, something absurd, that made me smile pityingly. +</p> + +<p> +Poor little angry, miserable creature! Poor little angry, miserable world! +</p> + +<p> +I sighed for pity, not only pity for myself, but for all the hot hearts, the +tormented brains, the straining, striving things of hope and pain, who had +found their peace at last beneath the pouring mist and suffocation of the +comet. Because certainly that world was over and done. They were all so weak +and unhappy, and I was now so strong and so serene. For I felt sure I was dead; +no one living could have this perfect assurance of good, this strong and +confident peace. I had made an end of the fever called living. I was dead, and +it was all right, and these———? +</p> + +<p> +I felt an inconsistency. +</p> + +<p> +These, then, must be the barley fields of God!—the still and silent +barley fields of God, full of unfading poppy flowers whose seeds bear peace. +</p> + +<p class="center"> +§ 2 +</p> + +<p> +It was queer to find barley fields in heaven, but no doubt there were many +surprises in store for me. +</p> + +<p> +How still everything was! Peace! The peace that passeth understanding. After +all it had come to me! But, indeed, everything was very still! No bird sang. +Surely I was alone in the world! No birds sang. Yes, and all the distant sounds +of life had ceased, the lowing of cattle, the barking of dogs. . . . +</p> + +<p> +Something that was like fear beatified came into my heart. It was all right, I +knew; but to be alone! I stood up and met the hot summons of the rising sun, +hurrying towards me, as it were, with glad tidings, over the spikes of the +barley. . . . +</p> + +<p> +Blinded, I made a step. My foot struck something hard, and I looked down to +discover my revolver, a blue-black thing, like a dead snake at my feet. +</p> + +<p> +For a moment that puzzled me. +</p> + +<p> +Then I clean forgot about it. The wonder of the quiet took possession of my +soul. Dawn, and no birds singing! +</p> + +<p> +How beautiful was the world! How beautiful, but how still! I walked slowly +through the barley towards a line of elder bushes, wayfaring tree and bramble +that made the hedge of the field. I noted as I passed along a dead shrew mouse, +as it seemed to me, among the halms; then a still toad. I was surprised that +this did not leap aside from my footfalls, and I stooped and picked it up. Its +body was limp like life, but it made no struggle, the brightness of its eye was +veiled, it did not move in my hand. +</p> + +<p> +It seems to me now that I stood holding that lifeless little creature for some +time. Then very softly I stooped down and replaced it. I was +trembling—trembling with a nameless emotion. I looked with quickened eyes +closely among the barley stems, and behold, now everywhere I saw beetles, +flies, and little creatures that did not move, lying as they fell when the +vapors overcame them; they seemed no more than painted things. Some were novel +creatures to me. I was very unfamiliar with natural things. “My +God!” I cried; “but is it only I———?” +</p> + +<p> +And then at my next movement something squealed sharply. I turned about, but I +could not see it, only I saw a little stir in a rut and heard the diminishing +rustle of the unseen creature’s flight. And at that I turned to my toad +again, and its eye moved and it stirred. And presently, with infirm and +hesitating gestures, it stretched its limbs and began to crawl away from me. +</p> + +<p> +But wonder, that gentle sister of fear, had me now. I saw a little way ahead a +brown and crimson butterfly perched upon a cornflower. I thought at first it +was the breeze that stirred it, and then I saw its wings were quivering. And +even as I watched it, it started into life, and spread itself, and fluttered +into the air. +</p> + +<p> +I watched it fly, a turn this way, a turn that, until suddenly it seemed to +vanish. And now, life was returning to this thing and that on every side of me, +with slow stretchings and bendings, with twitterings, with a little start and +stir. . . . +</p> + +<p> +I came slowly, stepping very carefully because of these drugged, feebly +awakening things, through the barley to the hedge. It was a very glorious +hedge, so that it held my eyes. It flowed along and interlaced like splendid +music. It was rich with lupin, honeysuckle, campions, and ragged robin; bed +straw, hops, and wild clematis twined and hung among its branches, and all +along its ditch border the starry stitchwort lifted its childish faces, and +chorused in lines and masses. Never had I seen such a symphony of note-like +flowers and tendrils and leaves. And suddenly in its depths, I heard a chirrup +and the whirr of startled wings. +</p> + +<p> +Nothing was dead, but everything had changed to beauty! And I stood for a time +with clean and happy eyes looking at the intricate delicacy before me and +marveling how richly God has made his worlds. . . . . +</p> + +<p> +“Tweedle-Tweezle,” a lark had shot the stillness with his shining +thread of song; one lark, and then presently another, invisibly in the air, +making out of that blue quiet a woven cloth of gold. . . . +</p> + +<p> +The earth recreated—only by the reiteration of such phrases may I hope to +give the intense freshness of that dawn. For a time I was altogether taken up +with the beautiful details of being, as regardless of my old life of jealous +passion and impatient sorrow as though I was Adam new made. I could tell you +now with infinite particularity of the shut flowers that opened as I looked, of +tendrils and grass blades, of a blue-tit I picked up very tenderly—never +before had I remarked the great delicacy of feathers—that presently +disclosed its bright black eye and judged me, and perched, swaying fearlessly, +upon my finger, and spread unhurried wings and flew away, and of a great +ebullition of tadpoles in the ditch; like all the things that lived beneath the +water, they had passed unaltered through the Change. Amid such incidents, I +lived those first great moments, losing for a time in the wonder of each little +part the mighty wonder of the whole. +</p> + +<p> +A little path ran between hedge and barley, and along this, leisurely and +content and glad, looking at this beautiful thing and that, moving a step and +stopping, then moving on again, I came presently to a stile, and deep below it, +and overgrown, was a lane. +</p> + +<p> +And on the worn oak of the stile was a round label, and on the label these +words, “Swindells’ G 90 Pills.” +</p> + +<p> +I sat myself astraddle on the stile, not fully grasping all the implications of +these words. But they perplexed me even more than the revolver and my dirty +cuff. +</p> + +<p> +About me now the birds lifted up their little hearts and sang, ever more birds +and more. +</p> + +<p> +I read the label over and over again, and joined it to the fact that I still +wore my former clothes, and that my revolver had been lying at my feet. One +conclusion stared out at me. This was no new planet, no glorious hereafter such +as I had supposed. This beautiful wonderland was the world, the same old world +of my rage and death! But at least it was like meeting a familiar house-slut, +washed and dignified, dressed in a queen’s robes, worshipful and fine. . +. . +</p> + +<p> +It might be the old world indeed, but something new lay upon all things, a +glowing certitude of health and happiness. It might be the old world, but the +dust and fury of the old life was certainly done. At least I had no doubt of +that. +</p> + +<p> +I recalled the last phases of my former life, that darkling climax of pursuit +and anger and universal darkness and the whirling green vapors of extinction. +The comet had struck the earth and made an end to all things; of that too I was +assured. +</p> + +<p> +But afterward? . . . +</p> + +<p> +And now? +</p> + +<p> +The imaginations of my boyhood came back as speculative possibilities. In those +days I had believed firmly in the necessary advent of a last day, a great +coming out of the sky, trumpetings and fear, the Resurrection, and the +Judgment. My roving fancy now suggested to me that this Judgment must have come +and passed. That it had passed and in some manner missed me. I was left alone +here, in a swept and garnished world (except, of course, for this label of +Swindells’) to begin again perhaps. . . . +</p> + +<p> +No doubt Swindells has got his deserts. +</p> + +<p> +My mind ran for a time on Swindells, on the imbecile pushfulness of that +extinct creature, dealing in rubbish, covering the country-side with lies in +order to get—what had he sought?—a silly, ugly, great house, a +temper-destroying motor-car, a number of disrespectful, abject servants; +thwarted intrigues for a party-fund baronetcy as the crest of his life, +perhaps. You cannot imagine the littleness of those former times; their naive, +queer absurdities! And for the first time in my existence I thought of these +things without bitterness. In the former days I had seen wickedness, I had seen +tragedy, but now I saw only the extraordinary foolishness of the old life. The +ludicrous side of human wealth and importance turned itself upon me, a shining +novelty, poured down upon me like the sunrise, and engulfed me in laughter. +Swindells! Swindells, damned! My vision of Judgment became a delightful +burlesque. I saw the chuckling Angel sayer with his face veiled, and the +corporeal presence of Swindells upheld amidst the laughter of the spheres. +“Here’s a thing, and a very pretty thing, and what’s to be +done with this very pretty thing?” I saw a soul being drawn from a +rotund, substantial-looking body like a whelk from its shell. . . . +</p> + +<p> +I laughed loudly and long. And behold! even as I laughed the keen point of +things accomplished stabbed my mirth, and I was weeping, weeping aloud, +convulsed with weeping, and the tears were pouring down my face. +</p> + +<p class="center"> +§ 3 +</p> + +<p> +Everywhere the awakening came with the sunrise. We awakened to the gladness of +the morning; we walked dazzled in a light that was joy. Everywhere that was so. +It was always morning. It was morning because, until the direct rays of the sun +touched it, the changing nitrogen of our atmosphere did not pass into its +permanent phase, and the sleepers lay as they had fallen. In its intermediate +state the air hung inert, incapable of producing either revival or +stupefaction, no longer green, but not yet changed to the gas that now lives in +us. . . . +</p> + +<p> +To every one, I think, came some parallel to the mental states I have already +sought to describe—a wonder, an impression of joyful novelty. There was +also very commonly a certain confusion of the intelligence, a difficulty in +self-recognition. I remember clearly as I sat on my stile that presently I had +the clearest doubts of my own identity and fell into the oddest metaphysical +questionings. “If this be I,” I said, “then how is it I am no +longer madly seeking Nettie? Nettie is now the remotest thing—and all my +wrongs. Why have I suddenly passed out of all that passion? Why does not the +thought of Verrall quicken my pulses?” . . . +</p> + +<p> +I was only one of many millions who that morning had the same doubts. I suppose +one knows one’s self for one’s self when one returns from sleep or +insensibility by the familiarity of one’s bodily sensations, and that +morning all our most intimate bodily sensations were changed. The intimate +chemical processes of life were changed, its nervous metaboly. For the +fluctuating, uncertain, passion-darkened thought and feeling of the old time +came steady, full-bodied, wholesome processes. Touch was different, sight was +different, sound and all the senses were subtler; had it not been that our +thought was steadier and fuller, I believe great multitudes of men would have +gone mad. But, as it was, we understood. The dominant impression I would convey +in this account of the Change is one of enormous release, of a vast substantial +exaltation. There was an effect, as it were, of light-headedness that was also +clear-headedness, and the alteration in one’s bodily sensations, instead +of producing the mental obfuscation, the loss of identity that was a common +mental trouble under former conditions, gave simply a new detachment from the +tumid passions and entanglements of the personal life. +</p> + +<p> +In this story of my bitter, restricted youth that I have been telling you, I +have sought constantly to convey the narrowness, the intensity, the confusion, +muddle, and dusty heat of the old world. It was quite clear to me, within an +hour of my awakening, that all that was, in some mysterious way, over and done. +That, too, was the common experience. Men stood up; they took the new air into +their lungs—a deep long breath, and the past fell from them; they could +forgive, they could disregard, they could attempt. . . . And it was no new +thing, no miracle that sets aside the former order of the world. It was a +change in material conditions, a change in the atmosphere, that at one bound +had released them. Some of them it had released to death. . . . Indeed, man +himself had changed not at all. We knew before the Change, the meanest knew, by +glowing moments in ourselves and others, by histories and music and beautiful +things, by heroic instances and splendid stories, how fine mankind could be, +how fine almost any human being could upon occasion be; but the poison in the +air, its poverty in all the nobler elements which made such moments rare and +remarkable—all that has changed. The air was changed, and the Spirit of +Man that had drowsed and slumbered and dreamt dull and evil things, awakened, +and stood with wonder-clean eyes, refreshed, looking again on life. +</p> + +<p class="center"> +§ 4 +</p> + +<p> +The miracle of the awakening came to me in solitude, the laughter, and then the +tears. Only after some time did I come upon another man. Until I heard his +voice calling I did not seem to feel there were any other people in the world. +All that seemed past, with all the stresses that were past. I had come out of +the individual pit in which my shy egotism had lurked, I had overflowed to all +humanity, I had seemed to be all humanity; I had laughed at Swindells as I +could have laughed at myself, and this shout that came to me seemed like the +coming of an unexpected thought in my own mind. But when it was repeated I +answered. +</p> + +<p> +“I am hurt,” said the voice, and I descended into the lane +forthwith, and so came upon Melmount sitting near the ditch with his back to +me. +</p> + +<p> +Some of the incidental sensory impressions of that morning bit so deeply into +my mind that I verily believe, when at last I face the greater mysteries that +lie beyond this life, when the things of this life fade from me as the mists of +the morning fade before the sun, these irrelevant petty details will be the +last to leave me, will be the last wisps visible of that attenuating veil. I +believe, for instance, I could match the fur upon the collar of his great +motoring coat now, could paint the dull red tinge of his big cheek with his +fair eyelashes just catching the light and showing beyond. His hat was off, his +dome-shaped head, with its smooth hair between red and extreme fairness, was +bent forward in scrutiny of his twisted foot. His back seemed enormous. And +there was something about the mere massive sight of him that filled me with +liking. +</p> + +<p> +“What’s wrong?” said I. +</p> + +<p> +“I say,” he said, in his full deliberate tones, straining round to +see me and showing a profile, a well-modeled nose, a sensitive, clumsy, big +lip, known to every caricaturist in the world, “I’m in a fix. I +fell and wrenched my ankle. Where are you?” +</p> + +<p> +I walked round him and stood looking at his face. I perceived he had his gaiter +and sock and boot off, the motor gauntlets had been cast aside, and he was +kneading the injured part in an exploratory manner with his thick thumbs. +</p> + +<p> +“By Jove!” I said, “you’re Melmount!” +</p> + +<p> +“Melmount!” He thought. “That’s my name,” he +said, without looking up. . . . “But it doesn’t affect my +ankle.” +</p> + +<p> +We remained silent for few moments except for a grunt of pain from him. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you know?” I asked, “what has happened to things?” +</p> + +<p> +He seemed to complete his diagnosis. “It’s not broken,” he +said. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you know,” I repeated, “what has happened to +everything?” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” he said, looking up at me incuriously for the first time. +</p> + +<p> +“There’s some difference———” +</p> + +<p> +“There’s a difference.” He smiled, a smile of unexpected +pleasantness, and an interest was coming into his eyes. “I’ve been +a little preoccupied with my own internal sensations. I remark an extraordinary +brightness about things. Is that it?” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s part of it. And a queer feeling, a +clear-headedness———” +</p> + +<p> +He surveyed me and meditated gravely. “I woke up,” he said, feeling +his way in his memory. +</p> + +<p> +“And I.” +</p> + +<p> +“I lost my way—I forget quite how. There was a curious green +fog.” He stared at his foot, remembering. “Something to do with a +comet. I was by a hedge in the darkness. Tried to run. . . . Then I must have +pitched into this lane. Look!” He pointed with his head. +“There’s a wooden rail new broken there. I must have stumbled over +that out of the field above.” He scrutinized this and concluded. +“Yes. . . .” +</p> + +<p> +“It was dark,” I said, “and a sort of green gas came out of +nothing everywhere. That is the last <i>I</i> remember.” +</p> + +<p> +“And then you woke up? So did I. . . . In a state of great bewilderment. +Certainly there’s something odd in the air. I was—I was rushing +along a road in a motor-car, very much excited and preoccupied. I got +down——” He held out a triumphant finger. +“Ironclads!” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Now</i> I’ve got it! We’d strung our fleet from here to +Texel. We’d got right across them and the Elbe mined. We’d lost the +<i>Lord Warden</i>. By Jove, yes. The <i>Lord Warden!</i> A battleship that +cost two million pounds—and that fool Rigby said it didn’t matter! +Eleven hundred men went down. . . . I remember now. We were sweeping up the +North Sea like a net, with the North Atlantic fleet waiting at the Faroes for +‘em—and not one of ‘em had three days’ coal! Now, was +that a dream? No! I told a lot of people as much—a meeting was +it?—to reassure them. They were warlike but extremely frightened. Queer +people—paunchy and bald like gnomes, most of them. Where? Of course! We +had it all over—a big dinner—oysters!—Colchester. I’d +been there, just to show all this raid scare was nonsense. And I was coming +back here. . . . But it doesn’t seem as though that was—recent. I +suppose it was. Yes, of course!—it was. I got out of my car at the bottom +of the rise with the idea of walking along the cliff path, because every one +said one of their battleships was being chased along the shore. That’s +clear! I heard their guns———” +</p> + +<p> +He reflected. “Queer I should have forgotten! Did <i>you</i> hear any +guns?” +</p> + +<p> +I said I had heard them. +</p> + +<p> +“Was it last night?” +</p> + +<p> +“Late last night. One or two in the morning.” +</p> + +<p> +He leant back on his hand and looked at me, smiling frankly. “Even +now,” he said, “it’s odd, but the whole of that seems like a +silly dream. Do you think there <i>was</i> a <i>Lord Warden?</i> Do you really +believe we sank all that machinery—for fun? It was a dream. And +yet—it happened.” +</p> + +<p> +By all the standards of the former time it would have been remarkable that I +talked quite easily and freely with so great a man. “Yes,” I said; +“that’s it. One feels one has awakened—from something more +than that green gas. As though the other things also—weren’t quite +real.” +</p> + +<p> +He knitted his brows and felt the calf of his leg thoughtfully. “I made a +speech at Colchester,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +I thought he was going to add something more about that, but there lingered a +habit of reticence in the man that held him for the moment. “It is a very +curious thing,” he broke away; “that this pain should be, on the +whole, more interesting than disagreeable.” +</p> + +<p> +“You are in pain?” +</p> + +<p> +“My ankle is! It’s either broken or badly sprained—I think +sprained; it’s very painful to move, but personally I’m not in +pain. That sort of general sickness that comes with local injury—not a +trace of it! . . .” He mused and remarked, “I was speaking at +Colchester, and saying things about the war. I begin to see it better. The +reporters—scribble, scribble. Max Sutaine, 1885. Hubbub. Compliments +about the oysters. Mm—mm. . . . What was it? About the war? A war that +must needs be long and bloody, taking toll from castle and cottage, taking +toll! . . . Rhetorical gusto! Was I drunk last night?” +</p> + +<p> +His eyebrows puckered. He had drawn up his right knee, his elbow rested thereon +and his chin on his fist. The deep-set gray eyes beneath his thatch of eyebrow +stared at unknown things. “My God!” he murmured, “My +God!” with a note of disgust. He made a big brooding figure in the +sunlight, he had an effect of more than physical largeness; he made me feel +that it became me to wait upon his thinking. I had never met a man of this sort +before; I did not know such men existed. . . . +</p> + +<p> +It is a curious thing, that I cannot now recall any ideas whatever that I had +before the Change about the personalities of statesmen, but I doubt if ever in +those days I thought of them at all as tangible individual human beings, +conceivably of some intellectual complexity. I believe that my impression was a +straightforward blend of caricature and newspaper leader. I certainly had no +respect for them. And now without servility or any insincerity whatever, as if +it were a first-fruit of the Change, I found myself in the presence of a human +being towards whom I perceived myself inferior and subordinate, before whom I +stood without servility or any insincerity whatever, in an attitude of respect +and attention. My inflamed, my rancid egotism—or was it after all only +the chances of life?—had never once permitted that before the Change. +</p> + +<p> +He emerged from his thoughts, still with a faint perplexity in his manner. +“That speech I made last night,” he said, “was damned +mischievous nonsense, you know. Nothing can alter that. Nothing. . . . No! . . +. Little fat gnomes in evening dress—gobbling oysters. Gulp!” +</p> + +<p> +It was a most natural part of the wonder of that morning that he should adopt +this incredible note of frankness, and that it should abate nothing from my +respect for him. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” he said, “you are right. It’s all indisputable +fact, and I can’t believe it was anything but a dream.” +</p> + +<p class="center"> +§ 5 +</p> + +<p> +That memory stands out against the dark past of the world with extraordinary +clearness and brightness. The air, I remember, was full of the calling and +piping and singing of birds. I have a curious persuasion too that there was a +distant happy clamor of pealing bells, but that I am half convinced is a +mistake. Nevertheless, there was something in the fresh bite of things, in the +dewy newness of sensation that set bells rejoicing in one’s brain. And +that big, fair, pensive man sitting on the ground had beauty even in his clumsy +pose, as though indeed some Great Master of strength and humor had made him. +</p> + +<p> +And—it is so hard now to convey these things—he spoke to me, a +stranger, without reservations, carelessly, as men now speak to men. Before +those days, not only did we think badly, but what we thought, a thousand +short-sighted considerations, dignity, objective discipline, discretion, a +hundred kindred aspects of shabbiness of soul, made us muffle before we told it +to our fellow-men. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s all returning now,” he said, and told me half +soliloquizingly what was in his mind. +</p> + +<p> +I wish I could give every word he said to me; he struck out image after image +to my nascent intelligence, with swift broken fragments of speech. If I had a +precise full memory of that morning I should give it you, verbatim, minutely. +But here, save for the little sharp things that stand out, I find only blurred +general impressions. Throughout I have to make up again his half-forgotten +sentences and speeches, and be content with giving you the general effect. But +I can see and hear him now as he said, “The dream got worst at the end. +The war—a perfectly horrible business! Horrible! And it was just like a +nightmare, you couldn’t do anything to escape from it—every one was +driven!” +</p> + +<p> +His sense of indiscretion was gone. +</p> + +<p> +He opened the war out to me—as every one sees it now. Only that morning +it was astonishing. He sat there on the ground, absurdly forgetful of his bare +and swollen foot, treating me as the humblest accessory and as altogether an +equal, talking out to himself the great obsessions of his mind. “We could +have prevented it! Any of us who chose to speak out could have prevented it. A +little decent frankness. What was there to prevent us being frank with one +another? Their emperor—his position was a pile of ridiculous assumptions, +no doubt, but at bottom—he was a sane man.” He touched off the +emperor in a few pithy words, the German press, the German people, and our own. +He put it as we should put it all now, but with a certain heat as of a man half +guilty and wholly resentful. “Their damned little buttoned-up +professors!” he cried, incidentally. “Were there ever such men? And +ours! Some of us might have taken a firmer line. . . . If a lot of us had taken +a firmer line and squashed that nonsense early. . . .” +</p> + +<p> +He lapsed into inaudible whisperings, into silence. . . . +</p> + +<p> +I stood regarding him, understanding him, learning marvelously from him. It is +a fact that for the best part of the morning of the Change I forgot Nettie and +Verrall as completely as though they were no more than characters in some novel +that I had put aside to finish at my leisure, in order that I might talk to +this man. +</p> + +<p> +“Eh, well,” he said, waking startlingly from his thoughts. +“Here we are awakened! The thing can’t go on now; all this must +end. How it ever began———! My dear boy, how did all those +things ever begin? I feel like a new Adam. . . . Do you think this has +happened—generally? Or shall we find all these gnomes and things? . . . +Who cares?” +</p> + +<p> +He made as if to rise, and remembered his ankle. He suggested I should help him +as far as his bungalow. There seemed nothing strange to either of us that he +should requisition my services or that I should cheerfully obey. I helped him +bandage his ankle, and we set out, I his crutch, the two of us making up a sort +of limping quadruped, along the winding lane toward the cliffs and the sea. +</p> + +<p class="center"> +§ 6 +</p> + +<p> +His bungalow beyond the golf links was, perhaps, a mile and a quarter from the +lane. We went down to the beach margin and along the pallid wave-smoothed +sands, and we got along by making a swaying, hopping, tripod dance forward +until I began to give under him, and then, as soon as we could, sitting down. +His ankle was, in fact, broken, and he could not put it to the ground without +exquisite pain. So that it took us nearly two hours to get to the house, and it +would have taken longer if his butler-valet had not come out to assist me. They +had found motor-car and chauffeur smashed and still at the bend of the road +near the house, and had been on that side looking for Melmount, or they would +have seen us before. +</p> + +<p> +For most of that time we were sitting now on turf, now on a chalk boulder, now +on a timber groin, and talking one to the other, with the frankness proper to +the intercourse of men of good intent, without reservations or aggressions, in +the common, open fashion of contemporary intercourse to-day, but which then, +nevertheless, was the rarest and strangest thing in the world. He for the most +part talked, but at some shape of a question I told him—as plainly as I +could tell of passions that had for a time become incomprehensible to +me—of my murderous pursuit of Nettie and her lover, and how the green +vapors overcame me. He watched me with grave eyes and nodded understandingly, +and afterwards he asked me brief penetrating questions about my education, my +upbringing, my work. There was a deliberation in his manner, brief full pauses, +that had in them no element of delay. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” he said, “yes—of course. What a fool I have +been!” and said no more until we had made another of our tripod struggles +along the beach. At first I did not see the connection of my story with that +self-accusation. +</p> + +<p> +“Suppose,” he said, panting on the groin, “there had been +such a thing as a statesman! . . .” +</p> + +<p> +He turned to me. “If one had decided all this muddle shall end! If one +had taken it, as an artist takes his clay, as a man who builds takes site and +stone, and made———” He flung out his big broad hand at +the glories of sky and sea, and drew a deep breath, “something to fit +that setting.” +</p> + +<p> +He added in explanation, “Then there wouldn’t have been such +stories as yours at all, you know. . . .” +</p> + +<p> +“Tell me more about it,” he said, “tell me all about +yourself. I feel all these things have passed away, all these things are to be +changed for ever. . . . You won’t be what you have been from this time +forth. All the things you have done—don’t matter now. To us, at any +rate, they don’t matter at all. We have met, who were separated in that +darkness behind us. Tell me. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” he said; and I told my story straight and as frankly as I +have told it to you. “And there, where those little skerries of weed rock +run out to the ebb, beyond the headland, is Bungalow village. What did you do +with your pistol?” +</p> + +<p> +“I left it lying there—among the barley.” +</p> + +<p> +He glanced at me from under his light eyelashes. “If others feel like you +and I,” he said, “there’ll be a lot of pistols left among the +barley to-day. . . .” +</p> + +<p> +So we talked, I and that great, strong man, with the love of brothers so plain +between us it needed not a word. Our souls went out to one another in stark +good faith; never before had I had anything but a guarded watchfulness for any +fellow-man. Still I see him, upon that wild desolate beach of the ebb tide, I +see him leaning against the shelly buttress of a groin, looking down at the +poor drowned sailor whose body we presently found. For we found a newly drowned +man who had just chanced to miss this great dawn in which we rejoiced. We found +him lying in a pool of water, among brown weeds in the dark shadow of the +timberings. You must not overrate the horrors of the former days; in those days +it was scarcely more common to see death in England than it would be to-day. +This dead man was a sailor from the <i>Rother Adler</i>, the great German +battleship that—had we but known it—lay not four miles away along +the coast amidst ploughed-up mountains of chalk ooze, a torn and battered mass +of machinery, wholly submerged at high water, and holding in its interstices +nine hundred drowned brave men, all strong and skilful, all once capable of +doing fine things. . . . +</p> + +<p> +I remember that poor boy very vividly. He had been drowned during the +anaesthesia of the green gas, his fair young face was quiet and calm, but the +skin of his chest had been crinkled by scalding water and his right arm was +bent queerly back. Even to this needless death and all its tale of cruelty, +beauty and dignity had come. Everything flowed together to significance as we +stood there, I, the ill-clad, cheaply equipped proletarian, and Melmount in his +great fur-trimmed coat—he was hot with walking but he had not thought to +remove it—leaning upon the clumsy groins and pitying this poor victim of +the war he had helped to make. “Poor lad!” he said, “poor +lad! A child we blunderers sent to death! Do look at the quiet beauty of that +face, that body—to be flung aside like this!” +</p> + +<p> +(I remember that near this dead man’s hand a stranded star-fish writhed +its slowly feeling limbs, struggling back toward the sea. It left grooved +traces in the sand.) +</p> + +<p> +“There must be no more of this,” panted Melmount, leaning on my +shoulder, “no more of this. . . .” +</p> + +<p> +But most I recall Melmount as he talked a little later, sitting upon a great +chalk boulder with the sunlight on his big, perspiration-dewed face. He made +his resolves. “We must end war,” he said, in that full whisper of +his; “it is stupidity. With so many people able to read and +think—even as it is—there is no need of anything of the sort. Gods! +What have we rulers been at? . . . Drowsing like people in a stifling room, too +dull and sleepy and too base toward each other for any one to get up and open +the window. What haven’t we been at?” +</p> + +<p> +A great powerful figure he sits there still in my memory, perplexed and +astonished at himself and all things. “We must change all this,” he +repeated, and threw out his broad hands in a powerful gesture against the sea +and sky. “We have done so weakly—Heaven alone knows why!” I +can see him now, queer giant that he looked on that dawnlit beach of splendor, +the sea birds flying about us and that crumpled death hard by, no bad symbol in +his clumsiness and needless heat of the unawakened powers of the former time. I +remember it as an integral part of that picture that far away across the sandy +stretches one of those white estate boards I have described, stuck up a little +askew amidst the yellow-green turf upon the crest of the low cliffs. +</p> + +<p> +He talked with a sort of wonder of the former things. “Has it ever dawned +upon you to imagine the pettiness—the pettiness!—of every soul +concerned in a declaration of war?” he asked. He went on, as though +speech was necessary to make it credible, to describe Laycock, who first gave +the horror words at the cabinet council, “an undersized Oxford prig with +a tenoring voice and a garbage of Greek—the sort of little fool who is +brought up on the admiration of his elder sisters. . . . +</p> + +<p> +“All the time almost,” he said, “I was watching +him—thinking what an ass he was to be trusted with men’s lives. . . +. I might have done better to have thought that of myself. I was doing nothing +to prevent it all! The damned little imbecile was up to his neck in the drama +of the thing, he liked to trumpet it out, he goggled round at us. ‘Then +it is war!’ he said. Richover shrugged his shoulders. I made some slight +protest and gave in. . . . Afterward I dreamt of him. +</p> + +<p> +“What a lot we were! All a little scared at ourselves—all, as it +were, instrumental. . . . +</p> + +<p> +“And it’s fools like that lead to things like this!” He +jerked his head at that dead man near by us. +</p> + +<p> +“It will be interesting to know what has happened to the world. . . . +This green vapor—queer stuff. But I know what has happened to me. +It’s Conversion. I’ve always known. . . . But this is being a fool. +Talk! I’m going to stop it.” +</p> + +<p> +He motioned to rise with his clumsy outstretched hands. +</p> + +<p> +“Stop what?” said I, stepping forward instinctively to help him. +</p> + +<p> +“War,” he said in his great whisper, putting his big hand on my +shoulder but making no further attempt to arise, “I’m going to put +an end to war—to any sort of war! And all these things that must end. The +world is beautiful, life is great and splendid, we had only to lift up our eyes +and see. Think of the glories through which we have been driving, like a herd +of swine in a garden place. The color in life—the sounds—the +shapes! We have had our jealousies, our quarrels, our ticklish rights, our +invincible prejudices, our vulgar enterprise and sluggish timidities, we have +chattered and pecked one another and fouled the world—like daws in the +temple, like unclean birds in the holy place of God. All my life has been +foolishness and pettiness, gross pleasures and mean discretions—all. I am +a meagre dark thing in this morning’s glow, a penitence, a shame! And, +but for God’s mercy, I might have died this night—like that poor +lad there—amidst the squalor of my sins! No more of this! No more of +this!—whether the whole world has changed or no, matters nothing. <i>We +two have seen this dawn!</i> . . .” +</p> + +<p> +He paused. +</p> + +<p> +“I will arise and go unto my Father,” he began presently, +“and will say unto Him———” +</p> + +<p> +His voice died away in an inaudible whisper. His hand tightened painfully on my +shoulder and he rose. . . . +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap07"></a>CHAPTER THE SECOND<br /> +THE AWAKENING</h2> + +<p class="center"> +§ 1 +</p> + +<p> +So the great Day came to me. +</p> + +<p> +And even as I had awakened so in that same dawn the whole world awoke. +</p> + +<p> +For the whole world of living things had been overtaken by the same tide of +insensibility; in an hour, at the touch of this new gas in the comet, the +shiver of catalytic change had passed about the globe. They say it was the +nitrogen of the air, the old <i>azote</i>, that in the twinkling of an eye was +changed out of itself, and in an hour or so became a respirable gas, differing +indeed from oxygen, but helping and sustaining its action, a bath of strength +and healing for nerve and brain. I do not know the precise changes that +occurred, nor the names our chemists give them, my work has carried me away +from such things, only this I know—I and all men were renewed. +</p> + +<p> +I picture to myself this thing happening in space, a planetary moment, the +faint smudge, the slender whirl of meteor, drawing nearer to this +planet,—this planet like a ball, like a shaded rounded ball, floating in +the void, with its little, nearly impalpable coat of cloud and air, with its +dark pools of ocean, its gleaming ridges of land. And as that midge from the +void touches it, the transparent gaseous outer shell clouds in an instant green +and then slowly clears again. . . . +</p> + +<p> +Thereafter, for three hours or more,—we know the minimum time for the +Change was almost exactly three hours because all the clocks and watches kept +going—everywhere, no man nor beast nor bird nor any living thing that +breathes the air stirred at all but lay still. . . . +</p> + +<p> +Everywhere on earth that day, in the ears of every one who breathed, there had +been the same humming in the air, the same rush of green vapors, the +crepitation, the streaming down of shooting stars. The Hindoo had stayed his +morning’s work in the fields to stare and marvel and fall, the +blue-clothed Chinaman fell head foremost athwart his midday bowl of rice, the +Japanese merchant came out from some chaffering in his office amazed and +presently lay there before his door, the evening gazers by the Golden Gates +were overtaken as they waited for the rising of the great star. This had +happened in every city of the world, in every lonely valley, in every home and +house and shelter and every open place. On the high seas, the crowding +steamship passengers, eager for any wonder, gaped and marveled, and were +suddenly terror-stricken, and struggled for the gangways and were overcome, the +captain staggered on the bridge and fell, the stoker fell headlong among his +coals, the engines throbbed upon their way untended, the fishing craft drove by +without a hail, with swaying rudder, heeling and dipping. . . . +</p> + +<p> +The great voice of material Fate cried Halt! And in the midst of the play the +actors staggered, dropped, and were still. The figure runs from my pen. In New +York that very thing occurred. Most of the theatrical audiences dispersed, but +in two crowded houses the company, fearing a panic, went on playing amidst the +gloom, and the people, trained by many a previous disaster, stuck to their +seats. There they sat, the back rows only moving a little, and there, in +disciplined lines, they drooped and failed, nodded, and fell forward or slid +down upon the floor. I am told by Parload—though indeed I know nothing of +the reasoning on which his confidence rests—-that within an hour of the +great moment of impact the first green modification of nitrogen had dissolved +and passed away, leaving the air as translucent as ever. The rest of that +wonderful interlude was clear, had any had eyes to see its clearness. In London +it was night, but in New York, for example, people were in the full bustle of +the evening’s enjoyment, in Chicago they were sitting down to dinner, the +whole world was abroad. The moonlight must have illuminated streets and squares +littered with crumpled figures, through which such electric cars as had no +automatic brakes had ploughed on their way until they were stopped by the +fallen bodies. People lay in their dress clothes, in dining-rooms, restaurants, +on staircases, in halls, everywhere just as they had been overcome. Men +gambling, men drinking, thieves lurking in hidden places, sinful couples, were +caught, to arise with awakened mind and conscience amidst the disorder of their +sin. America the comet reached in the full tide of evening life, but Britain +lay asleep. But as I have told, Britain did not slumber so deeply but that she +was in the full tide of what may have been battle and a great victory. Up and +down the North Sea her warships swept together like a net about their foes. On +land, too, that night was to have decided great issues. The German camps were +under arms from Redingen to Markirch, their infantry columns were lying in +swathes like mown hay, in arrested night march on every track between Longuyon +and Thiancourt, and between Avricourt and Donen. The hills beyond Spincourt +were dusted thick with hidden French riflemen; the thin lash of the French +skirmishers sprawled out amidst spades and unfinished rifle-pits in coils that +wrapped about the heads of the German columns, thence along the Vosges +watershed and out across the frontier near Belfort nearly to the Rhine. . . . +</p> + +<p> +The Hungarian, the Italian peasant, yawned and thought the morning dark, and +turned over to fall into a dreamless sleep; the Mahometan world spread its +carpet and was taken in prayer. And in Sydney, in Melbourne, in New Zealand, +the thing was a fog in the afternoon, that scattered the crowd on race-courses +and cricket-fields, and stopped the unloading of shipping and brought men out +from their afternoon rest to stagger and litter the streets. . . . +</p> + +<p class="center"> +§ 2 +</p> + +<p> +My thoughts go into the woods and wildernesses and jungles of the world, to the +wild life that shared man’s suspension, and I think of a thousand feral +acts interrupted and truncated—as it were frozen, like the frozen words +Pantagruel met at sea. Not only men it was that were quieted, all living +creatures that breathe the air became insensible, impassive things. Motionless +brutes and birds lay amidst the drooping trees and herbage in the universal +twilight, the tiger sprawled beside his fresh-struck victim, who bled to death +in a dreamless sleep. The very flies came sailing down the air with wings +outspread; the spider hung crumpled in his loaded net; like some gaily painted +snowflake the butterfly drifted to earth and grounded, and was still. And as a +queer contrast one gathers that the fishes in the sea suffered not at all. . . +. +</p> + +<p> +Speaking of the fishes reminds me of a queer little inset upon that great +world-dreaming. The odd fate of the crew of the submarine vessel B 94 has +always seemed memorable to me. So far as I know, they were the only men alive +who never saw that veil of green drawn across the world. All the while that the +stillness held above, they were working into the mouth of the Elbe, past the +booms and the mines, very slowly and carefully, a sinister crustacean of steel, +explosive crammed, along the muddy bottom. They trailed a long clue that was to +guide their fellows from the mother ship floating awash outside. Then in the +long channel beyond the forts they came up at last to mark down their victims +and get air. That must have been before the twilight of dawn, for they tell of +the brightness of the stars. They were amazed to find themselves not three +hundred yards from an ironclad that had run ashore in the mud, and heeled over +with the falling tide. It was afire amidships, but no one heeded that—no +one in all that strange clear silence heeded that—and not only this +wrecked vessel, but all the dark ships lying about them, it seemed to their +perplexed and startled minds must be full of dead men! +</p> + +<p> +Theirs I think must have been one of the strangest of all experiences; they +were never insensible; at once, and, I am told, with a sudden catch of +laughter, they began to breathe the new air. None of them has proved a writer; +we have no picture of their wonder, no description of what was said. But we +know these men were active and awake for an hour and a half at least before the +general awakening came, and when at last the Germans stirred and sat up they +found these strangers in possession of their battleship, the submarine +carelessly adrift, and the Englishmen, begrimed and weary, but with a sort of +furious exultation, still busy, in the bright dawn, rescuing insensible enemies +from the sinking conflagration. . . . +</p> + +<p> +But the thought of certain stokers the sailors of the submarine failed +altogether to save brings me back to the thread of grotesque horror that runs +through all this event, the thread I cannot overlook for all the splendors of +human well-being that have come from it. I cannot forget the unguided ships +that drove ashore, that went down in disaster with all their sleeping hands, +nor how, inland, motor-cars rushed to destruction upon the roads, and trains +upon the railways kept on in spite of signals, to be found at last by their +amazed, reviving drivers standing on unfamiliar lines, their fires exhausted, +or, less lucky, to be discovered by astonished peasants or awakening porters +smashed and crumpled up into heaps of smoking, crackling ruin. The foundry +fires of the Four Towns still blazed, the smoke of our burning still denied the +sky. Fires burnt indeed the brighter for the Change—and spread. . . . +</p> + +<p class="center"> +§ 3 +</p> + +<p> +Picture to yourself what happened between the printing and composing of the +copy of the <i>New Paper</i> that lies before me now. It was the first +newspaper that was printed upon earth after the Great Change. It was +pocket-worn and browned, made of a paper no man ever intended for preservation. +I found it on the arbor table in the inn garden while I was waiting for Nettie +and Verrall, before that last conversation of which I have presently to tell. +As I look at it all that scene comes back to me, and Nettie stands in her white +raiment against a blue-green background of sunlit garden, scrutinizing my face +as I read. . . . +</p> + +<p> +It is so frayed that the sheet cracks along the folds and comes to pieces in my +hands. It lies upon my desk, a dead souvenir of the dead ages of the world, of +the ancient passions of my heart. I know we discussed its news, but for the +life of me I cannot recall what we said, only I remember that Nettie said very +little, and that Verrall for a time read it over my shoulder. And I did not +like him to read over my shoulder. . . . +</p> + +<p> +The document before me must have helped us through the first awkwardness of +that meeting. +</p> + +<p> +But of all that we said and did then I must tell in a later chapter. . . . +</p> + +<p> +It is easy to see the <i>New Paper</i> had been set up overnight, and then +large pieces of the stereo plates replaced subsequently. I do not know enough +of the old methods of printing to know precisely what happened. The thing gives +one an impression of large pieces of type having been cut away and replaced by +fresh blocks. There is something very rough and ready about it all, and the new +portions print darker and more smudgily than the old, except toward the left, +where they have missed ink and indented. A friend of mine, who knows something +of the old typography, has suggested to me that the machinery actually in use +for the <i>New Paper</i> was damaged that night, and that on the morning of the +Change Banghurst borrowed a neighboring office—perhaps in financial +dependence upon him—to print in. +</p> + +<p> +The outer pages belong entirely to the old period, the only parts of the paper +that had undergone alteration are the two middle leaves. Here we found set +forth in a curious little four-column oblong of print, WHAT HAS HAPPENED. This +cut across a column with scare headings beginning, “Great Naval Battle +Now in Progress. The Fate of Two Empires in the Balance. Reported Loss of Two +More———” +</p> + +<p> +These things, one gathered, were beneath notice now. Probably it was guesswork, +and fabricated news in the first instance. +</p> + +<p> +It is curious to piece together the worn and frayed fragments, and reread this +discolored first intelligence of the new epoch. +</p> + +<p> +The simple clear statements in the replaced portion of the paper impressed me +at the time, I remember, as bald and strange, in that framework of shouting bad +English. Now they seem like the voice of a sane man amidst a vast faded +violence. But they witness to the prompt recovery of London from the gas; the +new, swift energy of rebound in that huge population. I am surprised now, as I +reread, to note how much research, experiment, and induction must have been +accomplished in the day that elapsed before the paper was printed. . . . But +that is by the way. As I sit and muse over this partly carbonized sheet, that +same curious remote vision comes again to me that quickened in my mind that +morning, a vision of those newspaper offices I have already described to you +going through the crisis. +</p> + +<p> +The catalytic wave must have caught the place in full swing, in its nocturnal +high fever, indeed in a quite exceptional state of fever, what with the comet +and the war, and more particularly with the war. Very probably the Change crept +into the office imperceptibly, amidst the noise and shouting, and the glare of +electric light that made the night atmosphere in that place; even the green +flashes may have passed unobserved there, the preliminary descending trails of +green vapor seemed no more than unseasonable drifting wisps of London fog. (In +those days London even in summer was not safe against dark fogs.) And then at +the last the Change poured in and overtook them. +</p> + +<p> +If there was any warning at all for them, it must have been a sudden universal +tumult in the street, and then a much more universal quiet. They could have had +no other intimation. +</p> + +<p> +There was no time to stop the presses before the main development of green +vapor had overwhelmed every one. It must have folded about them, tumbled them +to the earth, masked and stilled them. My imagination is always curiously +stirred by the thought of that, because I suppose it is the first picture I +succeeded in making for myself of what had happened in the towns. It has never +quite lost its strangeness for me that when the Change came, machinery went on +working. I don’t precisely know why that should have seemed so strange to +me, but it did, and still to a certain extent does. One is so accustomed, I +suppose, to regard machinery as an extension of human personality that the +extent of its autonomy the Change displayed came as a shock to me. The electric +lights, for example, hazy green-haloed nebulas, must have gone on burning at +least for a time; amidst the thickening darkness the huge presses must have +roared on, printing, folding, throwing aside copy after copy of that fabricated +battle report with its quarter column of scare headlines, and all the place +must have still quivered and throbbed with the familiar roar of the engines. +And this though no men ruled there at all any more! Here and there beneath that +thickening fog the crumpled or outstretched forms of men lay still. +</p> + +<p> +A wonderful thing that must have seemed, had any man had by chance the power of +resistance to the vapor, and could he have walked amidst it. +</p> + +<p> +And soon the machines must have exhausted their feed of ink and paper, and +thumped and banged and rattled emptily amidst the general quiet. Then I suppose +the furnaces failed for want of stoking, the steam pressure fell in the +pistons, the machinery slackened, the lights burnt dim, and came and went with +the ebb of energy from the power-station. Who can tell precisely the sequence +of these things now? +</p> + +<p> +And then, you know, amidst the weakening and terminating noises of men, the +green vapor cleared and vanished, in an hour indeed it had gone, and it may be +a breeze stirred and blew and went about the earth. +</p> + +<p> +The noises of life were all dying away, but some there were that abated +nothing, that sounded triumphantly amidst the universal ebb. To a heedless +world the church towers tolled out two and then three. Clocks ticked and chimed +everywhere about the earth to deafened ears. . . . +</p> + +<p> +And then came the first flush of morning, the first rustlings of the revival. +Perhaps in that office the filaments of the lamps were still glowing, the +machinery was still pulsing weakly, when the crumpled, booted heaps of cloth +became men again and began to stir and stare. The chapel of the printers was, +no doubt, shocked to find itself asleep. Amidst that dazzling dawn the <i>New +Paper</i> woke to wonder, stood up and blinked at its amazing self. . . . +</p> + +<p> +The clocks of the city churches, one pursuing another, struck four. The staffs, +crumpled and disheveled, but with a strange refreshment in their veins, stood +about the damaged machinery, marveling and questioning; the editor read his +overnight headlines with incredulous laughter. There was much involuntary +laughter that morning. Outside, the mail men patted the necks and rubbed the +knees of their awakening horses. . . . +</p> + +<p> +Then, you know, slowly and with much conversation and doubt, they set about to +produce the paper. +</p> + +<p> +Imagine those bemused, perplexed people, carried on by the inertia of their old +occupations and doing their best with an enterprise that had suddenly become +altogether extraordinary and irrational. They worked amidst questionings, and +yet light-heartedly. At every stage there must have been interruptions for +discussion. The paper only got down to Menton five days late. +</p> + +<p class="center"> +§ 4 +</p> + +<p> +Then let me give you a vivid little impression I received of a certain prosaic +person, a grocer, named Wiggins, and how he passed through the Change. I heard +this man’s story in the post-office at Menton, when, in the afternoon of +the First Day, I bethought me to telegraph to my mother. The place was also a +grocer’s shop, and I found him and the proprietor talking as I went in. +They were trade competitors, and Wiggins had just come across the street to +break the hostile silence of a score of years. The sparkle of the Change was in +their eyes, their slightly flushed cheeks, their more elastic gestures, spoke +of new physical influences that had invaded their beings. +</p> + +<p> +“It did us no good, all our hatred,” Mr. Wiggins said to me, +explaining the emotion of their encounter; “it did our customers no good. +I’ve come to tell him that. You bear that in mind, young man, if ever you +come to have a shop of your own. It was a sort of stupid bitterness possessed +us, and I can’t make out we didn’t see it before in that light. Not +so much downright wickedness it wasn’t as stupidity. A stupid jealousy! +Think of it!—two human beings within a stone’s throw, who have not +spoken for twenty years, hardening our hearts against each other!” +</p> + +<p> +“I can’t think how we came to such a state, Mr. Wiggins,” +said the other, packing tea into pound packets out of mere habit as he spoke. +“It was wicked pride and obstinacy. We <i>knew</i> it was foolish all the +time.” +</p> + +<p> +I stood affixing the adhesive stamp to my telegram. +</p> + +<p> +“Only the other morning,” he went on to me, “I was cutting +French eggs. Selling at a loss to do it. He’d marked down with a great +staring ticket to ninepence a dozen—I saw it as I went past. Here’s +my answer!” He indicated a ticket. “‘Eightpence a +dozen—same as sold elsewhere for ninepence.’ A whole penny down, +bang off! Just a touch above cost—if that—and even +then———” He leant over the counter to say impressively, +“<i>Not the same eggs!</i>” +</p> + +<p> +“Now, what people in their senses would do things like that?” said +Mr. Wiggins. +</p> + +<p> +I sent my telegram—the proprietor dispatched it for me, and while he did +so I fell exchanging experiences with Mr. Wiggins. He knew no more than I did +then the nature of the change that had come over things. He had been alarmed by +the green flashes, he said, so much so that after watching for a time from +behind his bedroom window blind, he had got up and hastily dressed and made his +family get up also, so that they might be ready for the end. He made them put +on their Sunday clothes. They all went out into the garden together, their +minds divided between admiration at the gloriousness of the spectacle and a +great and growing awe. They were Dissenters, and very religious people out of +business hours, and it seemed to them in those last magnificent moments that, +after all, science must be wrong and the fanatics right. With the green vapors +came conviction, and they prepared to meet their God. . . . +</p> + +<p> +This man, you must understand, was a common-looking man, in his shirt-sleeves +and with an apron about his paunch, and he told his story in an Anglian accent +that sounded mean and clipped to my Staffordshire ears; he told his story +without a thought of pride, and as it were incidentally, and yet he gave me a +vision of something heroic. +</p> + +<p> +These people did not run hither and thither as many people did. These four +simple, common people stood beyond their back door in their garden pathway +between the gooseberry bushes, with the terrors of their God and His Judgments +closing in upon them, swiftly and wonderfully—and there they began to +sing. There they stood, father and mother and two daughters, chanting out +stoutly, but no doubt a little flatly after the manner of their kind— +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“In Zion’s Hope abiding,<br /> +My soul in Triumph sings—” +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +until one by one they fell, and lay still. +</p> + +<p> +The postmaster had heard them in the gathering darkness, “In Zion’s +Hope abiding.” . . . +</p> + +<p> +It was the most extraordinary thing in the world to hear this flushed and +happy-eyed man telling that story of his recent death. It did not seem at all +possible to have happened in the last twelve hours. It was minute and remote, +these people who went singing through the darkling to their God. It was like a +scene shown to me, very small and very distinctly painted, in a locket. +</p> + +<p> +But that effect was not confined to this particular thing. A vast number of +things that had happened before the coming of the comet had undergone the same +transfiguring reduction. Other people, too, I have learnt since, had the same +illusion, a sense of enlargement. It seems to me even now that the little dark +creature who had stormed across England in pursuit of Nettie and her lover must +have been about an inch high, that all that previous life of ours had been an +ill-lit marionette show, acted in the twilight. . . . +</p> + +<p class="center"> +§ 5 +</p> + +<p> +The figure of my mother comes always into my conception of the Change. +</p> + +<p> +I remember how one day she confessed herself. +</p> + +<p> +She had been very sleepless that night, she said, and took the reports of the +falling stars for shooting; there had been rioting in Clayton and all through +Swathinglea all day, and so she got out of bed to look. She had a dim sense +that I was in all such troubles. +</p> + +<p> +But she was not looking when the Change came. +</p> + +<p> +“When I saw the stars a-raining down, dear,” she said, “and +thought of you out in it, I thought there’d be no harm in saying a prayer +for you, dear? I thought you wouldn’t mind that.” +</p> + +<p> +And so I got another of my pictures—the green vapors come and go, and +there by her patched coverlet that dear old woman kneels and droops, still +clasping her poor gnarled hands in the attitude of prayer—prayer to +IT—for me! +</p> + +<p> +Through the meagre curtains and blinds of the flawed refracting window I see +the stars above the chimneys fade, the pale light of dawn creeps into the sky, +and her candle flares and dies. . . . +</p> + +<p> +That also went with me through the stillness—that silent kneeling figure, +that frozen prayer to God to shield me, silent in a silent world, rushing +through the emptiness of space. . . . +</p> + +<p class="center"> +§ 6 +</p> + +<p> +With the dawn that awakening went about the earth. I have told how it came to +me, and how I walked in wonder through the transfigured cornfields of +Shaphambury. It came to every one. Near me, and for the time, clear forgotten +by me, Verrall and Nettie woke—woke near one another, each heard before +all other sounds the other’s voice amidst the stillness, and the light. +And the scattered people who had run to and fro, and fallen on the beach of +Bungalow village, awoke; the sleeping villagers of Menton started, and sat up +in that unwonted freshness and newness; the contorted figures in the garden, +with the hymn still upon their lips, stirred amidst the flowers, and touched +each other timidly, and thought of Paradise. My mother found herself crouched +against the bed, and rose—rose with a glad invincible conviction of +accepted prayer. . . . +</p> + +<p> +Already, when it came to us, the soldiers, crowded between the lines of dusty +poplars along the road to Allarmont, were chatting and sharing coffee with the +French riflemen, who had hailed them from their carefully hidden pits among the +vineyards up the slopes of Beauville. A certain perplexity had come to these +marksmen, who had dropped asleep tensely ready for the rocket that should wake +the whirr and rattle of their magazines. At the sight and sound of the stir and +human confusion in the roadway below, it had come to each man individually that +he could not shoot. One conscript, at least, has told his story of his +awakening, and how curious he thought the rifle there beside him in his pit, +how he took it on his knees to examine. Then, as his memory of its purpose grew +clearer, he dropped the thing, and stood up with a kind of joyful horror at the +crime escaped, to look more closely at the men he was to have assassinated. +“<i>Brave types</i>,” he thought, they looked for such a fate. The +summoning rocket never flew. Below, the men did not fall into ranks again, but +sat by the roadside, or stood in groups talking, discussing with a novel +incredulity the ostensible causes of the war. “The Emperor!” said +they; and “Oh, nonsense! We’re civilized men. Get some one else for +this job! . . . Where’s the coffee?” +</p> + +<p> +The officers held their own horses, and talked to the men frankly, regardless +of discipline. Some Frenchmen out of the rifle-pits came sauntering down the +hill. Others stood doubtfully, rifles still in hand. Curious faces scanned +these latter. Little arguments sprang as: “Shoot at us! Nonsense! +They’re respectable French citizens.” There is a picture of it all, +very bright and detailed in the morning light, in the battle gallery amidst the +ruins at old Nancy, and one sees the old-world uniform of the +“soldier,” the odd caps and belts and boots, the ammunition-belt, +the water-bottle, the sort of tourist’s pack the men carried, a queer +elaborate equipment. The soldiers had awakened one by one, first one and then +another. I wonder sometimes whether, perhaps, if the two armies had come awake +in an instant, the battle, by mere habit and inertia, might not have begun. But +the men who waked first, sat up, looked about them in astonishment, had time to +think a little. . . . +</p> + +<p class="center"> +§ 7 +</p> + +<p> +Everywhere there was laughter, everywhere tears. +</p> + +<p> +Men and women in the common life, finding themselves suddenly lit and exalted, +capable of doing what had hitherto been impossible, incapable of doing what had +hitherto been irresistible, happy, hopeful, unselfishly energetic, rejected +altogether the supposition that this was merely a change in the blood and +material texture of life. They denied the bodies God had given them, as once +the Upper Nile savages struck out their canine teeth, because these made them +like the beasts. They declared that this was the coming of a spirit, and +nothing else would satisfy their need for explanations. And in a sense the +Spirit came. The Great Revival sprang directly from the Change—the last, +the deepest, widest, and most enduring of all the vast inundations of religious +emotion that go by that name. +</p> + +<p> +But indeed it differed essentially from its innumerable predecessors. The +former revivals were a phase of fever, this was the first movement of health, +it was altogether quieter, more intellectual, more private, more religious than +any of those others. In the old time, and more especially in the Protestant +countries where the things of religion were outspoken, and the absence of +confession and well-trained priests made religious states of emotion explosive +and contagious, revivalism upon various scales was a normal phase in the +religious life, revivals were always going on—now a little disturbance of +consciences in a village, now an evening of emotion in a Mission Room, now a +great storm that swept a continent, and now an organized effort that came to +town with bands and banners and handbills and motor-cars for the saving of +souls. Never at any time did I take part in nor was I attracted by any of these +movements. My nature, although passionate, was too critical (or sceptical if +you like, for it amounts to the same thing) and shy to be drawn into these +whirls; but on several occasions Parload and I sat, scoffing, but nevertheless +disturbed, in the back seats of revivalist meetings. +</p> + +<p> +I saw enough of them to understand their nature, and I am not surprised to +learn now that before the comet came, all about the world, even among savages, +even among cannibals, these same, or at any rate closely similar, periodic +upheavals went on. The world was stifling; it was in a fever, and these +phenomena were neither more nor less than the instinctive struggle of the +organism against the ebb of its powers, the clogging of its veins, the +limitation of its life. Invariably these revivals followed periods of sordid +and restricted living. Men obeyed their base immediate motives until the world +grew unendurably bitter. Some disappointment, some thwarting, lit up for +them—darkly indeed, but yet enough for indistinct vision—the +crowded squalor, the dark inclosure of life. A sudden disgust with the +insensate smallness of the old-world way of living, a realization of sin, a +sense of the unworthiness of all individual things, a desire for something +comprehensive, sustaining, something greater, for wider communions and less +habitual things, filled them. Their souls, which were shaped for wider issues, +cried out suddenly amidst the petty interests, the narrow prohibitions, of +life, “Not this! not this!” A great passion to escape from the +jealous prison of themselves, an inarticulate, stammering, weeping passion +shook them. . . . +</p> + +<p> +I have seen——— I remember how once in Clayton Calvinistic +Methodist chapel I saw—his spotty fat face strangely distorted under the +flickering gas-flares—old Pallet the ironmonger repent. He went to the +form of repentance, a bench reserved for such exhibitions, and slobbered out +his sorrow and disgust for some sexual indelicacy—he was a +widower—and I can see now how his loose fat body quivered and swayed with +his grief. He poured it out to five hundred people, from whom in common times +he hid his every thought and purpose. And it is a fact, it shows where reality +lay, that we two youngsters laughed not at all at that blubbering grotesque, we +did not even think the distant shadow of a smile. We two sat grave and +intent—perhaps wondering. +</p> + +<p> +Only afterward and with an effort did we scoff. . . . +</p> + +<p> +Those old-time revivals were, I say, the convulsive movements of a body that +suffocates. They are the clearest manifestations from before the Change of a +sense in all men that things were not right. But they were too often but +momentary illuminations. Their force spent itself in inco-ordinated shouting, +gesticulations, tears. They were but flashes of outlook. Disgust of the narrow +life, of all baseness, took shape in narrowness and baseness. The quickened +soul ended the night a hypocrite; prophets disputed for precedence; seductions, +it is altogether indisputable, were frequent among penitents! and Ananias went +home converted and returned with a falsified gift. And it was almost universal +that the converted should be impatient and immoderate, scornful of reason and a +choice of expedients, opposed to balance, skill, and knowledge. Incontinently +full of grace, like thin old wine-skins overfilled, they felt they must burst +if once they came into contact with hard fact and sane direction. +</p> + +<p> +So the former revivals spent themselves, but the Great Revival did not spend +itself, but grew to be, for the majority of Christendom at least, the permanent +expression of the Change. For many it has taken the shape of an outright +declaration that this was the Second Advent—it is not for me to discuss +the validity of that suggestion, for nearly all it has amounted to an enduring +broadening of all the issues of life. . . . +</p> + +<p class="center"> +§ 8 +</p> + +<p> +One irrelevant memory comes back to me, irrelevant, and yet by some subtle +trick of quality it summarizes the Change for me. It is the memory of a +woman’s very beautiful face, a woman with a flushed face and tear-bright +eyes who went by me without speaking, rapt in some secret purpose. I passed her +when in the afternoon of the first day, struck by a sudden remorse, I went down +to Menton to send a telegram to my mother telling her all was well with me. +Whither this woman went I do not know, nor whence she came; I never saw her +again, and only her face, glowing with that new and luminous resolve, stands +out for me. . . . +</p> + +<p> +But that expression was the world’s. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap08"></a>CHAPTER THE THIRD<br /> +THE CABINET COUNCIL</h2> + +<p class="center"> +§ 1 +</p> + +<p> +And what a strange unprecedented thing was that cabinet council at which I was +present, the council that was held two days later in Melmount’s bungalow, +and which convened the conference to frame the constitution of the World State. +I was there because it was convenient for me to stay with Melmount. I had +nowhere to go particularly, and there was no one at his bungalow, to which his +broken ankle confined him, but a secretary and a valet to help him to begin his +share of the enormous labors that evidently lay before the rulers of the world. +I wrote shorthand, and as there was not even a phonograph available, I went in +so soon as his ankle had been dressed, and sat at his desk to write at his +dictation. It is characteristic of the odd slackness that went with the +spasmodic violence of the old epoch, that the secretary could not use shorthand +and that there was no telephone whatever in the place. Every message had to be +taken to the village post-office in that grocer’s shop at Menton, half a +mile away. . . . So I sat in the back of Melmount’s room, his desk had +been thrust aside, and made such memoranda as were needed. At that time his +room seemed to me the most beautifully furnished in the world, and I could +identify now the vivid cheerfulness of the chintz of the sofa on which the +great statesman lay just in front of me, the fine rich paper, the red +sealing-wax, the silver equipage of the desk I used. I know now that my +presence in that room was a strange and remarkable thing, the open door, even +the coming and going of Parker the secretary, innovations. In the old days a +cabinet council was a secret conclave, secrecy and furtiveness were in the +texture of all public life. In the old days everybody was always keeping +something back from somebody, being wary and cunning, prevaricating, +misleading—for the most part for no reason at all. Almost unnoticed, that +secrecy had dropped out of life. +</p> + +<p> +I close my eyes and see those men again, hear their deliberating voices. First +I see them a little diffusely in the cold explicitness of daylight, and then +concentrated and drawn together amidst the shadow and mystery about shaded +lamps. Integral to this and very clear is the memory of biscuit crumbs and a +drop of spilt water, that at first stood shining upon and then sank into the +green table-cloth. . . . +</p> + +<p> +I remember particularly the figure of Lord Adisham. He came to the bungalow a +day before the others, because he was Melmount’s personal friend. Let me +describe this statesman to you, this one of the fifteen men who made the last +war. He was the youngest member of the Government, and an altogether pleasant +and sunny man of forty. He had a clear profile to his clean gray face, a +smiling eye, a friendly, careful voice upon his thin, clean-shaven lips, an +easy disabusing manner. He had the perfect quality of a man who had fallen +easily into a place prepared for him. He had the temperament of what we used to +call a philosopher—an indifferent, that is to say. The Change had caught +him at his week-end recreation, fly-fishing; and, indeed, he said, I remember, +that he recovered to find himself with his head within a yard of the +water’s brim. In times of crisis Lord Adisham invariably went fly-fishing +at the week-end to keep his mind in tone, and when there was no crisis then +there was nothing he liked so much to do as fly-fishing, and so, of course, as +there was nothing to prevent it, he fished. He came resolved, among other +things, to give up fly-fishing altogether. I was present when he came to +Melmount, and heard him say as much; and by a more naive route it was evident +that he had arrived at the same scheme of intention as my master. I left them +to talk, but afterward I came back to take down their long telegrams to their +coming colleagues. He was, no doubt, as profoundly affected as Melmount by the +Change, but his tricks of civility and irony and acceptable humor had survived +the Change, and he expressed his altered attitude, his expanded emotions, in a +quaint modification of the old-time man-of-the-world style, with excessive +moderation, with a trained horror of the enthusiasm that swayed him. +</p> + +<p> +These fifteen men who ruled the British Empire were curiously unlike anything I +had expected, and I watched them intently whenever my services were not in +request. They made a peculiar class at that time, these English politicians and +statesmen, a class that has now completely passed away. In some respects they +were unlike the statesmen of any other region of the world, and I do not find +that any really adequate account remains of them. . . . Perhaps you are a +reader of the old books. If so, you will find them rendered with a note of +hostile exaggeration by Dickens in “Bleak House,” with a mingling +of gross flattery and keen ridicule by Disraeli, who ruled among them +accidentally by misunderstanding them and pleasing the court, and all their +assumptions are set forth, portentously, perhaps, but truthfully, so far as +people of the “permanent official” class saw them, in the novels of +Mrs. Humphry Ward. All these books are still in this world and at the disposal +of the curious, and in addition the philosopher Bagehot and the picturesque +historian Macaulay give something of their method of thinking, the novelist +Thackeray skirts the seamy side of their social life, and there are some good +passages of irony, personal descriptions, and reminiscence to be found in the +“Twentieth Century Garner” from the pens of such writers, for +example, as Sidney Low. But a picture of them as a whole is wanting. Then they +were too near and too great; now, very rapidly, they have become +incomprehensible. +</p> + +<p> +We common people of the old time based our conception of our statesmen almost +entirely on the caricatures that formed the most powerful weapon in political +controversy. Like almost every main feature of the old condition of things +these caricatures were an unanticipated development, they were a sort of +parasitic outgrowth from, which had finally altogether replaced, the thin and +vague aspirations of the original democratic ideals. They presented not only +the personalities who led our public life, but the most sacred structural +conceptions of that life, in ludicrous, vulgar, and dishonorable aspects that +in the end came near to destroying entirely all grave and honorable emotion or +motive toward the State. The state of Britain was represented nearly always by +a red-faced, purse-proud farmer with an enormous belly, that fine dream of +freedom, the United States, by a cunning, lean-faced rascal in striped trousers +and a blue coat. The chief ministers of state were pickpockets, washerwomen, +clowns, whales, asses, elephants, and what not, and issues that affected the +welfare of millions of men were dressed and judged like a rally in some idiotic +pantomime. A tragic war in South Africa, that wrecked many thousand homes, +impoverished two whole lands, and brought death and disablement to fifty +thousand men, was presented as a quite comical quarrel between a violent queer +being named Chamberlain, with an eyeglass, an orchid, and a short temper, and +“old Kroojer,” an obstinate and very cunning old man in a shocking +bad hat. The conflict was carried through in a mood sometimes of brutish +irritability and sometimes of lax slovenliness, the merry peculator plied his +trade congenially in that asinine squabble, and behind these fooleries and +masked by them, marched Fate—until at last the clowning of the booth +opened and revealed—hunger and suffering, brands burning and swords and +shame. . . . These men had come to fame and power in that atmosphere, and to me +that day there was the oddest suggestion in them of actors who have suddenly +laid aside grotesque and foolish parts; the paint was washed from their faces, +the posing put aside. +</p> + +<p> +Even when the presentation was not frankly grotesque and degrading it was +entirely misleading. When I read of Laycock, for example, there arises a +picture of a large, active, if a little wrong-headed, intelligence in a compact +heroic body, emitting that “Goliath” speech of his that did so much +to precipitate hostilities, it tallies not at all with the stammering, +high-pitched, slightly bald, and very conscience-stricken personage I saw, nor +with Melmount’s contemptuous first description of him. I doubt if the +world at large will ever get a proper vision of those men as they were before +the Change. Each year they pass more and more incredibly beyond our +intellectual sympathy. Our estrangement cannot, indeed, rob them of their +portion in the past, but it will rob them of any effect of reality. The whole +of their history becomes more and more foreign, more and more like some queer +barbaric drama played in a forgotten tongue. There they strut through their +weird metamorphoses of caricature, those premiers and presidents, their height +preposterously exaggerated by political buskins, their faces covered by great +resonant inhuman masks, their voices couched in the foolish idiom of public +utterance, disguised beyond any semblance to sane humanity, roaring and +squeaking through the public press. There it stands, this incomprehensible +faded show, a thing left on one side, and now still and deserted by any +interest, its many emptinesses as inexplicable now as the cruelties of medieval +Venice, the theology of old Byzantium. And they ruled and influenced the lives +of nearly a quarter of mankind, these politicians, their clownish conflicts +swayed the world, made mirth perhaps, made excitement, and +permitted—infinite misery. +</p> + +<p> +I saw these men quickened indeed by the Change, but still wearing the queer +clothing of the old time, the manners and conventions of the old time; if they +had disengaged themselves from the outlook of the old time they still had to +refer back to it constantly as a common starting-point. My refreshed +intelligence was equal to that, so that I think I did indeed see them. There +was Gorrell-Browning, the Chancellor of the Duchy; I remember him as a big +round-faced man, the essential vanity and foolishness of whose expression, +whose habit of voluminous platitudinous speech, triumphed absurdly once or +twice over the roused spirit within. He struggled with it, he burlesqued +himself, and laughed. Suddenly he said simply, intensely—it was a moment +for every one of clean, clear pain, “I have been a vain and +self-indulgent and presumptuous old man. I am of little use here. I have given +myself to politics and intrigues, and life is gone from me.” Then for a +long time he sat still. There was Carton, the Lord Chancellor, a white-faced +man with understanding, he had a heavy, shaven face that might have stood among +the busts of the Caesars, a slow, elaborating voice, with self-indulgent, +slightly oblique, and triumphant lips, and a momentary, voluntary, humorous +twinkle. “We have to forgive,” he said. “We have to +forgive—even ourselves.” +</p> + +<p> +These two were at the top corner of the table, so that I saw their faces well. +Madgett, the Home Secretary, a smaller man with wrinkled eyebrows and a frozen +smile on his thin wry mouth, came next to Carton; he contributed little to the +discussion save intelligent comments, and when the electric lights above glowed +out, the shadows deepened queerly in his eye-sockets and gave him the quizzical +expression of an ironical goblin. Next him was that great peer, the Earl of +Richover, whose self-indulgent indolence had accepted the <i>rôle</i> of a +twentieth-century British Roman patrician of culture, who had divided his time +almost equally between his jockeys, politics, and the composition of literary +studies in the key of his <i>rôle</i>. “We have done nothing worth +doing,” he said. “As for me, I have cut a figure!” He +reflected—no doubt on his ample patrician years, on the fine great houses +that had been his setting, the teeming race-courses that had roared his name, +the enthusiastic meetings he had fed with fine hopes, the futile Olympian +beginnings. . . . “I have been a fool,” he said compactly. They +heard him in a sympathetic and respectful silence. +</p> + +<p> +Gurker, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, was partially occulted, so far as I +was concerned, by the back of Lord Adisham. Ever and again Gurker protruded +into the discussion, swaying forward, a deep throaty voice, a big nose, a +coarse mouth with a drooping everted lower lip, eyes peering amidst folds and +wrinkles. He made his confession for his race. “We Jews,” he said, +“have gone through the system of this world, creating nothing, +consolidating many things, destroying much. Our racial self-conceit has been +monstrous. We seem to have used our ample coarse intellectuality for no other +purpose than to develop and master and maintain the convention of property, to +turn life into a sort of mercantile chess and spend our winnings grossly. . . . +We have had no sense of service to mankind. Beauty which is godhead—we +made it a possession.” +</p> + +<p> +These men and these sayings particularly remain in my memory. Perhaps, indeed, +I wrote them down at the time, but that I do not now remember. How Sir Digby +Privet, Revel, Markheimer, and the others sat I do not now recall; they came in +as voices, interruptions, imperfectly assigned comments. . . . +</p> + +<p> +One got a queer impression that except perhaps for Gurker or Revel these men +had not particularly wanted the power they held; had desired to do nothing very +much in the positions they had secured. They had found themselves in the +cabinet, and until this moment of illumination they had not been ashamed; but +they had made no ungentlemanly fuss about the matter. Eight of that fifteen +came from the same school, had gone through an entirely parallel education; +some Greek linguistics, some elementary mathematics, some emasculated +“science,” a little history, a little reading in the silent or +timidly orthodox English literature of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and +nineteenth centuries, all eight had imbibed the same dull gentlemanly tradition +of behavior; essentially boyish, unimaginative—with neither keen swords +nor art in it, a tradition apt to slobber into sentiment at a crisis and make a +great virtue of a simple duty rather clumsily done. None of these eight had +made any real experiments with life, they had lived in blinkers, they had been +passed from nurse to governess, from governess to preparatory school, from Eton +to Oxford, from Oxford to the politico-social routine. Even their vices and +lapses had been according to certain conceptions of good form. They had all +gone to the races surreptitiously from Eton, had all cut up to town from Oxford +to see life—music-hall life—had all come to heel again. Now +suddenly they discovered their limitations. . . . +</p> + +<p> +“What are we to do?” asked Melmount. “We have awakened; this +empire in our hands. . . .” I know this will seem the most fabulous of +all the things I have to tell of the old order, but, indeed, I saw it with my +eyes, I heard it with my ears. It is a fact that this group of men who +constituted the Government of one-fifth of the habitable land of the earth, who +ruled over a million of armed men, who had such navies as mankind had never +seen before, whose empire of nations, tongues, peoples still dazzles in these +greater days, had no common idea whatever of what they meant to do with the +world. They had been a Government for three long years, and before the Change +came to them it had never even occurred to them that it was necessary to have +a common idea. There was no common idea at all. That great empire was no more +than a thing adrift, an aimless thing that ate and drank and slept and bore +arms, and was inordinately proud of itself because it had chanced to happen. It +had no plan, no intention; it meant nothing at all. And the other great empires +adrift, perilously adrift like marine mines, were in the self-same case. Absurd +as a British cabinet council must seem to you now, it was no whit more absurd +than the controlling ganglion, autocratic council, president’s committee, +or what not, of each of its blind rivals. . . . +</p> + +<p class="center"> +§ 2 +</p> + +<p> +I remember as one thing that struck me very forcibly at the time, the absence +of any discussion, any difference of opinion, about the broad principles of our +present state. These men had lived hitherto in a system of conventions and +acquired motives, loyalty to a party, loyalty to various secret agreements and +understandings, loyalty to the Crown; they had all been capable of the keenest +attention to precedence, all capable of the most complete suppression of +subversive doubts and inquiries, all had their religious emotions under perfect +control. They had seemed protected by invisible but impenetrable barriers from +all the heady and destructive speculations, the socialistic, republican, and +communistic theories that one may still trace through the literature of the +last days of the comet. But now it was as if the very moment of the awakening +those barriers and defences had vanished, as if the green vapors had washed +through their minds and dissolved and swept away a hundred once rigid +boundaries and obstacles. They had admitted and assimilated at once all that +was good in the ill-dressed propagandas that had clamored so vehemently and +vainly at the doors of their minds in the former days. It was exactly like the +awakening from an absurd and limiting dream. They had come out together +naturally and inevitably upon the broad daylight platform of obvious and +reasonable agreement upon which we and all the order of our world now stand. +</p> + +<p> +Let me try to give the chief things that had vanished from their minds. There +was, first, the ancient system of “ownership” that made such an +extraordinary tangle of our administration of the land upon which we lived. In +the old time no one believed in that as either just or ideally convenient, but +every one accepted it. The community which lived upon the land was supposed to +have waived its necessary connection with the land, except in certain limited +instances of highway and common. All the rest of the land was cut up in the +maddest way into patches and oblongs and triangles of various sizes between a +hundred square miles and a few acres, and placed under the nearly absolute +government of a series of administrators called landowners. They owned the land +almost as a man now owns his hat; they bought it and sold it, and cut it up +like cheese or ham; they were free to ruin it, or leave it waste, or erect upon +it horrible and devastating eyesores. If the community needed a road or a +tramway, if it wanted a town or a village in any position, nay, even if it +wanted to go to and fro, it had to do so by exorbitant treaties with each of +the monarchs whose territory was involved. No man could find foothold on the +face of the earth until he had paid toll and homage to one of them. They had +practically no relations and no duties to the nominal, municipal, or national +Government amidst whose larger areas their own dominions lay. . . . This +sounds, I know, like a lunatic’s dream, but mankind was that lunatic; and +not only in the old countries of Europe and Asia, where this system had arisen +out of the rational delegation of local control to territorial magnates, who +had in the universal baseness of those times at last altogether evaded and +escaped their duties, did it obtain, but the “new countries,” as we +called them then—the United States of America, the Cape Colony, +Australia, and New Zealand—spent much of the nineteenth century in the +frantic giving away of land for ever to any casual person who would take it. +Was there coal, was there petroleum or gold, was there rich soil or harborage, +or the site for a fine city, these obsessed and witless Governments cried out +for scramblers, and a stream of shabby, tricky, and violent adventurers set out +to found a new section of the landed aristocracy of the world. After a brief +century of hope and pride, the great republic of the United States of America, +the hope as it was deemed of mankind, became for the most part a drifting crowd +of landless men; landlords and railway lords, food lords (for the land is food) +and mineral lords ruled its life, gave it Universities as one gave coins to a +mendicant, and spent its resources upon such vain, tawdry, and foolish luxuries +as the world had never seen before. Here was a thing none of these statesmen +before the Change would have regarded as anything but the natural order of the +world, which not one of them now regarded as anything but the mad and vanished +illusion of a period of dementia. +</p> + +<p> +And as it was with the question of the land, so was it also with a hundred +other systems and institutions and complicated and disingenuous factors in the +life of man. They spoke of trade, and I realized for the first time there could +be buying and selling that was no loss to any man; they spoke of industrial +organization, and one saw it under captains who sought no base advantages. The +haze of old associations, of personal entanglements and habitual recognitions +had been dispelled from every stage and process of the social training of men. +Things long hidden appeared discovered with an amazing clearness and nakedness. +These men who had awakened, laughed dissolvent laughs, and the old muddle of +schools and colleges, books and traditions, the old fumbling, half-figurative, +half-formal teaching of the Churches, the complex of weakening and confusing +suggestions and hints, amidst which the pride and honor of adolescence doubted +and stumbled and fell, became nothing but a curious and pleasantly faded +memory. “There must be a common training of the young,” said +Richover; “a frank initiation. We have not so much educated them as +hidden things from them, and set traps. And it might have been so easy—it +can all be done so easily.” +</p> + +<p> +That hangs in my memory as the refrain of that council, “It can all be +done so easily,” but when they said it then, it came to my ears with a +quality of enormous refreshment and power. It can all be done so easily, given +frankness, given courage. Time was when these platitudes had the freshness and +wonder of a gospel. +</p> + +<p> +In this enlarged outlook the war with the Germans—that mythical, heroic, +armed female, Germany, had vanished from men’s imaginations—was a +mere exhausted episode. A truce had already been arranged by Melmount, and +these ministers, after some marveling reminiscences, set aside the matter of +peace as a mere question of particular arrangements. . . . The whole scheme of +the world’s government had become fluid and provisional in their minds, +in small details as in great, the unanalyzable tangle of wards and vestries, +districts and municipalities, counties, states, boards, and nations, the +interlacing, overlapping, and conflicting authorities, the felt of little +interests and claims, in which an innumerable and insatiable multitude of +lawyers, agents, managers, bosses, organizers lived like fleas in a dirty old +coat, the web of the conflicts, jealousies, heated patchings up and jobbings +apart, of the old order—they flung it all on one side. +</p> + +<p> +“What are the new needs?” said Melmount. “This muddle is too +rotten to handle. We’re beginning again. Well, let us begin +afresh.” +</p> + +<p class="center"> +§ 3 +</p> + +<p> +“Let us begin afresh!” This piece of obvious common sense seemed +then to me instinct with courage, the noblest of words. My heart went out to +him as he spoke. It was, indeed, that day as vague as it was valiant; we did +not at all see the forms of what we were thus beginning. All that we saw was +the clear inevitableness that the old order should end. . . . +</p> + +<p> +And then in a little space of time mankind in halting but effectual brotherhood +was moving out to make its world anew. Those early years, those first and +second decades of the new epoch, were in their daily detail a time of rejoicing +toil; one saw chiefly one’s own share in that, and little of the whole. +It is only now that I look back at it all from these ripe years, from this high +tower, that I see the dramatic sequence of its changes, see the cruel old +confusions of the ancient time become clarified, simplified, and dissolve and +vanish away. Where is that old world now? Where is London, that somber city of +smoke and drifting darkness, full of the deep roar and haunting music of +disorder, with its oily, shining, mud-rimmed, barge-crowded river, its black +pinnacles and blackened dome, its sad wildernesses of smut-grayed houses, its +myriads of draggled prostitutes, its millions of hurrying clerks? The very +leaves upon its trees were foul with greasy black defilements. Where is +lime-white Paris, with its green and disciplined foliage, its hard unflinching +tastefulness, its smartly organized viciousness, and the myriads of workers, +noisily shod, streaming over the bridges in the gray cold light of dawn. Where +is New York, the high city of clangor and infuriated energy, wind swept and +competition swept, its huge buildings jostling one another and straining ever +upward for a place in the sky, the fallen pitilessly overshadowed. Where are +its lurking corners of heavy and costly luxury, the shameful bludgeoning +bribing vice of its ill ruled underways, and all the gaunt extravagant ugliness +of its strenuous life? And where now is Philadelphia, with its innumerable +small and isolated homes, and Chicago with its interminable blood-stained +stockyards, its polyglot underworld of furious discontent. +</p> + +<p> +All these vast cities have given way and gone, even as my native Potteries and +the Black Country have gone, and the lives that were caught, crippled, starved, +and maimed amidst their labyrinths, their forgotten and neglected +maladjustments, and their vast, inhuman, ill-conceived industrial machinery +have escaped—to life. Those cities of growth and accident are altogether +gone, never a chimney smokes about our world to-day, and the sound of the +weeping of children who toiled and hungered, the dull despair of overburdened +women, the noise of brute quarrels in alleys, all shameful pleasures and all +the ugly grossness of wealthy pride have gone with them, with the utter change +in our lives. As I look back into the past I see a vast exultant dust of +house-breaking and removal rise up into the clear air that followed the hour of +the green vapors, I live again the Year of Tents, the Year of Scaffolding, and +like the triumph of a new theme in a piece of music—the great cities of +our new days arise. Come Caerlyon and Armedon, the twin cities of lower +England, with the winding summer city of the Thames between, and I see the +gaunt dirt of old Edinburgh die to rise again white and tall beneath the shadow +of her ancient hill; and Dublin too, reshaped, returning enriched, fair, +spacious, the city of rich laughter and warm hearts, gleaming gaily in a shaft +of sunlight through the soft warm rain. I see the great cities America has +planned and made; the Golden City, with ever-ripening fruit along its broad +warm ways, and the bell-glad City of a Thousand Spires. I see again as I have +seen, the city of theaters and meeting-places, the City of the Sunlight Bight, +and the new city that is still called Utah; and dominated by its observatory +dome and the plain and dignified lines of the university façade upon the cliff, +Martenābar the great white winter city of the upland snows. And the lesser +places, too, the townships, the quiet resting-places, villages half forest with +a brawl of streams down their streets, villages laced with avenues of cedar, +villages of garden, of roses and wonderful flowers and the perpetual humming of +bees. And through all the world go our children, our sons the old world would +have made into servile clerks and shopmen, plough drudges and servants; our +daughters who were erst anaemic drudges, prostitutes, sluts, anxiety-racked +mothers or sere, repining failures; they go about this world glad and brave, +learning, living, doing, happy and rejoicing, brave and free. I think of them +wandering in the clear quiet of the ruins of Rome, among the tombs of Egypt or +the temples of Athens, of their coming to Mainington and its strange happiness, +to Orba and the wonder of its white and slender tower. . . . But who can tell +of the fullness and pleasure of life, who can number all our new cities in the +world?—cities made by the loving hands of men for living men, cities men +weep to enter, so fair they are, so gracious and so kind. . . . +</p> + +<p> +Some vision surely of these things must have been vouchsafed me as I sat there +behind Melmount’s couch, but now my knowledge of accomplished things has +mingled with and effaced my expectations. Something indeed I must have +foreseen—or else why was my heart so glad? +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="part04"></a>BOOK THE THIRD<br /> +THE NEW WORLD</h2> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap09"></a>CHAPTER THE FIRST<br /> +LOVE AFTER THE CHANGE</h2> + +<p class="center"> +§ 1 +</p> + +<p> +So far I have said nothing of Nettie. I have departed widely from my individual +story. I have tried to give you the effect of the change in relation to the +general framework of human life, its effect of swift, magnificent dawn, of an +overpowering letting in and inundation of light, and the spirit of living. In +my memory all my life before the Change has the quality of a dark passage, with +the dimmest side gleams of beauty that come and go. The rest is dull pain and +darkness. Then suddenly the walls, the bitter confines, are smitten and vanish, +and I walk, blinded, perplexed, and yet rejoicing, in this sweet, beautiful +world, in its fair incessant variety, its satisfaction, its opportunities, +exultant in this glorious gift of life. Had I the power of music I would make a +world-wide <i>motif</i> swell and amplify, gather to itself this theme and +that, and rise at last to sheer ecstasy of triumph and rejoicing. It should be +all sound, all pride, all the hope of outsetting in the morning brightness, all +the glee of unexpected happenings, all the gladness of painful effort suddenly +come to its reward; it should be like blossoms new opened and the happy play of +children, like tearful, happy mothers holding their first-born, like cities +building to the sound of music, and great ships, all hung with flags and wine +bespattered, gliding down through cheering multitudes to their first meeting +with the sea. Through it all should march Hope, confident Hope, radiant and +invincible, until at last it would be the triumph march of Hope the conqueror, +coming with trumpetings and banners through the wide-flung gates of the world. +</p> + +<p> +And then out of that luminous haze of gladness comes Nettie, transfigured. +</p> + +<p> +So she came again to me—amazing, a thing incredibly forgotten. +</p> + +<p> +She comes back, and Verrall is in her company. She comes back into my memories +now, just as she came back then, rather quaintly at first—at first not +seen very clearly, a little distorted by intervening things, seen with a doubt, +as I saw her through the slightly discolored panes of crinkled glass in the +window of the Menton post-office and grocer’s shop. It was on the second +day after the Change, and I had been sending telegrams for Melmount, who was +making arrangements for his departure for Downing Street. I saw the two of them +at first as small, flawed figures. The glass made them seem curved, and it +enhanced and altered their gestures and paces. I felt it became me to say +“Peace” to them, and I went out, to the jangling of the door-bell. +At the sight of me they stopped short, and Verrall cried with the note of one +who has sought, “Here he is!” And Nettie cried, +“Willie!” +</p> + +<p> +I went toward them, and all the perspectives of my reconstructed universe +altered as I did so. +</p> + +<p> +I seemed to see these two for the first time; how fine they were, how graceful +and human. It was as though I had never really looked at them before, and, +indeed, always before I had beheld them through a mist of selfish passion. They +had shared the universal darkness and dwarfing of the former time; they shared +the universal exaltation of the new. Now suddenly Nettie, and the love of +Nettie, a great passion for Nettie, lived again in me. This change which had +enlarged men’s hearts had made no end to love. Indeed, it had enormously +enlarged and glorified love. She stepped into the center of that dream of world +reconstruction that filled my mind and took possession of it all. A little wisp +of hair had blown across her cheek, her lips fell apart in that sweet smile of +hers; her eyes were full of wonder, of a welcoming scrutiny, of an infinitely +courageous friendliness. +</p> + +<p> +I took her outstretched hand, and wonder overwhelmed me. “I wanted to +kill you,” I said simply, trying to grasp that idea. It seemed now like +stabbing the stars, or murdering the sunlight. +</p> + +<p> +“Afterward we looked for you,” said Verrall; “and we could +not find you. . . . We heard another shot.” +</p> + +<p> +I turned my eyes to him, and Nettie’s hand fell from me. It was then I +thought of how they had fallen together, and what it must have been to have +awakened in that dawn with Nettie by one’s side. I had a vision of them +as I had glimpsed them last amidst the thickening vapors, close together, hand +in hand. The green hawks of the Change spread their darkling wings above their +last stumbling paces. So they fell. And awoke—lovers together in a +morning of Paradise. Who can tell how bright the sunshine was to them, how fair +the flowers, how sweet the singing of the birds? . . . +</p> + +<p> +This was the thought of my heart. But my lips were saying, “When I awoke +I threw my pistol away.” Sheer blankness kept my thoughts silent for a +little while; I said empty things. “I am very glad I did not kill +you—that you are here, so fair and well. . . .” +</p> + +<p> +“I am going away back to Clayton on the day after to-morrow,” I +said, breaking away to explanations. “I have been writing shorthand here +for Melmount, but that is almost over now. . . .” +</p> + +<p> +Neither of them said a word, and though all facts had suddenly ceased to matter +anything, I went on informatively, “He is to be taken to Downing Street +where there is a proper staff, so that there will be no need of me. . . . Of +course, you’re a little perplexed at my being with Melmount. You see I +met him—by accident—directly I recovered. I found him with a broken +ankle—in that lane. . . . I am to go now to the Four Towns to help +prepare a report. So that I am glad to see you both again”—I found +a catch in my voice—“to say good-bye to you, and wish you +well.” +</p> + +<p> +This was after the quality of what had come into my mind when first I saw them +through the grocer’s window, but it was not what I felt and thought as I +said it. I went on saying it because otherwise there would have been a gap. It +had come to me that it was going to be hard to part from Nettie. My words +sounded with an effect of unreality. I stopped, and we stood for a moment in +silence looking at one another. +</p> + +<p> +It was I, I think, who was discovering most. I was realizing for the first time +how little the Change had altered in my essential nature. I had forgotten this +business of love for a time in a world of wonder. That was all. Nothing was +lost from my nature, nothing had gone, only the power of thought and restraint +had been wonderfully increased and new interests had been forced upon me. The +Green Vapors had passed, our minds were swept and garnished, but we were +ourselves still, though living in a new and finer air. My affinities were +unchanged; Nettie’s personal charm for me was only quickened by the +enhancement of my perceptions. In her presence, meeting her eyes, instantly my +desire, no longer frantic but sane, was awake again. +</p> + +<p> +It was just like going to Checkshill in the old time, after writing about +socialism. . . . +</p> + +<p> +I relinquished her hand. It was absurd to part in these terms. +</p> + +<p> +So we all felt it. We hung awkwardly over our sense of that. It was Verrall, I +think, who shaped the thought for me, and said that to-morrow then we must meet +and say good-bye, and so turned our encounter into a transitory making of +arrangements. We settled we would come to the inn at Menton, all three of us, +and take our midday meal together. . . . +</p> + +<p> +Yes, it was clear that was all we had to say now. . . . +</p> + +<p> +We parted a little awkwardly. I went on down the village street, not looking +back, surprised at myself, and infinitely perplexed. It was as if I had +discovered something overlooked that disarranged all my plans, something +entirely disconcerting. For the first time I went back preoccupied and without +eagerness to Melmount’s work. I wanted to go on thinking about Nettie; my +mind had suddenly become voluminously productive concerning her and Verrall. +</p> + +<p class="center"> +§ 2 +</p> + +<p> +The talk we three had together in the dawn of the new time is very strongly +impressed upon my memory. There was something fresh and simple about it, +something young and flushed and exalted. We took up, we handled with a certain +naive timidity, the most difficult questions the Change had raised for men to +solve. I recall we made little of them. All the old scheme of human life had +dissolved and passed away, the narrow competitiveness, the greed and base +aggression, the jealous aloofness of soul from soul. Where had it left us? That +was what we and a thousand million others were discussing. . . . +</p> + +<p> +It chances that this last meeting with Nettie is inseparably associated—I +don’t know why—with the landlady of the Menton inn. +</p> + +<p> +The Menton inn was one of the rare pleasant corners of the old order; it was an +inn of an unusual prosperity, much frequented by visitors from Shaphambury, and +given to the serving of lunches and teas. It had a broad mossy bowling-green, +and round about it were creeper-covered arbors amidst beds of snap-dragon, and +hollyhock, and blue delphinium, and many such tall familiar summer flowers. +These stood out against a background of laurels and holly, and above these +again rose the gables of the inn and its signpost—a white-horsed George +slaying the dragon—against copper beeches under the sky. +</p> + +<p> +While I waited for Nettie and Verrall in this agreeable trysting place, I +talked to the landlady—a broad-shouldered, smiling, freckled +woman—about the morning of the Change. That motherly, abundant, +red-haired figure of health was buoyantly sure that everything in the world was +now to be changed for the better. That confidence, and something in her voice, +made me love her as I talked to her. “Now we’re awake,” she +said, “all sorts of things will be put right that hadn’t any sense +in them. Why? Oh! I’m sure of it.” +</p> + +<p> +Her kind blue eyes met mine in an infinitude of friendliness. Her lips in her +pauses shaped in a pretty faint smile. +</p> + +<p> +Old tradition was strong in us; all English inns in those days charged the +unexpected, and I asked what our lunch was to cost. +</p> + +<p> +“Pay or not,” she said, “and what you like. It’s +holiday these days. I suppose we’ll still have paying and charging, +however we manage it, but it won’t be the worry it has been—that I +feel sure. It’s the part I never had no fancy for. Many a time I peeped +through the bushes worrying to think what was just and right to me and mine, +and what would send ‘em away satisfied. It isn’t the money I care +for. There’ll be mighty changes, be sure of that; but here I’ll +stay, and make people happy—them that go by on the roads. It’s a +pleasant place here when people are merry; it’s only when they’re +jealous, or mean, or tired, or eat up beyond any stomach’s digesting, or +when they got the drink in ‘em that Satan comes into this garden. +Many’s the happy face I’ve seen here, and many that come again like +friends, but nothing to equal what’s going to be, now things are being +set right.” +</p> + +<p> +She smiled, that bounteous woman, with the joy of life and hope. “You +shall have an omelet,” she said, “you and your friends; such an +omelet—like they’ll have ‘em in heaven! I feel there’s +cooking in me these days like I’ve never cooked before. I’m +rejoiced to have it to do. . . .” +</p> + +<p> +It was just then that Nettie and Verrall appeared under a rustic archway of +crimson roses that led out from the inn. Nettie wore white and a sun-hat, and +Verrall was a figure of gray. “Here are my friends,” I said; but +for all the magic of the Change, something passed athwart the sunlight in my +soul like the passing of the shadow of a cloud. “A pretty couple,” +said the landlady, as they crossed the velvet green toward us. . . . +</p> + +<p> +They were indeed a pretty couple, but that did not greatly gladden me. +No—I winced a little at that. +</p> + +<p class="center"> +§ 3 +</p> + +<p> +This old newspaper, this first reissue of the <i>New Paper</i>, desiccated last +relic of a vanished age, is like the little piece of identification the +superstitious of the old days—those queer religionists who brought a +certain black-clad Mrs. Piper to the help of Christ—used to put into the +hand of a clairvoyant. At the crisp touch of it I look across a gulf of fifty +years and see again the three of us sitting about that table in the arbor, and +I smell again the smell of the sweet-briar that filled the air about us, and +hear in our long pauses the abundant murmuring of bees among the heliotrope of +the borders. +</p> + +<p> +It is the dawn of the new time, but we bear, all three of us, the marks and +liveries of the old. +</p> + +<p> +I see myself, a dark, ill-dressed youth, with the bruise Lord Redcar gave me +still blue and yellow beneath my jaw; and young Verrall sits cornerwise to me, +better grown, better dressed, fair and quiet, two years my senior indeed, but +looking no older than I because of his light complexion; and opposite me is +Nettie, with dark eyes upon my face, graver and more beautiful than I had ever +seen her in the former time. Her dress is still that white one she had worn +when I came upon her in the park, and still about her dainty neck she wears her +string of pearls and that little coin of gold. She is so much the same, she is +so changed; a girl then and now a woman—and all my agony and all the +marvel of the Change between! Over the end of the green table about which we +sit, a spotless cloth is spread, it bears a pleasant lunch spread out with a +simple equipage. Behind me is the liberal sunshine of the green and various +garden. I see it all. Again I sit there, eating awkwardly, this paper lies upon +the table and Verrall talks of the Change. +</p> + +<p> +“You can’t imagine,” he says in his sure, fine accents, +“how much the Change has destroyed of me. I still don’t feel awake. +Men of my sort are so tremendously <i>made;</i> I never suspected it +before.” +</p> + +<p> +He leans over the table toward me with an evident desire to make himself +perfectly understood. “I find myself like some creature that is taken out +of its shell—soft and new. I was trained to dress in a certain way, to +behave in a certain way, to think in a certain way; I see now it’s all +wrong and narrow—most of it anyhow—a system of class shibboleths. +We were decent to each other in order to be a gang to the rest of the world. +Gentlemen indeed! But it’s perplexing———” +</p> + +<p> +I can hear his voice saying that now, and see the lift of his eyebrows and his +pleasant smile. +</p> + +<p> +He paused. He had wanted to say that, but it was not the thing we had to say. +</p> + +<p> +I leant forward a little and took hold of my glass very tightly. “You +two,” I said, “will marry?” +</p> + +<p> +They looked at one another. +</p> + +<p> +Nettie spoke very softly. “I did not mean to marry when I came +away,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“I know,” I answered. I looked up with a sense of effort and met +Verrall’s eyes. +</p> + +<p> +He answered me. “I think we two have joined our lives. . . . But the +thing that took us was a sort of madness.” +</p> + +<p> +I nodded. “All passion,” I said, “is madness.” Then I +fell into a doubting of those words. +</p> + +<p> +“Why did we do these things?” he said, turning to her suddenly. +</p> + +<p> +Her hands were clasped under her chin, her eyes downcast. +</p> + +<p> +“We <i>had</i> to,” she said, with her old trick of inadequate +expression. +</p> + +<p> +Then she seemed to open out suddenly. +</p> + +<p> +“Willie,” she cried with a sudden directness, with her eyes +appealing to me, “I didn’t mean to treat you badly—indeed I +didn’t. I kept thinking of you—and of father and mother, all the +time. Only it didn’t seem to move me. It didn’t move me not one bit +from the way I had chosen.” +</p> + +<p> +“Chosen!” I said. +</p> + +<p> +“Something seemed to have hold of me,” she admitted. +“It’s all so unaccountable. . . .” +</p> + +<p> +She gave a little gesture of despair. +</p> + +<p> +Verrall’s fingers played on the cloth for a space. Then he turned his +face to me again. +</p> + +<p> +“Something said ‘Take her.’ Everything. It was a raging +desire—for her. I don’t know. Everything contributed to +that—or counted for nothing. You———” +</p> + +<p> +“Go on,” said I. +</p> + +<p> +“When I knew of you———” +</p> + +<p> +I looked at Nettie. “You never told him about me?” I said, feeling, +as it were, a sting out of the old time. +</p> + +<p> +Verrall answered for her. “No. But things dropped; I saw you that night, +my instincts were all awake. I knew it was you.” +</p> + +<p> +“You triumphed over me? . . . If I could I would have triumphed over +you,” I said. “But go on!” +</p> + +<p> +“Everything conspired to make it the finest thing in life. It had an air +of generous recklessness. It meant mischief, it might mean failure in that life +of politics and affairs, for which I was trained, which it was my honor to +follow. That made it all the finer. It meant ruin or misery for Nettie. That +made it all the finer. No sane or decent man would have approved of what we +did. That made it more splendid than ever. I had all the advantages of position +and used them basely. That mattered not at all.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” I said; “it is true. And the same dark wave that +lifted you, swept me on to follow. With that revolver—and blubbering with +hate. And the word to you, Nettie, what was it? ‘Give?’ Hurl +yourself down the steep?” +</p> + +<p> +Nettie’s hands fell upon the table. “I can’t tell what it +was,” she said, speaking bare-hearted straight to me. “Girls +aren’t trained as men are trained to look into their minds. I can’t +see it yet. All sorts of mean little motives were there—over and above +the ‘must.’ Mean motives. I kept thinking of his clothes.” +She smiled—a flash of brightness at Verrall. “I kept thinking of +being like a lady and sitting in an hotel—with men like butlers waiting. +It’s the dreadful truth, Willie. Things as mean as that! Things meaner +than that!” +</p> + +<p> +I can see her now pleading with me, speaking with a frankness as bright and +amazing as the dawn of the first great morning. +</p> + +<p> +“It wasn’t all mean,” I said slowly, after a pause. +</p> + +<p> +“No!” They spoke together. +</p> + +<p> +“But a woman chooses more than a man does,” Nettie added. “I +saw it all in little bright pictures. Do you know—that +jacket—there’s something——— You won’t mind +my telling you? But you won’t now!” +</p> + +<p> +I nodded, “No.” +</p> + +<p> +She spoke as if she spoke to my soul, very quietly and very earnestly, seeking +to give the truth. “Something cottony in that cloth of yours,” she +said. “I know there’s something horrible in being swung round by +things like that, but they did swing me round. In the old time—to have +confessed that! And I hated Clayton—and the grime of it. That kitchen! +Your mother’s dreadful kitchen! And besides, Willie, I was afraid of you. +I didn’t understand you and I did him. It’s different now—but +then I knew what he meant. And there was his voice.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” I said to Verrall, making these discoveries quietly, +“yes, Verrall, you have a good voice. Queer I never thought of that +before!” +</p> + +<p> +We sat silently for a time before our vivisected passions. +</p> + +<p> +“Gods!” I cried, “and there was our poor little top-hamper of +intelligence on all these waves of instinct and wordless desire, these foaming +things of touch and sight and feeling, like—like a coop of hens washed +overboard and clucking amidst the seas.” +</p> + +<p> +Verrall laughed approval of the image I had struck out. “A week +ago,” he said, trying it further, “we were clinging to our chicken +coops and going with the heave and pour. That was true enough a week ago. But +to-day———?” +</p> + +<p> +“To-day,” I said, “the wind has fallen. The world storm is +over. And each chicken coop has changed by a miracle to a vessel that makes +head against the sea.” +</p> + +<p class="center"> +§ 4 +</p> + +<p> +“What are we to do?” asked Verrall. +</p> + +<p> +Nettie drew a deep crimson carnation from the bowl before us, and began very +neatly and deliberately to turn down the sepals of its calyx and remove, one by +one, its petals. I remember that went on through all our talk. She put those +ragged crimson shreds in a long row and adjusted them and readjusted them. When +at last I was alone with these vestiges the pattern was still incomplete. +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” said I, “the matter seems fairly simple. You +two”—I swallowed it—“love one another.” +</p> + +<p> +I paused. They answered me by silence, by a thoughtful silence. +</p> + +<p> +“You belong to each other. I have thought it over and looked at it from +many points of view. I happened to want—impossible things. . . . I +behaved badly. I had no right to pursue you.” I turned to Verrall. +“You hold yourself bound to her?” +</p> + +<p> +He nodded assent. +</p> + +<p> +“No social influence, no fading out of all this generous clearness in the +air—for that might happen—will change you back . . . ?” +</p> + +<p> +He answered me with honest eyes meeting mine, “No, Leadford, no!” +</p> + +<p> +“I did not know you,” I said. “I thought of you as something +very different from this.” +</p> + +<p> +“I was,” he interpolated. +</p> + +<p> +“Now,” I said, “it is all changed.” +</p> + +<p> +Then I halted—for my thread had slipped away from me. +</p> + +<p> +“As for me,” I went on, and glanced at Nettie’s downcast +face, and then sat forward with my eyes upon the flowers between us, +“since I am swayed and shall be swayed by an affection for Nettie, since +that affection is rich with the seeds of desire, since to see her yours and +wholly yours is not to be endured by me—I must turn about and go from +you; you must avoid me and I you. . . . We must divide the world like Jacob and +Esau. . . . I must direct myself with all the will I have to other things. +After all—this passion is not life! It is perhaps for brutes and savages, +but for men. No! We must part and I must forget. What else is there but +that?” +</p> + +<p> +I did not look up, I sat very tense with the red petals printing an indelible +memory in my brain, but I felt the assent of Verrall’s pose. There were +some moments of silence. Then Nettie spoke. +“But———” she said, and ceased. +</p> + +<p> +I waited for a little while. I sighed and leant back in my chair. “It is +perfectly simple,” I smiled, “now that we have cool heads.” +</p> + +<p> +“But IS it simple?” asked Nettie, and slashed my discourse out of +being. +</p> + +<p> +I looked up and found her with her eyes on Verrall. “You see,” she +said, “I like Willie. It’s hard to say what one feels—but I +don’t want him to go away like that.” +</p> + +<p> +“But then,” objected Verrall, +“how———?” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said Nettie, and swept her half-arranged carnation petals +back into a heap of confusion. She began to arrange them very quickly into one +long straight line. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s so difficult——— I’ve never before in +all my life tried to get to the bottom of my mind. For one thing, I’ve +not treated Willie properly. He—he counted on me. I know he did. I was +his hope. I was a promised delight—something, something to crown +life—better than anything he had ever had. And a secret pride. . . . He +lived upon me. I knew—when we two began to meet together, you and +I——— It was a sort of treachery to +him———” +</p> + +<p> +“Treachery!” I said. “You were only feeling your way through +all these perplexities.” +</p> + +<p> +“You thought it treachery.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t now.” +</p> + +<p> +“I did. In a sense I think so still. For you had need of me.” +</p> + +<p> +I made a slight protest at this doctrine and fell thinking. +</p> + +<p> +“And even when he was trying to kill us,” she said to her lover, +“I felt for him down in the bottom of my mind. I can understand all the +horrible things, the humiliation—the humiliation! he went through.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” I said, “but I don’t +see———” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>I</i> don’t see. I’m only trying to see. But you know, +Willie, you are a part of my life. I have known you longer than I have known +Edward. I know you better. Indeed I know you with all my heart. You think all +your talk was thrown away upon me, that I never understood that side of you, or +your ambitions or anything. I did. More than I thought at the time. +Now—now it is all clear to me. What I had to understand in you was +something deeper than Edward brought me. I have it now. . . . You are a part of +my life, and I don’t want to cut all that off from me now I have +comprehended it, and throw it away.” +</p> + +<p> +“But you love Verrall.” +</p> + +<p> +“Love is such a queer thing! . . . Is there one love? I mean, only one +love?” She turned to Verrall. “I know I love you. I can speak out +about that now. Before this morning I couldn’t have done. It’s just +as though my mind had got out of a scented prison. But what is it, this love +for you? It’s a mass of fancies—things about you—ways you +look, ways you have. It’s the senses—and the senses of certain +beauties. Flattery too, things you said, hopes and deceptions for myself. And +all that had rolled up together and taken to itself the wild help of those deep +emotions that slumbered in my body; it seemed everything. But it wasn’t. +How can I describe it? It was like having a very bright lamp with a thick +shade—everything else in the room was hidden. But you take the shade off +and there they are—it is the same light—still there! Only it lights +every one!” +</p> + +<p> +Her voice ceased. For awhile no one spoke, and Nettie, with a quick movement, +swept the petals into the shape of a pyramid. +</p> + +<p> +Figures of speech always distract me, and it ran through my mind like some +puzzling refrain, “It is still the same light. . . .” +</p> + +<p> +“No woman believes these things,” she asserted abruptly. +</p> + +<p> +“What things?” +</p> + +<p> +“No woman ever has believed them.” +</p> + +<p> +“You have to choose a man,” said Verrall, apprehending her before I +did. +</p> + +<p> +“We’re brought up to that. We’re told—it’s in +books, in stories, in the way people look, in the way they behave—one day +there will come a man. He will be everything, no one else will be anything. +Leave everything else; live in him.” +</p> + +<p> +“And a man, too, is taught that of some woman,” said Verrall. +</p> + +<p> +“Only men don’t believe it! They have more obstinate minds. . . . +Men have never behaved as though they believed it. One need not be old to know +that. By nature they don’t believe it. But a woman believes nothing by +nature. She goes into a mold hiding her secret thoughts almost from +herself.” +</p> + +<p> +“She used to,” I said. +</p> + +<p> +“You haven’t,” said Verrall, “anyhow.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve come out. It’s this comet. And Willie. And because I +never really believed in the mold at all—even if I thought I did. +It’s stupid to send Willie off—shamed, cast out, never to see him +again—when I like him as much as I do. It is cruel, it is wicked and +ugly, to prance over him as if he was a defeated enemy, and pretend I’m +going to be happy just the same. There’s no sense in a rule of life that +prescribes that. It’s selfish. It’s brutish. It’s like +something that has no sense. I———” there was a sob in +her voice: “Willie! I <i>won’t</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +I sat lowering, I mused with my eyes upon her quick fingers. +</p> + +<p> +“It IS brutish,” I said at last, with a careful unemotional +deliberation. “Nevertheless—it is in the nature of things. . . . +No! . . . You see, after all, we are still half brutes, Nettie. And men, as you +say, are more obstinate than women. The comet hasn’t altered that; +it’s only made it clearer. We have come into being through a tumult of +blind forces. . . . I come back to what I said just now; we have found our poor +reasonable minds, our wills to live well, ourselves, adrift on a wash of +instincts, passions, instinctive prejudices, half animal stupidities. . . . +Here we are like people clinging to something—like people +awakening—upon a raft.” +</p> + +<p> +“We come back at last to my question,” said Verrall, softly; +“what are we to do?” +</p> + +<p> +“Part,” I said. “You see, Nettie, these bodies of ours are +not the bodies of angels. They are the same bodies——— I have +read somewhere that in our bodies you can find evidence of the lowliest +ancestry; that about our inward ears—I think it is—and about our +teeth, there remains still something of the fish, that there are bones that +recall little—what is it?—marsupial forebears—and a hundred +traces of the ape. Even your beautiful body, Nettie, carries this taint. No! +Hear me out.” I leant forward earnestly. “Our emotions, our +passions, our desires, the substance of them, like the substance of our bodies, +is an animal, a competing thing, as well as a desiring thing. You speak to us +now a mind to minds—one can do that when one has had exercise and when +one has eaten, when one is not doing anything—but when one turns to live, +one turns again to matter.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Nettie, slowly following me, “but you control +it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Only through a measure of obedience. There is no magic in the +business—to conquer matter, we must divide the enemy, and take matter as +an ally. Nowadays it is indeed true, by faith a man can remove mountains; he +can say to a mountain, Be thou removed and be thou cast into the sea; but he +does it because he helps and trusts his brother men, because he has the wit and +patience and courage to win over to his side iron, steel, obedience, dynamite, +cranes, trucks, the money of other people. . . . To conquer my desire for you, +I must not perpetually thwart it by your presence; I must go away so that I may +not see you, I must take up other interests, thrust myself into struggles and +discussions———” +</p> + +<p> +“And forget?” said Nettie. +</p> + +<p> +“Not forget,” I said; “but anyhow—cease to brood upon +you.” +</p> + +<p> +She hung on that for some moments. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” she said, demolished her last pattern and looked up at +Verrall as he stirred. +</p> + +<p> +Verrall leant forward on the table, elbows upon it, and the fingers of his two +hands intertwined. +</p> + +<p> +“You know,” he said, “I haven’t thought much of these +things. At school and the university, one doesn’t. . . . It was part of +the system to prevent it. They’ll alter all that, no doubt. We +seem”—he thought—“to be skating about over questions +that one came to at last in Greek—with variorum readings—in Plato, +but which it never occurred to any one to translate out of a dead language into +living realities. . . .” He halted and answered some unspoken question +from his own mind with, “No. I think with Leadford, Nettie, that, as he +put it, it is in the nature of things for men to be exclusive. . . . Minds are +free things and go about the world, but only one man can possess a woman. You +must dismiss rivals. We are made for the struggle for existence—we +<i>are</i> the struggle for existence; the things that live are the struggle +for existence incarnate—and that works out that the men struggle for +their mates; for each woman one prevails. The others go away.” +</p> + +<p> +“Like animals,” said Nettie. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes. . . .” +</p> + +<p> +“There are many things in life,” I said, “but that is the +rough universal truth.” +</p> + +<p> +“But,” said Nettie, “you don’t struggle. That has been +altered because men have minds.” +</p> + +<p> +“You choose,” I said. +</p> + +<p> +“If I don’t choose to choose?” +</p> + +<p> +“You have chosen.” +</p> + +<p> +She gave a little impatient “Oh! Why are women always the slaves of sex? +Is this great age of Reason and Light that has come to alter nothing of that? +And men too! I think it is all—stupid. I do not believe this is the right +solution of the thing, or anything but the bad habits of the time that was. . . +Instinct! You don’t let your instincts rule you in a lot of other things. +Here am I between you. Here is Edward. I—love him because he is gay and +pleasant, and because—because I <i>like</i> him! Here is Willie—a +part of me—my first secret, my oldest friend! Why must I not have both? +Am I not a mind that you must think of me as nothing but a woman? imagine me +always as a thing to struggle for?” She paused; then she made her +distressful proposition to me. “Let us three keep together,” she +said. “Let us not part. To part is hate, Willie. Why should we not anyhow +keep friends? Meet and talk?” +</p> + +<p> +“Talk?” I said. “About this sort of thing?” +</p> + +<p> +I looked across at Verrall and met his eyes, and we studied one another. It was +the clean, straight scrutiny of honest antagonism. “No,” I decided. +“Between us, nothing of that sort can be.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ever?” said Nettie. +</p> + +<p> +“Never,” I said, convinced. +</p> + +<p> +I made an effort within myself. “We cannot tamper with the law and +customs of these things,” I said; “these passions are too close to +one’s essential self. Better surgery than a lingering disease! From +Nettie my love—asks all. A man’s love is not devotion—it is a +demand, a challenge. And besides”—and here I forced my +theme—“I have given myself now to a new mistress—and it is I, +Nettie, who am unfaithful. Behind you and above you rises the coming City of +the World, and I am in that building. Dear heart! you are only +happiness—and that———Indeed that calls! If it is only +that my life blood shall christen the foundation stones—I could almost +hope that should be my part, Nettie—I will join myself in that.” I +threw all the conviction I could into these words. . . . “No conflict of +passion.” I added a little lamely, “must distract me.” +</p> + +<p> +There was a pause. +</p> + +<p> +“Then we must part,” said Nettie, with the eyes of a woman one +strikes in the face. +</p> + +<p> +I nodded assent. . . . +</p> + +<p> +There was a little pause, and then I stood up. We stood up, all three. We +parted almost sullenly, with no more memorable words, and I was left presently +in the arbor alone. +</p> + +<p> +I do not think I watched them go. I only remember myself left there +somehow—horribly empty and alone. I sat down again and fell into a deep +shapeless musing. +</p> + +<p class="center"> +§ 5 +</p> + +<p> +Suddenly I looked up. Nettie had come back and stood looking down at me. +</p> + +<p> +“Since we talked I have been thinking,” she said. “Edward has +let me come to you alone. And I feel perhaps I can talk better to you +alone.” +</p> + +<p> +I said nothing and that embarrassed her. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t think we ought to part,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“No—I don’t think we ought to part,” she repeated. +</p> + +<p> +“One lives,” she said, “in different ways. I wonder if you +will understand what I am saying, Willie. It is hard to say what I feel. But I +want it said. If we are to part for ever I want it said—very plainly. +Always before I have had the woman’s instinct and the woman’s +training which makes one hide. But——— Edward is not all of +me. Think of what I am saying—Edward is not all of me. . . . I wish I +could tell you better how I see it. I am not all of myself. You, at any rate, +are a part of me and I cannot bear to leave you. And I cannot see why I should +leave you. There is a sort of blood link between us, Willie. We grew together. +We are in one another’s bones. I understand you. Now indeed I understand. +In some way I have come to an understanding at a stride. Indeed I understand +you and your dream. I want to help you. Edward—Edward has no dreams. . . +. It is dreadful to me, Willie, to think we two are to part.” +</p> + +<p> +“But we have settled that—part we must.” +</p> + +<p> +“But <i>why?</i>” +</p> + +<p> +“I love you.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, and why should I hide it Willie?—I love you. . . .” +Our eyes met. She flushed, she went on resolutely: “You are stupid. The +whole thing is stupid. I love you both.” +</p> + +<p> +I said, “You do not understand what you say. No!” +</p> + +<p> +“You mean that I must go.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, yes. Go!” +</p> + +<p> +For a moment we looked at one another, mute, as though deep down in the +unfathomable darkness below the surface and present reality of things dumb +meanings strove to be. She made to speak and desisted. +</p> + +<p> +“But <i>must</i> I go?” she said at last, with quivering lips, and +the tears in her eyes were stars. Then she began, +“Willie———” +</p> + +<p> +“Go!” I interrupted her. . . . “Yes.” +</p> + +<p> +Then again we were still. +</p> + +<p> +She stood there, a tearful figure of pity, longing for me, pitying me. +Something of that wider love, that will carry our descendants at last out of +all the limits, the hard, clear obligations of our personal life, moved us, +like the first breath of a coming wind out of heaven that stirs and passes +away. I had an impulse to take her hand and kiss it, and then a trembling came +to me, and I knew that if I touched her, my strength would all pass from me. . +. . +</p> + +<p> +And so, standing at a distance one from the other, we parted, and Nettie went, +reluctant and looking back, with the man she had chosen, to the lot she had +chosen, out of my life—like the sunlight out of my life. . . . +</p> + +<p> +Then, you know, I suppose I folded up this newspaper and put it in my pocket. +But my memory of that meeting ends with the face of Nettie turning to go. +</p> + +<p class="center"> +§ 6 +</p> + +<p> +I remember all that very distinctly to this day. I could almost vouch for the +words I have put into our several mouths. Then comes a blank. I have a dim +memory of being back in the house near the Links and the bustle of +Melmount’s departure, of finding Parker’s energy distasteful, and +of going away down the road with a strong desire to say good-bye to Melmount +alone. +</p> + +<p> +Perhaps I was already doubting my decision to part for ever from Nettie, for I +think I had it in mind to tell him all that had been said and done. . . . +</p> + +<p> +I don’t think I had a word with him or anything but a hurried hand clasp. +I am not sure. It has gone out of my mind. But I have a very clear and certain +memory of my phase of bleak desolation as I watched his car recede and climb +and vanish over Mapleborough Hill, and that I got there my first full and +definite intimation that, after all, this great Change and my new wide aims in +life, were not to mean indiscriminate happiness for me. I had a sense of +protest, as against extreme unfairness, as I saw him go. “It is too +soon,” I said to myself, “to leave me alone.” +</p> + +<p> +I felt I had sacrificed too much, that after I had said good-bye to the hot +immediate life of passion, to Nettie and desire, to physical and personal +rivalry, to all that was most intensely myself, it was wrong to leave me alone +and sore hearted, to go on at once with these steely cold duties of the wider +life. I felt new born, and naked, and at a loss. +</p> + +<p> +“Work!” I said with an effort at the heroic, and turned about with +a sigh, and I was glad that the way I had to go would at least take me to my +mother. . . . +</p> + +<p> +But, curiously enough, I remember myself as being fairly cheerful in the town +of Birmingham that night, I recall an active and interested mood. I spent the +night in Birmingham because the train service on was disarranged, and I could +not get on. I went to listen to a band that was playing its brassy old-world +music in the public park, and I fell into conversation with a man who said he +had been a reporter upon one of their minor local papers. He was full and keen +upon all the plans of reconstruction that were now shaping over the lives of +humanity, and I know that something of that noble dream came back to me with +his words and phrases. We walked up to a place called Bourneville by moonlight, +and talked of the new social groupings that must replace the old isolated +homes, and how the people would be housed. +</p> + +<p> +This Bourneville was germane to that matter. It had been an attempt on the part +of a private firm of manufacturers to improve the housing of their workers. To +our ideas to-day it would seem the feeblest of benevolent efforts, but at the +time it was extraordinary and famous, and people came long journeys to see its +trim cottages with baths sunk under the kitchen floors (of all conceivable +places), and other brilliant inventions. No one seemed to see the danger to +liberty in that aggressive age, that might arise through making workpeople +tenants and debtors of their employer, though an Act called the Truck Act had +long ago intervened to prevent minor developments in the same direction. . . . +But I and my chance acquaintance seemed that night always to have been aware of +that possibility, and we had no doubt in our minds of the public nature of the +housing duty. Our interest lay rather in the possibility of common nurseries +and kitchens and public rooms that should economize toil and give people space +and freedom. +</p> + +<p> +It was very interesting, but still a little cheerless, and when I lay in bed +that night I thought of Nettie and the queer modifications of preference she +had made, and among other things and in a way, I prayed. I prayed that night, +let me confess it, to an image I had set up in my heart, an image that still +serves with me as a symbol for things inconceivable, to a Master Artificer, the +unseen captain of all who go about the building of the world, the making of +mankind. +</p> + +<p> +But before and after I prayed I imagined I was talking and reasoning and +meeting again with Nettie. . . . She never came into the temple of that +worshiping with me. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap10"></a>CHAPTER THE SECOND<br /> +MY MOTHER’S LAST DAYS</h2> + +<p class="center"> +§ 1 +</p> + +<p> +Next day I came home to Clayton. +</p> + +<p> +The new strange brightness of the world was all the brighter there, for the +host of dark distressful memories, of darkened childhood, toilsome youth, +embittered adolescence that wove about the place for me. It seemed to me that I +saw morning there for the first time. No chimneys smoked that day, no furnaces +were burning, the people were busy with other things. The clear strong sun, the +sparkle in the dustless air, made a strange gaiety in the narrow streets. I +passed a number of smiling people coming home from the public breakfasts that +were given in the Town Hall until better things could be arranged, and happened +on Parload among them. “You were right about that comet,” I sang +out at the sight of him; and he came toward me and clasped my hand. +</p> + +<p> +“What are people doing here?” said I. +</p> + +<p> +“They’re sending us food from outside,” he said, “and +we’re going to level all these slums—and shift into tents on to the +moors;” and he began to tell me of many things that were being arranged, +the Midland land committees had got to work with remarkable celerity and +directness of purpose, and the redistribution of population was already in its +broad outlines planned. He was working at an improvised college of engineering. +Until schemes of work were made out, almost every one was going to school again +to get as much technical training as they could against the demands of the huge +enterprise of reconstruction that was now beginning. +</p> + +<p> +He walked with me to my door, and there I met old Pettigrew coming down the +steps. He looked dusty and tired, but his eye was brighter than it used to be, +and he carried in a rather unaccustomed manner, a workman’s tool basket. +</p> + +<p> +“How’s the rheumatism, Mr. Pettigrew?” I asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Dietary,” said old Pettigrew, “can work wonders. . . +.” He looked me in the eye. “These houses,” he said, +“will have to come down, I suppose, and our notions of property must +undergo very considerable revision—in the light of reason; but meanwhile +I’ve been doing something to patch that disgraceful roof of mine! To +think that I could have dodged and evaded———” +</p> + +<p> +He raised a deprecatory hand, drew down the loose corners of his ample mouth, +and shook his old head. +</p> + +<p> +“The past is past, Mr. Pettigrew.” +</p> + +<p> +“Your poor dear mother! So good and honest a woman! So simple and kind +and forgiving! To think of it! My dear young man!”—he said it +manfully—“I’m ashamed.” +</p> + +<p> +“The whole world blushed at dawn the other day, Mr. Pettigrew,” I +said, “and did it very prettily. That’s over now. God knows, who is +<i>not</i> ashamed of all that came before last Tuesday.” +</p> + +<p> +I held out a forgiving hand, naively forgetful that in this place I was a +thief, and he took it and went his way, shaking his head and repeating he was +ashamed, but I think a little comforted. +</p> + +<p> +The door opened and my poor old mother’s face, marvelously cleaned, +appeared. “Ah, Willie, boy! <i>You</i>. You!” +</p> + +<p> +I ran up the steps to her, for I feared she might fall. +</p> + +<p> +How she clung to me in the passage, the dear woman! . . . +</p> + +<p> +But first she shut the front door. The old habit of respect for my +unaccountable temper still swayed her. “Ah deary!” she said, +“ah deary! But you were sorely tried,” and kept her face close to +my shoulder, lest she should offend me by the sight of the tears that welled +within her. +</p> + +<p> +She made a sort of gulping noise and was quiet for a while, holding me very +tightly to her heart with her worn, long hands . . . +</p> + +<p> +She thanked me presently for my telegram, and I put my arm about her and drew +her into the living room. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s all well with me, mother dear,” I said, “and the +dark times are over—are done with for ever, mother.” +</p> + +<p> +Whereupon she had courage and gave way and sobbed aloud, none chiding her. +</p> + +<p> +She had not let me know she could still weep for five grimy years. . . . +</p> + +<p class="center"> +§ 2 +</p> + +<p> +Dear heart! There remained for her but a very brief while in this world that +had been renewed. I did not know how short that time would be, but the little I +could do—perhaps after all it was not little to her—to atone for +the harshness of my days of wrath and rebellion, I did. I took care to be +constantly with her, for I perceived now her curious need of me. It was not +that we had ideas to exchange or pleasures to share, but she liked to see me at +table, to watch me working, to have me go to and fro. There was no toil for her +any more in the world, but only such light services as are easy and pleasant +for a worn and weary old woman to do, and I think she was happy even at her +end. +</p> + +<p> +She kept to her queer old eighteenth century version of religion, too, without +a change. She had worn this particular amulet so long it was a part of her. Yet +the Change was evident even in that persistence. I said to her one day, +“But do you still believe in that hell of flame, dear mother? +You—with your tender heart!” +</p> + +<p> +She vowed she did. +</p> + +<p> +Some theological intricacy made it necessary to her, but +still——— +</p> + +<p> +She looked thoughtfully at a bank of primulas before her for a time, and then +laid her tremulous hand impressively on my arm. “You know, Willie, +dear,” she said, as though she was clearing up a childish +misunderstanding of mine, “I don’t think any one will <i>go</i> +there. I never <i>did</i> think that. . . .” +</p> + +<p class="center"> +§ 3 +</p> + +<p> +That talk stands out in my memory because of that agreeable theological +decision of hers, but it was only one of a great number of talks. It used to be +pleasant in the afternoon, after the day’s work was done and before one +went on with the evening’s study—how odd it would have seemed in +the old time for a young man of the industrial class to be doing post-graduate +work in sociology, and how much a matter of course it seems now!—to walk +out into the gardens of Lowchester House, and smoke a cigarette or so and let +her talk ramblingly of the things that interested her. . . . Physically the +Great Change did not do so very much to reinvigorate her—she had lived in +that dismal underground kitchen in Clayton too long for any material +rejuvenescence—she glowed out indeed as a dying spark among the ashes +might glow under a draught of fresh air—and assuredly it hastened her +end. But those closing days were very tranquil, full of an effortless +contentment. With her, life was like a rainy, windy day that clears only to +show the sunset afterglow. The light has passed. She acquired no new habits +amid the comforts of the new life, did no new things, but only found a happier +light upon the old. +</p> + +<p> +She lived with a number of other old ladies belonging to our commune in the +upper rooms of Lowchester House. Those upper apartments were simple and ample, +fine and well done in the Georgian style, and they had been organized to give +the maximum of comfort and conveniences and to economize the need of skilled +attendance. We had taken over the various “great houses,” as they +used to be called, to make communal dining-rooms and so forth—their +kitchens were conveniently large—and pleasant places for the old people +of over sixty whose time of ease had come, and for suchlike public uses. We had +done this not only with Lord Redcar’s house, but also with Checkshill +House—where old Mrs. Verrall made a dignified and capable +hostess,—and indeed with most of the fine residences in the beautiful +wide country between the Four Towns district and the Welsh mountains. About +these great houses there had usually been good outbuildings, laundries, married +servants’ quarters, stabling, dairies, and the like, suitably masked by +trees, we turned these into homes, and to them we added first tents and wood +chalets and afterward quadrangular residential buildings. In order to be near +my mother I had two small rooms in the new collegiate buildings which our +commune was almost the first to possess, and they were very convenient for the +station of the high-speed electric railway that took me down to our daily +conferences and my secretarial and statistical work in Clayton. +</p> + +<p> +Ours had been one of the first modern communes to get in order; we were greatly +helped by the energy of Lord Redcar, who had a fine feeling for the picturesque +associations of his ancestral home—the detour that took our line through +the beeches and bracken and bluebells of the West Wood and saved the pleasant +open wildness of the park was one of his suggestions; and we had many reasons +to be proud of our surroundings. Nearly all the other communes that sprang up +all over the pleasant parkland round the industrial valley of the Four Towns, +as the workers moved out, came to us to study the architecture of the +residential squares and quadrangles with which we had replaced the back streets +between the great houses and the ecclesiastical residences about the cathedral, +and the way in which we had adapted all these buildings to our new social +needs. Some claimed to have improved on us. But they could not emulate the +rhododendron garden out beyond our shrubberies; that was a thing altogether our +own in our part of England, because of its ripeness and of the rarity of good +peat free from lime. +</p> + +<p> +These gardens had been planned under the third Lord Redcar, fifty years ago and +more; they abounded in rhododendra and azaleas, and were in places so well +sheltered and sunny that great magnolias flourished and flowered. There were +tall trees smothered in crimson and yellow climbing roses, and an endless +variety of flowering shrubs and fine conifers, and such pampas grass as no +other garden can show. And barred by the broad shadows of these, were glades +and broad spaces of emerald turf, and here and there banks of pegged roses, and +flower-beds, and banks given over some to spring bulbs, and some to primroses +and primulas and polyanthuses. My mother loved these latter banks and the +little round staring eyes of their innumerable yellow, ruddy brown, and purple +corollas, more than anything else the gardens could show, and in the spring of +the Year of Scaffolding she would go with me day after day to the seat that +showed them in the greatest multitude. +</p> + +<p> +It gave her, I think, among other agreeable impressions, a sense of gentle +opulence. In the old time she had never known what it was to have more than +enough of anything agreeable in the world at all. +</p> + +<p> +We would sit and think, or talk—there was a curious effect of complete +understanding between us whether we talked or were still. +</p> + +<p> +“Heaven,” she said to me one day, “Heaven is a garden.” +</p> + +<p> +I was moved to tease her a little. “There’s jewels, you know, walls +and gates of jewels—and singing.” +</p> + +<p> +“For such as like them,” said my mother firmly, and thought for a +while. “There’ll be things for all of us, o’ course. But for +me it couldn’t be Heaven, dear, unless it was a garden—a nice sunny +garden. . . . And feeling such as we’re fond of, are close and handy +by.” +</p> + +<p> +You of your happier generation cannot realize the wonderfulness of those early +days in the new epoch, the sense of security, the extraordinary effects of +contrast. In the morning, except in high summer, I was up before dawn, and +breakfasted upon the swift, smooth train, and perhaps saw the sunrise as I +rushed out of the little tunnel that pierced Clayton Crest, and so to work like +a man. Now that we had got all the homes and schools and all the softness of +life away from our coal and iron ore and clay, now that a thousand obstructive +“rights” and timidities had been swept aside, we could let +ourselves go, we merged this enterprise with that, cut across this or that +anciently obstructive piece of private land, joined and separated, effected +gigantic consolidations and gigantic economies, and the valley, no longer a pit +of squalid human tragedies and meanly conflicting industries, grew into a sort +of beauty of its own, a savage inhuman beauty of force and machinery and +flames. One was a Titan in that Etna. Then back one came at midday to bathe and +change in the train, and so to the leisurely gossiping lunch in the club +dining-room in Lowchester House, and the refreshment of these green and sunlit +afternoon tranquillities. +</p> + +<p> +Sometimes in her profounder moments my mother doubted whether all this last +phase of her life was not a dream. +</p> + +<p> +“A dream,” I used to say, “a dream indeed—but a dream +that is one step nearer awakening than that nightmare of the former +days.” +</p> + +<p> +She found great comfort and assurance in my altered clothes—she liked the +new fashions of dress, she alleged. It was not simply altered clothes. I did +grow two inches, broaden some inches round my chest, and increase in weight +three stones before I was twenty-three. I wore a soft brown cloth and she would +caress my sleeve and admire it greatly—she had the woman’s sense of +texture very strong in her. +</p> + +<p> +Sometimes she would muse upon the past, rubbing together her poor rough +hands—they never got softened—one over the other. She told me much +I had not heard before about my father, and her own early life. It was like +finding flat and faded flowers in a book still faintly sweet, to realize that +once my mother had been loved with passion; that my remote father had once shed +hot tears of tenderness in her arms. And she would sometimes even speak +tentatively in those narrow, old-world phrases that her lips could rob of all +their bitter narrowness, of Nettie. +</p> + +<p> +“She wasn’t worthy of you, dear,” she would say abruptly, +leaving me to guess the person she intended. +</p> + +<p> +“No man is worthy of a woman’s love,” I answered. “No +woman is worthy of a man’s. I love her, dear mother, and that you cannot +alter.” +</p> + +<p> +“There’s others,” she would muse. +</p> + +<p> +“Not for me,” I said. “No! I didn’t fire a shot that +time; I burnt my magazine. I can’t begin again, mother, not from the +beginning.” +</p> + +<p> +She sighed and said no more then. +</p> + +<p> +At another time she said—I think her words were: “You’ll be +lonely when I’m gone dear.” +</p> + +<p> +“You’ll not think of going, then,” I said. +</p> + +<p> +“Eh, dear! but man and maid should come together.” +</p> + +<p> +I said nothing to that. +</p> + +<p> +“You brood overmuch on Nettie, dear. If I could see you married to some +sweet girl of a woman, some good, <i>kind</i> girl———” +</p> + +<p> +“Dear mother, I’m married enough. Perhaps some +day——— Who knows? I can wait.” +</p> + +<p> +“But to have nothing to do with women!” +</p> + +<p> +“I have my friends. Don’t you trouble, mother. There’s +plentiful work for a man in this world though the heart of love is cast out +from him. Nettie was life and beauty for me—is—will be. Don’t +think I’ve lost too much, mother.” +</p> + +<p> +(Because in my heart I told myself the end had still to come.) +</p> + +<p> +And once she sprang a question on me suddenly that surprised me. +</p> + +<p> +“Where are they now?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Who?” +</p> + +<p> +“Nettie and—him.” +</p> + +<p> +She had pierced to the marrow of my thoughts. “I don’t know,” +I said shortly. +</p> + +<p> +Her shriveled hand just fluttered into touch of mine. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s better so,” she said, as if pleading. “Indeed . . +. it is better so.” +</p> + +<p> +There was something in her quivering old voice that for a moment took me back +across an epoch, to the protests of the former time, to those counsels of +submission, those appeals not to offend It, that had always stirred an angry +spirit of rebellion within me. +</p> + +<p> +“That is the thing I doubt,” I said, and abruptly I felt I could +talk no more to her of Nettie. I got up and walked away from her, and came back +after a while, to speak of other things, with a bunch of daffodils for her in +my hand. +</p> + +<p> +But I did not always spend my afternoons with her. There were days when my +crushed hunger for Nettie rose again, and then I had to be alone; I walked, or +bicycled, and presently I found a new interest and relief in learning to ride. +For the horse was already very swiftly reaping the benefit to the Change. +Hardly anywhere was the inhumanity of horse traction to be found after the +first year of the new epoch, everywhere lugging and dragging and straining was +done by machines, and the horse had become a beautiful instrument for the +pleasure and carriage of youth. I rode both in the saddle and, what is finer, +naked and barebacked. I found violent exercises were good for the states of +enormous melancholy that came upon me, and when at last horse riding palled, I +went and joined the aviators who practised soaring upon aeroplanes beyond +Horsemarden Hill. . . . But at least every alternate day I spent with my +mother, and altogether I think I gave her two-thirds of my afternoons. +</p> + +<p class="center"> +§ 4 +</p> + +<p> +When presently that illness, that fading weakness that made an euthanasia for +so many of the older people in the beginning of the new time, took hold upon my +mother, there came Anna Reeves to daughter her—after our new custom. She +chose to come. She was already known to us a little from chance meetings and +chance services she had done my mother in the garden; she sought to give her +help. She seemed then just one of those plainly good girls the world at its +worst has never failed to produce, who were indeed in the dark old times the +hidden antiseptic of all our hustling, hating, faithless lives. They made their +secret voiceless worship, they did their steadfast, uninspired, unthanked, +unselfish work as helpful daughters, as nurses, as faithful servants, as the +humble providences of homes. She was almost exactly three years older than I. +At first I found no beauty in her, she was short but rather sturdy and ruddy, +with red-tinged hair, and fair hairy brows and red-brown eyes. But her freckled +hands I found, were full of apt help, her voice carried good cheer. . . . +</p> + +<p> +At first she was no more than a blue-clad, white-aproned benevolence, that +moved in the shadows behind the bed on which my old mother lay and sank +restfully to death. She would come forward to anticipate some little need, to +proffer some simple comfort, and always then my mother smiled on her. In a +little while I discovered the beauty of that helpful poise of her woman’s +body, I discovered the grace of untiring goodness, the sweetness of a tender +pity, and the great riches of her voice, of her few reassuring words and +phrases. I noted and remembered very clearly how once my mother’s lean +old hand patted the firm gold-flecked strength of hers, as it went by upon its +duties with the coverlet. +</p> + +<p> +“She is a good girl to me,” said my mother one day. “A good +girl. Like a daughter should be. . . . I never had a +daughter—really.” She mused peacefully for a space. “Your +little sister died,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +I had never heard of that little sister. +</p> + +<p> +“November the tenth,” said my mother. “Twenty-nine months and +three days. . . . I cried. I cried. That was before you came, dear. So long +ago—and I can see it now. I was a young wife then, and your father was +very kind. But I can see its hands, its dear little quiet hands. . . . Dear, +they say that now—now they will not let the little children die.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, dear mother,” I said. “We shall do better now.” +</p> + +<p> +“The club doctor could not come. Your father went twice. There was some +one else, some one who paid. So your father went on into Swathinglea, and that +man wouldn’t come unless he had his fee. And your father had changed his +clothes to look more respectful and he hadn’t any money, not even his +tram fare home. It seemed cruel to be waiting there with my baby thing in pain. +. . . And I can’t help thinking perhaps we might have saved her. . . . +But it was like that with the poor always in the bad old times—always. +When the doctor came at last he was angry. ‘Why wasn’t I called +before?’ he said, and he took no pains. He was angry because some one +hadn’t explained. I begged him—but it was too late.” +</p> + +<p> +She said these things very quietly with drooping eyelids, like one who +describes a dream. “We are going to manage all these things better +now,” I said, feeling a strange resentment at this pitiful little story +her faded, matter-of-fact voice was telling me. +</p> + +<p> +“She talked,” my mother went on. “She talked for her age +wonderfully. . . . Hippopotamus.” +</p> + +<p> +“Eh?” I said. +</p> + +<p> +“Hippopotamus, dear—quite plainly one day, when her father was +showing her pictures. . . And her little prayers. ‘Now I lay me. . . . +down to sleep.’ . . . I made her little socks. Knitted they was, dear, +and the heel most difficult.” +</p> + +<p> +Her eyes were closed now. She spoke no longer to me but to herself. She +whispered other vague things, little sentences, ghosts of long dead moments. . +. . Her words grew less distinct. +</p> + +<p> +Presently she was asleep and I got up and went out of the room, but my mind was +queerly obsessed by the thought of that little life that had been glad and +hopeful only to pass so inexplicably out of hope again into nonentity, this +sister of whom I had never heard before. . . . +</p> + +<p> +And presently I was in a black rage at all the irrecoverable sorrows of the +past, of that great ocean of avoidable suffering of which this was but one +luminous and quivering red drop. I walked in the garden and the garden was too +small for me; I went out to wander on the moors. “The past is +past,” I cried, and all the while across the gulf of five and twenty +years I could hear my poor mother’s heart-wrung weeping for that daughter +baby who had suffered and died. Indeed that old spirit of rebellion has not +altogether died in me, for all the transformation of the new time. . . . I +quieted down at last to a thin and austere comfort in thinking that the whole +is not told to us, that it cannot perhaps be told to such minds as ours; and +anyhow, and what was far more sustaining, that now we have strength and courage +and this new gift of wise love, whatever cruel and sad things marred the past, +none of these sorrowful things that made the very warp and woof of the old +life, need now go on happening. We could foresee, we could prevent and save. +“The past is past,” I said, between sighing and resolve, as I came +into view again on my homeward way of the hundred sunset-lit windows of old +Lowchester House. “Those sorrows are sorrows no more.” +</p> + +<p> +But I could not altogether cheat that common sadness of the new time, that +memory, and insoluble riddle of the countless lives that had stumbled and +failed in pain and darkness before our air grew clear. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap11"></a>CHAPTER THE THIRD<br /> +BELTANE AND NEW YEAR’S EVE</h2> + +<p class="center"> +§ 1 +</p> + +<p> +In the end my mother died rather suddenly, and her death came as a shock to me. +Diagnosis was still very inadequate at that time. The doctors were, of course, +fully alive to the incredible defects of their common training and were doing +all they could to supply its deficiencies, but they were still extraordinarily +ignorant. Some unintelligently observed factor of her illness came into play +with her, and she became feverish and sank and died very quickly. I do not know +what remedial measures were attempted. I hardly knew what was happening until +the whole thing was over. +</p> + +<p> +At that time my attention was much engaged by the stir of the great Beltane +festival that was held on May-day in the Year of Scaffolding. It was the first +of the ten great rubbish burnings that opened the new age. Young people +nowadays can scarcely hope to imagine the enormous quantities of pure litter +and useless accumulation with which we had to deal; had we not set aside a +special day and season, the whole world would have been an incessant reek of +small fires; and it was, I think, a happy idea to revive this ancient festival +of the May and November burnings. It was inevitable that the old idea of +purification should revive with the name, it was felt to be a burning of other +than material encumbrances, innumerable quasi-spiritual things, deeds, +documents, debts, vindictive records, went up on those great flares. People +passed praying between the fires, and it was a fine symbol of the new and wiser +tolerance that had come to men, that those who still found their comfort in the +orthodox faiths came hither unpersuaded, to pray that all hate might be burnt +out of their professions. For even in the fires of Baal, now that men have done +with base hatred, one may find the living God. +</p> + +<p> +Endless were the things we had to destroy in those great purgings. First, there +were nearly all the houses and buildings of the old time. In the end we did not +save in England one building in five thousand that was standing when the comet +came. Year by year, as we made our homes afresh in accordance with the saner +needs of our new social families, we swept away more and more of those horrible +structures, the ancient residential houses, hastily built, without imagination, +without beauty, without common honesty, without even comfort or convenience, in +which the early twentieth century had sheltered until scarcely one remained; we +saved nothing but what was beautiful or interesting out of all their gaunt and +melancholy abundance. The actual houses, of course, we could not drag to our +fires, but we brought all their ill-fitting deal doors, their dreadful window +sashes, their servant-tormenting staircases, their dank, dark cupboards, the +verminous papers from their scaly walls, their dust and dirt-sodden carpets, +their ill-designed and yet pretentious tables and chairs, sideboards and chests +of drawers, the old dirt-saturated books, their ornaments—their dirty, +decayed, and altogether painful ornaments—amidst which I remember there +were sometimes even <i>stuffed dead birds!</i>—we burnt them all. The +paint-plastered woodwork, with coat above coat of nasty paint, that in +particular blazed finely. I have already tried to give you an impression of +old-world furniture, of Parload’s bedroom, my mother’s room, Mr. +Gabbitas’s sitting-room, but, thank Heaven! there is nothing in life now +to convey the peculiar dinginess of it all. For one thing, there is no more +imperfect combustion of coal going on everywhere, and no roadways like +grassless open scars along the earth from which dust pours out perpetually. We +burnt and destroyed most of our private buildings and all the woodwork, all our +furniture, except a few score thousand pieces of distinct and intentional +beauty, from which our present forms have developed, nearly all our hangings +and carpets, and also we destroyed almost every scrap of old-world clothing. +Only a few carefully disinfected types and vestiges of that remain now in our +museums. +</p> + +<p> +One writes now with a peculiar horror of the dress of the old world. The +men’s clothes were worn without any cleansing process at all, except an +occasional superficial brushing, for periods of a year or so; they were made of +dark obscurely mixed patterns to conceal the stage of defilement they had +reached, and they were of a felted and porous texture admirably calculated to +accumulate drifting matter. Many women wore skirts of similar substances, and +of so long and inconvenient a form that they inevitably trailed among all the +abomination of our horse-frequented roads. It was our boast in England that the +whole of our population was booted—their feet were for the most part ugly +enough to need it,—but it becomes now inconceivable how they could have +imprisoned their feet in the amazing cases of leather and imitations of leather +they used. I have heard it said that a large part of the physical decline that +was apparent in our people during the closing years of the nineteenth century, +though no doubt due in part to the miscellaneous badness of the food they ate, +was in the main attributable to the vileness of the common footwear. They +shirked open-air exercise altogether because their boots wore out ruinously and +pinched and hurt them if they took it. I have mentioned, I think, the part my +own boots played in the squalid drama of my adolescence. I had a sense of +unholy triumph over a fallen enemy when at last I found myself steering truck +after truck of cheap boots and shoes (unsold stock from Swathinglea) to the +run-off by the top of the Glanville blast furnaces. +</p> + +<p> +“Plup!” they would drop into the cone when Beltane came, and the +roar of their burning would fill the air. Never a cold would come from the +saturation of their brown paper soles, never a corn from their foolish shapes, +never a nail in them get home at last in suffering flesh. . . . +</p> + +<p> +Most of our public buildings we destroyed and burnt as we reshaped our plan of +habitation, our theater sheds, our banks, and inconvenient business warrens, +our factories (these in the first year of all), and all the “unmeaning +repetition” of silly little sham Gothic churches and meeting-houses, mean +looking shells of stone and mortar without love, invention, or any beauty at +all in them, that men had thrust into the face of their sweated God, even as +they thrust cheap food into the mouths of their sweated workers; all these we +also swept away in the course of that first decade. Then we had the whole of +the superseded steam-railway system to scrap and get rid of, stations, signals, +fences, rolling stock; a plant of ill-planned, smoke-distributing nuisance +apparatus, that would, under former conditions, have maintained an offensive +dwindling obstructive life for perhaps half a century. Then also there was a +great harvest of fences, notice boards, hoardings, ugly sheds, all the +corrugated iron in the world, and everything that was smeared with tar, all our +gas works and petroleum stores, all our horse vehicles and vans and lorries had +to be erased. . . . But I have said enough now perhaps to give some idea of the +bulk and quality of our great bonfires, our burnings up, our meltings down, our +toil of sheer wreckage, over and above the constructive effort, in those early +years. +</p> + +<p> +But these were the coarse material bases of the Phœnix fires of the world. +These were but the outward and visible signs of the innumerable claims, rights, +adhesions, debts, bills, deeds, and charters that were cast upon the fires; a +vast accumulation of insignia and uniforms neither curious enough nor beautiful +enough to preserve, went to swell the blaze, and all (saving a few truly +glorious trophies and memories) of our symbols, our apparatus and material of +war. Then innumerable triumphs of our old, bastard, half-commercial, fine-art +were presently condemned, great oil paintings, done to please the half-educated +middle-class, glared for a moment and were gone, Academy marbles crumbled to +useful lime, a gross multitude of silly statuettes and decorative crockery, and +hangings, and embroideries, and bad music, and musical instruments shared this +fate. And books, countless books, too, and bales of newspapers went also to +these pyres. From the private houses in Swathinglea alone—which I had +deemed, perhaps not unjustly, altogether illiterate—we gathered a whole +dust-cart full of cheap ill-printed editions of the minor English +classics—for the most part very dull stuff indeed and still +clean—and about a truckload of thumbed and dog-eared penny fiction, +watery base stuff, the dropsy of our nation’s mind. . . . And it seemed +to me that when we gathered those books and papers together, we gathered +together something more than print and paper, we gathered warped and crippled +ideas and contagious base suggestions, the formulae of dull tolerances and +stupid impatiences, the mean defensive ingenuities of sluggish habits of +thinking and timid and indolent evasions. There was more than a touch of +malignant satisfaction for me in helping gather it all together. +</p> + +<p> +I was so busy, I say, with my share in this dustman’s work that I did not +notice, as I should otherwise have done, the little indications of change in my +mother’s state. Indeed, I thought her a little stronger; she was slightly +flushed, slightly more talkative. . . . +</p> + +<p> +On Beltane Eve, and our Lowchester rummage being finished, I went along the +valley to the far end of Swathinglea to help sort the stock of the detached +group of potbanks there—their chief output had been mantel ornaments in +imitation of marble, and there was very little sorting, I found, to be +done—and there it was nurse Anna found me at last by telephone, and told +me my mother had died in the morning suddenly and very shortly after my +departure. +</p> + +<p> +For a while I did not seem to believe it; this obviously imminent event stunned +me when it came, as though I had never had an anticipatory moment. For a while +I went on working, and then almost apathetically, in a mood of half-reluctant +curiosity, I started for Lowchester. +</p> + +<p> +When I got there the last offices were over, and I was shown my old +mother’s peaceful white face, very still, but a little cold and stern to +me, a little unfamiliar, lying among white flowers. +</p> + +<p> +I went in alone to her, into that quiet room, and stood for a long time by her +bedside. I sat down then and thought. . . . +</p> + +<p> +Then at last, strangely hushed, and with the deeps of my loneliness opening +beneath me, I came out of that room and down into the world again, a +bright-eyed, active world, very noisy, happy, and busy with its last +preparations for the mighty cremation of past and superseded things. +</p> + +<p class="center"> +§ 2 +</p> + +<p> +I remember that first Beltane festival as the most terribly lonely night in my +life. It stands in my mind in fragments, fragments of intense feeling with +forgotten gaps between. +</p> + +<p> +I recall very distinctly being upon the great staircase of Lowchester House +(though I don’t remember getting there from the room in which my mother +lay), and how upon the landing I met Anna ascending as I came down. She had but +just heard of my return, and she was hurrying upstairs to me. She stopped and +so did I, and we stood and clasped hands, and she scrutinized my face in the +way women sometimes do. So we remained for a second or so. I could say nothing +to her at all, but I could feel the wave of her emotion. I halted, answered the +earnest pressure of her hand, relinquished it, and after a queer second of +hesitation went on down, returning to my own preoccupations. It did not occur +to me at all then to ask myself what she might be thinking or feeling. +</p> + +<p> +I remember the corridor full of mellow evening light, and how I went +mechanically some paces toward the dining-room. Then at the sight of the little +tables, and a gusty outburst of talking voices as some one in front of me swung +the door open and to, I remembered that I did not want to eat. . . . After that +comes an impression of myself walking across the open grass in front of the +house, and the purpose I had of getting alone upon the moors, and how somebody +passing me said something about a hat. I had come out without my hat. +</p> + +<p> +A fragment of thought has linked itself with an effect of long shadows upon +turf golden with the light of the sinking sun. The world was singularly empty, +I thought, without either Nettie or my mother. There wasn’t any sense in +it any more. Nettie was already back in my mind then. . . . +</p> + +<p> +Then I am out on the moors. I avoided the crests where the bonfires were being +piled, and sought the lonely places. . . . +</p> + +<p> +I remember very clearly sitting on a gate beyond the park, in a fold just below +the crest, that hid the Beacon Hill bonfire and its crowd, and I was looking at +and admiring the sunset. The golden earth and sky seemed like a little bubble +that floated in the globe of human futility. . . . Then in the twilight I +walked along an unknown, bat-haunted road between high hedges. +</p> + +<p> +I did not sleep under a roof that night. But I hungered and ate. I ate near +midnight at a little inn over toward Birmingham, and miles away from my home. +Instinctively I had avoided the crests where the bonfire crowds gathered, but +here there were many people, and I had to share a table with a man who had some +useless mortgage deeds to burn. I talked to him about them—but my soul +stood at a great distance behind my lips. . . . +</p> + +<p> +Soon each hilltop bore a little tulip-shaped flame flower. Little black figures +clustered round and dotted the base of its petals, and as for the rest of the +multitude abroad, the kindly night swallowed them up. By leaving the roads and +clear paths and wandering in the fields I contrived to keep alone, though the +confused noise of voices and the roaring and crackling of great fires was +always near me. +</p> + +<p> +I wandered into a lonely meadow, and presently in a hollow of deep shadows I +lay down to stare at the stars. I lay hidden in the darkness, and ever and +again the sough and uproar of the Beltane fires that were burning up the sere +follies of a vanished age, and the shouting of the people passing through the +fires and praying to be delivered from the prison of themselves, reached my +ears. . . . +</p> + +<p> +And I thought of my mother, and then of my new loneliness and the hunger of my +heart for Nettie. +</p> + +<p> +I thought of many things that night, but chiefly of the overflowing personal +love and tenderness that had come to me in the wake of the Change, of the +greater need, the unsatisfied need in which I stood, for this one person who +could fulfil all my desires. So long as my mother had lived, she had in a +measure held my heart, given me a food these emotions could live upon, and +mitigated that emptiness of spirit, but now suddenly that one possible comfort +had left me. There had been many at the season of the Change who had thought +that this great enlargement of mankind would abolish personal love; but indeed +it had only made it finer, fuller, more vitally necessary. They had thought +that, seeing men now were all full of the joyful passion to make and do, and +glad and loving and of willing service to all their fellows, there would be no +need of the one intimate trusting communion that had been the finest thing of +the former life. And indeed, so far as this was a matter of advantage and the +struggle for existence, they were right. But so far as it was a matter of the +spirit and the fine perceptions of life, it was altogether wrong. +</p> + +<p> +We had indeed not eliminated personal love, we had but stripped it of its base +wrappings, of its pride, its suspicions, its mercenary and competitive +elements, until at last it stood up in our minds stark, shining and invincible. +Through all the fine, divaricating ways of the new life, it grew ever more +evident, there were for every one certain persons, mysteriously and +indescribably in the key of one’s self, whose mere presence gave +pleasure, whose mere existence was interest, whose idiosyncrasy blended with +accident to make a completing and predominant harmony for their predestined +lovers. They were the essential thing in life. Without them the fine brave show +of the rejuvenated world was a caparisoned steed without a rider, a bowl +without a flower, a theater without a play. . . . And to me that night of +Beltane, it was as clear as white flames that Nettie, and Nettie alone, roused +those harmonies in me. And she had gone! I had sent her from me; I knew not +whither she had gone. I had in my first virtuous foolishness cut her out of my +life for ever! +</p> + +<p> +So I saw it then, and I lay unseen in the darkness and called upon Nettie, and +wept for her, lay upon my face and wept for her, while the glad people went to +and fro, and the smoke streamed thick across the distant stars, and the red +reflections, the shadows and the fluctuating glares, danced over the face of +the world. +</p> + +<p> +No! the Change had freed us from our baser passions indeed, from habitual and +mechanical concupiscence and mean issues and coarse imaginings, but from the +passions of love it had not freed us. It had but brought the lord of life, +Eros, to his own. All through the long sorrow of that night I, who had rejected +him, confessed his sway with tears and inappeasable regrets. . . . +</p> + +<p> +I cannot give the remotest guess of when I rose up, nor of my tortuous +wanderings in the valleys between the midnight fires, nor how I evaded the +laughing and rejoicing multitudes who went streaming home between three and +four, to resume their lives, swept and garnished, stripped and clean. But at +dawn, when the ashes of the world’s gladness were ceasing to +glow—it was a bleak dawn that made me shiver in my thin summer +clothes—I came across a field to a little copse full of dim blue +hyacinths. A queer sense of familiarity arrested my steps, and I stood puzzled. +Then I was moved to go a dozen paces from the path, and at once a singularly +misshapen tree hitched itself into a notch in my memory. This was the place! +Here I had stood, there I had placed my old kite, and shot with my revolver, +learning to use it, against the day when I should encounter Verrall. +</p> + +<p> +Kite and revolver had gone now, and all my hot and narrow past, its last +vestiges had shriveled and vanished in the whirling gusts of the Beltane fires. +So I walked through a world of gray ashes at last, back to the great house in +which the dead, deserted image of my dear lost mother lay. +</p> + +<p class="center"> +§ 3 +</p> + +<p> +I came back to Lowchester House very tired, very wretched; exhausted by my +fruitless longing for Nettie. I had no thought of what lay before me. +</p> + +<p> +A miserable attraction drew me into the great house to look again on the +stillness that had been my mother’s face, and as I came into that room, +Anna, who had been sitting by the open window, rose to meet me. She had the air +of one who waits. She, too, was pale with watching; all night she had watched +between the dead within and the Beltane fires abroad, and longed for my coming. +I stood mute between her and the bedside. . . . +</p> + +<p> +“Willie,” she whispered, and eyes and body seemed incarnate pity. +</p> + +<p> +An unseen presence drew us together. My mother’s face became resolute, +commanding. I turned to Anna as a child may turn to its nurse. I put my hands +about her strong shoulders, she folded me to her, and my heart gave way. I +buried my face in her breast and clung to her weakly, and burst into a passion +of weeping. . . . +</p> + +<p> +She held me with hungry arms. She whispered to me, “There, there!” +as one whispers comfort to a child. . . . Suddenly she was kissing me. She +kissed me with a hungry intensity of passion, on my cheeks, on my lips. She +kissed me on my lips with lips that were salt with tears. And I returned her +kisses. . . . +</p> + +<p> +Then abruptly we desisted and stood apart—looking at one another. +</p> + +<p class="center"> +§ 4 +</p> + +<p> +It seems to me as if the intense memory of Nettie vanished utterly out of my +mind at the touch of Anna’s lips. I loved Anna. +</p> + +<p> +We went to the council of our group—commune it was then called—and +she was given me in marriage, and within a year she had borne me a son. We saw +much of one another, and talked ourselves very close together. My faithful +friend she became and has been always, and for a time we were passionate +lovers. Always she has loved me and kept my soul full of tender gratitude and +love for her; always when we met our hands and eyes clasped in friendly +greeting, all through our lives from that hour we have been each other’s +secure help and refuge, each other’s ungrudging fastness of help and +sweetly frank and open speech. . . . And after a little while my love and +desire for Nettie returned as though it had never faded away. +</p> + +<p> +No one will have a difficulty now in understanding how that could be, but in +the evil days of the world malaria, that would have been held to be the most +impossible thing. I should have had to crush that second love out of my +thoughts, to have kept it secret from Anna, to have lied about it to all the +world. The old-world theory was there was only one love—we who float upon +a sea of love find that hard to understand. The whole nature of a man was +supposed to go out to the one girl or woman who possessed him, her whole nature +to go out to him. Nothing was left over—it was a discreditable thing to +have any overplus at all. They formed a secret secluded system of two, two and +such children as she bore him. All other women he was held bound to find no +beauty in, no sweetness, no interest; and she likewise, in no other man. The +old-time men and women went apart in couples, into defensive little houses, +like beasts into little pits, and in these “homes” they sat down +purposing to love, but really coming very soon to jealous watching of this +extravagant mutual proprietorship. All freshness passed very speedily out of +their love, out of their conversation, all pride out of their common life. To +permit each other freedom was blank dishonor. That I and Anna should love, and +after our love-journey together, go about our separate lives and dine at the +public tables, until the advent of her motherhood, would have seemed a terrible +strain upon our unmitigable loyalty. And that I should have it in me to go on +loving Nettie—who loved in different manner both Verrall and +me—would have outraged the very quintessence of the old convention. +</p> + +<p> +In the old days love was a cruel proprietary thing. But now Anna could let +Nettie live in the world of my mind, as freely as a rose will suffer the +presence of white lilies. If I could hear notes that were not in her compass, +she was glad, because she loved me, that I should listen to other music than +hers. And she, too, could see the beauty of Nettie. Life is so rich and +generous now, giving friendship, and a thousand tender interests and helps and +comforts, that no one stints another of the full realization of all +possibilities of beauty. For me from the beginning Nettie was the figure of +beauty, the shape and color of the divine principle that lights the world. For +every one there are certain types, certain faces and forms, gestures, voices +and intonations that have that inexplicable unanalyzable quality. These come +through the crowd of kindly friendly fellow-men and women—one’s +own. These touch one mysteriously, stir deeps that must otherwise slumber, +pierce and interpret the world. To refuse this interpretation is to refuse the +sun, to darken and deaden all life. . . . I loved Nettie, I loved all who were +like her, in the measure that they were like her, in voice, or eyes, or form, +or smile. And between my wife and me there was no bitterness that the great +goddess, the life-giver, Aphrodite, Queen of the living Seas, came to my +imagination so. It qualified our mutual love not at all, since now in our +changed world love is unstinted; it is a golden net about our globe that nets +all humanity together. +</p> + +<p> +I thought of Nettie much, and always movingly beautiful things restored me to +her, all fine music, all pure deep color, all tender and solemn things. The +stars were hers, and the mystery of moonlight; the sun she wore in her hair, +powdered finely, beaten into gleams and threads of sunlight in the wisps and +strands of her hair. . . . Then suddenly one day a letter came to me from her, +in her unaltered clear handwriting, but in a new language of expression, +telling me many things. She had learnt of my mother’s death, and the +thought of me had grown so strong as to pierce the silence I had imposed on +her. We wrote to one another—like common friends with a certain restraint +between us at first, and with a great longing to see her once more arising in +my heart. For a time I left that hunger unexpressed, and then I was moved to +tell it to her. And so on New Year’s Day in the Year Four, she came to +Lowchester and me. How I remember that coming, across the gulf of fifty years! +I went out across the park to meet her, so that we should meet alone. The +windless morning was clear and cold, the ground new carpeted with snow, and all +the trees motionless lace and glitter of frosty crystals. The rising sun had +touched the white with a spirit of gold, and my heart beat and sang within me. +I remember now the snowy shoulder of the down, sunlit against the bright blue +sky. And presently I saw the woman I loved coming through the white still +trees. . . . +</p> + +<p> +I had made a goddess of Nettie, and behold she was a fellow-creature! She came, +warm-wrapped and tremulous, to me, with the tender promise of tears in her +eyes, with her hands outstretched and that dear smile quivering upon her lips. +She stepped out of the dream I had made of her, a thing of needs and regrets +and human kindliness. Her hands as I took them were a little cold. The goddess +shone through her indeed, glowed in all her body, she was a worshipful temple +of love for me—yes. But I could feel, like a thing new discovered, the +texture and sinews of her living, her dear personal and mortal hands. . . . +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="part05"></a>THE EPILOGUE<br /> +THE WINDOW OF THE TOWER</h2> + +<p> +This was as much as this pleasant-looking, gray-haired man had written. I had +been lost in his story throughout the earlier portions of it, forgetful of the +writer and his gracious room, and the high tower in which he was sitting. But +gradually, as I drew near the end, the sense of strangeness returned to me. It +was more and more evident to me that this was a different humanity from any I +had known, unreal, having different customs, different beliefs, different +interpretations, different emotions. It was no mere change in conditions and +institutions the comet had wrought. It had made a change of heart and mind. In +a manner it had dehumanized the world, robbed it of its spites, its little +intense jealousies, its inconsistencies, its humor. At the end, and +particularly after the death of his mother, I felt his story had slipped away +from my sympathies altogether. Those Beltane fires had burnt something in him +that worked living still and unsubdued in me, that rebelled in particular at +that return of Nettie. I became a little inattentive. I no longer felt with +him, nor gathered a sense of complete understanding from his phrases. His Lord +Eros indeed! He and these transfigured people—they were beautiful and +noble people, like the people one sees in great pictures, like the gods of +noble sculpture, but they had no nearer fellowship than these to men. As the +change was realized, with every stage of realization the gulf widened and it +was harder to follow his words. +</p> + +<p> +I put down the last fascicle of all, and met his friendly eyes. It was hard to +dislike him. +</p> + +<p> +I felt a subtle embarrassment in putting the question that perplexed me. And +yet it seemed so material to me I had to put it. “And did +you—?” I asked. “Were you—lovers?” +</p> + +<p> +His eyebrows rose. “Of course.” +</p> + +<p> +“But your wife—?” +</p> + +<p> +It was manifest he did not understand me. +</p> + +<p> +I hesitated still more. I was perplexed by a conviction of baseness. +“But—” I began. “You remained lovers?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes.” I had grave doubts if I understood him. Or he me. +</p> + +<p> +I made a still more courageous attempt. “And had Nettie no other +lovers?” +</p> + +<p> +“A beautiful woman like that! I know not how many loved beauty in her, +nor what she found in others. But we four from that time were very close, you +understand, we were friends, helpers, personal lovers in a world of +lovers.” +</p> + +<p> +“Four?” +</p> + +<p> +“There was Verrall.” +</p> + +<p> +Then suddenly it came to me that the thoughts that stirred in my mind were +sinister and base, that the queer suspicions, the coarseness and coarse +jealousies of my old world were over and done for these more finely living +souls. “You made,” I said, trying to be liberal minded, “a +home together.” +</p> + +<p> +“A home!” He looked at me, and, I know not why, I glanced down at +my feet. What a clumsy, ill-made thing a boot is, and how hard and colorless +seemed my clothing! How harshly I stood out amidst these fine, perfected +things. I had a moment of rebellious detestation. I wanted to get out of all +this. After all, it wasn’t my style. I wanted intensely to say something +that would bring him down a peg, make sure, as it were, of my suspicions by +launching an offensive accusation. I looked up and he was standing. +</p> + +<p> +“I forgot,” he said. “You are pretending the old world is +still going on. A home!” +</p> + +<p> +He put out his hand, and quite noiselessly the great window widened down to us, +and the splendid nearer prospect of that dreamland city was before me. There +for one clear moment I saw it; its galleries and open spaces, its trees of +golden fruit and crystal waters, its music and rejoicing, love and beauty +without ceasing flowing through its varied and intricate streets. And the +nearer people I saw now directly and plainly, and no longer in the distorted +mirror that hung overhead. They really did not justify my suspicions, and +yet—! They were such people as one sees on earth—save that they +were changed. How can I express that change? As a woman is changed in the eyes +of her lover, as a woman is changed by the love of a lover. They were exalted. +. . . +</p> + +<p> +I stood up beside him and looked out. I was a little flushed, my ears a little +reddened, by the inconvenience of my curiosities, and by my uneasy sense of +profound moral differences. He was taller than I. . . . +</p> + +<p> +“This is our home,” he said smiling, and with thoughtful eyes on +me. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IN THE DAYS OF THE COMET ***</div> +<div style='text-align:left'> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will +be renamed. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United +States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. 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Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f1f4ba9 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #3797 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3797) diff --git a/old/3797.txt b/old/3797.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..14670c1 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/3797.txt @@ -0,0 +1,9744 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of In the Days of the Comet, by H. G. Wells + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net + + +Title: In the Days of the Comet + +Author: H. G. Wells + +Release Date: October 25, 2004 [EBook #3797] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IN THE DAYS OF THE COMET *** + + + + +This etext was produced by Judy Boss. + + + + + + + +IN THE DAYS OF THE COMET + +BY H. G. WELLS + + + + + "The World's Great Age begins anew, + The Golden Years return, + The Earth doth like a Snake renew + Her Winter Skin outworn: + Heaven smiles, and Faiths and Empires gleam + Like Wrecks of a Dissolving Dream." + + + + + +CONTENTS + +PROLOGUE + + PAGE + +THE MAN WHO WROTE IN THE TOWER . . . 3 + + +BOOK THE FIRST + +THE COMET + +CHAPTER + + I. DUST IN THE SHADOWS . . . . . . 9 + II. NETTIE . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 +III. THE REVOLVER . . . . . . . . . 89 + IV. WAR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152 + V. THE PURSUIT OF THE TWO LOVERS . . 184 + + +BOOK THE SECOND + +THE GREEN VAPORS + + I. THE CHANGE . . . . . . . . . 221 + II. THE AWAKENING . . . . . . . . . 252 +III. THE CABINET COUNCIL . . . . . . . 279 + + +BOOK THE THIRD + +THE NEW WORLD + +CHAPTER PAGE + + I. LOVE AFTER THE CHANGE . . . . . . 303 + II. MY MOTHER'S LAST DAYS . . . . . . 335 +III. BELTANE AND NEW YEAR'S EVE . . . 353 + + +EPILOGUE + +THE WINDOW OF THE TOWER . . . . . . . 375 + + + + + +IN THE DAYS OF THE COMET + +PROLOGUE + +THE MAN WHO WROTE IN THE TOWER + + +I SAW a gray-haired man, a figure of hale age, sitting at a desk +and writing. + +He seemed to be in a room in a tower, very high, so that through +the tall window on his left one perceived only distances, a remote +horizon of sea, a headland and that vague haze and glitter in the +sunset that many miles away marks a city. All the appointments of +this room were orderly and beautiful, and in some subtle quality, +in this small difference and that, new to me and strange. They were +in no fashion I could name, and the simple costume the man wore +suggested neither period nor country. It might, I thought, be the +Happy Future, or Utopia, or the Land of Simple Dreams; an errant +mote of memory, Henry James's phrase and story of "The Great Good +Place," twinkled across my mind, and passed and left no light. + +The man I saw wrote with a thing like a fountain pen, a modern touch +that prohibited any historical retrospection, and as he finished +each sheet, writing in an easy flowing hand, he added it to a growing +pile upon a graceful little table under the window. His last done +sheets lay loose, partly covering others that were clipped together +into fascicles. + +Clearly he was unaware of my presence, and I stood waiting until +his pen should come to a pause. Old as he certainly was +he wrote with a steady hand. . . . + +I discovered that a concave speculum hung slantingly high over his +head; a movement in this caught my attention sharply, and I looked +up to see, distorted and made fantastic but bright and beautifully +colored, the magnified, reflected, evasive rendering of a palace, +of a terrace, of the vista of a great roadway with many people, +people exaggerated, impossible-looking because of the curvature of +the mirror, going to and fro. I turned my head quickly that I might +see more clearly through the window behind me, but it was too high +for me to survey this nearer scene directly, and after a momentary +pause I came back to that distorting mirror again. + +But now the writer was leaning back in his chair. He put down his +pen and sighed the half resentful sigh--"ah! you, work, you! how +you gratify and tire me!"--of a man who has been writing to his +satisfaction. + +"What is this place," I asked, "and who are you?" + +He looked around with the quick movement of surprise. + +"What is this place?" I repeated, "and where am I?" + +He regarded me steadfastly for a moment under his wrinkled brows, +and then his expression softened to a smile. He pointed to a chair +beside the table. "I am writing," he said. + +"About this?" + +"About the change." + +I sat down. It was a very comfortable chair, and well placed under +the light. + +"If you would like to read--" he said. + +I indicated the manuscript. "This explains?" I asked. + +"That explains," he answered. + +He drew a fresh sheet of paper toward him as he looked at me. + +I glanced from him about his apartment and back to the little +table. A fascicle marked very distinctly "1" caught my attention, +and I took it up. I smiled in his friendly eyes. "Very well," said +I, suddenly at my ease, and he nodded and went on writing. And in +a mood between confidence and curiosity, I began to read. + +This is the story that happy, active-looking old man in that pleasant +place had written. + + + + + +BOOK THE FIRST + +THE COMET + + + + +CHAPTER THE FIRST + +DUST IN THE SHADOWS + + + +Section 1 + +I HAVE set myself to write the story of the Great Change, so far +as it has affected my own life and the lives of one or two people +closely connected with me, primarily to please myself. + +Long ago in my crude unhappy youth, I conceived the desire of +writing a book. To scribble secretly and dream of authorship was +one of my chief alleviations, and I read with a sympathetic envy +every scrap I could get about the world of literature and the +lives of literary people. It is something, even amidst this present +happiness, to find leisure and opportunity to take up and partially +realize these old and hopeless dreams. But that alone, in a world +where so much of vivid and increasing interest presents itself to +be done, even by an old man, would not, I think, suffice to set +me at this desk. I find some such recapitulation of my past as +this will involve, is becoming necessary to my own secure mental +continuity. The passage of years brings a man at last to retrospection; +at seventy-two one's youth is far more important than it was at +forty. And I am out of touch with my youth. The old life seems so +cut off from the new, so alien and so unreasonable, that at times +I find it bordering upon the incredible. The data have gone, the +buildings and places. I stopped dead the other afternoon in my walk +across the moor, where once the dismal outskirts of Swathinglea +straggled toward Leet, and asked, "Was it here indeed that I +crouched among the weeds and refuse and broken crockery and loaded +my revolver ready for murder? Did ever such a thing happen in my +life? Was such a mood and thought and intention ever possible to +me? Rather, has not some queer nightmare spirit out of dreamland +slipped a pseudo-memory into the records of my vanished life?" +There must be many alive still who have the same perplexities. And +I think too that those who are now growing up to take our places +in the great enterprise of mankind, will need many such narratives +as mine for even the most partial conception of the old world +of shadows that came before our day. It chances too that my case +is fairly typical of the Change; I was caught midway in a gust +of passion; and a curious accident put me for a time in the very +nucleus of the new order. + +My memory takes me back across the interval of fifty years to a +little ill-lit room with a sash window open to a starry sky, and +instantly there returns to me the characteristic smell of that +room, the penetrating odor of an ill-trimmed lamp, burning cheap +paraffin. Lighting by electricity had then been perfected for fifteen +years, but still the larger portion of the world used these lamps. +All this first scene will go, in my mind at least, to that olfactory +accompaniment. That was the evening smell of the room. By day +it had a more subtle aroma, a closeness, a peculiar sort of faint +pungency that I associate--I know not why--with dust. + +Let me describe this room to you in detail. It was perhaps eight +feet by seven in area and rather higher than either of these +dimensions; the ceiling was of plaster, cracked and bulging in +places, gray with the soot of the lamp, and in one place discolored +by a system of yellow and olive-green stains caused by the percolation +of damp from above. The walls were covered with dun-colored paper, +upon which had been printed in oblique reiteration a crimson shape, +something of the nature of a curly ostrich feather, or an acanthus +flower, that had in its less faded moments a sort of dingy gaiety. +There were several big plaster-rimmed wounds in this, caused by +Parload's ineffectual attempts to get nails into the wall, whereby +there might hang pictures. One nail had hit between two bricks and +got home, and from this depended, sustained a little insecurely +by frayed and knotted blind-cord, Parload's hanging bookshelves, +planks painted over with a treacly blue enamel and further decorated +by a fringe of pinked American cloth insecurely fixed by tacks. Below +this was a little table that behaved with a mulish vindictiveness +to any knee that was thrust beneath it suddenly; it was covered +with a cloth whose pattern of red and black had been rendered less +monotonous by the accidents of Parload's versatile ink bottle, and +on it, leit motif of the whole, stood and stank the lamp. This lamp, +you must understand, was of some whitish translucent substance that +was neither china nor glass, it had a shade of the same substance, +a shade that did not protect the eyes of a reader in any measure, +and it seemed admirably adapted to bring into pitiless prominence +the fact that, after the lamp's trimming, dust and paraffin had +been smeared over its exterior with a reckless generosity. + +The uneven floor boards of this apartment were covered with scratched +enamel of chocolate hue, on which a small island of frayed carpet +dimly blossomed in the dust and shadows. + +There was a very small grate, made of cast-iron in one piece and +painted buff, and a still smaller misfit of a cast-iron fender +that confessed the gray stone of the hearth. No fire was laid, only +a few scraps of torn paper and the bowl of a broken corn-cob pipe +were visible behind the bars, and in the corner and rather thrust +away was an angular japanned coal-box with a damaged hinge. It +was the custom in those days to warm every room separately from a +separate fireplace, more prolific of dirt than heat, and the rickety +sash window, the small chimney, and the loose-fitting door were +expected to organize the ventilation of the room among themselves +without any further direction. + +Parload's truckle bed hid its gray sheets beneath an old patchwork +counterpane on one side of the room, and veiled his boxes and +suchlike oddments, and invading the two corners of the window were +an old whatnot and the washhandstand, on which were distributed +the simple appliances of his toilet. + +This washhandstand had been made of deal by some one with an +excess of turnery appliances in a hurry, who had tried to distract +attention from the rough economies of his workmanship by an arresting +ornamentation of blobs and bulbs upon the joints and legs. Apparently +the piece had then been placed in the hands of some person of +infinite leisure equipped with a pot of ocherous paint, varnish, +and a set of flexible combs. This person had first painted the +article, then, I fancy, smeared it with varnish, and then sat down +to work with the combs to streak and comb the varnish into a weird +imitation of the grain of some nightmare timber. The washhandstand so +made had evidently had a prolonged career of violent use, had been +chipped, kicked, splintered, punched, stained, scorched, hammered, +dessicated, damped, and defiled, had met indeed with almost every +possible adventure except a conflagration or a scrubbing, until at +last it had come to this high refuge of Parload's attic to sustain +the simple requirements of Parload's personal cleanliness. There +were, in chief, a basin and a jug of water and a slop-pail of tin, +and, further, a piece of yellow soap in a tray, a tooth-brush, a +rat-tailed shaving brush, one huckaback towel, and one or two other +minor articles. In those days only very prosperous people had more +than such an equipage, and it is to be remarked that every drop +of water Parload used had to be carried by an unfortunate servant +girl,--the "slavey," Parload called her--up from the basement to +the top of the house and subsequently down again. Already we begin +to forget how modern an invention is personal cleanliness. It is a +fact that Parload had never stripped for a swim in his life; never +had a simultaneous bath all over his body since his childhood. Not +one in fifty of us did in the days of which I am telling you. + +A chest, also singularly grained and streaked, of two large and +two small drawers, held Parload's reserve of garments, and pegs +on the door carried his two hats and completed this inventory +of a "bed-sitting-room" as I knew it before the Change. But I had +forgotten--there was also a chair with a "squab" that apologized +inadequately for the defects of its cane seat. I forgot that for +the moment because I was sitting on the chair on the occasion that +best begins this story. + +I have described Parload's room with such particularity because it +will help you to understand the key in which my earlier chapters +are written, but you must not imagine that this singular equipment +or the smell of the lamp engaged my attention at that time to the +slightest degree. I took all this grimy unpleasantness as if it +were the most natural and proper setting for existence imaginable. +It was the world as I knew it. My mind was entirely occupied then +by graver and intenser matters, and it is only now in the distant +retrospect that I see these details of environment as being +remarkable, as significant, as indeed obviously the outward visible +manifestations of the old world disorder in our hearts. + + + +Section 2 + +Parload stood at the open window, opera-glass in hand, and sought +and found and was uncertain about and lost again, the new comet. + +I thought the comet no more than a nuisance then because I wanted +to talk of other matters. But Parload was full of it. My head was +hot, I was feverish with interlacing annoyances and bitterness, +I wanted to open my heart to him--at least I wanted to relieve my +heart by some romantic rendering of my troubles--and I gave but +little heed to the things he told me. It was the first time I had +heard of this new speck among the countless specks of heaven, and +I did not care if I never heard of the thing again. + +We were two youths much of an age together, Parload was two and +twenty, and eight months older than I. He was--I think his proper +definition was "engrossing clerk" to a little solicitor in Overcastle, +while I was third in the office staff of Rawdon's pot-bank in +Clayton. We had met first in the "Parliament" of the Young Men's +Christian Association of Swathinglea; we had found we attended +simultaneous classes in Overcastle, he in science and I in shorthand, +and had started a practice of walking home together, and so our +friendship came into being. (Swathinglea, Clayton, and Overcastle +were contiguous towns, I should mention, in the great industrial +area of the Midlands.) We had shared each other's secret of religious +doubt, we had confided to one another a common interest in Socialism, +he had come twice to supper at my mother's on a Sunday night, and +I was free of his apartment. He was then a tall, flaxen-haired, +gawky youth, with a disproportionate development of neck and wrist, +and capable of vast enthusiasm; he gave two evenings a week to +the evening classes of the organized science school in Overcastle, +physiography was his favorite "subject," and through this insidious +opening of his mind the wonder of outer space had come to take +possession of his soul. He had commandeered an old opera-glass +from his uncle who farmed at Leet over the moors, he had bought a +cheap paper planisphere and Whitaker's Almanac, and for a time day +and moonlight were mere blank interruptions to the one satisfactory +reality in his life--star-gazing. It was the deeps that had seized +him, the immensities, and the mysterious possibilities that might +float unlit in that unplumbed abyss. With infinite labor and the +help of a very precise article in The Heavens, a little monthly +magazine that catered for those who were under this obsession, he +had at last got his opera-glass upon the new visitor to our system +from outer space. He gazed in a sort of rapture upon that quivering +little smudge of light among the shining pin-points--and gazed. My +troubles had to wait for him. + +"Wonderful," he sighed, and then as though his first emphasis did +not satisfy him, "wonderful!" + +He turned to me. "Wouldn't you like to see?" + +I had to look, and then I had to listen, how that this scarce-visible +intruder was to be, was presently to be, one of the largest comets +this world has ever seen, how that its course must bring it within +at most--so many score of millions of miles from the earth, a mere +step, Parload seemed to think that; how that the spectroscope was +already sounding its chemical secrets, perplexed by the unprecedented +band in the green, how it was even now being photographed in the +very act of unwinding--in an unusual direction--a sunward tail +(which presently it wound up again), and all the while in a sort +of undertow I was thinking first of Nettie Stuart and the letter +she had just written me, and then of old Rawdon's detestable face +as I had seen it that afternoon. Now I planned answers to Nettie +and now belated repartees to my employer, and then again "Nettie" +was blazing all across the background of my thoughts. . . . + +Nettie Stuart was daughter of the head gardener of the rich Mr. +Verrall's widow, and she and I had kissed and become sweethearts +before we were eighteen years old. My mother and hers were second +cousins and old schoolfellows, and though my mother had been widowed +untimely by a train accident, and had been reduced to letting lodgings +(she was the Clayton curate's landlady), a position esteemed much +lower than that of Mrs. Stuart, a kindly custom of occasional +visits to the gardener's cottage at Checkshill Towers still kept +the friends in touch. Commonly I went with her. And I remember it +was in the dusk of one bright evening in July, one of those long +golden evenings that do not so much give way to night as admit at +last, upon courtesy, the moon and a choice retinue of stars, that +Nettie and I, at the pond of goldfish where the yew-bordered walks +converged, made our shy beginners' vow. I remember still--something +will always stir in me at that memory--the tremulous emotion of +that adventure. Nettie was dressed in white, her hair went off in +waves of soft darkness from above her dark shining eyes; there was +a little necklace of pearls about her sweetly modeled neck, and +a little coin of gold that nestled in her throat. I kissed her +half-reluctant lips, and for three years of my life thereafter--nay! +I almost think for all the rest of her life and mine--I could have +died for her sake. + +You must understand--and every year it becomes increasingly difficult +to understand--how entirely different the world was then from what +it is now. It was a dark world; it was full of preventable disorder, +preventable diseases, and preventable pain, of harshness and stupid +unpremeditated cruelties; but yet, it may be even by virtue of +the general darkness, there were moments of a rare and evanescent +beauty that seem no longer possible in my experience. The +great Change has come for ever more, happiness and beauty are our +atmosphere, there is peace on earth and good will to all men. None +would dare to dream of returning to the sorrows of the former time, +and yet that misery was pierced, ever and again its gray curtain was +stabbed through and through by joys of an intensity, by perceptions +of a keenness that it seems to me are now altogether gone out +of life. Is it the Change, I wonder, that has robbed life of its +extremes, or is it perhaps only this, that youth has left me--even +the strength of middle years leaves me now--and taken its despairs +and raptures, leaving me judgment, perhaps, sympathy, memories? + +I cannot tell. One would need to be young now and to have been +young then as well, to decide that impossible problem. + +Perhaps a cool observer even in the old days would have found little +beauty in our grouping. I have our two photographs at hand in this +bureau as I write, and they show me a gawky youth in ill-fitting +ready-made clothing, and Nettie--Indeed Nettie is badly dressed, +and her attitude is more than a little stiff; but I can see her +through the picture, and her living brightness and something of +that mystery of charm she had for me, comes back again to my mind. +Her face has triumphed over the photographer--or I would long ago +have cast this picture away. + +The reality of beauty yields itself to no words. I wish that I had +the sister art and could draw in my margin something that escapes +description. There was a sort of gravity in her eyes. There was +something, a matter of the minutest difference, about her upper +lip so that her mouth closed sweetly and broke very sweetly to a +smile. That grave, sweet smile! + +After we had kissed and decided not to tell our parents for awhile +of the irrevocable choice we had made, the time came for us to part, +shyly and before others, and I and my mother went off back across +the moonlit park--the bracken thickets rustling with startled deer--to +the railway station at Checkshill and so to our dingy basement in +Clayton, and I saw no more of Nettie--except that I saw her in my +thoughts--for nearly a year. But at our next meeting it was decided +that we must correspond, and this we did with much elaboration +of secrecy, for Nettie would have no one at home, not even her +only sister, know of her attachment. So I had to send my precious +documents sealed and under cover by way of a confidential schoolfellow +of hers who lived near London. . . . I could write that address +down now, though house and street and suburb have gone beyond any +man's tracing. + +Our correspondence began our estrangement, because for the first +time we came into more than sensuous contact and our minds sought +expression. + +Now you must understand that the world of thought in those days was +in the strangest condition, it was choked with obsolete inadequate +formulae, it was tortuous to a maze-like degree with secondary +contrivances and adaptations, suppressions, conventions, and +subterfuges. Base immediacies fouled the truth on every man's +lips. I was brought up by my mother in a quaint old-fashioned narrow +faith in certain religious formulae, certain rules of conduct, +certain conceptions of social and political order, that had no more +relevance to the realities and needs of everyday contemporary life +than if they were clean linen that had been put away with lavender +in a drawer. Indeed, her religion did actually smell of lavender; +on Sundays she put away all the things of reality, the garments and +even the furnishings of everyday, hid her hands, that were gnarled +and sometimes chapped with scrubbing, in black, carefully mended +gloves, assumed her old black silk dress and bonnet and took me, +unnaturally clean and sweet also, to church. There we sang and +bowed and heard sonorous prayers and joined in sonorous responses, +and rose with a congregational sigh refreshed and relieved when the +doxology, with its opening "Now to God the Father, God the Son," +bowed out the tame, brief sermon. There was a hell in that religion +of my mother's, a red-haired hell of curly flames that had once +been very terrible; there was a devil, who was also ex officio the +British King's enemy, and much denunciation of the wicked lusts +of the flesh; we were expected to believe that most of our poor +unhappy world was to atone for its muddle and trouble here by +suffering exquisite torments for ever after, world without end, +Amen. But indeed those curly flames looked rather jolly. The whole +thing had been mellowed and faded into a gentle unreality long +before my time; if it had much terror even in my childhood I have +forgotten it, it was not so terrible as the giant who was killed +by the Beanstalk, and I see it all now as a setting for my poor +old mother's worn and grimy face, and almost lovingly as a part +of her. And Mr. Gabbitas, our plump little lodger, strangely +transformed in his vestments and lifting his voice manfully to +the quality of those Elizabethan prayers, seemed, I think, to give +her a special and peculiar interest with God. She radiated her +own tremulous gentleness upon Him, and redeemed Him from all the +implications of vindictive theologians; she was in truth, had I +but perceived it, the effectual answer to all she would have taught +me. + +So I see it now, but there is something harsh in the earnest +intensity of youth, and having at first taken all these things quite +seriously, the fiery hell and God's vindictiveness at any neglect, +as though they were as much a matter of fact as Bladden's iron-works +and Rawdon's pot-bank, I presently with an equal seriousness flung +them out of my mind again. + +Mr. Gabbitas, you see, did sometimes, as the phrase went, "take +notice" of me, he had induced me to go on reading after I left +school, and with the best intentions in the world and to anticipate +the poison of the times, he had lent me Burble's "Scepticism +Answered," and drawn my attention to the library of the Institute +in Clayton. + +The excellent Burble was a great shock to me. It seemed clear from +his answers to the sceptic that the case for doctrinal orthodoxy +and all that faded and by no means awful hereafter, which I had +hitherto accepted as I accepted the sun, was an extremely poor +one, and to hammer home that idea the first book I got from the +Institute happened to be an American edition of the collected works +of Shelley, his gassy prose as well as his atmospheric verse. I was +soon ripe for blatant unbelief. And at the Young Men's Christian +Association I presently made the acquaintance of Parload, who told +me, under promises of the most sinister secrecy, that he was "a +Socialist out and out." He lent me several copies of a periodical +with the clamant title of The Clarion, which was just taking up a +crusade against the accepted religion. The adolescent years of any +fairly intelligent youth lie open, and will always lie healthily +open, to the contagion of philosophical doubts, of scorns and new +ideas, and I will confess I had the fever of that phase badly. Doubt, +I say, but it was not so much doubt--which is a complex thing--as +startled emphatic denial. "Have I believed THIS!" And I was also, +you must remember, just beginning love-letters to Nettie. + +We live now in these days, when the Great Change has been in most +things accomplished, in a time when every one is being educated to a +sort of intellectual gentleness, a gentleness that abates nothing +from our vigor, and it is hard to understand the stifled and +struggling manner in which my generation of common young men did +its thinking. To think at all about certain questions was an act +of rebellion that set one oscillating between the furtive and the +defiant. People begin to find Shelley--for all his melody--noisy +and ill conditioned now because his Anarchs have vanished, yet there +was a time when novel thought HAD to go to that tune of breaking +glass. It becomes a little difficult to imagine the yeasty state +of mind, the disposition to shout and say, "Yah!" at constituted +authority, to sustain a persistent note of provocation such as we +raw youngsters displayed. I began to read with avidity such writing +as Carlyle, Browning, and Heine have left for the perplexity +of posterity, and not only to read and admire but to imitate. My +letters to Nettie, after one or two genuinely intended displays of +perfervid tenderness, broke out toward theology, sociology, and the +cosmos in turgid and startling expressions. No doubt they puzzled +her extremely. + +I retain the keenest sympathy and something inexplicably near to +envy for my own departed youth, but I should find it difficult to +maintain my case against any one who would condemn me altogether as +having been a very silly, posturing, emotional hobbledehoy indeed +and quite like my faded photograph. And when I try to recall what +exactly must have been the quality and tenor of my more sustained +efforts to write memorably to my sweetheart, I confess I shiver. . . +Yet I wish they were not all destroyed. + +Her letters to me were simple enough, written in a roundish, +unformed hand and badly phrased. Her first two or three showed a +shy pleasure in the use of the word "dear," and I remember being +first puzzled and then, when I understood, delighted, because she +had written "Willie ASTHORE" under my name. "Asthore," I gathered, +meant "darling." But when the evidences of my fermentation began, +her answers were less happy. + +I will not weary you with the story of how we quarreled in our +silly youthful way, and how I went the next Sunday, all uninvited, +to Checkshill, and made it worse, and how afterward I wrote a letter +that she thought was "lovely," and mended the matter. Nor will I +tell of all our subsequent fluctuations of misunderstanding. Always +I was the offender and the final penitent until this last trouble +that was now beginning; and in between we had some tender near +moments, and I loved her very greatly. There was this misfortune +in the business, that in the darkness, and alone, I thought with +great intensity of her, of her eyes, of her touch, of her sweet +and delightful presence, but when I sat down to write I thought of +Shelley and Burns and myself, and other such irrelevant matters. +When one is in love, in this fermenting way, it is harder to make +love than it is when one does not love at all. And as for Nettie, +she loved, I know, not me but those gentle mysteries. It was not +my voice should rouse her dreams to passion. . . So our letters +continued to jar. Then suddenly she wrote me one doubting whether +she could ever care for any one who was a Socialist and did not +believe in Church, and then hard upon it came another note with +unexpected novelties of phrasing. She thought we were not suited +to each other, we differed so in tastes and ideas, she had long +thought of releasing me from our engagement. In fact, though I really +did not apprehend it fully at the first shock, I was dismissed. +Her letter had reached me when I came home after old Rawdon's none +too civil refusal to raise my wages. On this particular evening of +which I write, therefore, I was in a state of feverish adjustment +to two new and amazing, two nearly overwhelming facts, that I was +neither indispensable to Nettie nor at Rawdon's. And to talk of +comets! + +Where did I stand? + +I had grown so accustomed to think of Nettie as inseparably +mine--the whole tradition of "true love" pointed me to that--that +for her to face about with these precise small phrases toward +abandonment, after we had kissed and whispered and come so close +in the little adventurous familiarities of the young, shocked me +profoundly. I! I! And Rawdon didn't find me indispensable either. +I felt I was suddenly repudiated by the universe and threatened +with effacement, that in some positive and emphatic way I must at +once assert myself. There was no balm in the religion I had learnt, +or in the irreligion I had adopted, for wounded self-love. + +Should I fling up Rawdon's place at once and then in some extraordinary, +swift manner make the fortune of Frobisher's adjacent and closely +competitive pot-bank? + +The first part of that program, at any rate, would be easy of +accomplishment, to go to Rawdon and say, "You will hear from me +again," but for the rest, Frobisher might fail me. That, however, +was a secondary issue. The predominant affair was with Nettie. +I found my mind thick-shot with flying fragments of rhetoric that +might be of service in the letter I would write her. Scorn, irony, +tenderness--what was it to be? + +"Brother!" said Parload, suddenly. + +"What?" said I. + +"They're firing up at Bladden's iron-works, and the smoke comes +right across my bit of sky." + +The interruption came just as I was ripe to discharge my thoughts +upon him. + +"Parload," said I, "very likely I shall have to leave all this. Old +Rawdon won't give me a rise in my wages, and after having asked I +don't think I can stand going on upon the old terms anymore. See? +So I may have to clear out of Clayton for good and all." + + + +Section 3 + +That made Parload put down the opera-glass and look at me. + +"It's a bad time to change just now," he said after a little pause. + +Rawdon had said as much, in a less agreeable tone. + +But with Parload I felt always a disposition to the heroic note. +"I'm tired," I said, "of humdrum drudgery for other men. One may +as well starve one's body out of a place as to starve one's soul +in one." + +"I don't know about that altogether," began Parload, slowly. . . . + +And with that we began one of our interminable conversations, one +of those long, wandering, intensely generalizing, diffusely personal +talks that will be dear to the hearts of intelligent youths until +the world comes to an end. The Change has not abolished that, +anyhow. + +It would be an incredible feat of memory for me now to recall all +that meandering haze of words, indeed I recall scarcely any of it, +though its circumstances and atmosphere stand out, a sharp, clear +picture in my mind. I posed after my manner and behaved very foolishly +no doubt, a wounded, smarting egotist, and Parload played his part +of the philosopher preoccupied with the deeps. + +We were presently abroad, walking through the warm summer's night +and talking all the more freely for that. But one thing that I +said I can remember. "I wish at times," said I, with a gesture at +the heavens, "that comet of yours or some such thing would indeed +strike this world--and wipe us all away, strikes, wars, tumults, +loves, jealousies, and all the wretchedness of life!" + +"Ah!" said Parload, and the thought seemed to hang about him. + +"It could only add to the miseries of life," he said irrelevantly, +when presently I was discoursing of other things. + +"What would?" + +"Collision with a comet. It would only throw things back. It would +only make what was left of life more savage than it is at present." + +"But why should ANYTHING be left of life?" said I. . . . + +That was our style, you know, and meanwhile we walked together up +the narrow street outside his lodging, up the stepway and the lanes +toward Clayton Crest and the high road. + +But my memories carry me back so effectually to those days before +the Change that I forget that now all these places have been altered +beyond recognition, that the narrow street and the stepway and the +view from Clayton Crest, and indeed all the world in which I was +born and bred and made, has vanished clean away, out of space and +out of time, and wellnigh out of the imagination of all those who +are younger by a generation than I. You cannot see, as I can see, +the dark empty way between the mean houses, the dark empty way +lit by a bleary gas-lamp at the corner, you cannot feel the hard +checkered pavement under your boots, you cannot mark the dimly lit +windows here and there, and the shadows upon the ugly and often +patched and crooked blinds of the people cooped within. Nor can you +presently pass the beerhouse with its brighter gas and its queer, +screening windows, nor get a whiff of foul air and foul language +from its door, nor see the crumpled furtive figure--some rascal +child--that slinks past us down the steps. + +We crossed the longer street, up which a clumsy steam tram, vomiting +smoke and sparks, made its clangorous way, and adown which one +saw the greasy brilliance of shop fronts and the naphtha flares of +hawkers' barrows dripping fire into the night. A hazy movement of +people swayed along that road, and we heard the voice of an itinerant +preacher from a waste place between the houses. You cannot see these +things as I can see them, nor can you figure--unless you know the +pictures that great artist Hyde has left the world--the effect of +the great hoarding by which we passed, lit below by a gas-lamp and +towering up to a sudden sharp black edge against the pallid sky. + +Those hoardings! They were the brightest colored things in all +that vanished world. Upon them, in successive layers of paste and +paper, all the rough enterprises of that time joined in chromatic +discord; pill vendors and preachers, theaters and charities, +marvelous soaps and astonishing pickles, typewriting machines and +sewing machines, mingled in a sort of visualized clamor. And passing +that there was a muddy lane of cinders, a lane without a light, +that used its many puddles to borrow a star or so from the sky. We +splashed along unheeding as we talked. + +Then across the allotments, a wilderness of cabbages and evil-looking +sheds, past a gaunt abandoned factory, and so to the high road. +The high road ascended in a curve past a few houses and a beerhouse +or so, and round until all the valley in which four industrial +towns lay crowded and confluent was overlooked. + +I will admit that with the twilight there came a spell of weird +magnificence over all that land and brooded on it until dawn. The +horrible meanness of its details was veiled, the hutches that were +homes, the bristling multitudes of chimneys, the ugly patches of +unwilling vegetation amidst the makeshift fences of barrel-stave +and wire. The rusty scars that framed the opposite ridges where +the iron ore was taken and the barren mountains of slag from the +blast furnaces were veiled; the reek and boiling smoke and dust +from foundry, pot-bank, and furnace, transfigured and assimilated +by the night. The dust-laden atmosphere that was gray oppression +through the day became at sundown a mystery of deep translucent +colors, of blues and purples, of somber and vivid reds, of strange +bright clearnesses of green and yellow athwart the darkling sky. +Each upstart furnace, when its monarch sun had gone, crowned itself +with flames, the dark cinder heaps began to glow with quivering +fires, and each pot-bank squatted rebellious in a volcanic coronet of +light. The empire of the day broke into a thousand feudal baronies +of burning coal. The minor streets across the valley picked themselves +out with gas-lamps of faint yellow, that brightened and mingled at +all the principal squares and crossings with the greenish pallor of +incandescent mantles and the high cold glare of the electric arc. +The interlacing railways lifted bright signal-boxes over their +intersections, and signal stars of red and green in rectangular +constellations. The trains became articulated black serpents +breathing fire. + +Moreover, high overhead, like a thing put out of reach and near +forgotten, Parload had rediscovered a realm that was ruled by +neither sun nor furnace, the universe of stars. + +This was the scene of many a talk we two had held together. And +if in the daytime we went right over the crest and looked westward +there was farmland, there were parks and great mansions, the spire +of a distant cathedral, and sometimes when the weather was near +raining, the crests of remote mountains hung clearly in the sky. +Beyond the range of sight indeed, out beyond, there was Checkshill; +I felt it there always, and in the darkness more than I did by day. +Checkshill, and Nettie! + +And to us two youngsters as we walked along the cinder path beside +the rutted road and argued out our perplexities, it seemed that +this ridge gave us compendiously a view of our whole world. + +There on the one hand in a crowded darkness, about the ugly factories +and work-places, the workers herded together, ill clothed, ill +nourished, ill taught, badly and expensively served at every occasion +in life, uncertain even of their insufficient livelihood from day +to day, the chapels and churches and public-houses swelling up amidst +their wretched homes like saprophytes amidst a general corruption, +and on the other, in space, freedom, and dignity, scarce heeding +the few cottages, as overcrowded as they were picturesque, in which +the laborers festered, lived the landlords and masters who owned +pot-banks and forge and farm and mine. Far away, distant, beautiful, +irrelevant, from out of a little cluster of secondhand bookshops, +ecclesiastical residences, and the inns and incidentals of a decaying +market town, the cathedral of Lowchester pointed a beautiful, +unemphatic spire to vague incredible skies. So it seemed to us that +the whole world was planned in those youthful first impressions. + +We saw everything simple, as young men will. We had our angry, confident +solutions, and whosoever would criticize them was a friend of the +robbers. It was a clear case of robbery, we held, visibly so; there +in those great houses lurked the Landlord and the Capitalist, with +his scoundrel the Lawyer, with his cheat the Priest, and we others +were all the victims of their deliberate villainies. No doubt they +winked and chuckled over their rare wines, amidst their dazzling, +wickedly dressed women, and plotted further grinding for the faces +of the poor. And amidst all the squalor on the other hand, amidst +brutalities, ignorance, and drunkenness, suffered multitudinously +their blameless victim, the Working Man. And we, almost at the +first glance, had found all this out, it had merely to be asserted +now with sufficient rhetoric and vehemence to change the face +of the whole world. The Working Man would arise--in the form of a +Labor Party, and with young men like Parload and myself to represent +him--and come to his own, and then------? + +Then the robbers would get it hot, and everything would be extremely +satisfactory. + +Unless my memory plays me strange tricks that does no injustice +to the creed of thought and action that Parload and I held as the +final result of human wisdom. We believed it with heat, and rejected +with heat the most obvious qualification of its harshness. At +times in our great talks we were full of heady hopes for the near +triumph of our doctrine, more often our mood was hot resentment +at the wickedness and stupidity that delayed so plain and simple a +reconstruction of the order of the world. Then we grew malignant, +and thought of barricades and significant violence. I was very +bitter, I know, upon this night of which I am now particularly +telling, and the only face upon the hydra of Capitalism and Monopoly +that I could see at all clearly, smiled exactly as old Rawdon had +smiled when he refused to give me more than a paltry twenty shillings +a week. + +I wanted intensely to salve my self-respect by some revenge upon +him, and I felt that if that could be done by slaying the hydra, I +might drag its carcass to the feet of Nettie, and settle my other +trouble as well. "What do you think of me NOW, Nettie?" + +That at any rate comes near enough to the quality of my thinking, +then, for you to imagine how I gesticulated and spouted to Parload +that night. You figure us as little black figures, unprepossessing in +the outline, set in the midst of that desolating night of flaming +industrialism, and my little voice with a rhetorical twang +protesting, denouncing. . . . + +You will consider those notions of my youth poor silly violent +stuff; particularly if you are of the younger generation born since +the Change you will be of that opinion. Nowadays the whole world +thinks clearly, thinks with deliberation, pellucid certainties, you +find it impossible to imagine how any other thinking could have +been possible. Let me tell you then how you can bring yourself +to something like the condition of our former state. In the first +place you must get yourself out of health by unwise drinking and +eating, and out of condition by neglecting your exercise, then you +must contrive to be worried very much and made very anxious and +uncomfortable, and then you must work very hard for four or five +days and for long hours every day at something too petty to be +interesting, too complex to be mechanical, and without any personal +significance to you whatever. This done, get straightway into +a room that is not ventilated at all, and that is already full of +foul air, and there set yourself to think out some very complicated +problem. In a very little while you will find yourself in a state +of intellectual muddle, annoyed, impatient, snatching at the obvious +presently in choosing and rejecting conclusions haphazard. Try +to play chess under such conditions and you will play stupidly and +lose your temper. Try to do anything that taxes the brain or temper +and you will fail. + +Now, the whole world before the Change was as sick and feverish as +that, it was worried and overworked and perplexed by problems that +would not get stated simply, that changed and evaded solution, it +was in an atmosphere that had corrupted and thickened past breathing; +there was no thorough cool thinking in the world at all. There +was nothing in the mind of the world anywhere but half-truths, +hasty assumptions, hallucinations, and emotions. Nothing. . . . + +I know it seems incredible, that already some of the younger men +are beginning to doubt the greatness of the Change our world has +undergone, but read--read the newspapers of that time. Every age +becomes mitigated and a little ennobled in our minds as it recedes +into the past. It is the part of those who like myself have stories +of that time to tell, to supply, by a scrupulous spiritual realism, +some antidote to that glamour. + + + +Section 4 + +Always with Parload I was chief talker. + +I can look back upon myself with, I believe, an almost perfect +detachment, things have so changed that indeed now I am another +being, with scarce anything in common with that boastful foolish +youngster whose troubles I recall. I see him vulgarly theatrical, +egotistical, insincere, indeed I do not like him save with +that instinctive material sympathy that is the fruit of incessant +intimacy. Because he was myself I may be able to feel and write +understandingly about motives that will put him out of sympathy +with nearly every reader, but why should I palliate or defend his +quality? + +Always, I say, I did the talking, and it would have amazed me +beyond measure if any one had told me that mine was not the greater +intelligence in these wordy encounters. Parload was a quiet youth, +and stiff and restrained in all things, while I had that supreme +gift for young men and democracies, the gift of copious expression. +Parload I diagnosed in my secret heart as a trifle dull; he posed +as pregnant quiet, I thought, and was obsessed by the congenial +notion of "scientific caution." I did not remark that while my hands +were chiefly useful for gesticulation or holding a pen Parload's +hands could do all sorts of things, and I did not think therefore +that fibers must run from those fingers to something in his brain. +Nor, though I bragged perpetually of my shorthand, of my literature, +of my indispensable share in Rawdon's business, did Parload lay +stress on the conics and calculus he "mugged" in the organized +science school. Parload is a famous man now, a great figure in +a great time, his work upon intersecting radiations has broadened +the intellectual horizon of mankind for ever, and I, who am at best +a hewer of intellectual wood, a drawer of living water, can smile, +and he can smile, to think how I patronized and posed and jabbered +over him in the darkness of those early days. + +That night I was shrill and eloquent beyond measure. Rawdon was, of +course, the hub upon which I went round--Rawdon and the Rawdonesque +employer and the injustice of "wages slavery" and all the immediate +conditions of that industrial blind alley up which it seemed our +lives were thrust. But ever and again I glanced at other things. +Nettie was always there in the background of my mind, regarding +me enigmatically. It was part of my pose to Parload that I had +a romantic love-affair somewhere away beyond the sphere of our +intercourse, and that note gave a Byronic resonance to many of the +nonsensical things I produced for his astonishment. + +I will not weary you with too detailed an account of the talk of a +foolish youth who was also distressed and unhappy, and whose voice +was balm for the humiliations that smarted in his eyes. Indeed, +now in many particulars I cannot disentangle this harangue of which +I tell from many of the things I may have said in other talks to +Parload. For example, I forget if it was then or before or afterwards +that, as it were by accident, I let out what might be taken as an +admission that I was addicted to drugs. + +"You shouldn't do that," said Parload, suddenly. "It won't do to +poison your brains with that." + +My brains, my eloquence, were to be very important assets +to our party in the coming revolution. . . . + +But one thing does clearly belong to this particular conversation +I am recalling. When I started out it was quite settled in the back +of my mind that I must not leave Rawdon's. I simply wanted to abuse +my employer to Parload. But I talked myself quite out of touch +with all the cogent reasons there were for sticking to my place, +and I got home that night irrevocably committed to a spirited--not +to say a defiant--policy with my employer. + +"I can't stand Rawdon's much longer," I said to Parload by way of +a flourish. + +"There's hard times coming," said Parload. + +"Next winter." + +"Sooner. The Americans have been overproducing, and they mean to +dump. The iron trade is going to have convulsions." + +"I don't care. Pot-banks are steady." + +"With a corner in borax? No. I've heard--" + +"What have you heard?" + +"Office secrets. But it's no secret there's trouble coming to +potters. There's been borrowing and speculation. The masters don't +stick to one business as they used to do. I can tell that much. +Half the valley may be 'playing' before two months are out." Parload +delivered himself of this unusually long speech in his most pithy +and weighty manner. + +"Playing" was our local euphemism for a time when there was no work +and no money for a man, a time of stagnation and dreary hungry +loafing day after day. Such interludes seemed in those days a +necessary consequence of industrial organization. + +"You'd better stick to Rawdon's," said Parload. + +"Ugh," said I, affecting a noble disgust. + +"There'll be trouble," said Parload. + +"Who cares?" said I. "Let there be trouble--the more the better. +This system has got to end, sooner or later. These capitalists with +their speculation and corners and trusts make things go from bad to +worse. Why should I cower in Rawdon's office, like a frightened dog, +while hunger walks the streets? Hunger is the master revolutionary. +When he comes we ought to turn out and salute him. Anyway, I'M +going to do so now." + +"That's all very well," began Parload. + +"I'm tired of it," I said. "I want to come to grips with all these +Rawdons. I think perhaps if I was hungry and savage I could talk +to hungry men--" + +"There's your mother," said Parload, in his slow judicial way. + +That WAS a difficulty. + +I got over it by a rhetorical turn. "Why should one sacrifice +the future of the world--why should one even sacrifice one's own +future--because one's mother is totally destitute of imagination?" + + + +Section 5 + +It was late when I parted from Parload and came back to my own +home. + +Our house stood in a highly respectable little square near +the Clayton parish church. Mr. Gabbitas, the curate of all work, +lodged on our ground floor, and upstairs there was an old lady, +Miss Holroyd, who painted flowers on china and maintained her blind +sister in an adjacent room; my mother and I lived in the basement +and slept in the attics. The front of the house was veiled by +a Virginian creeper that defied the Clayton air and clustered in +untidy dependent masses over the wooden porch. + +As I came up the steps I had a glimpse of Mr. Gabbitas printing +photographs by candle light in his room. It was the chief delight +of his little life to spend his holiday abroad in the company of a +queer little snap-shot camera, and to return with a great multitude +of foggy and sinister negatives that he had made in beautiful and +interesting places. These the camera company would develop for him +on advantageous terms, and he would spend his evenings the year +through in printing from them in order to inflict copies upon his +undeserving friends. There was a long frameful of his work in the +Clayton National School, for example, inscribed in old English +lettering, "Italian Travel Pictures, by the Rev. E. B. Gabbitas." +For this it seemed he lived and traveled and had his being. It was +his only real joy. By his shaded light I could see his sharp little +nose, his little pale eyes behind his glasses, his mouth pursed up +with the endeavor of his employment. + +"Hireling Liar," I muttered, for was not he also part of the system, +part of the scheme of robbery that made wages serfs of Parload and +me?--though his share in the proceedings was certainly small. + +"Hireling Liar," said I, standing in the darkness, outside +even his faint glow of traveled culture. . . + +My mother let me in. + +She looked at me, mutely, because she knew there was something +wrong and that it was no use for her to ask what. + +"Good night, mummy," said I, and kissed her a little roughly, and +lit and took my candle and went off at once up the staircase to +bed, not looking back at her. + +"I've kept some supper for you, dear." + +"Don't want any supper." + +"But, dearie------" + +"Good night, mother," and I went up and slammed my door upon her, +blew out my candle, and lay down at once upon my bed, lay there a +long time before I got up to undress. + +There were times when that dumb beseeching of my mother's face +irritated me unspeakably. It did so that night. I felt I had to +struggle against it, that I could not exist if I gave way to its +pleadings, and it hurt me and divided me to resist it, almost beyond +endurance. It was clear to me that I had to think out for myself +religious problems, social problems, questions of conduct, questions +of expediency, that her poor dear simple beliefs could not help me +at all--and she did not understand! Hers was the accepted religion, +her only social ideas were blind submissions to the accepted +order--to laws, to doctors, to clergymen, lawyers, masters, and all +respectable persons in authority over us, and with her to believe +was to fear. She knew from a thousand little signs--though still at +times I went to church with her--that I was passing out of touch of +all these things that ruled her life, into some terrible unknown. +From things I said she could infer such clumsy concealments as I +made. She felt my socialism, felt my spirit in revolt against the +accepted order, felt the impotent resentments that filled me with +bitterness against all she held sacred. Yet, you know, it was not +her dear gods she sought to defend so much as me! She seemed always +to be wanting to say to me, "Dear, I know it's hard--but revolt +is harder. Don't make war on it, dear--don't! Don't do anything to +offend it. I'm sure it will hurt you if you do--it will hurt you +if you do." + +She had been cowed into submission, as so many women of that time +had been, by the sheer brutality of the accepted thing. The existing +order dominated her into a worship of abject observances. It had +bent her, aged her, robbed her of eyesight so that at fifty-five +she peered through cheap spectacles at my face, and saw it only +dimly, filled her with a habit of anxiety, made her hands------ +Her poor dear hands! Not in the whole world now could you find a +woman with hands so grimy, so needle-worn, so misshapen by toil, +so chapped and coarsened, so evilly entreated. . . . At any rate, +there is this I can say for myself, that my bitterness against the +world and fortune was for her sake as well as for my own. + +Yet that night I pushed by her harshly. I answered her curtly, +left her concerned and perplexed in the passage, and slammed my +door upon her. + +And for a long time I lay raging at the hardship and evil of life, +at the contempt of Rawdon, and the loveless coolness of Nettie's +letter, at my weakness and insignificance, at the things I found +intolerable, and the things I could not mend. Over and over went +my poor little brain, tired out and unable to stop on my treadmill +of troubles. Nettie. Rawdon. My mother. Gabbitas. Nettie. . . + +Suddenly I came upon emotional exhaustion. Some clock was striking +midnight. After all, I was young; I had these quick transitions. +I remember quite distinctly, I stood up abruptly, undressed very +quickly in the dark, and had hardly touched my pillow again before +I was asleep. + +But how my mother slept that night I do not know. + +Oddly enough, I do not blame myself for behaving like this to my +mother, though my conscience blames me acutely for my arrogance to +Parload. I regret my behavior to my mother before the days of the +Change, it is a scar among my memories that will always be a little +painful to the end of my days, but I do not see how something of +the sort was to be escaped under those former conditions. In that +time of muddle and obscurity people were overtaken by needs and +toil and hot passions before they had the chance of even a year or +so of clear thinking; they settled down to an intense and strenuous +application to some partial but immediate duty, and the growth of +thought ceased in them. They set and hardened into narrow ways. +Few women remained capable of a new idea after five and twenty, +few men after thirty-one or two. Discontent with the thing that +existed was regarded as immoral, it was certainly an annoyance, and +the only protest against it, the only effort against that universal +tendency in all human institutions to thicken and clog, to work +loosely and badly, to rust and weaken towards catastrophes, came +from the young--the crude unmerciful young. It seemed in those +days to thoughtful men the harsh law of being--that either we must +submit to our elders and be stifled, or disregard them, disobey them, +thrust them aside, and make our little step of progress before we +too ossified and became obstructive in our turn. + +My pushing past my mother, my irresponsive departure to my own +silent meditations, was, I now perceive, a figure of the whole hard +relationship between parents and son in those days. There appeared +no other way; that perpetually recurring tragedy was, it seemed, +part of the very nature of the progress of the world. We did not +think then that minds might grow ripe without growing rigid, or +children honor their parents and still think for themselves. We were +angry and hasty because we stifled in the darkness, in a poisoned +and vitiated air. That deliberate animation of the intelligence +which is now the universal quality, that vigor with consideration, +that judgment with confident enterprise which shine through all +our world, were things disintegrated and unknown in the corrupting +atmosphere of our former state. + + +(So the first fascicle ended. I put it aside and looked for the +second. + +"Well?" said the man who wrote. + +"This is fiction?" + +"It's my story." + +"But you-- Amidst this beauty-- You are not this ill-conditioned, +squalidly bred lad of whom I have been reading?" + +He smiled. "There intervenes a certain Change," he said. "Have I +not hinted at that?" + +I hesitated upon a question, then saw the second fascicle at hand, +and picked it up.) + + + + +CHAPTER THE SECOND + +NETTIE + + + +Section 1 + +I CANNOT now remember (the story resumed), what interval separated +that evening on which Parload first showed me the comet--I think +I only pretended to see it then--and the Sunday afternoon I spent +at Checkshill. + +Between the two there was time enough for me to give notice and +leave Rawdon's, to seek for some other situation very strenuously +in vain, to think and say many hard and violent things to my mother +and to Parload, and to pass through some phases of very profound +wretchedness. There must have been a passionate correspondence +with Nettie, but all the froth and fury of that has faded now out +of my memory. All I have clear now is that I wrote one magnificent +farewell to her, casting her off forever, and that I got in reply +a prim little note to say, that even if there was to be an end to +everything, that was no excuse for writing such things as I had done, +and then I think I wrote again in a vein I considered satirical. +To that she did not reply. That interval was at least three weeks, +and probably four, because the comet which had been on the first +occasion only a dubious speck in the sky, certainly visible only +when it was magnified, was now a great white presence, brighter +than Jupiter, and casting a shadow on its own account. It was +now actively present in the world of human thought, every one was +talking about it, every one was looking for its waxing splendor +as the sun went down--the papers, the music-halls, the hoardings, +echoed it. + +Yes; the comet was already dominant before I went over to make +everything clear to Nettie. And Parload had spent two hoarded pounds +in buying himself a spectroscope, so that he could see for himself, +night after night, that mysterious, that stimulating line--the +unknown line in the green. How many times I wonder did I look at +the smudgy, quivering symbol of the unknown things that were rushing +upon us out of the inhuman void, before I rebelled? But at last I +could stand it no longer, and I reproached Parload very bitterly +for wasting his time in "astronomical dilettantism." + +"Here," said I. "We're on the verge of the biggest lock-out in the +history of this countryside; here's distress and hunger coming, +here's all the capitalistic competitive system like a wound inflamed, +and you spend your time gaping at that damned silly streak of +nothing in the sky!" + +Parload stared at me. "Yes, I do," he said slowly, as though it +was a new idea. "Don't I? . . . I wonder why." + +"_I_ want to start meetings of an evening on Howden's Waste." + +"You think they'd listen?" + +"They'd listen fast enough now." + +"They didn't before," said Parload, looking at his pet instrument. + +"There was a demonstration of unemployed at Swathinglea on Sunday. +They got to stone throwing." + +Parload said nothing for a little while and I said several things. +He seemed to be considering something. + +"But, after all," he said at last, with an awkward movement towards +his spectroscope, "that does signify something." + +"The comet?" + +"Yes." + +"What can it signify? You don't want me to believe in astrology. +What does it matter what flames in the heavens--when men are starving +on earth?" + +"It's--it's science." + +"Science! What we want now is socialism--not science." + +He still seemed reluctant to give up his comet. + +"Socialism's all right," he said, "but if that thing up there WAS +to hit the earth it might matter." + +"Nothing matters but human beings." + +"Suppose it killed them all." + +"Oh," said I, "that's Rot," + +"I wonder," said Parload, dreadfully divided in his allegiance. + +He looked at the comet. He seemed on the verge of repeating his +growing information about the nearness of the paths of the earth +and comet, and all that might ensue from that. So I cut in with +something I had got out of a now forgotten writer called Ruskin, +a volcano of beautiful language and nonsensical suggestions, who +prevailed very greatly with eloquent excitable young men in those +days. Something it was about the insignificance of science and the +supreme importance of Life. Parload stood listening, half turned +towards the sky with the tips of his fingers on his spectroscope. +He seemed to come to a sudden decision. + +"No. I don't agree with you, Leadford," he said. "You don't understand +about science." + +Parload rarely argued with that bluntness of opposition. I was so +used to entire possession of our talk that his brief contradiction +struck me like a blow. "Don't agree with me!" I repeated. + +"No," said Parload + +"But how?" + +"I believe science is of more importance than socialism," he said. +"Socialism's a theory. Science--science is something more." + +And that was really all he seemed to be able to say. + +We embarked upon one of those queer arguments illiterate young men +used always to find so heating. Science or Socialism? It was, of +course, like arguing which is right, left handedness or a taste for +onions, it was altogether impossible opposition. But the range of +my rhetoric enabled me at last to exasperate Parload, and his mere +repudiation of my conclusions sufficed to exasperate me, and we +ended in the key of a positive quarrel. "Oh, very well!" said I. +"So long as I know where we are!" + +I slammed his door as though I dynamited his house, and went raging +down the street, but I felt that he was already back at the window +worshiping his blessed line in the green, before I got round the +corner. + +I had to walk for an hour or so, before I was cool enough to go +home. + +And it was Parload who had first introduced me to socialism! + +Recreant! + +The most extraordinary things used to run through my head in those +days. I will confess that my mind ran persistently that evening upon +revolutions after the best French pattern, and I sat on a Committee +of Safety and tried backsliders. Parload was there, among the +prisoners, backsliderissimus, aware too late of the error of his +ways. His hands were tied behind his back ready for the shambles; +through the open door one heard the voice of justice, the rude +justice of the people. I was sorry, but I had to do my duty. + +"If we punish those who would betray us to Kings," said I, with +a sorrowful deliberation, "how much the more must we punish those +who would give over the State to the pursuit of useless knowledge"; +and so with a gloomy satisfaction sent him off to the guillotine. + +"Ah, Parload! Parload! If only you'd listened to me earlier, +Parload. . . ." + +None the less that quarrel made me extremely unhappy. Parload was +my only gossip, and it cost me much to keep away from him and think +evil of him with no one to listen to me, evening after evening. + +That was a very miserable time for me, even before my last visit +to Checkshill. My long unemployed hours hung heavily on my hands. +I kept away from home all day, partly to support a fiction that +I was sedulously seeking another situation, and partly to escape +the persistent question in my mother's eyes. "Why did you quarrel +with Mr. Rawdon? Why DID you? Why do you keep on going about with +a sullen face and risk offending IT more?" I spent most of the +morning in the newspaper-room of the public library, writing +impossible applications for impossible posts--I remember that among +other things of the sort I offered my services to a firm of private +detectives, a sinister breed of traders upon base jealousies now +happily vanished from the world, and wrote apropos of an advertisement +for "stevedores" that I did not know what the duties of a stevedore +might be, but that I was apt and willing to learn--and in the +afternoons and evenings I wandered through the strange lights and +shadows of my native valley and hated all created things. Until my +wanderings were checked by the discovery that I was wearing out my +boots. + +The stagnant inconclusive malaria of that time! + +I perceive that I was an evil-tempered, ill-disposed youth with a +great capacity for hatred, BUT-- + +There was an excuse for hate. + +It was wrong of me to hate individuals, to be rude, harsh, +and vindictive to this person or that, but indeed it would have +been equally wrong to have taken the manifest offer life made me, +without resentment. I see now clearly and calmly, what I then felt +obscurely and with an unbalanced intensity, that my conditions were +intolerable. My work was tedious and laborious and it took up an +unreasonable proportion of my time, I was ill clothed, ill fed, +ill housed, ill educated and ill trained, my will was suppressed +and cramped to the pitch of torture, I had no reasonable pride in +myself and no reasonable chance of putting anything right. It was +a life hardly worth living. That a large proportion of the people +about me had no better a lot, that many had a worse, does not +affect these facts. It was a life in which contentment would have +been disgraceful. If some of them were contented or resigned, so +much the worse for every one. No doubt it was hasty and foolish +of me to throw up my situation, but everything was so obviously +aimless and foolish in our social organization that I do not feel +disposed to blame myself even for that, except in so far as it +pained my mother and caused her anxiety. + +Think of the one comprehensive fact of the lock-out! + +That year was a bad year, a year of world-wide economic disorganization. +Through their want of intelligent direction the great "Trust" of +American ironmasters, a gang of energetic, narrow-minded furnace +owners, had smelted far more iron than the whole world had any demand +for. (In those days there existed no means of estimating any need +of that sort beforehand.) They had done this without even consulting +the ironmasters of any other country. During their period of activity +they had drawn into their employment a great number of workers, +and had erected a huge productive plant. It is manifestly just that +people who do headlong stupid things of this sort should suffer, +but in the old days it was quite possible, it was customary for +the real blunderers in such disasters, to shift nearly all the +consequences of their incapacity. No one thought it wrong for a +light-witted "captain of industry" who had led his workpeople into +overproduction, into the disproportionate manufacture, that is to +say, of some particular article, to abandon and dismiss them, nor +was there anything to prevent the sudden frantic underselling of +some trade rival in order to surprise and destroy his trade, secure +his customers for one's own destined needs, and shift a portion of +one's punishment upon him. This operation of spasmodic underselling +was known as "dumping." The American ironmasters were now dumping on +the British market. The British employers were, of course, taking +their loss out of their workpeople as much as possible, but in addition +they were agitating for some legislation that would prevent--not +stupid relative excess in production, but "dumping"--not the disease, +but the consequences of the disease. The necessary knowledge to +prevent either dumping or its causes, the uncorrelated production +of commodities, did not exist, but this hardly weighed with them +at all, and in answer to their demands there had arisen a curious +party of retaliatory-protectionists who combined vague proposals +for spasmodic responses to these convulsive attacks from foreign +manufacturers, with the very evident intention of achieving +financial adventures. The dishonest and reckless elements were +indeed so evident in this movement as to add very greatly to the +general atmosphere of distrust and insecurity, and in the recoil +from the prospect of fiscal power in the hands of the class of men +known as the "New Financiers," one heard frightened old-fashioned +statesmen asserting with passion that "dumping" didn't occur, or +that it was a very charming sort of thing to happen. Nobody would +face and handle the rather intricate truth of the business. The +whole effect upon the mind of a cool observer was of a covey of +unsubstantial jabbering minds drifting over a series of irrational +economic cataclysms, prices and employment tumbled about like towers +in an earthquake, and amidst the shifting masses were the common +work-people going on with their lives as well as they could, +suffering, perplexed, unorganized, and for anything but violent, +fruitless protests, impotent. You cannot hope now to understand +the infinite want of adjustment in the old order of things. At one +time there were people dying of actual starvation in India, while +men were burning unsalable wheat in America. It sounds like the +account of a particularly mad dream, does it not? It was a dream, +a dream from which no one on earth expected an awakening. + +To us youngsters with the positiveness, the rationalism of youth, +it seemed that the strikes and lockouts, the overproduction and +misery could not possibly result simply from ignorance and want +of thought and feeling. We needed more dramatic factors than these +mental fogs, these mere atmospheric devils. We fled therefore to +that common refuge of the unhappy ignorant, a belief in callous +insensate plots--we called them "plots"--against the poor. + +You can still see how we figured it in any museum by looking up +the caricatures of capital and labor that adorned the German and +American socialistic papers of the old time. + + + +Section 2 + +I had cast Nettie off in an eloquent epistle, had really imagined +the affair was over forever--"I've done with women," I said to +Parload--and then there was silence for more than a week. + +Before that week was over I was wondering with a growing emotion +what next would happen between us. + +I found myself thinking constantly of Nettie, picturing her--sometimes +with stern satisfaction, sometimes with sympathetic remorse--mourning, +regretting, realizing the absolute end that had come between us. +At the bottom of my heart I no more believed that there was an end +between us, than that an end would come to the world. Had we not +kissed one another, had we not achieved an atmosphere of whispering +nearness, breached our virgin shyness with one another? Of course +she was mine, of course I was hers, and separations and final +quarrels and harshness and distance were no more than flourishes +upon that eternal fact. So at least I felt the thing, however I +shaped my thoughts. + +Whenever my imagination got to work as that week drew to its close, +she came in as a matter of course, I thought of her recurrently +all day and dreamt of her at night. On Saturday night I dreamt of +her very vividly. Her face was flushed and wet with tears, her +hair a little disordered, and when I spoke to her she turned away. +In some manner this dream left in my mind a feeling of distress +and anxiety. In the morning I had a raging thirst to see her. + +That Sunday my mother wanted me to go to church very particularly. +She had a double reason for that; she thought that it would certainly +exercise a favorable influence upon my search for a situation +throughout the next week, and in addition Mr. Gabbitas, with +a certain mystery behind his glasses, had promised to see what he +could do for me, and she wanted to keep him up to that promise. I +half consented, and then my desire for Nettie took hold of me. I +told my mother I wasn't going to church, and set off about eleven +to walk the seventeen miles to Checkshill. + +It greatly intensified the fatigue of that long tramp that the +sole of my boot presently split at the toe, and after I had cut the +flapping portion off, a nail worked through and began to torment +me. However, the boot looked all right after that operation and +gave no audible hint of my discomfort. I got some bread and cheese +at a little inn on the way, and was in Checkshill park about four. +I did not go by the road past the house and so round to the gardens, +but cut over the crest beyond the second keeper's cottage, along +a path Nettie used to call her own. It was a mere deer track. It +led up a miniature valley and through a pretty dell in which we +had been accustomed to meet, and so through the hollies and along +a narrow path close by the wall of the shrubbery to the gardens. + +In my memory that walk through the park before I came upon Nettie +stands out very vividly. The long tramp before it is foreshortened +to a mere effect of dusty road and painful boot, but the bracken +valley and sudden tumult of doubts and unwonted expectations that +came to me, stands out now as something significant, as something +unforgettable, something essential to the meaning of all that +followed. Where should I meet her? What would she say? I had asked +these questions before and found an answer. Now they came again +with a trail of fresh implications and I had no answer for them at +all. As I approached Nettie she ceased to be the mere butt of my +egotistical self-projection, the custodian of my sexual pride, and +drew together and became over and above this a personality of her +own, a personality and a mystery, a sphinx I had evaded only to +meet again. + +I find a little difficulty in describing the quality of the old-world +love-making so that it may be understandable now. + +We young people had practically no preparation at all for the stir +and emotions of adolescence. Towards the young the world maintained +a conspiracy of stimulating silences. There came no initiation. +There were books, stories of a curiously conventional kind that +insisted on certain qualities in every love affair and greatly +intensified one's natural desire for them, perfect trust, perfect +loyalty, lifelong devotion. Much of the complex essentials of +love were altogether hidden. One read these things, got accidental +glimpses of this and that, wondered and forgot, and so one grew. +Then strange emotions, novel alarming desires, dreams strangely +charged with feeling; an inexplicable impulse of self-abandonment +began to tickle queerly amongst the familiar purely egotistical +and materialistic things of boyhood and girlhood. We were like +misguided travelers who had camped in the dry bed of a tropical +river. Presently we were knee deep and neck deep in the flood. +Our beings were suddenly going out from ourselves seeking other +beings--we knew not why. This novel craving for abandonment to +some one of the other sex, bore us away. We were ashamed and full +of desire. We kept the thing a guilty secret, and were resolved to +satisfy it against all the world. In this state it was we drifted +in the most accidental way against some other blindly seeking +creature, and linked like nascent atoms. + +We were obsessed by the books we read, by all the talk about us +that once we had linked ourselves we were linked for life. Then +afterwards we discovered that other was also an egotism, a thing +of ideas and impulses, that failed to correspond with ours. + +So it was, I say, with the young of my class and most of the young +people in our world. So it came about that I sought Nettie on the +Sunday afternoon and suddenly came upon her, light bodied, slenderly +feminine, hazel eyed, with her soft sweet young face under the shady +brim of her hat of straw, the pretty Venus I had resolved should +be wholly and exclusively mine. + +There, all unaware of me still, she stood, my essential feminine, +the embodiment of the inner thing in life for me--and moreover an +unknown other, a person like myself. + +She held a little book in her hand, open as if she were walking +along and reading it. That chanced to be her pose, but indeed she was +standing quite still, looking away towards the gray and lichenous +shrubbery wall and, as I think now, listening. Her lips were a +little apart, curved to that faint, sweet shadow of a smile. + + + +Section 3 + +I recall with a vivid precision her queer start when she heard the +rustle of my approaching feet, her surprise, her eyes almost of +dismay for me. I could recollect, I believe, every significant word +she spoke during our meeting, and most of what I said to her. At +least, it seems I could, though indeed I may deceive myself. But +I will not make the attempt. We were both too ill-educated to +speak our full meanings, we stamped out our feelings with clumsy +stereotyped phrases; you who are better taught would fail to catch +our intention. The effect would be inanity. But our first words +I may give you, because though they conveyed nothing to me at the +time, afterwards they meant much. + +"YOU, Willie!" she said. + +"I have come," I said--forgetting in the instant all the elaborate +things I had intended to say. "I thought I would surprise you--" + +"Surprise me?" + +"Yes." + +She stared at me for a moment. I can see her pretty face now as +it looked at me--her impenetrable dear face. She laughed a queer +little laugh and her color went for a moment, and then so soon as +she had spoken, came back again. + +"Surprise me at what?" she said with a rising note. + +I was too intent to explain myself to think of what might lie in +that. + +"I wanted to tell you," I said, "that I didn't mean quite . . . +the things I put in my letter." + + + +Section 4 + +When I and Nettie had been sixteen we had been just of an age and +contemporaries altogether. Now we were a year and three-quarters +older, and she--her metamorphosis was almost complete, and I was +still only at the beginning of a man's long adolescence. + +In an instant she grasped the situation. The hidden motives of her +quick ripened little mind flashed out their intuitive scheme of +action. She treated me with that neat perfection of understanding +a young woman has for a boy. + +"But how did you come?" she asked. + +I told her I had walked. + +"Walked!" In an instant she was leading me towards the gardens. +I MUST be tired. I must come home with her at once and sit down. +Indeed it was near tea-time (the Stuarts had tea at the old-fashioned +hour of five). Every one would be SO surprised to see me. Fancy +walking! Fancy! But she supposed a man thought nothing of seventeen +miles. When COULD I have started! + +All the while, keeping me at a distance, without even the touch of +her hand. + +"But, Nettie! I came over to talk to you?" + +"My dear boy! Tea first, if you please! And besides--aren't we +talking?" + +The "dear boy" was a new note, that sounded oddly to me. + +She quickened her pace a little. + +"I wanted to explain--" I began. + +Whatever I wanted to explain I had no chance to do so. I said a few +discrepant things that she answered rather by her intonation than +her words. + +When we were well past the shrubbery, she slackened a little in +her urgency, and so we came along the slope under the beeches to +the garden. She kept her bright, straightforward-looking girlish +eyes on me as we went; it seemed she did so all the time, but now +I know, better than I did then, that every now and then she glanced +over me and behind me towards the shrubbery. And all the while, +behind her quick breathless inconsecutive talk she was thinking. + +Her dress marked the end of her transition. + +Can I recall it? + +Not, I am afraid, in the terms a woman would use. But her bright +brown hair, which had once flowed down her back in a jolly pig-tail +tied with a bit of scarlet ribbon, was now caught up into an +intricacy of pretty curves above her little ear and cheek, and the +soft long lines of her neck; her white dress had descended to her +feet; her slender waist, which had once been a mere geographical +expression, an imaginary line like the equator, was now a thing +of flexible beauty. A year ago she had been a pretty girl's face +sticking out from a little unimportant frock that was carried upon +an extremely active and efficient pair of brown-stockinged legs. +Now there was coming a strange new body that flowed beneath her +clothes with a sinuous insistence. Every movement, and particularly +the novel droop of her hand and arm to the unaccustomed skirts she +gathered about her, and a graceful forward inclination that had come +to her, called softly to my eyes. A very fine scarf--I suppose you +would call it a scarf--of green gossamer, that some new wakened +instinct had told her to fling about her shoulders, clung now closely +to the young undulations of her body, and now streamed fluttering +out for a moment in a breath of wind, and like some shy independent +tentacle with a secret to impart, came into momentary contact with +my arm. + +She caught it back and reproved it. + +We went through the green gate in the high garden wall. I held it +open for her to pass through, for this was one of my restricted +stock of stiff politenesses, and then for a second she was near +touching me. So we came to the trim array of flower-beds near the +head gardener's cottage and the vistas of "glass" on our left. We +walked between the box edgings and beds of begonias and into the +shadow of a yew hedge within twenty yards of that very pond with +the gold-fish, at whose brim we had plighted our vows, and so we +came to the wistaria-smothered porch. + +The door was wide open, and she walked in before me. "Guess who +has come to see us!" she cried. + +Her father answered indistinctly from the parlor, and a chair +creaked. I judged he was disturbed in his nap. + +"Mother!" she called in her clear young voice. "Puss!" + +Puss was her sister. + +She told them in a marveling key that I had walked all the way from +Clayton, and they gathered about me and echoed her notes of surprise. + +"You'd better sit down, Willie," said her father; "now you have got +here. How's your mother?" + +He looked at me curiously as he spoke. + +He was dressed in his Sunday clothes, a sort of brownish tweeds, but +the waistcoat was unbuttoned for greater comfort in his slumbers. +He was a brown-eyed ruddy man, and I still have now in my mind the +bright effect of the red-golden hairs that started out from his +cheek to flow down into his beard. He was short but strongly built, +and his beard and mustache were the biggest things about him. She +had taken all the possibility of beauty he possessed, his clear +skin, his bright hazel-brown eyes, and wedded them to a certain +quickness she got from her mother. Her mother I remember as +a sharp-eyed woman of great activity; she seems to me now to have +been perpetually bringing in or taking out meals or doing some +such service, and to me--for my mother's sake and my own--she was +always welcoming and kind. Puss was a youngster of fourteen perhaps, +of whom a hard bright stare, and a pale skin like her mother's, are +the chief traces on my memory. All these people were very kind to +me, and among them there was a common recognition, sometimes very +agreeably finding expression, that I was--"clever." They all stood +about me as if they were a little at a loss. + +"Sit down!" said her father. "Give him a chair, Puss." + +We talked a little stiffly--they were evidently surprised by my +sudden apparition, dusty, fatigued, and white faced; but Nettie +did not remain to keep the conversation going. + +"There!" she cried suddenly, as if she were vexed. "I declare!" +and she darted out of the room. + +"Lord! what a girl it is!" said Mrs. Stuart. "I don't know what's +come to her." + +It was half an hour before Nettie came back. It seemed a long time +to me, and yet she had been running, for when she came in again +she was out of breath. In the meantime, I had thrown out casually +that I had given up my place at Rawdon's. "I can do better than +that," I said. + +"I left my book in the dell," she said, panting. "Is tea +ready?" and that was her apology. . . + +We didn't shake down into comfort even with the coming of the +tea-things. Tea at the gardener's cottage was a serious meal, with +a big cake and little cakes, and preserves and fruit, a fine spread +upon a table. You must imagine me, sullen, awkward, and preoccupied, +perplexed by the something that was inexplicably unexpected in +Nettie, saying little, and glowering across the cake at her, and all +the eloquence I had been concentrating for the previous twenty-four +hours, miserably lost somewhere in the back of my mind. Nettie's +father tried to set me talking; he had a liking for my gift of ready +speech, for his own ideas came with difficulty, and it pleased and +astonished him to hear me pouring out my views. Indeed, over there +I was, I think, even more talkative than with Parload, though to +the world at large I was a shy young lout. "You ought to write it +out for the newspapers," he used to say. "That's what you ought to +do. I never heard such nonsense." + +Or, "You've got the gift of the gab, young man. We ought to ha' +made a lawyer of you." + +But that afternoon, even in his eyes, I didn't shine. Failing any +other stimulus, he reverted to my search for a situation, but even +that did not engage me. + + + +Section 5 + +For a long time I feared I should have to go back to Clayton without +another word to Nettie, she seemed insensible to the need I felt +for a talk with her, and I was thinking even of a sudden demand +for that before them all. It was a transparent manoeuver of her +mother's who had been watching my face, that sent us out at last +together to do something--I forget now what--in one of the greenhouses. +Whatever that little mission may have been it was the merest, most +barefaced excuse, a door to shut, or a window to close, and I don't +think it got done. + +Nettie hesitated and obeyed. She led the way through one of +the hot-houses. It was a low, steamy, brick-floored alley between +staging that bore a close crowd of pots and ferns, and behind big +branching plants that were spread and nailed overhead so as to make +an impervious cover of leaves, and in that close green privacy she +stopped and turned on me suddenly like a creature at bay. + +"Isn't the maidenhair fern lovely?" she said, and looked at me with +eyes that said, "NOW." + +"Nettie," I began, "I was a fool to write to you as I did." + +She startled me by the assent that flashed out upon her face. But +she said nothing, and stood waiting. + +"Nettie," I plunged, "I can't do without you. I--I love you." + +"If you loved me," she said trimly, watching the white fingers +she plunged among the green branches of a selaginella, "could you +write the things you do to me?" + +"I don't mean them," I said. "At least not always." + +I thought really they were very good letters, and that Nettie was +stupid to think otherwise, but I was for the moment clearly aware +of the impossibility of conveying that to her. + +"You wrote them." + +"But then I tramp seventeen miles to say I don't mean them." + +"Yes. But perhaps you do." + +I think I was at a loss; then I said, not very clearly, "I don't." + +"You think you--you love me, Willie. But you don't." + +"I do. Nettie! You know I do." + +For answer she shook her head. + +I made what I thought was a most heroic plunge. "Nettie," I said, +"I'd rather have you than--than my own opinions." + +The selaginella still engaged her. "You think so now," she said. + +I broke out into protestations. + +"No," she said shortly. "It's different now." + +"But why should two letters make so much difference?" I said. + +"It isn't only the letters. But it is different. It's different +for good." + +She halted a little with that sentence, seeking her expression. +She looked up abruptly into my eyes and moved, indeed slightly, +but with the intimation that she thought our talk might end. + +But I did not mean it to end like that. + +"For good?" said I. "No! . . Nettie! Nettie! You don't mean that!" + +"I do," she said deliberately, still looking at me, and with all +her pose conveying her finality. She seemed to brace herself for +the outbreak that must follow. + +Of course I became wordy. But I did not submerge her. She stood +entrenched, firing her contradictions like guns into my scattered +discursive attack. I remember that our talk took the absurd form +of disputing whether I could be in love with her or not. And there +was I, present in evidence, in a deepening and widening distress +of soul because she could stand there, defensive, brighter and +prettier than ever, and in some inexplicable way cut off from me +and inaccessible. + +You know, we had never been together before without little enterprises +of endearment, without a faintly guilty, quite delightful excitement. + +I pleaded, I argued. I tried to show that even my harsh and difficult +letters came from my desire to come wholly into contact with her. +I made exaggerated fine statements of the longing I felt for her +when I was away, of the shock and misery of finding her estranged +and cool. She looked at me, feeling the emotion of my speech and +impervious to its ideas. I had no doubt--whatever poverty in my +words, coolly written down now--that I was eloquent then. I meant +most intensely what I said, indeed I was wholly concentrated upon +it. I was set upon conveying to her with absolute sincerity my +sense of distance, and the greatness of my desire. I toiled toward +her painfully and obstinately through a jungle of words. + +Her face changed very slowly--by such imperceptible degrees as when +at dawn light comes into a clear sky. I could feel that I touched +her, that her hardness was in some manner melting, her determination +softening toward hesitations. The habit of an old familiarity lurked +somewhere within her. But she would not let me reach her. + +"No," she cried abruptly, starting into motion. + +She laid a hand on my arm. A wonderful new friendliness came into +her voice. "It's impossible, Willie. Everything is different +now--everything. We made a mistake. We two young sillies made a +mistake and everything is different for ever. Yes, yes." + +She turned about. + +"Nettie!" cried I, and still protesting, pursued her along the narrow +alley between the staging toward the hot-house door. I pursued her +like an accusation, and she went before me like one who is guilty +and ashamed. So I recall it now. + +She would not let me talk to her again. + +Yet I could see that my talk to her had altogether abolished +the clear-cut distance of our meeting in the park. Ever and again +I found her hazel eyes upon me. They expressed something novel--a +surprise, as though she realized an unwonted relationship, and a +sympathetic pity. And still--something defensive. + +When we got back to the cottage, I fell talking rather more freely +with her father about the nationalization of railways, and my spirits +and temper had so far mended at the realization that I could still +produce an effect upon Nettie, that I was even playful with Puss. +Mrs. Stuart judged from that that things were better with me than +they were, and began to beam mightily. + +But Nettie remained thoughtful and said very little. She was lost +in perplexities I could not fathom, and presently she slipped away +from us and went upstairs. + + + +Section 6 + +I was, of course, too footsore to walk back to Clayton, but I had +a shilling and a penny in my pocket for the train between Checkshill +and Two-Mile Stone, and that much of the distance I proposed to +do in the train. And when I got ready to go, Nettie amazed me by +waking up to the most remarkable solicitude for me. I must, she +said, go by the road. It was altogether too dark for the short way +to the lodge gates. + +I pointed out that it was moonlight. "With the comet thrown in," +said old Stuart. + +"No," she insisted, "you MUST go by the road." + +I still disputed. + +She was standing near me. "To please ME," she urged, in a quick +undertone, and with a persuasive look that puzzled me. Even in the +moment I asked myself why should this please her? + +I might have agreed had she not followed that up with, "The hollies +by the shrubbery are as dark as pitch. And there's the deer-hounds." + +"I'm not afraid of the dark," said I. "Nor of the deer-hounds, +either." + +"But those dogs! Supposing one was loose!" + +That was a girl's argument, a girl who still had to understand that +fear is an overt argument only for her own sex. I thought too of +those grisly lank brutes straining at their chains and the chorus +they could make of a night when they heard belated footsteps along +the edge of the Killing Wood, and the thought banished my wish to +please her. Like most imaginative natures I was acutely capable of +dreads and retreats, and constantly occupied with their suppression +and concealment, and to refuse the short cut when it might appear +that I did it on account of half a dozen almost certainly chained +dogs was impossible. + +So I set off in spite of her, feeling valiant and glad to be +so easily brave, but a little sorry that she should think herself +crossed by me. + +A thin cloud veiled the moon, and the way under the beeches was +dark and indistinct. I was not so preoccupied with my love-affairs +as to neglect what I will confess was always my custom at night +across that wild and lonely park. I made myself a club by fastening +a big flint to one end of my twisted handkerchief and tying the +other about my wrist, and with this in my pocket, went on comforted. + +And it chanced that as I emerged from the hollies by the corner +of the shrubbery I was startled to come unexpectedly upon a young +man in evening dress smoking a cigar. + +I was walking on turf, so that the sound I made was slight. He +stood clear in the moonlight, his cigar glowed like a blood-red +star, and it did not occur to me at the time that I advanced towards +him almost invisibly in an impenetrable shadow. + +"Hullo," he cried, with a sort of amiable challenge. "I'm here +first!" + +I came out into the light. "Who cares if you are?" said I. + +I had jumped at once to an interpretation of his words. I knew that +there was an intermittent dispute between the House people and the +villager public about the use of this track, and it is needless to +say where my sympathies fell in that dispute. + +"Eh?" he cried in surprise. + +"Thought I would run away, I suppose," said I, and came close up +to him. + +All my enormous hatred of his class had flared up at the sight of +his costume, at the fancied challenge of his words. I knew him. He +was Edward Verrall, son of the man who owned not only this great +estate but more than half of Rawdon's pot-bank, and who had interests +and possessions, collieries and rents, all over the district of +the Four Towns. He was a gallant youngster, people said, and very +clever. Young as he was there was talk of parliament for him; he had +been a great success at the university, and he was being sedulously +popularized among us. He took with a light confidence, as a matter +of course, advantages that I would have faced the rack to get, and +I firmly believed myself a better man than he. He was, as he stood +there, a concentrated figure of all that filled me with bitterness. +One day he had stopped in a motor outside our house, and I remember +the thrill of rage with which I had noted the dutiful admiration +in my mother's eyes as she peered through her blind at him. "That's +young Mr. Verrall," she said. "They say he's very clever." + +"They would," I answered. "Damn them and him!" + +But that is by the way. + +He was clearly astonished to find himself face to face with a man. +His note changed. + +"Who the devil are YOU?" he asked. + +My retort was the cheap expedient of re-echoing, "Who the devil +are you?" + +"WELL," he said. + +"I'm coming along this path if I like," I said. "See? It's a public +path--just as this used to be public land. You've stolen the land--you +and yours, and now you want to steal the right of way. You'll +ask us to get off the face of the earth next. I sha'n't oblige. +See?" + +I was shorter and I suppose a couple of years younger than he, but +I had the improvised club in my pocket gripped ready, and I would +have fought with him very cheerfully. But he fell a step backward +as I came toward him. + +"Socialist, I presume?" he said, alert and quiet and with the +faintest note of badinage. + +"One of many." + +"We're all socialists nowadays," he remarked philosophically, "and +I haven't the faintest intention of disputing your right of way." + +"You'd better not," I said. + +"No!" + +"No." + +He replaced his cigar, and there was a brief pause. "Catching a +train?" he threw out. + +It seemed absurd not to answer. "Yes," I said shortly. + +He said it was a pleasant evening for a walk. + +I hovered for a moment and there was my path before me, and he +stood aside. There seemed nothing to do but go on. "Good night," +said he, as that intention took effect. + +I growled a surly good-night. + +I felt like a bombshell of swearing that must presently burst with +some violence as I went on my silent way. He had so completely got +the best of our encounter. + + + +Section 7 + +There comes a memory, an odd intermixture of two entirely divergent +things, that stands out with the intensest vividness. + +As I went across the last open meadow, following the short cut to +Checkshill station, I perceived I had two shadows. + +The thing jumped into my mind and stopped its tumid flow for a +moment. I remember the intelligent detachment of my sudden interest. +I turned sharply, and stood looking at the moon and the great white +comet, that the drift of the clouds had now rather suddenly unveiled. + +The comet was perhaps twenty degrees from the moon. What a wonderful +thing it looked floating there, a greenish-white apparition in +the dark blue deeps! It looked brighter than the moon because it +was smaller, but the shadow it cast, though clearer cut, was much +fainter than the moon's shadow. . . I went on noting these facts, +watching my two shadows precede me. + +I am totally unable to account for the sequence of my thoughts +on this occasion. But suddenly, as if I had come on this new fact +round a corner, the comet was out of my mind again, and I was face +to face with an absolutely new idea. I wonder sometimes if the two +shadows I cast, one with a sort of feminine faintness with regard +to the other and not quite so tall, may not have suggested the +word or the thought of an assignation to my mind. All that I have +clear is that with the certitude of intuition I knew what it was +that had brought the youth in evening dress outside the shrubbery. +Of course! He had come to meet Nettie! + +Once the mental process was started it took no time at all. The +day which had been full of perplexities for me, the mysterious +invisible thing that had held Nettie and myself apart, the unaccountable +strange something in her manner, was revealed and explained. + +I knew now why she had looked guilty at my appearance, what had +brought her out that afternoon, why she had hurried me in, the +nature of the "book" she had run back to fetch, the reason why she +had wanted me to go back by the high-road, and why she had pitied +me. It was all in the instant clear to me. + +You must imagine me a black little creature, suddenly stricken +still--for a moment standing rigid--and then again suddenly +becoming active with an impotent gesture, becoming audible with an +inarticulate cry, with two little shadows mocking my dismay, and +about this figure you must conceive a great wide space of moonlit +grass, rimmed by the looming suggestion of distant trees--trees +very low and faint and dim, and over it all the domed serenity of +that wonderful luminous night. + +For a little while this realization stunned my mind. My thoughts +came to a pause, staring at my discovery. Meanwhile my feet and my +previous direction carried me through the warm darkness to Checkshill +station with its little lights, to the ticket-office window, and +so to the train. + +I remember myself as it were waking up to the thing--I was alone +in one of the dingy "third-class" compartments of that time--and +the sudden nearly frantic insurgence of my rage. I stood up with the +cry of an angry animal, and smote my fist with all my strength +against the panel of wood before me. . . . + +Curiously enough I have completely forgotten my mood after that +for a little while, but I know that later, for a minute perhaps, I +hung for a time out of the carriage with the door open, contemplating +a leap from the train. It was to be a dramatic leap, and then I +would go storming back to her, denounce her, overwhelm her; and I +hung, urging myself to do it. I don't remember how it was I decided +not to do this, at last, but in the end I didn't. + +When the train stopped at the next station I had given up all +thoughts of going back. I was sitting in the corner of the carriage +with my bruised and wounded hand pressed under my arm, and still +insensible to its pain, trying to think out clearly a scheme of +action--action that should express the monstrous indignation that +possessed me. + + + + +CHAPTER THE THIRD + +THE REVOLVER + + + +Section 1 + +"THAT comet is going to hit the earth!" + +So said one of the two men who got into the train and settled down. + +"Ah!" said the other man. + +"They do say that it is made of gas, that comet. We sha'n't +blow up, shall us?". . . + +What did it matter to me? + +I was thinking of revenge--revenge against the primary conditions +of my being. I was thinking of Nettie and her lover. I was firmly +resolved he should not have her--though I had to kill them both to +prevent it. I did not care what else might happen, if only that end +was ensured. All my thwarted passions had turned to rage. I would +have accepted eternal torment that night without a second thought, +to be certain of revenge. A hundred possibilities of action, a +hundred stormy situations, a whirl of violent schemes, chased one +another through my shamed, exasperated mind. The sole prospect I +could endure was of some gigantic, inexorably cruel vindication of +my humiliated self. + +And Nettie? I loved Nettie still, but now with the intensest +jealousy, with the keen, unmeasuring hatred of wounded pride, and +baffled, passionate desire. + + + +Section 2 + +As I came down the hill from Clayton Crest--for my shilling and +a penny only permitted my traveling by train as far as Two-Mile +Stone, and thence I had to walk over the hill--I remember very +vividly a little man with a shrill voice who was preaching under +a gas-lamp against a hoarding to a thin crowd of Sunday evening +loafers. He was a short man, bald, with a little fair curly beard +and hair and watery blue eyes, and he was preaching that the end +of the world drew near. + +I think that is the first time I heard any one link the comet with +the end of the world. He had got that jumbled up with international +politics and prophecies from the Book of Daniel. + +I stopped to hear him only for a moment or so. I do not think I +should have halted at all but his crowd blocked my path, and the +sight of his queer wild expression, the gesture of his upward-pointing +finger, held me. + +"There is the end of all your Sins and Follies," he bawled. "There! +There is the Star of Judgments, the Judgments of the most High +God! It is appointed unto all men to die--unto all men to die"--his +voice changed to a curious flat chant--"and after death, the +Judgment! The Judgment!" + +I pushed and threaded my way through the bystanders and went on, +and his curious harsh flat voice pursued me. I went on with the +thoughts that had occupied me before--where I could buy a revolver, +and how I might master its use--and probably I should have forgotten +all about him had he not taken a part in the hideous dream that +ended the little sleep I had that night. For the most part I lay +awake thinking of Nettie and her lover. + +Then came three strange days--three days that seem now to have been +wholly concentrated upon one business. + +This dominant business was the purchase of my revolver. I held +myself resolutely to the idea that I must either restore myself by +some extraordinary act of vigor and violence in Nettie's eyes or I +must kill her. I would not let myself fall away from that. I felt +that if I let this matter pass, my last shred of pride and honor +would pass with it, that for the rest of my life I should never +deserve the slightest respect or any woman's love. Pride kept me +to my purpose between my gusts of passion. + +Yet it was not easy to buy that revolver. + +I had a kind of shyness of the moment when I should have to face +the shopman, and I was particularly anxious to have a story ready +if he should see fit to ask questions why I bought such a thing. +I determined to say I was going to Texas, and I thought it might +prove useful there. Texas in those days had the reputation of a +wild lawless land. As I knew nothing of caliber or impact, I wanted +also to be able to ask with a steady face at what distance a man +or woman could be killed by the weapon that might be offered me. +I was pretty cool-headed in relation to such practical aspects of +my affair. I had some little difficulty in finding a gunsmith. In +Clayton there were some rook-rifles and so forth in a cycle shop, +but the only revolvers these people had impressed me as being too +small and toylike for my purpose. It was in a pawnshop window in +the narrow High Street of Swathinglea that I found my choice, a +reasonably clumsy and serious-looking implement ticketed "As used +in the American army." + +I had drawn out my balance from the savings bank, matter of two +pounds and more, to make this purchase, and I found it at last +a very easy transaction. The pawnbroker told me where I could get +ammunition, and I went home that night with bulging pockets, an +armed man. + +The purchase of my revolver was, I say, the chief business of +those days, but you must not think I was so intent upon it as to +be insensible to the stirring things that were happening in the +streets through which I went seeking the means to effect my purpose. +They were full of murmurings: the whole region of the Four Towns +scowled lowering from its narrow doors. The ordinary healthy flow +of people going to work, people going about their business, was +chilled and checked. Numbers of men stood about the streets in knots +and groups, as corpuscles gather and catch in the blood-vessels in +the opening stages of inflammation. The woman looked haggard and +worried. The ironworkers had refused the proposed reduction of +their wages, and the lockout had begun. They were already at "play." +The Conciliation Board was doing its best to keep the coal-miners +and masters from a breach, but young Lord Redcar, the greatest of +our coal owners and landlord of all Swathinglea and half Clayton, was +taking a fine upstanding attitude that made the breach inevitable. +He was a handsome young man, a gallant young man; his pride revolted +at the idea of being dictated to by a "lot of bally miners," and +he meant, he said, to make a fight for it. The world had treated +him sumptuously from his earliest years; the shares in the common +stock of five thousand people had gone to pay for his handsome +upbringing, and large, romantic, expensive ambitions filled +his generously nurtured mind. He had early distinguished himself +at Oxford by his scornful attitude towards democracy. There was +something that appealed to the imagination in his fine antagonism +to the crowd--on the one hand, was the brilliant young nobleman, +picturesquely alone; on the other, the ugly, inexpressive multitude, +dressed inelegantly in shop-clothes, under-educated, under-fed, +envious, base, and with a wicked disinclination for work and a wicked +appetite for the good things it could so rarely get. For common +imaginative purposes one left out the policeman from the design, +the stalwart policeman protecting his lordship, and ignored the +fact that while Lord Redcar had his hands immediately and legally +on the workman's shelter and bread, they could touch him to the +skin only by some violent breach of the law. + +He lived at Lowchester House, five miles or so beyond Checkshill; +but partly to show how little he cared for his antagonists, and +partly no doubt to keep himself in touch with the negotiations that +were still going on, he was visible almost every day in and about +the Four Towns, driving that big motor car of his that could take +him sixty miles an hour. The English passion for fair play one +might have thought sufficient to rob this bold procedure of any +dangerous possibilities, but he did not go altogether free from +insult, and on one occasion at least an intoxicated Irish +woman shook her fist at him. . . . + +A dark, quiet crowd, that was greater each day, a crowd more than +half women, brooded as a cloud will sometimes brood permanently upon +a mountain crest, in the market-place outside the Clayton +Town Hall, where the conference was held. . . . + +I consider myself justified in regarding Lord Redcar's passing +automobile with a special animosity because of the leaks in our +roof. + +We held our little house on lease; the owner was a mean, saving +old man named Pettigrew, who lived in a villa adorned with plaster +images of dogs and goats, at Overcastle, and in spite of our specific +agreement, he would do no repairs for us at all. He rested secure +in my mother's timidity. Once, long ago, she had been behind-hand +with her rent, with half of her quarter's rent, and he had extended +the days of grace a month; her sense that some day she might need +the same mercy again made her his abject slave. She was afraid even +to ask that he should cause the roof to be mended for fear he might +take offence. But one night the rain poured in on her bed and gave +her a cold, and stained and soaked her poor old patchwork counterpane. +Then she got me to compose an excessively polite letter to old +Pettigrew, begging him as a favor to perform his legal obligations. +It is part of the general imbecility of those days that such one-sided +law as existed was a profound mystery to the common people, its +provisions impossible to ascertain, its machinery impossible to set +in motion. Instead of the clearly written code, the lucid statements +of rules and principles that are now at the service of every one, +the law was the muddle secret of the legal profession. Poor people, +overworked people, had constantly to submit to petty wrongs because +of the intolerable uncertainty not only of law but of cost, and of +the demands upon time and energy, proceedings might make. There +was indeed no justice for any one too poor to command a good +solicitor's deference and loyalty; there was nothing but rough +police protection and the magistrate's grudging or eccentric advice +for the mass of the population. The civil law, in particular, was +a mysterious upper-class weapon, and I can imagine no injustice that +would have been sufficient to induce my poor old mother to appeal +to it. + +All this begins to sound incredible. I can only assure you that it +was so. + +But I, when I learned that old Pettigrew had been down to tell my +mother all about his rheumatism, to inspect the roof, and to allege +that nothing was needed, gave way to my most frequent emotion in +those days, a burning indignation, and took the matter into my own +hands. I wrote and asked him, with a withering air of technicality, +to have the roof repaired "as per agreement," and added, "if not +done in one week from now we shall be obliged to take proceedings." +I had not mentioned this high line of conduct to my mother at first, +and so when old Pettigrew came down in a state of great agitation +with my letter in his hand, she was almost equally agitated. + +"How could you write to old Mr. Pettigrew like that?" she asked +me. + +I said that old Pettigrew was a shameful old rascal, or words to +that effect, and I am afraid I behaved in a very undutiful way to +her when she said that she had settled everything with him--she +wouldn't say how, but I could guess well enough--and that I was +to promise her, promise her faithfully, to do nothing more in the +matter. I wouldn't promise her. + +And--having nothing better to employ me then--I presently went +raging to old Pettigrew in order to put the whole thing before him +in what I considered the proper light. Old Pettigrew evaded my +illumination; he saw me coming up his front steps--I can still see +his queer old nose and the crinkled brow over his eye and the little +wisp of gray hair that showed over the corner of his window-blind--and +he instructed his servant to put up the chain when she answered +the door, and to tell me that he would not see me. So I had to fall +back upon my pen. + +Then it was, as I had no idea what were the proper "proceedings" +to take, the brilliant idea occurred to me of appealing to Lord +Redcar as the ground landlord, and, as it were, our feudal chief, +and pointing out to him that his security for his rent was depreciating +in old Pettigrew's hands. I added some general observations on +leaseholds, the taxation of ground rents, and the private ownership +of the soil. And Lord Redcar, whose spirit revolted at democracy, +and who cultivated a pert humiliating manner with his inferiors to +show as much, earned my distinguished hatred for ever by causing +his secretary to present his compliments to me, and his request +that I would mind my own business and leave him to manage his. At +which I was so greatly enraged that I first tore this note into +minute innumerable pieces, and then dashed it dramatically all over +the floor of my room--from which, to keep my mother from the job, +I afterward had to pick it up laboriously on all-fours. + +I was still meditating a tremendous retort, an indictment of all +Lord Redcar's class, their manners, morals, economic and political +crimes, when my trouble with Nettie arose to swamp all minor +troubles. Yet, not so completely but that I snarled aloud when his +lordship's motor-car whizzed by me, as I went about upon my long +meandering quest for a weapon. And I discovered after a time that +my mother had bruised her knee and was lame. Fearing to irritate +me by bringing the thing before me again, she had set herself to +move her bed out of the way of the drip without my help, and she +had knocked her knee. All her poor furnishings, I discovered, were +cowering now close to the peeling bedroom walls; there had come a +vast discoloration of the ceiling, and a washing-tub was +in occupation of the middle of her chamber. . . . + +It is necessary that I should set these things before you, should +give the key of inconvenience and uneasiness in which all things +were arranged, should suggest the breath of trouble that stirred +along the hot summer streets, the anxiety about the strike, the +rumors and indignations, the gatherings and meetings, the increasing +gravity of the policemen's faces, the combative headlines of the +local papers, the knots of picketers who scrutinized any one who +passed near the silent, smokeless forges, but in my mind, you must +understand, such impressions came and went irregularly; they made +a moving background, changing undertones, to my preoccupation by +that darkly shaping purpose to which a revolver was so imperative +an essential. + +Along the darkling streets, amidst the sullen crowds, the thought +of Nettie, my Nettie, and her gentleman lover made ever a vivid +inflammatory spot of purpose in my brain. + + + +Section 3 + +It was three days after this--on Wednesday, that is to say--that +the first of those sinister outbreaks occurred that ended in the +bloody affair of Peacock Grove and the flooding out of the entire +line of the Swathinglea collieries. It was the only one of these +disturbances I was destined to see, and at most a mere trivial +preliminary of that struggle. + +The accounts that have been written of this affair vary very widely. +To read them is to realize the extraordinary carelessness of truth +that dishonored the press of those latter days. In my bureau I +have several files of the daily papers of the old time--I collected +them, as a matter of fact--and three or four of about that date I +have just this moment taken out and looked through to refresh my +impression of what I saw. They lie before me--queer, shriveled, +incredible things; the cheap paper has already become brittle and +brown and split along the creases, the ink faded or smeared, and I +have to handle them with the utmost care when I glance among their +raging headlines. As I sit here in this serene place, their quality +throughout, their arrangement, their tone, their arguments and +exhortations, read as though they came from drugged and drunken men. +They give one the effect of faded bawling, of screams and shouts +heard faintly in a little gramophone. . . . It is only on Monday +I find, and buried deep below the war news, that these publications +contain any intimation that unusual happenings were forward in +Clayton and Swathinglea. + +What I saw was towards evening. I had been learning to shoot with +my new possession. I had walked out with it four or five miles +across a patch of moorland and down to a secluded little coppice +full of blue-bells, halfway along the high-road between Leet and +Stafford. Here I had spent the afternoon, experimenting and practising +with careful deliberation and grim persistence. I had brought an +old kite-frame of cane with me, that folded and unfolded, and each +shot-hole I made I marked and numbered to compare with my other +endeavors. At last I was satisfied that I could hit a playing-card +at thirty paces nine times out of ten; the light was getting too +bad for me to see my penciled bull's-eye, and in that state of +quiet moodiness that sometimes comes with hunger to passionate men, +I returned by the way of Swathinglea towards my home. + +The road I followed came down between banks of wretched-looking +working-men's houses, in close-packed rows on either side, and took +upon itself the role of Swathinglea High Street, where, at a lamp +and a pillar-box, the steam-trams began. So far that dirty hot way +had been unusually quiet and empty, but beyond the corner, where +the first group of beershops clustered, it became populous. It was +very quiet still, even the children were a little inactive, but +there were a lot of people standing dispersedly in little groups, +and with a general direction towards the gates of the Bantock Burden +coalpit. + +The place was being picketed, although at that time the miners +were still nominally at work, and the conferences between masters +and men still in session at Clayton Town Hall. But one of the men +employed at the Bantock Burden pit, Jack Briscoe, was a socialist, +and he had distinguished himself by a violent letter upon the crisis +to the leading socialistic paper in England, The Clarion, in which +he had adventured among the motives of Lord Redcar. The publication +of this had been followed by instant dismissal. As Lord Redcar wrote +a day or so later to the Times--I have that Times, I have all the +London papers of the last month before the Change-- + +"The man was paid off and kicked out. Any self-respecting employer +would do the same." The thing had happened overnight, and the men +did not at once take a clear line upon what was, after all, a very +intricate and debatable occasion. But they came out in a sort of +semiofficial strike from all Lord Redcar's collieries beyond the +canal that besets Swathinglea. They did so without formal notice, +committing a breach of contract by this sudden cessation. But in +the long labor struggles of the old days the workers were constantly +putting themselves in the wrong and committing illegalities +through that overpowering craving for dramatic promptness natural +to uneducated minds. + +All the men had not come out of the Bantock Burden pit. Something +was wrong there, an indecision if nothing else; the mine was still +working, and there was a rumor that men from Durham had been held +in readiness by Lord Redcar, and were already in the mine. Now, it +is absolutely impossible to ascertain certainly how things stood at +that time. The newspapers say this and that, but nothing trustworthy +remains. + +I believe I should have gone striding athwart the dark stage of +that stagnant industrial drama without asking a question, if Lord +Redcar had not chanced to come upon the scene about the same time +as myself and incontinently end its stagnation. + +He had promised that if the men wanted a struggle he would put +up the best fight they had ever had, and he had been active all +that afternoon in meeting the quarrel half way, and preparing as +conspicuously as possible for the scratch force of "blacklegs"--as +we called them--who were, he said and we believed, to replace the +strikers in his pits. + +I was an eye-witness of the whole of the affair outside the Bantock +Burden pit, and--I do not know what happened. + +Picture to yourself how the thing came to me. + +I was descending a steep, cobbled, excavated road between banked-up +footways, perhaps six feet high, upon which, in a monotonous +series, opened the living room doors of rows of dark, low cottages. +The perspective of squat blue slate roofs and clustering chimneys +drifted downward towards the irregular open space before the +colliery--a space covered with coaly, wheel-scarred mud, with a +patch of weedy dump to the left and the colliery gates to the right. +Beyond, the High Street with shops resumed again in good earnest +and went on, and the lines of the steam-tramway that started out +from before my feet, and were here shining and acutely visible +with reflected skylight and here lost in a shadow, took up for one +acute moment the greasy yellow irradiation of a newly lit gaslamp +as they vanished round the bend. Beyond, spread a darkling marsh +of homes, an infinitude of little smoking hovels, and emergent, +meager churches, public-houses, board schools, and other buildings +amidst the prevailing chimneys of Swathinglea. To the right, very +clear and relatively high, the Bantock Burden pit-mouth was marked +by a gaunt lattice bearing a great black wheel, very sharp and +distinct in the twilight, and beyond, in an irregular perspective, +were others following the lie of the seams. The general effect, +as one came down the hill, was of a dark compressed life beneath +a very high and wide and luminous evening sky, against which these +pit-wheels rose. And ruling the calm spaciousness of that heaven +was the great comet, now green-white, and wonderful for all who +had eyes to see. + +The fading afterglow of the sunset threw up all the contours and +skyline to the west, and the comet rose eastward out of the pouring +tumult of smoke from Bladden's forges. The moon had still to rise. + +By this time the comet had begun to assume the cloudlike form still +familiar through the medium of a thousand photographs and sketches. +At first it had been an almost telescopic speck; it had brightened +to the dimensions of the greatest star in the heavens; it had +still grown, hour by hour, in its incredibly swift, its noiseless +and inevitable rush upon our earth, until it had equaled and surpassed +the moon. Now it was the most splendid thing this sky of earth has +ever held. I have never seen a photograph that gave a proper idea +of it. Never at any time did it assume the conventional tailed +outline, comets are supposed to have. Astronomers talked of its +double tail, one preceding it and one trailing behind it, but these +were foreshortened to nothing, so that it had rather the form of a +bellying puff of luminous smoke with an intenser, brighter heart. +It rose a hot yellow color, and only began to show its distinctive +greenness when it was clear of the mists of the evening. + +It compelled attention for a space. For all my earthly concentration of +mind, I could but stare at it for a moment with a vague anticipation +that, after all, in some way so strange and glorious an object +must have significance, could not possibly be a matter of absolute +indifference to the scheme and values of my life. + +But how? + +I thought of Parload. I thought of the panic and uneasiness that +was spreading in this very matter, and the assurances of scientific +men that the thing weighed so little--at the utmost a few hundred +tons of thinly diffused gas and dust--that even were it to smite +this earth fully, nothing could possibly ensue. And, after all, +said I, what earthly significance has any one found in the stars? + +Then, as one still descended, the houses and buildings rose up, +the presence of those watching groups of people, the tension of +the situation; and one forgot the sky. + +Preoccupied with myself and with my dark dream about Nettie and my +honor, I threaded my course through the stagnating threat of this +gathering, and was caught unawares, when suddenly the whole +scene flashed into drama. . . . + +The attention of every one swung round with an irresistible magnetism +towards the High Street, and caught me as a rush of waters might +catch a wisp of hay. Abruptly the whole crowd was sounding one note. +It was not a word, it was a sound that mingled threat and protest, +something between a prolonged "Ah!" and "Ugh!" Then with a hoarse +intensity of anger came a low heavy booing, "Boo! boo--oo!" a note +stupidly expressive of animal savagery. "Toot, toot!" said Lord +Redcar's automobile in ridiculous repartee. "Toot, toot!" One heard +it whizzing and throbbing as the crowd obliged it to slow down. + +Everybody seemed in motion towards the colliery gates, I, too, with +the others. + +I heard a shout. Through the dark figures about me I saw the motor-car +stop and move forward again, and had a glimpse of something writhing +on the ground. + +It was alleged afterwards that Lord Redcar was driving, and that +he quite deliberately knocked down a little boy who would not get +out of his way. It is asserted with equal confidence that the boy +was a man who tried to pass across the front of the motor-car as it +came slowly through the crowd, who escaped by a hair's breadth, and +then slipped on the tram-rail and fell down. I have both accounts +set forth, under screaming headlines, in two of these sere newspapers +upon my desk. No one could ever ascertain the truth. Indeed, in +such a blind tumult of passion, could there be any truth? + +There was a rush forward, the horn of the car sounded, everything +swayed violently to the right for perhaps ten yards or so, and +there was a report like a pistol-shot. + +For a moment every one seemed running away. A woman, carrying a +shawl-wrapped child, blundered into me, and sent me reeling back. +Every one thought of firearms, but, as a matter of fact, something +had gone wrong with the motor, what in those old-fashioned contrivances +was called a backfire. A thin puff of bluish smoke hung in the air +behind the thing. The majority of the people scattered back in a +disorderly fashion, and left a clear space about the struggle that +centered upon the motor-car. + +The man or boy who had fallen was lying on the ground with no one +near him, a black lump, an extended arm and two sprawling feet. +The motor-car had stopped, and its three occupants were standing +up. Six or seven black figures surrounded the car, and appeared +to be holding on to it as if to prevent it from starting again; +one--it was Mitchell, a well-known labor leader--argued in fierce +low tones with Lord Redcar. I could not hear anything they said, +I was not near enough. Behind me the colliery gates were open, +and there was a sense of help coming to the motor-car from that +direction. There was an unoccupied muddy space for fifty yards, +perhaps, between car and gate, and then the wheels and head of the +pit rose black against the sky. I was one of a rude semicircle of +people that hung as yet indeterminate in action about this dispute. + +It was natural, I suppose, that my fingers should close upon the +revolver in my pocket. + +I advanced with the vaguest intentions in the world, and not so +quickly but that several men hurried past me to join the little +knot holding up the car. + +Lord Redcar, in his big furry overcoat, towered up over the group +about him; his gestures were free and threatening, and his voice +loud. He made a fine figure there, I must admit; he was a big, +fair, handsome young man with a fine tenor voice and an instinct +for gallant effect. My eyes were drawn to him at first wholly. He +seemed a symbol, a triumphant symbol, of all that the theory of +aristocracy claims, of all that filled my soul with resentment. +His chauffeur sat crouched together, peering at the crowd under +his lordship's arm. But Mitchell showed as a sturdy figure also, +and his voice was firm and loud. + +"You've hurt that lad," said Mitchell, over and over again. "You'll +wait here till you see if he's hurt." + +"I'll wait here or not as I please," said Redcar; and to the +chauffeur, "Here! get down and look at it!" + +"You'd better not get down," said Mitchell; and the chauffeur stood +bent and hesitating on the step. + +The man on the back seat stood up, leant forward, and spoke to Lord +Redcar, and for the first time my attention was drawn to him. It +was young Verrall! His handsome face shone clear and fine in the +green pallor of the comet. + +I ceased to hear the quarrel that was raising the voice of Mitchell +and Lord Redcar. This new fact sent them spinning into the background. +Young Verrall! + +It was my own purpose coming to meet me half way. + +There was to be a fight here, it seemed certain to come to a scuffle, +and here we were-- + +What was I to do? I thought very swiftly. Unless my memory cheats +me, I acted with swift decision. My hand tightened on my revolver, +and then I remembered it was unloaded. I had thought my course out +in an instant. I turned round and pushed my way out of the angry +crowd that was now surging back towards the motor-car. + +It would be quiet and out of sight, I thought, among the dump +heaps across the road, and there I might load unobserved. . . + +A big young man striding forward with his fists clenched, halted +for one second at the sight of me. + +"What!" said he. "Ain't afraid of them, are you?" + +I glanced over my shoulder and back at him, was near showing him my +pistol, and the expression changed in his eyes. He hung perplexed +at me. Then with a grunt he went on. + +I heard the voices growing loud and sharp behind me. + +I hesitated, half turned towards the dispute, then set off running +towards the heaps. Some instinct told me not to be detected loading. +I was cool enough therefore to think of the aftermath of the thing +I meant to do. + +I looked back once again towards the swaying discussion--or was +it a fight now? and then I dropped into the hollow, knelt among +the weeds, and loaded with eager trembling fingers. I loaded one +chamber, got up and went back a dozen paces, thought of possibilities, +vacillated, returned and loaded all the others. I did it slowly +because I felt a little clumsy, and at the end came a moment of +inspection--had I forgotten any thing? And then for a few seconds +I crouched before I rose, resisting the first gust of reaction +against my impulse. I took thought, and for a moment that great +green-white meteor overhead swam back into my conscious mind. For +the first time then I linked it clearly with all the fierce violence +that had crept into human life. I joined up that with what I meant +to do. I was going to shoot young Verrall as it were under the +benediction of that green glare. + +But about Nettie? + +I found it impossible to think out that obvious complication. + +I came up over the heap again, and walked slowly back towards the +wrangle. + +Of course I had to kill him. . . . + +Now I would have you believe I did not want to murder young Verrall +at all at that particular time. I had not pictured such circumstances +as these, I had never thought of him in connection with Lord Redcar +and our black industrial world. He was in that distant other world +of Checkshill, the world of parks and gardens, the world of sunlit +emotions and Nettie. His appearance here was disconcerting. I was +taken by surprise. I was too tired and hungry to think clearly, and +the hard implication of our antagonism prevailed with me. In the +tumult of my passed emotions I had thought constantly of conflicts, +confrontations, deeds of violence, and now the memory of these things +took possession of me as though they were irrevocable resolutions. + +There was a sharp exclamation, the shriek of a woman, and the crowd +came surging back. The fight had begun. + +Lord Redcar, I believe, had jumped down from his car and felled +Mitchell, and men were already running out to his assistance from +the colliery gates. + +I had some difficulty in shoving through the crowd; I can still +remember very vividly being jammed at one time between two big men +so that my arms were pinned to my sides, but all the other details +are gone out of my mind until I found myself almost violently +projected forward into the "scrap." + +I blundered against the corner of the motor-car, and came round it +face to face with young Verrall, who was descending from the back +compartment. His face was touched with orange from the automobile's +big lamps, which conflicted with the shadows of the comet light, +and distorted him oddly. That effect lasted but an instant, but it +put me out. Then he came a step forward, and the ruddy lights and +queerness vanished. + +I don't think he recognized me, but he perceived immediately I +meant attacking. He struck out at once at me a haphazard blow, and +touched me on the cheek. + +Instinctively I let go of the pistol, snatched my right hand out +of my pocket and brought it up in a belated parry, and then let +out with my left full in his chest. + +It sent him staggering, and as he went back I saw recognition mingle +with astonishment in his face. + +"You know me, you swine," I cried and hit again. + +Then I was spinning sideways, half-stunned, with a huge lump of a +fist under my jaw. I had an impression of Lord Redcar as a great +furry bulk, towering like some Homeric hero above the fray. I went +down before him--it made him seem to rush up--and he ignored me +further. His big flat voice counseled young Verrall-- + +"Cut, Teddy! It won't do. The picketa's got i'on bahs. . . ." + +Feet swayed about me, and some hobnailed miner kicked my ankle and +went stumbling. There were shouts and curses, and then everything +had swept past me. I rolled over on my face and beheld the chauffeur, +young Verrall, and Lord Redcar--the latter holding up his long +skirts of fur, and making a grotesque figure--one behind the other, +in full bolt across a coldly comet-lit interval, towards the open +gates of the colliery. + +I raised myself up on my hands. + +Young Verrall! + +I had not even drawn my revolver--I had forgotten it. I was covered +with coaly mud--knees, elbows, shoulders, back. I had not +even drawn my revolver! . . . + +A feeling of ridiculous impotence overwhelmed me. I struggled +painfully to my feet. + +I hesitated for a moment towards the gates of the colliery, and then +went limping homeward, thwarted, painful, confused, and ashamed. +I had not the heart nor desire to help in the wrecking and burning +of Lord Redcar's motor. + + + +Section 4 + +In the night, fever, pain, fatigue--it may be the indigestion of +my supper of bread and cheese--roused me at last out of a hag-rid +sleep to face despair. I was a soul lost amidst desolations and +shame, dishonored, evilly treated, hopeless. I raged against the +God I denied, and cursed him as I lay. + +And it was in the nature of my fever, which was indeed only half +fatigue and illness, and the rest the disorder of passionate youth, +that Nettie, a strangely distorted Nettie, should come through the +brief dreams that marked the exhaustions of that vigil, to dominate +my misery. I was sensible, with an exaggerated distinctness, of +the intensity of her physical charm for me, of her every grace and +beauty; she took to herself the whole gamut of desire in me and +the whole gamut of pride. She, bodily, was my lost honor. It was +not only loss but disgrace to lose her. She stood for life and all +that was denied; she mocked me as a creature of failure and defeat. +My spirit raised itself towards her, and then the bruise upon my +jaw glowed with a dull heat, and I rolled in the mud again before +my rivals. + +There were times when something near madness took me, and I gnashed +my teeth and dug my nails into my hands and ceased to curse and cry +out only by reason of the insufficiency of words. And once towards +dawn I got out of bed, and sat by my looking-glass with my revolver +loaded in my hand. I stood up at last and put it carefully in my +drawer and locked it--out of reach of any gusty impulse. After +that I slept for a little while. + +Such nights were nothing rare and strange in that old order of the +world. Never a city, never a night the whole year round, but amidst +those who slept were those who waked, plumbing the deeps of wrath +and misery. Countless thousands there were so ill, so troubled, +they agonize near to the very border-line of madness, each +one the center of a universe darkened and lost. . . + +The next day I spent in gloomy lethargy. + +I had intended to go to Checkshill that day, but my bruised ankle +was too swollen for that to be possible. I sat indoors in the +ill-lit downstairs kitchen, with my foot bandaged, and mused darkly +and read. My dear old mother waited on me, and her brown eyes watched +me and wondered at my black silences, my frowning preoccupations. +I had not told her how it was my ankle came to be bruised and my +clothes muddy. She had brushed my clothes in the morning before I +got up. + +Ah well! Mothers are not treated in that way now. That I suppose +must console me. I wonder how far you will be able to picture that +dark, grimy, untidy room, with its bare deal table, its tattered +wall paper, the saucepans and kettle on the narrow, cheap, but +by no means economical range, the ashes under the fireplace, the +rust-spotted steel fender on which my bandaged feet rested; I wonder +how near you can come to seeing the scowling pale-faced hobbledehoy +I was, unshaven and collarless, in the Windsor chair, and the little +timid, dirty, devoted old woman who hovered about me with +love peering out from her puckered eyelids. . . + +When she went out to buy some vegetables in the middle of the +morning she got me a half-penny journal. It was just such a one as +these upon my desk, only that the copy I read was damp from the +press, and these are so dry and brittle, they crack if I touch +them. I have a copy of the actual issue I read that morning; it +was a paper called emphatically the New Paper, but everybody bought +it and everybody called it the "yell." It was full that morning of +stupendous news and still more stupendous headlines, so stupendous +that for a little while I was roused from my egotistical broodings +to wider interests. For it seemed that Germany and England were on +the brink of war. + +Of all the monstrous irrational phenomena of the former time, war +was certainly the most strikingly insane. In reality it was probably +far less mischievous than such quieter evil as, for example, the +general acquiescence in the private ownership of land, but its evil +consequences showed so plainly that even in those days of stifling +confusion one marveled at it. On no conceivable grounds was there +any sense in modern war. Save for the slaughter and mangling of a +multitude of people, the destruction of vast quantities of material, +and the waste of innumerable units of energy, it effected nothing. +The old war of savage and barbaric nations did at least change +humanity, you assumed yourselves to be a superior tribe in physique +and discipline, you demonstrated this upon your neighbors, and +if successful you took their land and their women and perpetuated +and enlarged your superiority. The new war changed nothing but the +color of maps, the design of postage stamps, and the relationship +of a few accidentally conspicuous individuals. In one of the last +of these international epileptic fits, for example, the English, +with much dysentery and bad poetry, and a few hundred deaths in +battle, conquered the South African Boers at a gross cost of about +three thousand pounds per head--they could have bought the whole +of that preposterous imitation of a nation for a tenth of that +sum--and except for a few substitutions of personalities, this +group of partially corrupt officials in the place of that, and so +forth, the permanent change was altogether insignificant. (But +an excitable young man in Austria committed suicide when at length +the Transvaal ceased to be a "nation.") Men went through the seat +of that war after it was all over, and found humanity unchanged, +except for a general impoverishment, and the convenience of an +unlimited supply of empty ration tins and barbed wire and cartridge +cases--unchanged and resuming with a slight perplexity all its old +habits and misunderstandings, the nigger still in his slum-like +kraal, the white in his ugly ill-managed shanty. . . + +But we in England saw all these things, or did not see them, +through the mirage of the New Paper, in a light of mania. All my +adolescence from fourteen to seventeen went to the music of that +monstrous resonating futility, the cheering, the anxieties, the +songs and the waving of flags, the wrongs of generous Buller and +the glorious heroism of De Wet--who ALWAYS got away; that was the +great point about the heroic De Wet--and it never occurred to us +that the total population we fought against was less than half the +number of those who lived cramped ignoble lives within the compass +of the Four Towns. + +But before and after that stupid conflict of stupidities, a greater +antagonism was coming into being, was slowly and quietly defining +itself as a thing inevitable, sinking now a little out of attention +only to resume more emphatically, now flashing into some acute +definitive expression and now percolating and pervading some new +region of thought, and that was the antagonism of Germany and Great +Britain. + +When I think of that growing proportion of readers who belong +entirely to the new order, who are growing up with only the vaguest +early memories of the old world, I find the greatest difficulty +in writing down the unintelligible confusions that were matter of +fact to their fathers. + +Here were we British, forty-one millions of people, in a state of +almost indescribably aimless, economic, and moral muddle that we had +neither the courage, the energy, nor the intelligence to improve, +that most of us had hardly the courage to think about, and with our +affairs hopelessly entangled with the entirely different confusions +of three hundred and fifty million other persons scattered about +the globe, and here were the Germans over against us, fifty-six +millions, in a state of confusion no whit better than our own, +and the noisy little creatures who directed papers and wrote books +and gave lectures, and generally in that time of world-dementia +pretended to be the national mind, were busy in both countries, +with a sort of infernal unanimity, exhorting--and not only exhorting +but successfully persuading--the two peoples to divert such small +common store of material, moral and intellectual energy as either +possessed, into the purely destructive and wasteful business of war. +And--I have to tell you these things even if you do not believe +them, because they are vital to my story--there was not a man alive +who could have told you of any real permanent benefit, of anything +whatever to counterbalance the obvious waste and evil, that would +result from a war between England and Germany, whether England +shattered Germany or was smashed and overwhelmed, or whatever the +end might be. + +The thing was, in fact, an enormous irrational obsession, it was, +in the microcosm of our nation, curiously parallel to the egotistical +wrath and jealousy that swayed my individual microcosm. It measured +the excess of common emotion over the common intelligence, the +legacy of inordinate passion we have received from the brute from +which we came. Just as I had become the slave of my own surprise and +anger and went hither and thither with a loaded revolver, seeking +and intending vague fluctuating crimes, so these two nations went +about the earth, hot eared and muddle headed, with loaded navies +and armies terribly ready at hand. Only there was not even a Nettie +to justify their stupidity. There was nothing but quiet imaginary +thwarting on either side. + +And the press was the chief instrument that kept these two huge +multitudes of people directed against one another. + +The press--those newspapers that are now so strange to us--like +the "Empires," the "Nations," the Trusts, and all the other great +monstrous shapes of that extraordinary time--was in the nature +of an unanticipated accident. It had happened, as weeds happen in +abandoned gardens, just as all our world has happened,--because +there was no clear Will in the world to bring about anything better. +Towards the end this "press" was almost entirely under the direction +of youngish men of that eager, rather unintelligent type, that +is never able to detect itself aimless, that pursues nothing with +incredible pride and zeal, and if you would really understand this +mad era the comet brought to an end, you must keep in mind that every +phase in the production of these queer old things was pervaded by +a strong aimless energy and happened in a concentrated rush. + +Let me describe to you, very briefly, a newspaper day. + +Figure first, then, a hastily erected and still more hastily +designed building in a dirty, paper-littered back street of old +London, and a number of shabbily dressed men coming and going in +this with projectile swiftness, and within this factory companies +of printers, tensely active with nimble fingers--they were always +speeding up the printers--ply their type-setting machines, and cast +and arrange masses of metal in a sort of kitchen inferno, above +which, in a beehive of little brightly lit rooms, disheveled men +sit and scribble. There is a throbbing of telephones and a clicking +of telegraph needles, a rushing of messengers, a running to and fro +of heated men, clutching proofs and copy. Then begins a clatter +roar of machinery catching the infection, going faster and faster, +and whizzing and banging,--engineers, who have never had time to +wash since their birth, flying about with oil-cans, while paper +runs off its rolls with a shudder of haste. The proprietor you +must suppose arriving explosively on a swift motor-car, leaping +out before the thing is at a standstill, with letters and documents +clutched in his hand, rushing in, resolute to "hustle," getting +wonderfully in everybody's way. At the sight of him even the messenger +boys who are waiting, get up and scamper to and fro. Sprinkle your +vision with collisions, curses, incoherencies. You imagine all the +parts of this complex lunatic machine working hysterically toward +a crescendo of haste and excitement as the night wears on. At last +the only things that seem to travel slowly in all those tearing +vibrating premises are the hands of the clock. + +Slowly things draw on toward publication, the consummation of all +those stresses. Then in the small hours, into the now dark and +deserted streets comes a wild whirl of carts and men, the place +spurts paper at every door, bales, heaps, torrents of papers, +that are snatched and flung about in what looks like a free fight, +and off with a rush and clatter east, west, north, and south. The +interest passes outwardly; the men from the little rooms are going +homeward, the printers disperse yawning, the roaring presses slacken. +The paper exists. Distribution follows manufacture, and we follow +the bundles. + +Our vision becomes a vision of dispersal. You see those bundles +hurling into stations, catching trains by a hair's breadth, speeding +on their way, breaking up, smaller bundles of them hurled with +a fierce accuracy out upon the platforms that rush by, and then +everywhere a division of these smaller bundles into still smaller +bundles, into dispersing parcels, into separate papers, and the +dawn happens unnoticed amidst a great running and shouting of boys, +a shoving through letter slots, openings of windows, spreading out +upon book-stalls. For the space of a few hours you must figure the +whole country dotted white with rustling papers--placards everywhere +vociferating the hurried lie for the day; men and women in trains, +men and women eating and reading, men by study-fenders, people +sitting up in bed, mothers and sons and daughters waiting for father +to finish--a million scattered people reading--reading headlong--or +feverishly ready to read. It is just as if some vehement jet +had sprayed that white foam of papers over the surface of the land. . . + +And then you know, wonderfully gone--gone utterly, vanished as foam +might vanish upon the sand. + +Nonsense! The whole affair a noisy paroxysm of nonsense, unreasonable +excitement, witless mischief, and waste of strength--signifying +nothing. . . . + +And one of those white parcels was the paper I held in my hands, +as I sat with a bandaged foot on the steel fender in that dark +underground kitchen of my mother's, clean roused from my personal +troubles by the yelp of the headlines. She sat, sleeves tucked up +from her ropy arms, peeling potatoes as I read. + +It was like one of a flood of disease germs that have invaded a +body, that paper. There I was, one corpuscle in the big amorphous +body of the English community, one of forty-one million such +corpuscles and, for all my preoccupations, these potent headlines, +this paper ferment, caught me and swung me about. And all over the +country that day, millions read as I read, and came round into line +with me, under the same magnetic spell, came round--how did we say +it?--Ah!--"to face the foe." + +The comet had been driven into obscurity overleaf. The column +headed "Distinguished Scientist says Comet will Strike our Earth. +Does it Matter?" went unread. "Germany"--I usually figured this +mythical malignant creature as a corseted stiff-mustached Emperor +enhanced by heraldic black wings and a large sword--had insulted +our flag. That was the message of the New Paper, and the monster +towered over me, threatening fresh outrages, visibly spitting +upon my faultless country's colors. Somebody had hoisted a British +flag on the right bank of some tropical river I had never heard of +before, and a drunken German officer under ambiguous instructions +had torn it down. Then one of the convenient abundant natives +of the country, a British subject indisputably, had been shot in +the leg. But the facts were by no means clear. Nothing was clear +except that we were not going to stand any nonsense from Germany. +Whatever had or had not happened we meant to have an apology for, +and apparently they did not mean apologizing. + +"HAS WAR COME AT LAST?" + +That was the headline. One's heart leapt to assent. . . . + +There were hours that day when I clean forgot Nettie, in dreaming +of battles and victories by land and sea, of shell fire, and +entrenchments, and the heaped slaughter of many thousands of men. + +But the next morning I started for Checkshill, started, I remember, +in a curiously hopeful state of mind, oblivious of comets, strikes, +and wars. + + + +Section 5 + +You must understand that I had no set plan of murder when I walked +over to Checkshill. I had no set plan of any sort. There was a +great confusion of dramatically conceived intentions in my head, +scenes of threatening and denunciation and terror, but I did not mean +to kill. The revolver was to turn upon my rival my disadvantage +in age and physique. . . . + +But that was not it really! The revolver!--I took the revolver +because I had the revolver and was a foolish young lout. It was a +dramatic sort of thing to take. I had, I say, no plan at all. + +Ever and again during that second trudge to Checkshill I was +irradiated with a novel unreasonable hope. I had awakened in the +morning with the hope, it may have been the last unfaded trail of +some obliterated dream, that after all Nettie might relent toward me, +that her heart was kind toward me in spite of all that I imagined +had happened. I even thought it possible that I might have misinterpreted +what I had seen. Perhaps she would explain everything. My revolver +was in my pocket for all that. + +I limped at the outset, but after the second mile my ankle warmed +to forgetfulness, and the rest of the way I walked well. Suppose, +after all, I was wrong? + +I was still debating that, as I came through the park. By the corner +of the paddock near the keeper's cottage, I was reminded by some +belated blue hyacinths of a time when I and Nettie had gathered +them together. It seemed impossible that we could really have parted +ourselves for good and all. A wave of tenderness flowed over me, +and still flooded me as I came through the little dell and drew +towards the hollies. But there the sweet Nettie of my boy's love +faded, and I thought of the new Nettie of desire and the man I had +come upon in the moonlight, I thought of the narrow, hot purpose +that had grown so strongly out of my springtime freshness, and my +mood darkened to night. + +I crossed the beech wood and came towards the gardens with a resolute +and sorrowful heart. When I reached the green door in the garden +wall I was seized for a space with so violent a trembling that I +could not grip the latch to lift it, for I no longer had any doubt +how this would end. That trembling was succeeded by a feeling +of cold, and whiteness, and self-pity. I was astonished to find +myself grimacing, to feel my cheeks wet, and thereupon I gave way +completely to a wild passion of weeping. I must take just a little +time before the thing was done. . . . I turned away from the door +and stumbled for a little distance, sobbing loudly, and lay down +out of sight among the bracken, and so presently became calm again. +I lay there some time. I had half a mind to desist, and then my +emotion passed like the shadow of a cloud, and I walked very coolly +into the gardens. + +Through the open door of one of the glass houses I saw old Stuart. +He was leaning against the staging, his hands in his pockets, and +so deep in thought he gave no heed to me. + +I hesitated and went on towards the cottage, slowly. + +Something struck me as unusual about the place, but I could not +tell at first what it was. One of the bedroom windows was open, +and the customary short blind, with its brass upper rail partly +unfastened, drooped obliquely across the vacant space. It looked +negligent and odd, for usually everything about the cottage was +conspicuously trim. + +The door was standing wide open, and everything was still. But giving +that usually orderly hall an odd look--it was about half-past two +in the afternoon--was a pile of three dirty plates, with used knives +and forks upon them, on one of the hall chairs. + +I went into the hall, looked into either room, and hesitated. + +Then I fell to upon the door-knocker and gave a loud rat-tat-too, +and followed this up with an amiable "Hel-lo!" + +For a time no one answered me, and I stood listening and expectant, +with my fingers about my weapon. Some one moved about upstairs +presently, and was still again. The tension of waiting seemed to +brace my nerves. + +I had my hand on the knocker for the second time, when Puss appeared +in the doorway. + +For a moment we remained staring at one another without speaking. +Her hair was disheveled, her face dirty, tear-stained, and irregularly +red. Her expression at the sight of me was pure astonishment. +I thought she was about to say something, and then she had darted +away out of the house again. + +"I say, Puss!" I said. "Puss!" + +I followed her out of the door. "Puss! What's the matter? Where's +Nettie?" + +She vanished round the corner of the house. + +I hesitated, perplexed whether I should pursue her. What did it +all mean? Then I heard some one upstairs. + +"Willie!" cried the voice of Mrs. Stuart. "Is that you?" + +"Yes," I answered. "Where's every one? Where's Nettie? I want to +have a talk with her." + +She did not answer, but I heard her dress rustle as she moved. I +Judged she was upon the landing overhead. + +I paused at the foot of the stairs, expecting her to appear and +come down. + +Suddenly came a strange sound, a rush of sounds, words jumbled +and hurrying, confused and shapeless, borne along upon a note of +throaty distress that at last submerged the words altogether and +ended in a wail. Except that it came from a woman's throat it was +exactly the babbling sound of a weeping child with a grievance. "I +can't," she said, "I can't," and that was all I could distinguish. +It was to my young ears the strangest sound conceivable from a +kindly motherly little woman, whom I had always thought of chiefly +as an unparalleled maker of cakes. It frightened me. I went upstairs +at once in a state of infinite alarm, and there she was upon the +landing, leaning forward over the top of the chest of drawers beside +her open bedroom door, and weeping. I never saw such weeping. One +thick strand of black hair had escaped, and hung with a spiral +twist down her back; never before had I noticed that she had gray +hairs. + +As I came up upon the landing her voice rose again. "Oh that I should +have to tell you, Willie! Oh that I should have to tell you!" She +dropped her head again, and a fresh gust of tears swept all further +words away. + +I said nothing, I was too astonished; but I drew nearer +to her, and waited. . . . + +I never saw such weeping; the extraordinary wetness of her dripping +handkerchief abides with me to this day. + +"That I should have lived to see this day!" she wailed. "I had +rather a thousand times she was struck dead at my feet." + +I began to understand. + +"Mrs. Stuart," I said, clearing my throat; "what has become of +Nettie?" + +"That I should have lived to see this day!" she said by way of +reply. + +I waited till her passion abated. + +There came a lull. I forgot the weapon in my pocket. I said nothing, +and suddenly she stood erect before me, wiping her swollen eyes. +"Willie," she gulped, "she's gone!" + +"Nettie?" + +"Gone! . . . Run away. . . . Run away from her home. Oh, Willie, +Willie! The shame of it! The sin and shame of it!" + +She flung herself upon my shoulder, and clung to me, and began +again to wish her daughter lying dead at our feet. + +"There, there," said I, and all my being was a-tremble. "Where has +she gone?" I said as softly as I could. + +But for the time she was preoccupied with her own sorrow, and I had +to hold her there, and comfort her with the blackness of finality +spreading over my soul. + +"Where has she gone?" I asked for the fourth time. + +"I don't know--we don't know. And oh, Willie, she went out yesterday +morning! I said to her, 'Nettie,' I said to her, 'you're mighty +fine for a morning call.' 'Fine clo's for a fine day,' she said, +and that was her last words to me!--Willie!--the child I suckled +at my breast!" + +"Yes, yes. But where has she gone?" I said. + +She went on with sobs, and now telling her story with a sort of +fragmentary hurry: "She went out bright and shining, out of this +house for ever. She was smiling, Willie--as if she was glad to be +going. ("Glad to be going," I echoed with soundless lips.) 'You're +mighty fine for the morning,' I says; 'mighty fine.' 'Let the girl +be pretty,' says her father, 'while she's young!' And somewhere +she'd got a parcel of her things hidden to pick up, and she was +going off--out of this house for ever!" + +She became quiet. + +"Let the girl be pretty," she repeated; "let the girl be pretty +while she's young. . . . Oh! how can we go on LIVING, Willie? He +doesn't show it, but he's like a stricken beast. He's wounded to +the heart. She was always his favorite. He never seemed to care +for Puss like he did for her. And she's wounded him--" + +"Where has she gone?" I reverted at last to that. + +"We don't know. She leaves her own blood, she trusts herself-- Oh, +Willie, it'll kill me! I wish she and me together were lying in +our graves." + +"But"--I moistened my lips and spoke slowly--"she may have gone +to marry." + +"If that was so! I've prayed to God it might be so, Willie. I've +prayed that he'd take pity on her--him, I mean, she's with." + +I jerked out: "Who's that?" + +"In her letter, she said he was a gentleman. She did say he was +a gentleman." + +"In her letter. Has she written? Can I see her letter?" + +"Her father took it." + +"But if she writes-- When did she write?" + +"It came this morning." + +"But where did it come from? You can tell--" + +"She didn't say. She said she was happy. She said love took one +like a storm--" + +"Curse that! Where is her letter? Let me see it. And as for this +gentleman--" + +She stared at me. + +"You know who it is." + +"Willie!" she protested. + +"You know who it is, whether she said or not?" Her eyes made a mute +unconfident denial. + +"Young Verrall?" + +She made no answer. "All I could do for you, Willie," she began +presently. + +"Was it young Verrall?" I insisted. + +For a second, perhaps, we faced one another in stark understanding. +. . . Then she plumped back to the chest of drawers, and her wet +pocket-handkerchief, and I knew she sought refuge from my relentless +eyes. + +My pity for her vanished. She knew it was her mistress's son as +well as I! And for some time she had known, she had felt. + +I hovered over her for a moment, sick with amazed disgust. I suddenly +bethought me of old Stuart, out in the greenhouse, and turned and +went downstairs. As I did so, I looked up to see Mrs. Stuart moving +droopingly and lamely back into her own room. + + + +Section 6 + +Old Stuart was pitiful. + +I found him still inert in the greenhouse where I had first seen +him. He did not move as I drew near him; he glanced at me, and then +stared hard again at the flowerpots before him. + +"Eh, Willie," he said, "this is a black day for all of us." + +"What are you going to do?" I asked. + +"The missus takes on so," he said. "I came out here." + +"What do you mean to do?" + +"What IS a man to do in such a case?" + +"Do!" I cried, "why-- Do!" + +"He ought to marry her," he said. + +"By God, yes!" I cried. "He must do that anyhow." + +"He ought to. It's--it's cruel. But what am I to do? Suppose he +won't? Likely he won't. What then?" + +He drooped with an intensified despair. + +"Here's this cottage," he said, pursuing some contracted argument. +"We've lived here all our lives, you might say. . . . Clear out. +At my age. . . . One can't die in a slum." + +I stood before him for a space, speculating what thoughts might +fill the gaps between these broken words. I found his lethargy, and +the dimly shaped mental attitudes his words indicated, abominable. +I said abruptly, "You have her letter?" + +He dived into his breast-pocket, became motionless for ten seconds, +then woke up again and produced her letter. He drew it clumsily +from its envelope, and handed it to me silently. + +"Why!" he cried, looking at me for the first time, "What's come to +your chin, Willie?" + +"It's nothing," I said. "It's a bruise;" and I opened the letter. + +It was written on greenish tinted fancy note-paper, and with all +and more than Nettie's usual triteness and inadequacy of expression. +Her handwriting bore no traces of emotion; it was round and upright +and clear as though it had been done in a writing lesson. Always +her letters were like masks upon her image; they fell like curtains +before the changing charm of her face; one altogether forgot the +sound of her light clear voice, confronted by a perplexing stereotyped +thing that had mysteriously got a hold upon one's heart and pride. +How did that letter run?-- + + +"MY DEAR MOTHER, + +"Do not be distressed at my going away. I have gone somewhere safe, +and with some one who cares for me very much. I am sorry for your +sakes, but it seems that it had to be. Love is a very difficult +thing, and takes hold of one in ways one does not expect. Do not +think I am ashamed about this, I glory in my love, and you must not +trouble too much about me. I am very, very happy (deeply underlined). + +"Fondest love to Father and Puss. + +"Your loving + +"Nettie." + +That queer little document! I can see it now for the childish simple +thing it was, but at the time I read it in a suppressed anguish of +rage. It plunged me into a pit of hopeless shame; there seemed to +remain no pride for me in life until I had revenge. I stood staring +at those rounded upstanding letters, not trusting myself to speak +or move. At last I stole a glance at Stuart. + +He held the envelope in his hand, and stared down at the postmark +between his horny thumbnails. + +"You can't even tell where she is," he said, turning the thing +round in a hopeless manner, and then desisting. "It's hard on us, +Willie. Here she is; she hadn't anything to complain of; a sort of +pet for all of us. Not even made to do her share of the 'ousework. +And she goes off and leaves us like a bird that's learnt to fly. +Can't TRUST us, that's what takes me. Puts 'erself-- But there! +What's to happen to her?" + +"What's to happen to him?" + +He shook his head to show that problem was beyond him. + +"You'll go after her," I said in an even voice; "you'll make him +marry her?" + +"Where am I to go?" he asked helplessly, and held out the envelope +with a gesture; "and what could I do? Even if I knew-- How could +I leave the gardens?" + +"Great God!" I cried, "not leave these gardens! It's your Honor, +man! If she was my daughter--if she was my daughter--I'd tear the +world to pieces!" . . I choked. "You mean to stand it?" + +"What can I do?" + +"Make him marry her! Horsewhip him! Horsewhip him, I say!--I'd +strangle him!" + +He scratched slowly at his hairy cheek, opened his mouth, and +shook his head. Then, with an intolerable note of sluggish gentle +wisdom, he said, "People of our sort, Willie, can't do things like +that." + +I came near to raving. I had a wild impulse to strike him in the +face. Once in my boyhood I happened upon a bird terribly mangled +by some cat, and killed it in a frenzy of horror and pity. I had +a gust of that same emotion now, as this shameful mutilated soul +fluttered in the dust, before me. Then, you know, I dismissed him +from the case. + +"May I look?" I asked. + +He held out the envelope reluctantly. + +"There it is," he said, and pointing with his garden-rough forefinger. +"I.A.P.A.M.P. What can you make of that?" + +I took the thing in my hands. The adhesive stamp customary in those +days was defaced by a circular postmark, which bore the name of +the office of departure and the date. The impact in this particular +case had been light or made without sufficient ink, and half the +letters of the name had left no impression. I could distinguish-- + + I A P A M P + +and very faintly below D.S.O. + +I guessed the name in an instant flash of intuition. It was +Shaphambury. The very gaps shaped that to my mind. Perhaps in a +sort of semi-visibility other letters were there, at least hinting +themselves. It was a place somewhere on the east coast, I knew, +either in Norfolk or Suffolk. + +"Why!" cried I--and stopped. + +What was the good of telling him? + +Old Stuart had glanced up sharply, I am inclined to think almost +fearfully, into my face. "You--you haven't got it?" he said. + +Shaphambury--I should remember that. + +"You don't think you got it?" he said. + +I handed the envelope back to him. + +"For a moment I thought it might be Hampton," I said. + +"Hampton," he repeated. "Hampton. How could you make Hampton?" He +turned the envelope about. "H.A.M.--why, Willie, you're a worse +hand at the job than me!" + +He replaced the letter in the envelope and stood erect to put this +back in his breast pocket. + +I did not mean to take any risks in this affair. I drew a stump +of pencil from my waistcoat pocket, turned a little away from him +and wrote "Shaphambury" very quickly on my frayed and rather grimy +shirt cuff. + +"Well," said I, with an air of having done nothing remarkable. + +I turned to him with some unimportant observation--I have forgotten +what. + +I never finished whatever vague remark I commenced. + +I looked up to see a third person waiting at the greenhouse door. + + + +Section 7 + +It was old Mrs. Verrall. + +I wonder if I can convey the effect of her to you. She was a little +old lady with extraordinarily flaxen hair, her weak aquiline features +were pursed up into an assumption of dignity, and she was richly +dressed. I would like to underline that "richly dressed," or have +the words printed in florid old English or Gothic lettering. No +one on earth is now quite so richly dressed as she was, no one old +or young indulges in so quiet and yet so profound a sumptuosity. +But you must not imagine any extravagance of outline or any beauty +or richness of color. The predominant colors were black and fur +browns, and the effect of richness was due entirely to the extreme +costliness of the materials employed. She affected silk brocades +with rich and elaborate patterns, priceless black lace over creamy +or purple satin, intricate trimmings through which threads and +bands of velvet wriggled, and in the winter rare furs. Her gloves +fitted exquisitely, and ostentatiously simple chains of fine gold +and pearls, and a great number of bracelets, laced about her little +person. One was forced to feel that the slightest article she wore +cost more than all the wardrobe of a dozen girls like Nettie; her +bonnet affected the simplicity that is beyond rubies. Richness, +that is the first quality about this old lady that I would like to +convey to you, and the second was cleanliness. You felt that old +Mrs. Verrall was exquisitely clean. If you had boiled my poor dear +old mother in soda for a month you couldn't have got her so clean +as Mrs. Verrall constantly and manifestly was. And pervading all +her presence shone her third great quality, her manifest confidence +in the respectful subordination of the world. + +She was pale and a little out of breath that day, but without any +loss of her ultimate confidence, and it was clear to me that she +had come to interview Stuart upon the outbreak of passion that had +bridged the gulf between their families. + +And here again I find myself writing in an unknown language, so far +as my younger readers are concerned. You who know only the world +that followed the Great Change will find much that I am telling +inconceivable. Upon these points I cannot appeal, as I have appealed +for other confirmations, to the old newspapers; these were the things +that no one wrote about because every one understood and every one +had taken up an attitude. There were in England and America, and +indeed throughout the world, two great informal divisions of human +beings--the Secure and the Insecure. There was not and never had +been in either country a nobility--it was and remains a common +error that the British peers were noble--neither in law nor custom +were there noble families, and we altogether lacked the edification +one found in Russia, for example, of a poor nobility. A peerage +was an hereditary possession that, like the family land, concerned +only the eldest sons of the house; it radiated no luster of noblesse +oblige. The rest of the world were in law and practice common--and +all America was common. But through the private ownership of land +that had resulted from the neglect of feudal obligations in Britain +and the utter want of political foresight in the Americas, large +masses of property had become artificially stable in the hands +of a small minority, to whom it was necessary to mortgage all new +public and private enterprises, and who were held together not by +any tradition of service and nobility but by the natural sympathy +of common interests and a common large scale of living. It was a class +without any very definite boundaries; vigorous individualities, by +methods for the most part violent and questionable, were constantly +thrusting themselves from insecurity to security, and the sons +and daughters of secure people, by marrying insecurity or by wild +extravagance or flagrant vice, would sink into the life of anxiety +and insufficiency which was the ordinary life of man. The rest +of the population was landless and, except by working directly or +indirectly for the Secure, had no legal right to exist. And such +was the shallowness and insufficiency of our thought, such the +stifled egotism of all our feelings before the Last Days, that very +few indeed of the Secure could be found to doubt that this was the +natural and only conceivable order of the world. + +It is the life of the Insecure under the old order that I am +displaying, and I hope that I am conveying something of its hopeless +bitterness to you, but you must not imagine that the Secure lived +lives of paradisiacal happiness. The pit of insecurity below them +made itself felt, even though it was not comprehended. Life about +them was ugly; the sight of ugly and mean houses, of ill-dressed +people, the vulgar appeals of the dealers in popular commodities, +were not to be escaped. There was below the threshold of their minds +an uneasiness; they not only did not think clearly about social +economy but they displayed an instinctive disinclination to think. +Their security was not so perfect that they had not a dread of +falling towards the pit, they were always lashing themselves by +new ropes, their cultivation of "connexions," of interests, their +desire to confirm and improve their positions, was a constant +ignoble preoccupation. You must read Thackeray to get the full +flavor of their lives. Then the bacterium was apt to disregard class +distinctions, and they were never really happy in their servants. +Read their surviving books. Each generation bewails the decay +of that "fidelity" of servants, no generation ever saw. A world +that is squalid in one corner is squalid altogether, but that they +never understood. They believed there was not enough of anything +to go round, they believed that this was the intention of God and +an incurable condition of life, and they held passionately and with +a sense of right to their disproportionate share. They maintained +a common intercourse as "Society" of all who were practically +secure, and their choice of that word is exhaustively eloquent +of the quality of their philosophy. But, if you can master these +alien ideas upon which the old system rested, just in the same +measure will you understand the horror these people had for marriages +with the Insecure. In the case of their girls and women it was +extraordinarily rare, and in the case of either sex it was regarded +as a disastrous social crime. Anything was better than that. + +You are probably aware of the hideous fate that was only too probably +the lot, during those last dark days, of every girl of the insecure +classes who loved and gave way to the impulse of self-abandonment +without marriage, and so you will understand the peculiar situation +of Nettie with young Verrall. One or other had to suffer. And as +they were both in a state of great emotional exaltation and capable +of strange generosities toward each other, it was an open question +and naturally a source of great anxiety to a mother in Mrs. Verrall's +position, whether the sufferer might not be her son--whether as +the outcome of that glowing irresponsible commerce Nettie might +not return prospective mistress of Checkshill Towers. The chances +were greatly against that conclusion, but such things did occur. + +These laws and customs sound, I know, like a record of some +nasty-minded lunatic's inventions. They were invincible facts in +that vanished world into which, by some accident, I had been born, +and it was the dream of any better state of things that was scouted +as lunacy. Just think of it! This girl I loved with all my soul, +for whom I was ready to sacrifice my life, was not good enough to +marry young Verrall. And I had only to look at his even, handsome, +characterless face to perceive a creature weaker and no better +than myself. She was to be his pleasure until he chose to cast her +aside, and the poison of our social system had so saturated her +nature--his evening dress, his freedom and his money had seemed +so fine to her and I so clothed in squalor--that to that prospect +she had consented. And to resent the social conventions that +created their situation, was called "class envy," and gently born +preachers reproached us for the mildest resentment against an injustice +no living man would now either endure or consent to profit by. + +What was the sense of saying "peace" when there was no peace? If +there was one hope in the disorders of that old world it lay in +revolt and conflict to the death. + +But if you can really grasp the shameful grotesqueness of the old +life, you will begin to appreciate the interpretation of old Mrs. +Verrall's appearance that leapt up at once in my mind. + +She had come to compromise the disaster! + +And the Stuarts WOULD compromise! I saw that only too well. + +An enormous disgust at the prospect of the imminent encounter between +Stuart and his mistress made me behave in a violent and irrational +way. I wanted to escape seeing that, seeing even Stuart's first +gesture in that, at any cost. + +"I'm off," said I, and turned my back on him without any further +farewell. + +My line of retreat lay by the old lady, and so I advanced toward +her. + +I saw her expression change, her mouth fell a little way open, her +forehead wrinkled, and her eyes grew round. She found me a queer +customer even at the first sight, and there was something in the +manner of my advance that took away her breath. + +She stood at the top of the three or four steps that descended to +the level of the hothouse floor. She receded a pace or two, with +a certain offended dignity at the determination of my rush. + +I gave her no sort of salutation. + +Well, as a matter of fact, I did give her a sort of salutation. +There is no occasion for me to begin apologizing now for the thing +I said to her--I strip these things before you--if only I can get +them stark enough you will understand and forgive. I was filled +with a brutal and overpowering desire to insult her. + +And so I addressed this poor little expensive old woman in +the following terms, converting her by a violent metonymy into a +comprehensive plural. "You infernal land thieves!" I said point-blank +into her face. "HAVE YOU COME TO OFFER THEM MONEY?" + +And without waiting to test her powers of repartee I passed rudely +beyond her and vanished, striding with my fists clenched, +out of her world again. . . + +I have tried since to imagine how the thing must have looked to +her. So far as her particular universe went I had not existed at +all, or I had existed only as a dim black thing, an insignificant +speck, far away across her park in irrelevant, unimportant transit, +until this moment when she came, sedately troubled, into her own +secure gardens and sought for Stuart among the greenhouses. Then +abruptly I flashed into being down that green-walled, brick-floored +vista as a black-avised, ill-clad young man, who first stared and +then advanced scowling toward her. Once in existence I developed +rapidly. I grew larger in perspective and became more and more +important and sinister every moment. I came up the steps with +inconceivable hostility and disrespect in my bearing, towered +over her, becoming for an instant at least a sort of second French +Revolution, and delivered myself with the intensest concentration +of those wicked and incomprehensible words. Just for a second I +threatened annihilation. Happily that was my climax. + +And then I had gone by, and the Universe was very much as it had +always been except for the wild swirl in it, and the faint sense +of insecurity my episode left in its wake. + +The thing that never entered my head in those days was that a large +proportion of the rich were rich in absolute good faith. I thought +they saw things exactly as I saw them, and wickedly denied. But indeed +old Mrs. Verrall was no more capable of doubting the perfection +of her family's right to dominate a wide country side, than she was +of examining the Thirty-nine Articles or dealing with any other of +the adamantine pillars upon which her universe rested in security. + +No doubt I startled and frightened her tremendously. But she could +not understand. + +None of her sort of people ever did seem to understand such livid +flashes of hate, as ever and again lit the crowded darkness below +their feet. The thing leapt out of the black for a moment and +vanished, like a threatening figure by a desolate roadside lit for +a moment by one's belated carriage-lamp and then swallowed up by +the night. They counted it with nightmares, and did their best to +forget what was evidently as insignificant as it was disturbing. + + + + +CHAPTER THE FOURTH + +WAR + + + +Section 1 + +FROM that moment when I insulted old Mrs. Verrall I became +representative, I was a man who stood for all the disinherited of +the world. I had no hope of pride or pleasure left in me, I was +raging rebellion against God and mankind. There were no more vague +intentions swaying me this way and that; I was perfectly clear now +upon what I meant to do. I would make my protest and die. + +I would make my protest and die. I was going to kill Nettie--Nettie +who had smiled and promised and given herself to another, and who +stood now for all the conceivable delightfulnesses, the lost imaginations +of the youthful heart, the unattainable joys in life; and Verrall +who stood for all who profited by the incurable injustice of our +social order. I would kill them both. And that being done I would +blow my brains out and see what vengeance followed my blank refusal +to live. + +So indeed I was resolved. I raged monstrously. And above me, +abolishing the stars, triumphant over the yellow waning moon that +followed it below, the giant meteor towered up towards the zenith. + +"Let me only kill!" I cried. "Let me only kill!" + +So I shouted in my frenzy. I was in a fever that defied hunger +and fatigue; for a long time I had prowled over the heath towards +Lowchester talking to myself, and now that night had fully come I +was tramping homeward, walking the long seventeen miles without a +thought of rest. And I had eaten nothing since the morning. + +I suppose I must count myself mad, but I can recall my ravings. + +There were times when I walked weeping through that brightness that +was neither night nor day. There were times when I reasoned in a +topsy-turvy fashion with what I called the Spirit of All Things. +But always I spoke to that white glory in the sky. + +"Why am I here only to suffer ignominies?" I asked. "Why have you +made me with pride that cannot be satisfied, with desires that +turn and rend me? Is it a jest, this world--a joke you play on your +guests? I--even I--have a better humor than that!" + +"Why not learn from me a certain decency of mercy? Why not undo? +Have I ever tormented--day by day, some wretched worm--making +filth for it to trail through, filth that disgusts it, starving it, +bruising it, mocking it? Why should you? Your jokes are clumsy. +Try--try some milder fun up there; do you hear? Something that +doesn't hurt so infernally." + +"You say this is your purpose--your purpose with me. You are making +something with me--birth pangs of a soul. Ah! How can I believe +you? You forget I have eyes for other things. Let my own case go, +but what of that frog beneath the cart-wheel, God?--and the bird +the cat had torn?" + +And after such blasphemies I would fling out a ridiculous little +debating society hand. "Answer me that!" + +A week ago it had been moonlight, white and black and hard across +the spaces of the park, but now the light was livid and full of +the quality of haze. An extraordinarily low white mist, not three +feet above the ground, drifted broodingly across the grass, and +the trees rose ghostly out of that phantom sea. Great and shadowy +and strange was the world that night, no one seemed abroad; I and my +little cracked voice drifted solitary through the silent mysteries. +Sometimes I argued as I have told, sometimes I tumbled along in +moody vacuity, sometimes my torment was vivid and acute. + +Abruptly out of apathy would come a boiling paroxysm of fury, when +I thought of Nettie mocking me and laughing, and of her and Verrall +clasped in one another's arms. + +"I will not have it so!" I screamed. "I will not have it so!" + +And in one of these raving fits I drew my revolver from my pocket +and fired into the quiet night. Three times I fired it. + +The bullets tore through the air, the startled trees told one another +in diminishing echoes the thing I had done, and then, with a slow +finality, the vast and patient night healed again to calm. My shots, +my curses and blasphemies, my prayers--for anon I prayed--that +Silence took them all. + +It was--how can I express it?--a stifled outcry tranquilized, +lost, amid the serene assumptions, the overwhelming empire of that +brightness. The noise of my shots, the impact upon things, had +for the instant been enormous, then it had passed away. I found +myself standing with the revolver held up, astonished, my emotions +penetrated by something I could not understand. Then I looked up +over my shoulder at the great star, and remained staring at it. + +"Who are YOU?" I said at last. + +I was like a man in a solitary desert who has suddenly heard a voice. . . . + +That, too, passed. + +As I came over Clayton Crest I recalled that I missed the multitude +that now night after night walked out to stare at the comet, and +the little preacher in the waste beyond the hoardings, who warned +sinners to repent before the Judgment, was not in his usual place. + +It was long past midnight, and every one had gone home. But I did +not think of this at first, and the solitude perplexed me and left +a memory behind. The gas-lamps were all extinguished because of the +brightness of the comet, and that too was unfamiliar. The little +newsagent in the still High Street had shut up and gone to bed, +but one belated board had been put out late and forgotten, and it +still bore its placard. + +The word upon it--there was but one word upon it in staring +letters--was: "WAR." + +You figure that empty mean street, emptily echoing to my footsteps--no +soul awake and audible but me. Then my halt at the placard. And +amidst that sleeping stillness, smeared hastily upon the board, +a little askew and crumpled, but quite distinct beneath that cool +meteoric glare, preposterous and appalling, the measureless evil +of that word-- + +"WAR!" + + + +Section 2 + +I awoke in that state of equanimity that so often follows an +emotional drenching. + +It was late, and my mother was beside my bed. She had some breakfast +for me on a battered tray. + +"Don't get up yet, dear," she said. "You've been sleeping. It was +three o'clock when you got home last night. You must have been +tired out." + +"Your poor face," she went on, "was as white as a sheet and your +eyes shining. . . . It frightened me to let you in. And you stumbled +on the stairs." + +My eyes went quietly to my coat pocket, where something still bulged. +She probably had not noticed. "I went to Checkshill," I said. "You +know--perhaps--?" + +"I got a letter last evening, dear," and as she bent near me to put +the tray upon my knees, she kissed my hair softly. For a moment we +both remained still, resting on that, her cheek just touching my +head. + +I took the tray from her to end the pause. + +"Don't touch my clothes, mummy," I said sharply, as she moved +towards them. "I'm still equal to a clothes-brush." + +And then, as she turned away, I astonished her by saying, "You dear +mother, you! A little--I understand. Only--now--dear mother; oh! +let me be! Let me be!" + +And, with the docility of a good servant, she went from me. Dear +heart of submission that the world and I had used so ill! + +It seemed to me that morning that I could never give way to a gust +of passion again. A sorrowful firmness of the mind possessed me. +My purpose seemed now as inflexible as iron; there was neither love +nor hate nor fear left in me--only I pitied my mother greatly for +all that was still to come. I ate my breakfast slowly, and thought +where I could find out about Shaphambury, and how I might hope to +get there. I had not five shillings in the world. + +I dressed methodically, choosing the least frayed of my collars, +and shaving much more carefully than was my wont; then I went down +to the Public Library to consult a map. + +Shaphambury was on the coast of Essex, a long and complicated +journey from Clayton. I went to the railway-station and made some +memoranda from the time-tables. The porters I asked were not very +clear about Shaphambury, but the booking-office clerk was helpful, +and we puzzled out all I wanted to know. Then I came out into the +coaly street again. At the least I ought to have two pounds. + +I went back to the Public Library and into the newspaper room to +think over this problem. + +A fact intruded itself upon me. People seemed in an altogether +exceptional stir about the morning journals, there was something +unusual in the air of the room, more people and more talking than +usual, and for a moment I was puzzled. Then I bethought me: "This +war with Germany, of course!" A naval battle was supposed to be in +progress in the North Sea. Let them! I returned to the consideration +of my own affairs. + +Parload? + +Could I go and make it up with him, and then borrow? I weighed the +chances of that. Then I thought of selling or pawning something, +but that seemed difficult. My winter overcoat had not cost a pound +when it was new, my watch was not likely to fetch many shillings. +Still, both these things might be factors. I thought with a certain +repugnance of the little store my mother was probably making for +the rent. She was very secretive about that, and it was locked in +an old tea-caddy in her bedroom. I knew it would be almost impossible +to get any of that money from her willingly, and though I told +myself that in this issue of passion and death no detail mattered, +I could not get rid of tormenting scruples whenever I thought of +that tea-caddy. Was there no other course? Perhaps after every +other source had been tapped I might supplement with a few shillings +frankly begged from her. "These others," I said to myself, thinking +without passion for once of the sons of the Secure, "would find it +difficult to run their romances on a pawnshop basis. However, we +must manage it." + +I felt the day was passing on, but I did not get excited about +that. "Slow is swiftest," Parload used to say, and I meant to get +everything thought out completely, to take a long aim and then to +act as a bullet flies. + +I hesitated at a pawnshop on my way home to my midday meal, but I +determined not to pledge my watch until I could bring my overcoat +also. + +I ate silently, revolving plans. + + + +Section 3 + +After our midday dinner--it was a potato-pie, mostly potato with +some scraps of cabbage and bacon--I put on my overcoat and got it +out of the house while my mother was in the scullery at the back. + +A scullery in the old world was, in the case of such houses as +ours, a damp, unsavory, mainly subterranean region behind the dark +living-room kitchen, that was rendered more than typically dirty +in our case by the fact that into it the coal-cellar, a yawning +pit of black uncleanness, opened, and diffused small crunchable +particles about the uneven brick floor. It was the region of +"washing-up," that greasy, damp function that followed every meal; +its atmosphere had ever a cooling steaminess and the memory of +boiled cabbage, and the sooty black stains where saucepan or kettle +had been put down for a minute, scraps of potato-peel caught by +the strainer of the escape-pipe, and rags of a quite indescribable +horribleness of acquisition, called "dish-clouts," rise in my +memory at the name. The altar of this place was the "sink," a tank +of stone, revolting to a refined touch, grease-filmed and unpleasant +to see, and above this was a tap for cold water, so arranged that +when the water descended it splashed and wetted whoever had turned +it on. This tap was our water supply. And in such a place you +must fancy a little old woman, rather incompetent and very gentle, +a soul of unselfishness and sacrifice, in dirty clothes, all come +from their original colors to a common dusty dark gray, in worn, +ill-fitting boots, with hands distorted by ill use, and untidy +graying hair--my mother. In the winter her hands would be "chapped," +and she would have a cough. And while she washes up I go out, to +sell my overcoat and watch in order that I may desert her. + +I gave way to queer hesitations in pawning my two negotiable articles. +A weakly indisposition to pawn in Clayton, where the pawnbroker +knew me, carried me to the door of the place in Lynch Street, +Swathinglea, where I had bought my revolver. Then came an idea that +I was giving too many facts about myself to one man, and I came +back to Clayton after all. I forget how much money I got, but I +remember that it was rather less than the sum I had made out to be +the single fare to Shaphambury. Still deliberate, I went back to +the Public Library to find out whether it was possible, by walking +for ten or twelve miles anywhere, to shorten the journey. My boots +were in a dreadful state, the sole of the left one also was now +peeling off, and I could not help perceiving that all my plans +might be wrecked if at this crisis I went on shoe leather in which +I could only shuffle. So long as I went softly they would serve, +but not for hard walking. I went to the shoemaker in Hacker Street, +but he would not promise any repairs for me under forty-eight hours. + +I got back home about five minutes to three, resolved to start by +the five train for Birmingham in any case, but still dissatisfied +about my money. I thought of pawning a book or something of that +sort, but I could think of nothing of obvious value in the house. +My mother's silver--two gravy-spoons and a salt-cellar--had been +pawned for some weeks, since, in fact, the June quarter day. But +my mind was full of hypothetical opportunities. + +As I came up the steps to our door, I remarked that Mr. Gabbitas +looked at me suddenly round his dull red curtains with a sort of +alarmed resolution in his eye and vanished, and as I walked along +the passage he opened his door upon me suddenly and intercepted +me. + +You are figuring me, I hope, as a dark and sullen lout in shabby, +cheap, old-world clothes that are shiny at all the wearing surfaces, +and with a discolored red tie and frayed linen. My left hand keeps +in my pocket as though there is something it prefers to keep a grip +upon there. Mr. Gabbitas was shorter than I, and the first note +he struck in the impression he made upon any one was of something +bright and birdlike. I think he wanted to be birdlike, he possessed +the possibility of an avian charm, but, as a matter of fact, there +was nothing of the glowing vitality of the bird in his being. And +a bird is never out of breath and with an open mouth. He was in +the clerical dress of that time, that costume that seems now almost +the strangest of all our old-world clothing, and he presented it in +its cheapest form--black of a poor texture, ill-fitting, strangely +cut. Its long skirts accentuated the tubbiness of his body, the +shortness of his legs. The white tie below his all-round collar, +beneath his innocent large-spectacled face, was a little grubby, +and between his not very clean teeth he held a briar pipe. His +complexion was whitish, and although he was only thirty-three or +four perhaps, his sandy hair was already thinning from the top of +his head. + +To your eye, now, he would seem the strangest figure, in the utter +disregard of all physical beauty or dignity about him. You would +find him extraordinarily odd, but in the old days he met not only +with acceptance but respect. He was alive until within a year or so +ago, but his later appearance changed. As I saw him that afternoon +he was a very slovenly, ungainly little human being indeed, not only +was his clothing altogether ugly and queer, but had you stripped +the man stark, you would certainly have seen in the bulging paunch +that comes from flabby muscles and flabbily controlled appetites, +and in the rounded shoulders and flawed and yellowish skin, the same +failure of any effort toward clean beauty. You had an instinctive +sense that so he had been from the beginning. You felt he was not +only drifting through life, eating what came in his way, believing +what came in his way, doing without any vigor what came in his way, +but that into life also he had drifted. You could not believe him +the child of pride and high resolve, or of any splendid passion of +love. He had just HAPPENED. . . But we all happened then. Why am +I taking this tone over this poor little curate in particular? + +"Hello!" he said, with an assumption of friendly ease. "Haven't +seen you for weeks! Come in and have a gossip." + +An invitation from the drawing-room lodger was in the nature of a +command. I would have liked very greatly to have refused it, never +was invitation more inopportune, but I had not the wit to think +of an excuse. "All right," I said awkwardly, and he held the door +open for me. + +"I'd be very glad if you would," he amplified. "One doesn't get +much opportunity of intelligent talk in this parish." + +What the devil was he up to, was my secret preoccupation. He fussed +about me with a nervous hospitality, talking in jumpy fragments, +rubbing his hands together, and taking peeps at me over and round +his glasses. As I sat down in his leather-covered armchair, I had +an odd memory of the one in the Clayton dentist's operating-room--I +know not why. + +"They're going to give us trouble in the North Sea, it seems," he +remarked with a sort of innocent zest. "I'm glad they mean fighting." + +There was an air of culture about his room that always cowed me, +and that made me constrained even on this occasion. The table under +the window was littered with photographic material and the later +albums of his continental souvenirs, and on the American cloth +trimmed shelves that filled the recesses on either side of the +fireplace were what I used to think in those days a quite incredible +number of books--perhaps eight hundred altogether, including +the reverend gentleman's photograph albums and college and school +text-books. This suggestion of learning was enforced by the +little wooden shield bearing a college coat-of-arms that hung over +the looking-glass, and by a photograph of Mr. Gabbitas in cap and +gown in an Oxford frame that adorned the opposite wall. And in the +middle of that wall stood his writing-desk, which I knew to have +pigeon-holes when it was open, and which made him seem not merely +cultured but literary. At that he wrote sermons, composing them +himself! + +"Yes," he said, taking possession of the hearthrug, "the war had +to come sooner or later. If we smash their fleet for them now; +well, there's an end to the matter!" + +He stood on his toes and then bumped down on his heels, and looked +blandly through his spectacles at a water-color by his sister--the +subject was a bunch of violets--above the sideboard which was his +pantry and tea-chest and cellar. "Yes," he said as he did so. + +I coughed, and wondered how I might presently get away. + +He invited me to smoke--that queer old practice!--and then when +I declined, began talking in a confidential tone of this "dreadful +business" of the strikes. "The war won't improve THAT outlook," he +said, and was very grave for a moment. + +He spoke of the want of thought for their wives and children shown +by the colliers in striking merely for the sake of the union, and +this stirred me to controversy, and distracted me a little from my +resolution to escape. + +"I don't quite agree with that," I said, clearing my throat. "If +the men didn't strike for the union now, if they let that be broken +up, where would they be when the pinch of reductions did come?" + +To which he replied that they couldn't expect to get top-price +wages when the masters were selling bottom-price coal. I replied, +"That isn't it. The masters don't treat them fairly. They have to +protect themselves." + +To which Mr. Gabbitas answered, "Well, I don't know. I've been in +the Four Towns some time, and I must say I don't think the balance +of injustice falls on the masters' side." + +"It falls on the men," I agreed, wilfully misunderstanding him. + +And so we worked our way toward an argument. "Confound this +argument!" I thought; but I had no skill in self-extraction, and +my irritation crept into my voice. Three little spots of color came +into the cheeks and nose of Mr. Gabbitas, but his voice showed +nothing of his ruffled temper. + +"You see," I said, "I'm a socialist. I don't think this world was +made for a small minority to dance on the faces of every one else." + +"My dear fellow," said the Rev. Gabbitas, "I'M a socialist too. +Who isn't. But that doesn't lead me to class hatred." + +"You haven't felt the heel of this confounded system. I have." + +"Ah!" said he; and catching him on that note came a rap at the front +door, and, as he hung suspended, the sound of my mother letting +some one in and a timid rap. + +"NOW," thought I, and stood up, resolutely, but he would not let +me. "No, no, no!" said he. "It's only for the Dorcas money." + +He put his hand against my chest with an effect of physical +compulsion, and cried, "Come in!" + +"Our talk's just getting interesting," he protested; and there +entered Miss Ramell, an elderly little young lady who was mighty +in Church help in Clayton. + +He greeted her--she took no notice of me--and went to his bureau, +and I remained standing by my chair but unable to get out of the +room. "I'm not interrupting?" asked Miss Ramell. + +"Not in the least," he said; drew out the carriers and opened his +desk. I could not help seeing what he did. + +I was so fretted by my impotence to leave him that at the moment +it did not connect at all with the research of the morning that +he was taking out money. I listened sullenly to his talk with Miss +Ramell, and saw only, as they say in Wales, with the front of my +eyes, the small flat drawer that had, it seemed, quite a number +of sovereigns scattered over its floor. "They're so unreasonable," +complained Miss Ramell. Who could be otherwise in a social +organization that bordered on insanity? + +I turned away from them, put my foot on the fender, stuck my elbow +on the plush-fringed mantelboard, and studied the photographs, +pipes, and ash-trays that adorned it. What was it I had to think +out before I went to the station? + +Of course! My mind made a queer little reluctant leap--it felt like +being forced to leap over a bottomless chasm--and alighted upon the +sovereigns that were just disappearing again as Mr. Gabbitas shut +his drawer. + +"I won't interrupt your talk further," said Miss Ramell, receding +doorward. + +Mr. Gabbitas played round her politely, and opened the door for her +and conducted her into the passage, and for a moment or so I had +the fullest sense of proximity to those--it seemed to me +there must be ten or twelve--sovereigns. . . . + +The front door closed and he returned. My chance of escape had +gone. + + + +Section 4 + +"I MUST be going," I said, with a curiously reinforced desire to +get away out of that room. + +"My dear chap!" he insisted, "I can't think of it. Surely--there's +nothing to call you away." Then with an evident desire to shift the +venue of our talk, he asked, "You never told me what you thought +of Burble's little book." + +I was now, beneath my dull display of submission, furiously angry +with him. It occurred to me to ask myself why I should defer +and qualify my opinions to him. Why should I pretend a feeling +of intellectual and social inferiority toward him. He asked what +I thought of Burble. I resolved to tell him--if necessary with +arrogance. Then perhaps he would release me. I did not sit down +again, but stood by the corner of the fireplace. + +"That was the little book you lent me last summer?" I said. + +"He reasons closely, eh?" he said, and indicated the armchair with +a flat hand, and beamed persuasively. + +I remained standing. "I didn't think much of his reasoning powers," +I said. + +"He was one of the cleverest bishops London ever had." + +"That may be. But he was dodging about in a jolly feeble case," +said I. + +"You mean?" + +"That he's wrong. I don't think he proves his case. I don't think +Christianity is true. He knows himself for the pretender he is. +His reasoning's--Rot." + +Mr. Gabbitas went, I think, a shade paler than his wont, and propitiation +vanished from his manner. His eyes and mouth were round, his face +seemed to get round, his eyebrows curved at my remarks. + +"I'm sorry you think that," he said at last, with a catch in his +breath. + +He did not repeat his suggestion that I should sit. He made a step +or two toward the window and turned. "I suppose you will admit--" he +began, with a faintly irritating note of intellectual condescension. +. . . . + +I will not tell you of his arguments or mine. You will find if +you care to look for them, in out-of-the-way corners of our book +museums, the shriveled cheap publications--the publications of the +Rationalist Press Association, for example--on which my arguments +were based. Lying in that curious limbo with them, mixed up with +them and indistinguishable, are the endless "Replies" of orthodoxy, +like the mixed dead in some hard-fought trench. All those disputes +of our fathers, and they were sometimes furious disputes, have +gone now beyond the range of comprehension. You younger people, I +know, read them with impatient perplexity. You cannot understand +how sane creatures could imagine they had joined issue at all +in most of these controversies. All the old methods of systematic +thinking, the queer absurdities of the Aristotelian logic, have +followed magic numbers and mystical numbers, and the Rumpelstiltskin +magic of names now into the blackness of the unthinkable. You can +no more understand our theological passions than you can understand +the fancies that made all ancient peoples speak of their gods only +by circumlocutions, that made savages pine away and die because +they had been photographed, or an Elizabethan farmer turn back from +a day's expedition because he had met three crows. Even I, who have +been through it all, recall our controversies now with something +near incredulity. + +Faith we can understand to-day, all men live by faith, but in the +old time every one confused quite hopelessly Faith and a forced, +incredible Belief in certain pseudo-concrete statements. I am +inclined to say that neither believers nor unbelievers had faith as +we understand it--they had insufficient intellectual power. They +could not trust unless they had something to see and touch and +say, like their barbarous ancestors who could not make a bargain +without exchange of tokens. If they no longer worshipped stocks and +stones, or eked out their needs with pilgrimages and images, they +still held fiercely to audible images, to printed words and formulae. + +But why revive the echoes of the ancient logomachies? + +Suffice it that we lost our tempers very readily in pursuit of +God and Truth, and said exquisitely foolish things on either side. +And on the whole--from the impartial perspective of my three and +seventy years--I adjudicate that if my dialectic was bad, that of +the Rev. Gabbitas was altogether worse. + +Little pink spots came into his cheeks, a squealing note into his +voice. We interrupted each other more and more rudely. We invented +facts and appealed to authorities whose names I mispronounced; +and, finding Gabbitas shy of the higher criticism and the Germans, +I used the names of Karl Marx and Engels as Bible exegetes with no +little effect. A silly wrangle! a preposterous wrangle!--you must +imagine our talk becoming louder, with a developing quarrelsome +note--my mother no doubt hovering on the staircase and listening +in alarm as who should say, "My dear, don't offend it! Oh, don't +offend it! Mr. Gabbitas enjoys its friendship. Try to think whatever +Mr. Gabbitas says"--though we still kept in touch with a pretence +of mutual deference. The ethical superiority of Christianity to +all other religions came to the fore--I know not how. We dealt with +the matter in bold, imaginative generalizations, because of the +insufficiency of our historical knowledge. I was moved to denounce +Christianity as the ethic of slaves, and declare myself a disciple +of a German writer of no little vogue in those days, named Nietzsche. + +For a disciple I must confess I was particularly ill acquainted +with the works of the master. Indeed, all I knew of him had come +to me through a two-column article in The Clarion for the previous +week. . . . But the Rev. Gabbitas did not read The Clarion. + +I am, I know, putting a strain upon your credulity when I tell you +that I now have little doubt that the Rev. Gabbitas was absolutely +ignorant even of the name of Nietzsche, although that writer presented +a separate and distinct attitude of attack upon the faith that was +in the reverend gentleman's keeping. + +"I'm a disciple of Nietzsche," said I, with an air of extensive +explanation. + +He shied away so awkwardly at the name that I repeated it at once. + +"But do you know what Nietzsche says?" I pressed him viciously. + +"He has certainly been adequately answered," said he, still trying +to carry it off. + +"Who by?" I rapped out hotly. "Tell me that!" and became mercilessly +expectant. + + + +Section 5 + +A happy accident relieved Mr. Gabbitas from the embarrassment +of that challenge, and carried me another step along my course of +personal disaster. + +It came on the heels of my question in the form of a clatter of +horses without, and the gride and cessation of wheels. I glimpsed +a straw-hatted coachman and a pair of grays. It seemed an incredibly +magnificent carriage for Clayton. + +"Eh!" said the Rev. Gabbitas, going to the window. "Why, it's old +Mrs. Verrall! It's old Mrs. Verrall. Really! What CAN she want with +me?" + +He turned to me, and the flush of controversy had passed and his +face shone like the sun. It was not every day, I perceived, that +Mrs. Verrall came to see him. + +"I get so many interruptions," he said, almost grinning. "You must +excuse me a minute! Then--then I'll tell you about that fellow. +But don't go. I pray you don't go. I can assure you. . . . MOST +interesting." + +He went out of the room waving vague prohibitory gestures. + +"I MUST go," I cried after him. + +"No, no, no!" in the passage. "I've got your answer," I think it +was he added, and "quite mistaken;" and I saw him running down the +steps to talk to the old lady. + +I swore. I made three steps to the window, and this brought me +within a yard of that accursed drawer. + +I glanced at it, and then at that old woman who was so absolutely +powerful, and instantly her son and Nettie's face were flaming in +my brain. The Stuarts had, no doubt, already accepted accomplished +facts. And I too-- + +What was I doing here? + +What was I doing here while judgment escaped me? + +I woke up. I was injected with energy. I took one reassuring look +at the curate's obsequious back, at the old lady's projected nose +and quivering hand, and then with swift, clean movements I had the +little drawer open, four sovereigns in my pocket, and the drawer +shut again. Then again at the window--they were still talking. + +That was all right. He might not look in that drawer for hours. I +glanced at his clock. Twenty minutes still before the Birmingham +train. Time to buy a pair of boots and get away. But how I was to +get to the station? + +I went out boldly into the passage, and took my hat and stick. . . . +Walk past him? + +Yes. That was all right! He could not argue with me while so +important a person engaged him. . . . I came boldly down the steps. + +"I want a list made, Mr. Gabbitas, of all the really DESERVING +cases," old Mrs. Verrall was saying. + +It is curious, but it did not occur to me that here was a mother +whose son I was going to kill. I did not see her in that aspect +at all. Instead, I was possessed by a realization of the blazing +imbecility of a social system that gave this palsied old woman +the power to give or withhold the urgent necessities of life from +hundreds of her fellow-creatures just according to her poor, foolish +old fancies of desert. + +"We could make a PROVISIONAL list of that sort," he was saying, +and glanced round with a preoccupied expression at me. + +"I MUST go," I said at his flash of inquiry, and added, "I'll be +back in twenty minutes," and went on my way. He turned again to +his patroness as though he forgot me on the instant. Perhaps after +all he was not sorry. + +I felt extraordinarily cool and capable, exhilarated, if anything, +by this prompt, effectual theft. After all, my great determination +would achieve itself. I was no longer oppressed by a sense +of obstacles, I felt I could grasp accidents and turn them to +my advantage. I would go now down Hacker Street to the little +shoemaker's--get a sound, good pair of boots--ten minutes--and then to +the railway-station--five minutes more--and off! I felt as efficient +and non-moral as if I was Nietzsche's Over-man already come. It did +not occur to me that the curate's clock might have a considerable +margin of error. + + + +Section 6 + +I missed the train. + +Partly that was because the curate's clock was slow, and partly +it was due to the commercial obstinacy of the shoemaker, who would +try on another pair after I had declared my time was up. I bought +the final pair however, gave him a wrong address for the return of +the old ones, and only ceased to feel like the Nietzschean Over-man, +when I saw the train running out of the station. + +Even then I did not lose my head. It occurred to me almost at once +that, in the event of a prompt pursuit, there would be a great +advantage in not taking a train from Clayton; that, indeed, to have +done so would have been an error from which only luck had saved +me. As it was, I had already been very indiscreet in my inquiries +about Shaphambury; for once on the scent the clerk could not fail +to remember me. Now the chances were against his coming into the +case. I did not go into the station therefore at all, I made no +demonstration of having missed the train, but walked quietly past, +down the road, crossed the iron footbridge, and took the way back +circuitously by White's brickfields and the allotments to the way +over Clayton Crest to Two-Mile Stone, where I calculated I should +have an ample margin for the 6.13 train. + +I was not very greatly excited or alarmed then. Suppose, I reasoned, +that by some accident the curate goes to that drawer at once: will +he be certain to miss four out of ten or eleven sovereigns? If he +does, will he at once think I have taken them? If he does, will +he act at once or wait for my return? If he acts at once, will he +talk to my mother or call in the police? Then there are a dozen +roads and even railways out of the Clayton region, how is he to +know which I have taken? Suppose he goes straight at once to the +right station, they will not remember my departure for the simple +reason that I didn't depart. But they may remember about Shaphambury? +It was unlikely. + +I resolved not to go directly to Shaphambury from Birmingham, but +to go thence to Monkshampton, thence to Wyvern, and then come down +on Shaphambury from the north. That might involve a night at some +intermediate stopping-place but it would effectually conceal me +from any but the most persistent pursuit. And this was not a case +of murder yet, but only the theft of four sovereigns. + +I had argued away all anxiety before I reached Clayton Crest. + +At the Crest I looked back. What a world it was! And suddenly it +came to me that I was looking at this world for the last time. If +I overtook the fugitives and succeeded, I should die with them--or +hang. I stopped and looked back more attentively at that wide ugly +valley. + +It was my native valley, and I was going out of it, I thought never +to return, and yet in that last prospect, the group of towns that +had borne me and dwarfed and crippled and made me, seemed, in some +indefinable manner, strange. I was, perhaps, more used to seeing it +from this comprehensive view-point when it was veiled and softened +by night; now it came out in all its weekday reek, under a clear +afternoon sun. That may account a little for its unfamiliarity. +And perhaps, too, there was something in the emotions through which +I had been passing for a week and more, to intensify my insight, +to enable me to pierce the unusual, to question the accepted. But +it came to me then, I am sure, for the first time, how promiscuous, +how higgledy-piggledy was the whole of that jumble of mines and +homes, collieries and potbanks, railway yards, canals, schools, +forges and blast furnaces, churches, chapels, allotment hovels, +a vast irregular agglomeration of ugly smoking accidents in which +men lived as happy as frogs in a dustbin. Each thing jostled and +damaged the other things about it, each thing ignored the other +things about it; the smoke of the furnace defiled the potbank clay, +the clatter of the railway deafened the worshipers in church, the +public-house thrust corruption at the school doors, the dismal +homes squeezed miserably amidst the monstrosities of industrialism, +with an effect of groping imbecility. Humanity choked amidst its +products, and all its energy went in increasing its disorder, like +a blind stricken thing that struggles and sinks in a morass. + +I did not think these things clearly that afternoon. Much less did +I ask how I, with my murderous purpose, stood to them all. I write +down that realization of disorder and suffocation here and now as +though I had thought it, but indeed then I only felt it, felt it +transitorily as I looked back, and then stood with the thing escaping +from my mind. + +I should never see that country-side again. + +I came back to that. At any rate I wasn't sorry. The chances were +I should die in sweet air, under a clean sky. + +From distant Swathinglea came a little sound, the minute undulation +of a remote crowd, and then rapidly three shots. + +That held me perplexed for a space. . . . Well, anyhow I was +leaving it all! Thank God I was leaving it all! Then, as I turned +to go on, I thought of my mother. + +It seemed an evil world in which to leave one's mother. My thoughts +focused upon her very vividly for a moment. Down there, under that +afternoon light, she was going to and fro, unaware as yet that +she had lost me, bent and poking about in the darkling underground +kitchen, perhaps carrying a lamp into the scullery to trim, or +sitting patiently, staring into the fire, waiting tea for me. A +great pity for her, a great remorse at the blacker troubles that +lowered over her innocent head, came to me. Why, after all, was +I doing this thing? + +Why? + +I stopped again dead, with the hill crest rising between me and +home. I had more than half a mind to return to her. + +Then I thought of the curate's sovereigns. If he has missed them +already, what should I return to? And, even if I returned, how +could I put them back? + +And what of the night after I renounced my revenge? What of the +time when young Verrall came back? And Nettie? + +No! The thing had to be done. + +But at least I might have kissed my mother before I came away, left +her some message, reassured her at least for a little while. +All night she would listen and wait for me. . . . . + +Should I send her a telegram from Two-Mile Stone? + +It was no good now; too late, too late. To do that would be to tell +the course I had taken, to bring pursuit upon me, swift and sure, +if pursuit there was to be. No. My mother must suffer! + +I went on grimly toward Two-Mile Stone, but now as if some greater +will than mine directed my footsteps thither. + +I reached Birmingham before darkness came, and just caught the last +train for Monkshampton, where I had planned to pass the night. + + + + +CHAPTER THE FIFTH + +THE PURSUIT OF THE TWO LOVERS + + + +Section 1 + +As the train carried me on from Birmingham to Monkshampton, it +carried me not only into a country where I had never been before, +but out of the commonplace daylight and the touch and quality +of ordinary things, into the strange unprecedented night that was +ruled by the giant meteor of the last days. + +There was at that time a curious accentuation of the common alternation +of night and day. They became separated with a widening difference +of value in regard to all mundane affairs. During the day, the +comet was an item in the newspapers, it was jostled by a thousand +more living interests, it was as nothing in the skirts of the war +storm that was now upon us. It was an astronomical phenomenon, +somewhere away over China, millions of miles away in the deeps. +We forgot it. But directly the sun sank one turned ever and again +toward the east, and the meteor resumed its sway over us. + +One waited for its rising, and yet each night it came as a surprise. +Always it rose brighter than one had dared to think, always larger and +with some wonderful change in its outline, and now with a strange, +less luminous, greener disk upon it that grew with its growth, the +umbra of the earth. It shone also with its own light, so that this +shadow was not hard or black, but it shone phosphorescently and with +a diminishing intensity where the stimulus of the sun's rays was +withdrawn. As it ascended toward the zenith, as the last trailing +daylight went after the abdicating sun, its greenish white illumination +banished the realities of day, diffused a bright ghostliness over +all things. It changed the starless sky about it to an extraordinary +deep blue, the profoundest color in the world, such as I have never +seen before or since. I remember, too, that as I peered from the +train that was rattling me along to Monkshampton, I perceived and +was puzzled by a coppery red light that mingled with all the shadows +that were cast by it. + +It turned our ugly English industrial towns to phantom cities. +Everywhere the local authorities discontinued street lighting--one +could read small print in the glare,--and so at Monkshampton I +went about through pale, white, unfamiliar streets, whose electric +globes had shadows on the path. Lit windows here and there burnt +ruddy orange, like holes cut in some dream curtain that hung before +a furnace. A policeman with noiseless feet showed me an inn woven +of moonshine, a green-faced man opened to us, and there I abode +the night. And the next morning it opened with a mighty clatter, +and was a dirty little beerhouse that stank of beer, and there was +a fat and grimy landlord with red spots upon his neck, and much +noisy traffic going by on the cobbles outside. + +I came out, after I had paid my bill, into a street that echoed +to the bawlings of two newsvendors and to the noisy yappings of a +dog they had raised to emulation. They were shouting: "Great British +disaster in the North Sea. A battleship lost with all hands!" + +I bought a paper, went on to the railway station reading such +details as were given of this triumph of the old civilization, of +the blowing up of this great iron ship, full of guns and explosives +and the most costly and beautiful machinery of which that time was +capable, together with nine hundred able-bodied men, all of them +above the average, by a contact mine towed by a German submarine. +I read myself into a fever of warlike emotions. Not only did I +forget the meteor, but for a time I forgot even the purpose that +took me on to the railway station, bought my ticket, and was now +carrying me onward to Shaphambury. + +So the hot day came to its own again, and people forgot the night. + +Each night, there shone upon us more and more insistently, beauty, +wonder, the promise of the deeps, and we were hushed, and marveled +for a space. And at the first gray sounds of dawn again, at the +shooting of bolts and the noise of milk-carts, we forgot, and the +dusty habitual day came yawning and stretching back again. The +stains of coal smoke crept across the heavens, and we rose to the +soiled disorderly routine of life. + +"Thus life has always been," we said; "thus it will always be." + +The glory of those nights was almost universally regarded as +spectacular merely. It signified nothing to us. So far as western +Europe went, it was only a small and ignorant section of the lower +classes who regarded the comet as a portent of the end of the +world. Abroad, where there were peasantries, it was different, but +in England the peasantry had already disappeared. Every one read. +The newspaper, in the quiet days before our swift quarrel with Germany +rushed to its climax, had absolutely dispelled all possibilities +of a panic in this matter. The very tramps upon the high-roads, the +children in the nursery, had learnt that at the utmost the whole +of that shining cloud could weigh but a few score tons. This fact +had been shown quite conclusively by the enormous deflections that +had at last swung it round squarely at our world. It had passed +near three of the smallest asteroids without producing the minutest +perceptible deflection in their course; while, on its own part, it +had described a course through nearly three degrees. When it struck +our earth there was to be a magnificent spectacle, no doubt, for +those who were on the right side of our planet to see, but beyond +that nothing. It was doubtful whether we were on the right side. +The meteor would loom larger and larger in the sky, but with the +umbra of our earth eating its heart of brightness out, and at last +it would be the whole sky, a sky of luminous green clouds, with +a white brightness about the horizon, west and east. Then a pause--a +pause of not very exactly definite duration--and then, no doubt, +a great blaze of shooting stars. They might be of some unwonted +color because of the unknown element that line in the green revealed. +For a little while the zenith would spout shooting stars. Some, +it was hoped, would reach the earth and be available for analysis. + +That, science said, would be all. The green clouds would whirl and +vanish, and there might be thunderstorms. But through the attenuated +wisps of comet shine, the old sky, the old stars, would reappear, +and all would be as it had been before. And since this was to happen +between one and eleven in the morning of the approaching Tuesday--I +slept at Monkshampton on Saturday night,--it would be only partially +visible, if visible at all, on our side of the earth. Perhaps, if +it came late, one would see no more than a shooting star low down +in the sky. All this we had with the utmost assurances of science. +Still it did not prevent the last nights being the most beautiful +and memorable of human experiences. + +The nights had become very warm, and when next day I had ranged +Shaphambury in vain, I was greatly tormented, as that unparalleled +glory of the night returned, to think that under its splendid +benediction young Verrall and Nettie made love to one another. + +I walked backward and forward, backward and forward, along the sea +front, peering into the faces of the young couples who promenaded, +with my hand in my pocket ready, and a curious ache in my heart +that had no kindred with rage. Until at last all the promenaders +had gone home to bed, and I was alone with the star. + +My train from Wyvern to Shaphambury that morning was a whole hour +late; they said it was on account of the movement of troops to meet +a possible raid from the Elbe. + + + +Section 2 + +Shaphambury seemed an odd place to me even then. But something was +quickening in me at that time to feel the oddness of many accepted +things. Now in the retrospect I see it as intensely queer. The whole +place was strange to my untraveled eyes; the sea even was strange. +Only twice in my life had I been at the seaside before, and then +I had gone by excursion to places on the Welsh coast whose great +cliffs of rock and mountain backgrounds made the effect of the horizon +very different from what it is upon the East Anglian seaboard. Here +what they call a cliff was a crumbling bank of whitey-brown earth +not fifty feet high. + +So soon as I arrived I made a systematic exploration of Shaphambury. +To this day I retain the clearest memories of the plan I shaped +out then, and how my inquiries were incommoded by the overpowering +desire of every one to talk of the chances of a German raid, before +the Channel Fleet got round to us. I slept at a small public-house +in a Shaphambury back street on Sunday night. I did not get on to +Shaphambury from Wyvern until two in the afternoon, because of the +infrequency of Sunday trains, and I got no clue whatever until late +in the afternoon of Monday. As the little local train bumped into +sight of the place round the curve of a swelling hill, one saw +a series of undulating grassy spaces, amidst which a number of +conspicuous notice-boards appealed to the eye and cut up the distant +sea horizon. Most of these referred to comestibles or to remedies +to follow the comestibles; and they were colored with a view to be +memorable rather than beautiful, to "stand out" amidst the gentle +grayish tones of the east coast scenery. The greater number, I may +remark, of the advertisements that were so conspicuous a factor +in the life of those days, and which rendered our vast tree-pulp +newspapers possible, referred to foods, drinks, tobacco, and the +drugs that promised a restoration of the equanimity these other +articles had destroyed. Wherever one went one was reminded in glaring +letters that, after all, man was little better than a worm, that +eyeless, earless thing that burrows and lives uncomplainingly +amidst nutritious dirt, "an alimentary canal with the subservient +appendages thereto." But in addition to such boards there were also +the big black and white boards of various grandiloquently named +"estates." The individualistic enterprise of that time had led to +the plotting out of nearly all the country round the seaside towns +into roads and building-plots--all but a small portion of the south +and east coast was in this condition, and had the promises of those +schemes been realized the entire population of the island might +have been accommodated upon the sea frontiers. Nothing of the sort +happened, of course; the whole of this uglification of the coast-line +was done to stimulate a little foolish gambling in plots, and +one saw everywhere agents' boards in every state of freshness and +decay, ill-made exploitation roads overgrown with grass, and here +and there, at a corner, a label, "Trafalgar Avenue," or "Sea View +Road." Here and there, too, some small investor, some shopman with +"savings," had delivered his soul to the local builders and built +himself a house, and there it stood, ill-designed, mean-looking, +isolated, ill-placed on a cheaply fenced plot, athwart which his +domestic washing fluttered in the breeze amidst a bleak desolation +of enterprise. Then presently our railway crossed a high road, +and a row of mean yellow brick houses--workmen's cottages, and +the filthy black sheds that made the "allotments" of that time a +universal eyesore, marked our approach to the more central areas +of--I quote the local guidebook--"one of the most delightful resorts +in the East Anglian poppy-land." Then more mean houses, the gaunt +ungainliness of the electric force station--it had a huge chimney, +because no one understood how to make combustion of coal complete--and +then we were in the railway station, and barely three-quarters of +a mile from the center of this haunt of health and pleasure. + +I inspected the town thoroughly before I made my inquiries. The +road began badly with a row of cheap, pretentious, insolvent-looking +shops, a public-house, and a cab-stand, but, after an interval of +little red villas that were partly hidden amidst shrubbery gardens, +broke into a confusedly bright but not unpleasing High Street, +shuttered that afternoon and sabbatically still. Somewhere in the +background a church bell jangled, and children in bright, new-looking +clothes were going to Sunday-school. Thence through a square of +stuccoed lodging-houses, that seemed a finer and cleaner version of +my native square, I came to a garden of asphalt and euonymus--the +Sea Front. I sat down on a cast-iron seat, and surveyed first of all +the broad stretches of muddy, sandy beach, with its queer wheeled +bathing machines, painted with the advertisements of somebody's +pills--and then at the house fronts that stared out upon these visceral +counsels. Boarding-houses, private hotels, and lodging-houses in +terraces clustered closely right and left of me, and then came to +an end; in one direction scaffolding marked a building enterprise +in progress, in the other, after a waste interval, rose a monstrous +bulging red shape, a huge hotel, that dwarfed all other things. +Northward were low pale cliffs with white denticulations of tents, +where the local volunteers, all under arms, lay encamped, and +southward, a spreading waste of sandy dunes, with occasional bushes +and clumps of stunted pine and an advertisement board or so. A +hard blue sky hung over all this prospect, the sunshine cast inky +shadows, and eastward was a whitish sea. It was Sunday, and the +midday meal still held people indoors. + +A queer world! thought I even then--to you now it must seem impossibly +queer,--and after an interval I forced myself back to my own affair. + +How was I to ask? What was I to ask for? I puzzled for a long time +over that--at first I was a little tired and indolent--and then +presently I had a flow of ideas. + +My solution was fairly ingenious. I invented the following story. +I happened to be taking a holiday in Shaphambury, and I was making +use of the opportunity to seek the owner of a valuable feather boa, +which had been left behind in the hotel of my uncle at Wyvern by a +young lady, traveling with a young gentleman--no doubt a youthful +married couple. They had reached Shaphambury somewhen on Thursday. +I went over the story many times, and gave my imaginary uncle and +his hotel plausible names. At any rate this yarn would serve as +a complete justification for all the questions I might wish to ask. + +I settled that, but I still sat for a time, wanting the energy to +begin. Then I turned toward the big hotel. Its gorgeous magnificence +seemed to my inexpert judgment to indicate the very place a rich +young man of good family would select. + +Huge draught-proof doors were swung round for me by an ironically +polite under-porter in a magnificent green uniform, who looked at +my clothes as he listened to my question and then with a German +accent referred me to a gorgeous head porter, who directed me to +a princely young man behind a counter of brass and polish, like a +bank--like several banks. This young man, while he answered me, kept +his eye on my collar and tie--and I knew that they were abominable. + +"I want to find a lady and gentleman who came to Shaphambury on +Tuesday," I said. + +"Friends of yours?" he asked with a terrible fineness of irony. + +I made out at last that here at any rate the young people had not +been. They might have lunched there, but they had had no room. But +I went out--door opened again for me obsequiously--in a state of +social discomfiture, and did not attack any other establishment +that afternoon. + +My resolution had come to a sort of ebb. More people were promenading, +and their Sunday smartness abashed me. I forgot my purpose in an +acute sense of myself. I felt that the bulge of my pocket caused +by the revolver was conspicuous, and I was ashamed. I went along +the sea front away from the town, and presently lay down among +pebbles and sea poppies. This mood of reaction prevailed with me +all that afternoon. In the evening, about sundown, I went to the +station and asked questions of the outporters there. But outporters, +I found, were a class of men who remembered luggage rather than +people, and I had no sort of idea what luggage young Verrall and +Nettie were likely to have with them. + +Then I fell into conversation with a salacious wooden-legged old +man with a silver ring, who swept the steps that went down to the +beach from the parade. He knew much about young couples, but only +in general terms, and nothing of the particular young couple I +sought. He reminded me in the most disagreeable way of the sensuous +aspects of life, and I was not sorry when presently a gunboat +appeared in the offing signalling the coastguard and the camp, and +cut short his observations upon holidays, beaches, and morals. + +I went, and now I was past my ebb, and sat in a seat upon the parade, +and watched the brightening of those rising clouds of chilly fire +that made the ruddy west seem tame. My midday lassitude was going, +my blood was running warmer again. And as the twilight and that filmy +brightness replaced the dusty sunlight and robbed this unfamiliar +place of all its matter-of-fact queerness, its sense of aimless +materialism, romance returned to me, and passion, and my thoughts +of honor and revenge. I remember that change of mood as occurring +very vividly on this occasion, but I fancy that less distinctly I +had felt this before many times. In the old times, night and the +starlight had an effect of intimate reality the daytime did not possess. +The daytime--as one saw it in towns and populous places--had hold +of one, no doubt, but only as an uproar might, it was distracting, +conflicting, insistent. Darkness veiled the more salient aspects of +those agglomerations of human absurdity, and one could exist--one +could imagine. + +I had a queer illusion that night, that Nettie and her lover were +close at hand, that suddenly I should come on them. I have already +told how I went through the dusk seeking them in every couple that +drew near. And I dropped asleep at last in an unfamiliar bedroom +hung with gaudily decorated texts, cursing myself for having wasted +a day. + + + +Section 3 + +I sought them in vain the next morning, but after midday I came in +quick succession on a perplexing multitude of clues. After failing +to find any young couple that corresponded to young Verrall +and Nettie, I presently discovered an unsatisfactory quartette of +couples. + +Any of these four couples might have been the one I sought; with +regard to none of them was there conviction. They had all arrived +either on Wednesday or Thursday. Two couples were still in occupation +of their rooms, but neither of these were at home. Late in the +afternoon I reduced my list by eliminating a young man in drab, with +side whiskers and long cuffs, accompanied by a lady, of thirty or +more, of consciously ladylike type. I was disgusted at the sight +of them; the other two young people had gone for a long walk, and +though I watched their boarding-house until the fiery cloud shone +out above, sharing and mingling in an unusually splendid sunset, +I missed them. Then I discovered them dining at a separate table +in the bow window, with red-shaded candles between them, peering +out ever and again at this splendor that was neither night nor day. +The girl in her pink evening dress looked very light and pretty +to me--pretty enough to enrage me,--she had well shaped arms and +white, well-modeled shoulders, and the turn of her cheek and the +fair hair about her ears was full of subtle delights; but she was +not Nettie, and the happy man with her was that odd degenerate type +our old aristocracy produced with such odd frequency, chinless, +large bony nose, small fair head, languid expression, and a neck +that had demanded and received a veritable sleeve of collar. I +stood outside in the meteor's livid light, hating them and cursing +them for having delayed me so long. I stood until it was evident +they remarked me, a black shape of envy, silhouetted against the +glare. + +That finished Shaphambury. The question I now had to debate was +which of the remaining couples I had to pursue. + +I walked back to the parade trying to reason my next step out, and +muttering to myself, because there was something in that luminous +wonderfulness that touched one's brain, and made one feel a little +light-headed. + +One couple had gone to London; the other had gone to the Bungalow +village at Bone Cliff. Where, I wondered, was Bone Cliff? + +I came upon my wooden-legged man at the top of his steps. + +"Hullo," said I. + +He pointed seaward with his pipe, his silver ring shone in the sky +light. + +"Rum," he said. + +"What is?" I asked. + +"Search-lights! Smoke! Ships going north! If it wasn't for this +blasted Milky Way gone green up there, we might see." + +He was too intent to heed my questions for a time. Then he vouchsafed +over his shoulder-- + +"Know Bungalow village?--rather. Artis' and such. Nice goings on! +Mixed bathing--something scandalous. Yes." + +"But where is it?" I said, suddenly exasperated. + +"There!" he said. "What's that flicker? A gunflash--or I'm a lost +soul!" + +"You'd hear," I said, "long before it was near enough to see a +flash." + +He didn't answer. Only by making it clear I would distract him until +he told me what I wanted to know could I get him to turn from his +absorbed contemplation of that phantom dance between the sea rim and +the shine. Indeed I gripped his arm and shook him. Then he turned +upon me cursing. + +"Seven miles," he said, "along this road. And now go to 'ell with +yer!" + +I answered with some foul insult by way of thanks, and so we parted, +and I set off towards the bungalow village. + +I found a policeman, standing star-gazing, a little way beyond the +end of the parade, and verified the wooden-legged man's directions. + +"It's a lonely road, you know," he called after me. . . . + +I had an odd intuition that now at last I was on the right track. +I left the dark masses of Shaphambury behind me, and pushed out +into the dim pallor of that night, with the quiet assurance of a +traveler who nears his end. + +The incidents of that long tramp I do not recall in any orderly +succession, the one progressive thing is my memory of a growing +fatigue. The sea was for the most part smooth and shining like a +mirror, a great expanse of reflecting silver, barred by slow broad +undulations, but at one time a little breeze breathed like a faint +sigh and ruffled their long bodies into faint scaly ripples that +never completely died out again. The way was sometimes sandy, thick +with silvery colorless sand, and sometimes chalky and lumpy, with +lumps that had shining facets; a black scrub was scattered, sometimes +in thickets, sometimes in single bunches, among the somnolent +hummocks of sand. At one place came grass, and ghostly great sheep +looming up among the gray. After a time black pinewoods intervened, +and made sustained darknesses along the road, woods that frayed +out at the edges to weirdly warped and stunted trees. Then isolated +pine witches would appear, and make their rigid gestures at me as +I passed. Grotesquely incongruous amidst these forms, I presently +came on estate boards, appealing, "Houses can be built to suit +purchaser," to the silence, to the shadows, and the glare. + +Once I remember the persistent barking of a dog from somewhere inland +of me, and several times I took out and examined my revolver very +carefully. I must, of course, have been full of my intention when +I did that, I must have been thinking of Nettie and revenge, but +I cannot now recall those emotions at all. Only I see again very +distinctly the greenish gleams that ran over lock and barrel as I +turned the weapon in my hand. + +Then there was the sky, the wonderful, luminous, starless, moonless +sky, and the empty blue deeps of the edge of it, between the meteor +and the sea. And once--strange phantoms!--I saw far out upon +the shine, and very small and distant, three long black warships, +without masts, or sails, or smoke, or any lights, dark, deadly, +furtive things, traveling very swiftly and keeping an equal distance. +And when I looked again they were very small, and then the shine +had swallowed them up. + +Then once a flash and what I thought was a gun, until I looked +up and saw a fading trail of greenish light still hanging in the +sky. And after that there was a shiver and whispering in the air, +a stronger throbbing in one's arteries, a sense of refreshment, +a renewal of purpose. . . . + +Somewhere upon my way the road forked, but I do not remember +whether that was near Shaphambury or near the end of my walk. The +hesitation between two rutted unmade roads alone remains clear in +my mind. + +At last I grew weary. I came to piled heaps of decaying seaweed +and cart tracks running this way and that, and then I had missed +the road and was stumbling among sand hummocks quite close to the +sea. I came out on the edge of the dimly glittering sandy beach, +and something phosphorescent drew me to the water's edge. I bent +down and peered at the little luminous specks that floated in the +ripples. + +Presently with a sigh I stood erect, and contemplated the lonely +peace of that last wonderful night. The meteor had now trailed its +shining nets across the whole space of the sky and was beginning +to set; in the east the blue was coming to its own again; the sea +was an intense edge of blackness, and now, escaped from that great +shine, and faint and still tremulously valiant, one weak elusive +star could just be seen, hovering on the verge of the invisible. + +How beautiful it was! how still and beautiful! Peace! peace!--the +peace that passeth understanding, robed in light descending! . . . + +My heart swelled, and suddenly I was weeping. + +There was something new and strange in my blood. It came to me that +indeed I did not want to kill. + +I did not want to kill. I did not want to be the servant of my +passions any more. A great desire had come to me to escape from +life, from the daylight which is heat and conflict and desire, into +that cool night of eternity--and rest. I had played--I had done. + +I stood upon the edge of the great ocean, and I was filled with an +inarticulate spirit of prayer, and I desired greatly--peace from +myself. + +And presently, there in the east, would come again the red discoloring +curtain over these mysteries, the finite world again, the gray and +growing harsh certainties of dawn. My resolve I knew would take up +with me again. This was a rest for me, an interlude, but to-morrow +I should be William Leadford once more, ill-nourished, ill-dressed, +ill-equipped and clumsy, a thief and shamed, a wound upon the face +of life, a source of trouble and sorrow even to the mother I loved; +no hope in life left for me now but revenge before my death. + +Why this paltry thing, revenge? It entered into my thoughts that +I might end the matter now and let these others go. + +To wade out into the sea, into this warm lapping that mingled the +natures of water and light, to stand there breast-high, to thrust +my revolver barrel into my mouth------? + +Why not? + +I swung about with an effort. I walked slowly up the beach thinking. . . . + +I turned and looked back at the sea. No! Something within me said, +"No!" + +I must think. + +It was troublesome to go further because the hummocks and +the tangled bushes began. I sat down amidst a black cluster of +shrubs, and rested, chin on hand. I drew my revolver from my pocket +and looked at it, and held it in my hand. Life? Or Death? . . . + +I seemed to be probing the very deeps of being, but indeed +imperceptibly I fell asleep, and sat dreaming. + + + +Section 4 + +Two people were bathing in the sea. + +I had awakened. It was still that white and wonderful night, and +the blue band of clear sky was no wider than before. These people +must have come into sight as I fell asleep, and awakened me almost +at once. They waded breast-deep in the water, emerging, coming +shoreward, a woman, with her hair coiled about her head, and in +pursuit of her a man, graceful figures of black and silver, with a +bright green surge flowing off from them, a pattering of flashing +wavelets about them. He smote the water and splashed it toward +her, she retaliated, and then they were knee-deep, and then for an +instant their feet broke the long silver margin of the sea. + +Each wore a tightly fitting bathing dress that hid nothing of the +shining, dripping beauty of their youthful forms. + +She glanced over her shoulder and found him nearer than she thought, +started, gesticulated, gave a little cry that pierced me to the +heart, and fled up the beach obliquely toward me, running like the +wind, and passed me, vanished amidst the black distorted bushes, +and was gone--she and her pursuer, in a moment, over the ridge of +sand. + +I heard him shout between exhaustion and laughter. . . . + +And suddenly I was a thing of bestial fury, standing up with hands +held up and clenched, rigid in gesture of impotent threatening, +against the sky. . . . + +For this striving, swift thing of light and beauty was Nettie--and +this was the man for whom I had been betrayed! + +And, it blazed upon me, I might have died there by the sheer ebbing +of my will--unavenged! + +In another moment I was running and stumbling, revolver in hand, in +quiet unsuspected pursuit of them, through the soft and noiseless +sand. + + + +Section 5 + +I came up over the little ridge and discovered the bungalow village +I had been seeking, nestling in a crescent lap of dunes. A door +slammed, the two runners had vanished, and I halted staring. + +There was a group of three bungalows nearer to me than the others. +Into one of these three they had gone, and I was too late to see +which. All had doors and windows carelessly open, and none showed +a light. + +This place, upon which I had at last happened, was a fruit of the +reaction of artistic-minded and carelessly living people against +the costly and uncomfortable social stiffness of the more formal +seaside resorts of that time. It was, you must understand, the custom +of the steam-railway companies to sell their carriages after they +had been obsolete for a sufficient length of years, and some genius +had hit upon the possibility of turning these into little habitable +cabins for the summer holiday. The thing had become a fashion with +a certain Bohemian-spirited class; they added cabin to cabin, and +these little improvised homes, gaily painted and with broad verandas +and supplementary leantos added to their accommodation, made the +brightest contrast conceivable to the dull rigidities of the decorous +resorts. Of course there were many discomforts in such camping that +had to be faced cheerfully, and so this broad sandy beach was sacred +to high spirits and the young. Art muslin and banjoes, Chinese +lanterns and frying, are leading "notes," I find, in the impression +of those who once knew such places well. But so far as I was +concerned this odd settlement of pleasure-squatters was a mystery +as well as a surprise, enhanced rather than mitigated by an +imaginative suggestion or so I had received from the wooden-legged +man at Shaphambury. I saw the thing as no gathering of light +hearts and gay idleness, but grimly--after the manner of poor men +poisoned by the suppression of all their cravings after joy. To the +poor man, to the grimy workers, beauty and cleanness were absolutely +denied; out of a life of greasy dirt, of muddied desires, they +watched their happier fellows with a bitter envy and foul, tormenting +suspicions. Fancy a world in which the common people held love +to be a sort of beastliness, own sister to being drunk! . . . + +There was in the old time always something cruel at the bottom of +this business of sexual love. At least that is the impression I +have brought with me across the gulf of the great Change. To succeed +in love seemed such triumph as no other success could give, +but to fail was as if one was tainted. . . . + +I felt no sense of singularity that this thread of savagery should +run through these emotions of mine and become now the whole strand +of these emotions. I believed, and I think I was right in believing, +that the love of all true lovers was a sort of defiance then, that +they closed a system in each other's arms and mocked the world +without. You loved against the world, and these two loved AT me. +They had their business with one another, under the threat of a +watchful fierceness. A sword, a sharp sword, the keenest edge in +life, lay among their roses. + +Whatever may be true of this for others, for me and my imagination, +at any rate, it was altogether true. I was never for dalliance, I was +never a jesting lover. I wanted fiercely; I made love impatiently. +Perhaps I had written irrelevant love-letters for that very reason; +because with this stark theme I could not play. . . + +The thought of Nettie's shining form, of her shrinking bold abandon +to her easy conqueror, gave me now a body of rage that was nearly +too strong for my heart and nerves and the tense powers of my merely +physical being. I came down among the pale sand-heaps slowly toward +that queer village of careless sensuality, and now within my puny +body I was coldly sharpset for pain and death, a darkly gleaming +hate, a sword of evil, drawn. + + + +Section 6 + +I halted, and stood planning what I had to do. + +Should I go to bungalow after bungalow until one of the two I sought +answered to my rap? But suppose some servant intervened! + +Should I wait where I was--perhaps until morning--watching? And +meanwhile------ + +All the nearer bungalows were very still now. If I walked softly +to them, from open windows, from something seen or overheard, +I might get a clue to guide me. Should I advance circuitously, +creeping upon them, or should I walk straight to the door? It was +bright enough for her to recognize me clearly at a distance of many +paces. + +The difficulty to my mind lay in this, that if I involved other +people by questions, I might at last confront my betrayers with +these others close about me, ready to snatch my weapon and seize +my hands. Besides, what names might they bear here? + +"Boom!" the sound crept upon my senses, and then again it came. + +I turned impatiently as one turns upon an impertinence, and beheld +a great ironclad not four miles out, steaming fast across the +dappled silver, and from its funnels sparks, intensely red, poured +out into the night. As I turned, came the hot flash of its guns, +firing seaward, and answering this, red flashes and a streaming +smoke in the line between sea and sky. So I remembered it, and I +remember myself staring at it--in a state of stupid arrest. It was +an irrelevance. What had these things to do with me? + +With a shuddering hiss, a rocket from a headland beyond the village +leapt up and burst hot gold against the glare, and the sound of +the third and fourth guns reached me. + +The windows of the dark bungalows, one after another, leapt out, +squares of ruddy brightness that flared and flickered and became +steadily bright. Dark heads appeared looking seaward, a door opened, +and sent out a brief lane of yellow to mingle and be lost in the +comet's brightness. That brought me back to the business in hand. + +"Boom! boom!" and when I looked again at the great ironclad, +a little torchlike spurt of flame wavered behind her funnels. I +could hear the throb and clangor of her straining engines. . . . + +I became aware of the voices of people calling to one another in +the village. A white-robed, hooded figure, some man in a bathing +wrap, absurdly suggestive of an Arab in his burnous, came out from +one of the nearer bungalows, and stood clear and still and shadowless +in the glare. + +He put his hands to shade his seaward eyes, and shouted to people +within. + +The people within--MY people! My fingers tightened on my revolver. +What was this war nonsense to me? I would go round among the hummocks +with the idea of approaching the three bungalows inconspicuously +from the flank. This fight at sea might serve my purpose--except +for that, it had no interest for me at all. Boom! boom! The huge +voluminous concussions rushed past me, beat at my heart and passed. +In a moment Nettie would come out to see. + +First one and then two other wrappered figures came out of the +bungalows to join the first. His arm pointed seaward, and his voice, +a full tenor, rose in explanation. I could hear some of the words. +"It's a German!" he said. "She's caught." + +Some one disputed that, and there followed a little indistinct +babble of argument. I went on slowly in the circuit I had marked +out, watching these people as I went. + +They shouted together with such a common intensity of direction +that I halted and looked seaward. I saw the tall fountain flung by +a shot that had just missed the great warship. A second rose still +nearer us, a third, and a fourth, and then a great uprush of dust, +a whirling cloud, leapt out of the headland whence the rocket had +come, and spread with a slow deliberation right and left. Hard on +that an enormous crash, and the man with the full voice leapt and +cried, "Hit!" + +Let me see! Of course, I had to go round beyond the bungalows, and +then come up towards the group from behind. + +A high-pitched woman's voice called, "Honeymooners! honeymooners! +Come out and see!" + +Something gleamed in the shadow of the nearer bungalow, and +a man's voice answered from within. What he said I did not catch, +but suddenly I heard Nettie calling very distinctly, "We've been +bathing." + +The man who had first come out shouted, "Don't you hear the guns? +They're fighting--not five miles from shore." + +"Eh?" answered the bungalow, and a window opened. + +"Out there!" + +I did not hear the reply, because of the faint rustle of my own +movements. Clearly these people were all too much occupied by the +battle to look in my direction, and so I walked now straight toward +the darkness that held Nettie and the black desire of my heart. + +"Look!" cried some one, and pointed skyward. + +I glanced up, and behold! The sky was streaked with bright green +trails. They radiated from a point halfway between the western +horizon and the zenith, and within the shining clouds of the meteor +a streaming movement had begun, so that it seemed to be pouring +both westwardly and back toward the east, with a crackling sound, as +though the whole heaven was stippled over with phantom pistol-shots. +It seemed to me then as if the meteor was coming to help me, +descending with those thousand pistols like a curtain to fend off +this unmeaning foolishness of the sea. + +"Boom!" went a gun on the big ironclad, and "boom!" and the guns +of the pursuing cruisers flashed in reply. + +To glance up at that streaky, stirring light scum of the sky made +one's head swim. I stood for a moment dazed, and more than a little +giddy. I had a curious instant of purely speculative thought. Suppose, +after all, the fanatics were right, and the world WAS coming to an +end! What a score that would be for Parload! + +Then it came into my head that all these things were happening to +consecrate my revenge! The war below, the heavens above, were the +thunderous garment of my deed. I heard Nettie's voice cry out not +fifty yards away, and my passion surged again. I was to return to +her amid these terrors bearing unanticipated death. I was to possess +her, with a bullet, amidst thunderings and fear. At the thought I +lifted up my voice to a shout that went unheard, and advanced now +recklessly, revolver displayed in my hand. + +It was fifty yards, forty yards, thirty yards--the little group +of people, still heedless of me, was larger and more important now, +the green-shot sky and the fighting ships remoter. Some one darted +out from the bungalow, with an interrupted question, and stopped, +suddenly aware of me. It was Nettie, with some coquettish dark +wrap about her, and the green glare shining on her sweet face and +white throat. I could see her expression, stricken with dismay and +terror, at my advance, as though something had seized her by the +heart and held her still--a target for my shots. + +"Boom!" came the ironclad's gunshot like a command. "Bang!" the +bullet leapt from my hand. Do you know, I did not want to shoot +her then. Indeed I did not want to shoot her then! Bang! and I +had fired again, still striding on, and--each time it seemed I had +missed. + +She moved a step or so toward me, still staring, and then someone +intervened, and near beside her I saw young Verrall. + +A heavy stranger, the man in the hooded bath-gown, a fat, foreign-looking +man, came out of nowhere like a shield before them. He seemed a +preposterous interruption. His face was full of astonishment and +terror. He rushed across my path with arms extended and open hands, +as one might try to stop a runaway horse. He shouted some nonsense. +He seemed to want to dissuade me, as though dissuasion had anything +to do with it now. + +"Not you, you fool!" I said hoarsely. "Not you!" But he hid Nettie +nevertheless. + +By an enormous effort I resisted a mechanical impulse to shoot +through his fat body. Anyhow, I knew I mustn't shoot him. For +a moment I was in doubt, then I became very active, turned aside +abruptly and dodged his pawing arm to the left, and so found two +others irresolutely in my way. I fired a third shot in the air, just +over their heads, and ran at them. They hastened left and right; I +pulled up and faced about within a yard of a foxy-faced young man +coming sideways, who seemed about to grapple me. At my resolute +halt he fell back a pace, ducked, and threw up a defensive arm, +and then I perceived the course was clear, and ahead of me, young +Verrall and Nettie--he was holding her arm to help her--running +away. "Of course!" said I. + +I fired a fourth ineffectual shot, and then in an access of fury +at my misses, started out to run them down and shoot them barrel to +backbone. "These people!" I said, dismissing all these interferences. +. . . "A yard," I panted, speaking aloud to myself, "a yard! Till +then, take care, you mustn't--mustn't shoot again." + +Some one pursued me, perhaps several people--I do not +know, we left them all behind. . . . + +We ran. For a space I was altogether intent upon the swift monotony +of flight and pursuit. The sands were changed to a whirl of green +moonshine, the air was thunder. A luminous green haze rolled about +us. What did such things matter? We ran. Did I gain or lose? that +was the question. They ran through a gap in a broken fence that +sprang up abruptly out of nothingness and turned to the right. I +noted we were in a road. But this green mist! One seemed to plough +through it. They were fading into it, and at that thought I made +a spurt that won a dozen feet or more. + +She staggered. He gripped her arm, and dragged her forward. They +doubled to the left. We were off the road again and on turf. It +felt like turf. I tripped and fell at a ditch that was somehow +full of smoke, and was up again, but now they were phantoms +half gone into the livid swirls about me. . . . + +Still I ran. + +On, on! I groaned with the violence of my effort. I staggered +again and swore. I felt the concussions of great guns tear past me +through the murk. + +They were gone! Everything was going, but I kept on running. Once +more I stumbled. There was something about my feet that impeded +me, tall grass or heather, but I could not see what it was, only +this smoke that eddied about my knees. There was a noise and spinning +in my brain, a vain resistance to a dark green curtain that was +falling, falling, falling, fold upon fold. Everything grew darker +and darker. + +I made one last frantic effort, and raised my revolver, fired my +penultimate shot at a venture, and fell headlong to the ground. +And behold! the green curtain was a black one, and the earth and +I and all things ceased to be. + + + + + +BOOK THE SECOND + +THE GREEN VAPORS + + + + +CHAPTER THE FIRST + +THE CHANGE + + + +Section 1 + +I SEEMED to awaken out of a refreshing sleep. + +I did not awaken with a start, but opened my eyes, and lay very +comfortably looking at a line of extraordinarily scarlet poppies +that glowed against a glowing sky. It was the sky of a magnificent +sunrise, and an archipelago of gold-beached purple islands floated in +a sea of golden green. The poppies too, swan-necked buds, blazing +corollas, translucent stout seed-vessels, stoutly upheld, had a +luminous quality, seemed wrought only from some more solid kind of +light. + +I stared unwonderingly at these things for a time, and then there +rose upon my consciousness, intermingling with these, the bristling +golden green heads of growing barley. + +A remote faint question, where I might be, drifted and vanished +again in my mind. Everything was very still. + +Everything was as still as death. + +I felt very light, full of the sense of physical well-being. +I perceived I was lying on my side in a little trampled space +in a weedy, flowering barley field, that was in some inexplicable +way saturated with light and beauty. I sat up, and remained for a +long time filled with the delight and charm of the delicate little +convolvulus that twined among the barley stems, the pimpernel that +laced the ground below. + +Then that question returned. What was this place? How had I come +to be sleeping here? + +I could not remember. + +It perplexed me that somehow my body felt strange to me. It was +unfamiliar--I could not tell how--and the barley, and the beautiful +weeds, and the slowly developing glory of the dawn behind; all +those things partook of the same unfamiliarity. I felt as though +I was a thing in some very luminous painted window, as though this +dawn broke through me. I felt I was part of some exquisite picture +painted in light and joy. + +A faint breeze bent and rustled the barley-heads, and jogged my +mind forward. + +Who was I? That was a good way of beginning. + +I held up my left hand and arm before me, a grubby hand, a frayed +cuff; but with a quality of painted unreality, transfigured as a +beggar might have been by Botticelli. I looked for a time steadfastly +at a beautiful pearl sleeve-link. + +I remembered Willie Leadford, who had owned that arm and hand, as +though he had been some one else. + +Of course! My history--its rough outline rather than the immediate +past--began to shape itself in my memory, very small, very bright +and inaccessible, like a thing watched through a microscope. +Clayton and Swathinglea returned to my mind; the slums and darkness, +Dureresque, minute and in their rich dark colors pleasing, and through +them I went towards my destiny. I sat hands on knees recalling that +queer passionate career that had ended with my futile shot into +the growing darkness of the End. The thought of that shot awoke my +emotions again. + +There was something in it now, something absurd, that made me smile +pityingly. + +Poor little angry, miserable creature! Poor little angry, miserable +world! + +I sighed for pity, not only pity for myself, but for all the hot +hearts, the tormented brains, the straining, striving things of hope +and pain, who had found their peace at last beneath the pouring +mist and suffocation of the comet. Because certainly that world was +over and done. They were all so weak and unhappy, and I was now so +strong and so serene. For I felt sure I was dead; no one living +could have this perfect assurance of good, this strong and confident +peace. I had made an end of the fever called living. I was dead, +and it was all right, and these------? + +I felt an inconsistency. + +These, then, must be the barley fields of God!--the still and +silent barley fields of God, full of unfading poppy flowers whose +seeds bear peace. + + + +Section 2 + +It was queer to find barley fields in heaven, but no doubt there +were many surprises in store for me. + +How still everything was! Peace! The peace that passeth understanding. +After all it had come to me! But, indeed, everything was very still! +No bird sang. Surely I was alone in the world! No birds sang. Yes, +and all the distant sounds of life had ceased, the lowing +of cattle, the barking of dogs. . . . + +Something that was like fear beatified came into my heart. It was +all right, I knew; but to be alone! I stood up and met the hot +summons of the rising sun, hurrying towards me, as it were, +with glad tidings, over the spikes of the barley. . . . + +Blinded, I made a step. My foot struck something hard, and I looked +down to discover my revolver, a blue-black thing, like a dead snake +at my feet. + +For a moment that puzzled me. + +Then I clean forgot about it. The wonder of the quiet took possession +of my soul. Dawn, and no birds singing! + +How beautiful was the world! How beautiful, but how still! I walked +slowly through the barley towards a line of elder bushes, wayfaring +tree and bramble that made the hedge of the field. I noted as +I passed along a dead shrew mouse, as it seemed to me, among the +halms; then a still toad. I was surprised that this did not leap +aside from my footfalls, and I stooped and picked it up. Its body +was limp like life, but it made no struggle, the brightness of its +eye was veiled, it did not move in my hand. + +It seems to me now that I stood holding that lifeless little creature +for some time. Then very softly I stooped down and replaced it. I +was trembling--trembling with a nameless emotion. I looked with +quickened eyes closely among the barley stems, and behold, now +everywhere I saw beetles, flies, and little creatures that did not +move, lying as they fell when the vapors overcame them; they seemed +no more than painted things. Some were novel creatures to me. I +was very unfamiliar with natural things. "My God!" I cried; "but +is it only I------?" + +And then at my next movement something squealed sharply. I turned +about, but I could not see it, only I saw a little stir in a rut +and heard the diminishing rustle of the unseen creature's flight. +And at that I turned to my toad again, and its eye moved and it +stirred. And presently, with infirm and hesitating gestures, it +stretched its limbs and began to crawl away from me. + +But wonder, that gentle sister of fear, had me now. I saw a little +way ahead a brown and crimson butterfly perched upon a cornflower. +I thought at first it was the breeze that stirred it, and then I +saw its wings were quivering. And even as I watched it, it started +into life, and spread itself, and fluttered into the air. + +I watched it fly, a turn this way, a turn that, until suddenly it +seemed to vanish. And now, life was returning to this thing and +that on every side of me, with slow stretchings and bendings, +with twitterings, with a little start and stir. . . . + +I came slowly, stepping very carefully because of these drugged, +feebly awakening things, through the barley to the hedge. It was a +very glorious hedge, so that it held my eyes. It flowed along and +interlaced like splendid music. It was rich with lupin, honeysuckle, +campions, and ragged robin; bed straw, hops, and wild clematis +twined and hung among its branches, and all along its ditch border +the starry stitchwort lifted its childish faces, and chorused in +lines and masses. Never had I seen such a symphony of note-like +flowers and tendrils and leaves. And suddenly in its depths, I +heard a chirrup and the whirr of startled wings. + +Nothing was dead, but everything had changed to beauty! And I +stood for a time with clean and happy eyes looking at the intricate +delicacy before me and marveling how richly God has made +his worlds. . . . . + +"Tweedle-Tweezle," a lark had shot the stillness with his shining +thread of song; one lark, and then presently another, invisibly in +the air, making out of that blue quiet a woven cloth of gold. . . . + +The earth recreated--only by the reiteration of such phrases +may I hope to give the intense freshness of that dawn. For a time +I was altogether taken up with the beautiful details of being, as +regardless of my old life of jealous passion and impatient sorrow +as though I was Adam new made. I could tell you now with infinite +particularity of the shut flowers that opened as I looked, of tendrils +and grass blades, of a blue-tit I picked up very tenderly--never +before had I remarked the great delicacy of feathers--that presently +disclosed its bright black eye and judged me, and perched, swaying +fearlessly, upon my finger, and spread unhurried wings and flew +away, and of a great ebullition of tadpoles in the ditch; like all +the things that lived beneath the water, they had passed unaltered +through the Change. Amid such incidents, I lived those first great +moments, losing for a time in the wonder of each little part the +mighty wonder of the whole. + +A little path ran between hedge and barley, and along this, leisurely +and content and glad, looking at this beautiful thing and that, +moving a step and stopping, then moving on again, I came presently +to a stile, and deep below it, and overgrown, was a lane. + +And on the worn oak of the stile was a round label, and on the +label these words, "Swindells' G 90 Pills." + +I sat myself astraddle on the stile, not fully grasping all the +implications of these words. But they perplexed me even more than +the revolver and my dirty cuff. + +About me now the birds lifted up their little hearts and sang, ever +more birds and more. + +I read the label over and over again, and joined it to the fact +that I still wore my former clothes, and that my revolver had been +lying at my feet. One conclusion stared out at me. This was no new +planet, no glorious hereafter such as I had supposed. This beautiful +wonderland was the world, the same old world of my rage and death! +But at least it was like meeting a familiar house-slut, washed and +dignified, dressed in a queen's robes, worshipful and fine. . . . + +It might be the old world indeed, but something new lay upon all +things, a glowing certitude of health and happiness. It might be +the old world, but the dust and fury of the old life was certainly +done. At least I had no doubt of that. + +I recalled the last phases of my former life, that darkling climax +of pursuit and anger and universal darkness and the whirling green +vapors of extinction. The comet had struck the earth and made an +end to all things; of that too I was assured. + +But afterward? . . . + +And now? + +The imaginations of my boyhood came back as speculative possibilities. +In those days I had believed firmly in the necessary advent of a +last day, a great coming out of the sky, trumpetings and fear, the +Resurrection, and the Judgment. My roving fancy now suggested to +me that this Judgment must have come and passed. That it had passed +and in some manner missed me. I was left alone here, in a swept and +garnished world (except, of course, for this label of Swindells') +to begin again perhaps. . . . + +No doubt Swindells has got his deserts. + +My mind ran for a time on Swindells, on the imbecile pushfulness of +that extinct creature, dealing in rubbish, covering the country-side +with lies in order to get--what had he sought?--a silly, ugly, +great house, a temper-destroying motor-car, a number of disrespectful, +abject servants; thwarted intrigues for a party-fund baronetcy as +the crest of his life, perhaps. You cannot imagine the littleness +of those former times; their naive, queer absurdities! And for +the first time in my existence I thought of these things without +bitterness. In the former days I had seen wickedness, I had +seen tragedy, but now I saw only the extraordinary foolishness of +the old life. The ludicrous side of human wealth and importance +turned itself upon me, a shining novelty, poured down upon me like +the sunrise, and engulfed me in laughter. Swindells! Swindells, +damned! My vision of Judgment became a delightful burlesque. I saw +the chuckling Angel sayer with his face veiled, and the corporeal +presence of Swindells upheld amidst the laughter of the spheres. +"Here's a thing, and a very pretty thing, and what's to be done with +this very pretty thing?" I saw a soul being drawn from a rotund, +substantial-looking body like a whelk from its shell. . . . + +I laughed loudly and long. And behold! even as I laughed the keen +point of things accomplished stabbed my mirth, and I was weeping, +weeping aloud, convulsed with weeping, and the tears were pouring +down my face. + + + +Section 3 + +Everywhere the awakening came with the sunrise. We awakened to the +gladness of the morning; we walked dazzled in a light that was joy. +Everywhere that was so. It was always morning. It was morning +because, until the direct rays of the sun touched it, the changing +nitrogen of our atmosphere did not pass into its permanent phase, +and the sleepers lay as they had fallen. In its intermediate +state the air hung inert, incapable of producing either revival or +stupefaction, no longer green, but not yet changed to the +gas that now lives in us. . . . + +To every one, I think, came some parallel to the mental states I +have already sought to describe--a wonder, an impression of joyful +novelty. There was also very commonly a certain confusion of the +intelligence, a difficulty in self-recognition. I remember clearly +as I sat on my stile that presently I had the clearest doubts of +my own identity and fell into the oddest metaphysical questionings. +"If this be I," I said, "then how is it I am no longer madly seeking +Nettie? Nettie is now the remotest thing--and all my wrongs. Why +have I suddenly passed out of all that passion? Why does +not the thought of Verrall quicken my pulses?" . . . + +I was only one of many millions who that morning had the same doubts. I +suppose one knows one's self for one's self when one returns from +sleep or insensibility by the familiarity of one's bodily sensations, +and that morning all our most intimate bodily sensations were +changed. The intimate chemical processes of life were changed, its +nervous metaboly. For the fluctuating, uncertain, passion-darkened +thought and feeling of the old time came steady, full-bodied, +wholesome processes. Touch was different, sight was different, sound +and all the senses were subtler; had it not been that our thought +was steadier and fuller, I believe great multitudes of men would +have gone mad. But, as it was, we understood. The dominant impression +I would convey in this account of the Change is one of enormous +release, of a vast substantial exaltation. There was an effect, as +it were, of light-headedness that was also clear-headedness, and +the alteration in one's bodily sensations, instead of producing the +mental obfuscation, the loss of identity that was a common mental +trouble under former conditions, gave simply a new detachment from +the tumid passions and entanglements of the personal life. + +In this story of my bitter, restricted youth that I have been +telling you, I have sought constantly to convey the narrowness, the +intensity, the confusion, muddle, and dusty heat of the old world. +It was quite clear to me, within an hour of my awakening, that all +that was, in some mysterious way, over and done. That, too, was the +common experience. Men stood up; they took the new air into their +lungs--a deep long breath, and the past fell from them; they could +forgive, they could disregard, they could attempt. . . . And it +was no new thing, no miracle that sets aside the former order of +the world. It was a change in material conditions, a change in the +atmosphere, that at one bound had released them. Some of them it +had released to death. . . . Indeed, man himself had changed not +at all. We knew before the Change, the meanest knew, by glowing +moments in ourselves and others, by histories and music and beautiful +things, by heroic instances and splendid stories, how fine mankind +could be, how fine almost any human being could upon occasion be; +but the poison in the air, its poverty in all the nobler elements +which made such moments rare and remarkable--all that has changed. +The air was changed, and the Spirit of Man that had drowsed and +slumbered and dreamt dull and evil things, awakened, and stood with +wonder-clean eyes, refreshed, looking again on life. + + + +Section 4 + +The miracle of the awakening came to me in solitude, the laughter, +and then the tears. Only after some time did I come upon another +man. Until I heard his voice calling I did not seem to feel there +were any other people in the world. All that seemed past, with +all the stresses that were past. I had come out of the individual +pit in which my shy egotism had lurked, I had overflowed to all +humanity, I had seemed to be all humanity; I had laughed at Swindells +as I could have laughed at myself, and this shout that came to me +seemed like the coming of an unexpected thought in my own mind. +But when it was repeated I answered. + +"I am hurt," said the voice, and I descended into the lane forthwith, +and so came upon Melmount sitting near the ditch with his back to +me. + +Some of the incidental sensory impressions of that morning bit so +deeply into my mind that I verily believe, when at last I face the +greater mysteries that lie beyond this life, when the things of +this life fade from me as the mists of the morning fade before the +sun, these irrelevant petty details will be the last to leave me, +will be the last wisps visible of that attenuating veil. I believe, +for instance, I could match the fur upon the collar of his great +motoring coat now, could paint the dull red tinge of his big +cheek with his fair eyelashes just catching the light and showing +beyond. His hat was off, his dome-shaped head, with its smooth hair +between red and extreme fairness, was bent forward in scrutiny of +his twisted foot. His back seemed enormous. And there was something +about the mere massive sight of him that filled me with liking. + +"What's wrong?" said I. + +"I say," he said, in his full deliberate tones, straining round +to see me and showing a profile, a well-modeled nose, a sensitive, +clumsy, big lip, known to every caricaturist in the world, "I'm in +a fix. I fell and wrenched my ankle. Where are you?" + +I walked round him and stood looking at his face. I perceived he +had his gaiter and sock and boot off, the motor gauntlets had been +cast aside, and he was kneading the injured part in an exploratory +manner with his thick thumbs. + +"By Jove!" I said, "you're Melmount!" + +"Melmount!" He thought. "That's my name," he said, without looking +up. . . . "But it doesn't affect my ankle." + +We remained silent for few moments except for a grunt of pain from +him. + +"Do you know?" I asked, "what has happened to things?" + +He seemed to complete his diagnosis. "It's not broken," he said. + +"Do you know," I repeated, "what has happened to everything?" + +"No," he said, looking up at me incuriously for the first time. + +"There's some difference------" + +"There's a difference." He smiled, a smile of unexpected pleasantness, +and an interest was coming into his eyes. "I've been a little +preoccupied with my own internal sensations. I remark an extraordinary +brightness about things. Is that it?" + +"That's part of it. And a queer feeling, a clear-headedness------" + +He surveyed me and meditated gravely. "I woke up," he said, feeling +his way in his memory. + +"And I." + +"I lost my way--I forget quite how. There was a curious green fog." +He stared at his foot, remembering. "Something to do with a comet. +I was by a hedge in the darkness. Tried to run. . . . Then I +must have pitched into this lane. Look!" He pointed with his head. +"There's a wooden rail new broken there. I must have stumbled over +that out of the field above." He scrutinized this and concluded. +"Yes. . . ." + +"It was dark," I said, "and a sort of green gas came out of nothing +everywhere. That is the last I remember." + +"And then you woke up? So did I. . . . In a state of great bewilderment. +Certainly there's something odd in the air. I was--I was rushing +along a road in a motor-car, very much excited and preoccupied. I +got down----" He held out a triumphant finger. "Ironclads!" + +"NOW I've got it! We'd strung our fleet from here to Texel. We'd +got right across them and the Elbe mined. We'd lost the Lord Warden. +By Jove, yes. The Lord Warden! A battleship that cost two million +pounds--and that fool Rigby said it didn't matter! Eleven hundred +men went down. . . . I remember now. We were sweeping up the North +Sea like a net, with the North Atlantic fleet waiting at the Faroes +for 'em--and not one of 'em had three days' coal! Now, was that a +dream? No! I told a lot of people as much--a meeting was it?--to +reassure them. They were warlike but extremely frightened. Queer +people--paunchy and bald like gnomes, most of them. Where? Of +course! We had it all over--a big dinner--oysters!--Colchester. +I'd been there, just to show all this raid scare was nonsense. And +I was coming back here. . . . But it doesn't seem as though that +was--recent. I suppose it was. Yes, of course!--it was. I got out +of my car at the bottom of the rise with the idea of walking along +the cliff path, because every one said one of their battleships was +being chased along the shore. That's clear! I heard their guns------" + +He reflected. "Queer I should have forgotten! Did YOU hear any +guns?" + +I said I had heard them. + +"Was it last night?" + +"Late last night. One or two in the morning." + +He leant back on his hand and looked at me, smiling frankly. "Even +now," he said, "it's odd, but the whole of that seems like a silly +dream. Do you think there WAS a Lord Warden? Do you really believe +we sank all that machinery--for fun? It was a dream. And yet--it +happened." + +By all the standards of the former time it would have been remarkable +that I talked quite easily and freely with so great a man. "Yes," +I said; "that's it. One feels one has awakened--from something +more than that green gas. As though the other things also--weren't +quite real." + +He knitted his brows and felt the calf of his leg thoughtfully. "I +made a speech at Colchester," he said. + +I thought he was going to add something more about that, but there +lingered a habit of reticence in the man that held him for the +moment. "It is a very curious thing," he broke away; "that this +pain should be, on the whole, more interesting than disagreeable." + +"You are in pain?" + +"My ankle is! It's either broken or badly sprained--I think sprained; +it's very painful to move, but personally I'm not in pain. That +sort of general sickness that comes with local injury--not a trace +of it! . . ." He mused and remarked, "I was speaking at Colchester, +and saying things about the war. I begin to see it better. The +reporters--scribble, scribble. Max Sutaine, 1885. Hubbub. Compliments +about the oysters. Mm--mm. . . . What was it? About the war? A war +that must needs be long and bloody, taking toll from castle and +cottage, taking toll! . . . Rhetorical gusto! Was I drunk last +night?" + +His eyebrows puckered. He had drawn up his right knee, his elbow +rested thereon and his chin on his fist. The deep-set gray eyes +beneath his thatch of eyebrow stared at unknown things. "My God!" +he murmured, "My God!" with a note of disgust. He made a big brooding +figure in the sunlight, he had an effect of more than physical +largeness; he made me feel that it became me to wait upon his thinking. +I had never met a man of this sort before; I did not know +such men existed. . . . + +It is a curious thing, that I cannot now recall any ideas whatever +that I had before the Change about the personalities of statesmen, +but I doubt if ever in those days I thought of them at all as +tangible individual human beings, conceivably of some intellectual +complexity. I believe that my impression was a straightforward blend +of caricature and newspaper leader. I certainly had no respect for +them. And now without servility or any insincerity whatever, as if +it were a first-fruit of the Change, I found myself in the presence +of a human being towards whom I perceived myself inferior and +subordinate, before whom I stood without servility or any insincerity +whatever, in an attitude of respect and attention. My inflamed, my +rancid egotism--or was it after all only the chances of life?--had +never once permitted that before the Change. + +He emerged from his thoughts, still with a faint perplexity in +his manner. "That speech I made last night," he said, "was damned +mischievous nonsense, you know. Nothing can alter that. Nothing. . . . +No! . . . Little fat gnomes in evening dress--gobbling oysters. +Gulp!" + +It was a most natural part of the wonder of that morning that he +should adopt this incredible note of frankness, and that it should +abate nothing from my respect for him. + +"Yes," he said, "you are right. It's all indisputable fact, and I +can't believe it was anything but a dream." + + + +Section 5 + +That memory stands out against the dark past of the world with +extraordinary clearness and brightness. The air, I remember, was full +of the calling and piping and singing of birds. I have a curious +persuasion too that there was a distant happy clamor of pealing +bells, but that I am half convinced is a mistake. Nevertheless, there +was something in the fresh bite of things, in the dewy newness of +sensation that set bells rejoicing in one's brain. And that big, +fair, pensive man sitting on the ground had beauty even in his +clumsy pose, as though indeed some Great Master of strength and +humor had made him. + +And--it is so hard now to convey these things--he spoke to me, +a stranger, without reservations, carelessly, as men now speak to +men. Before those days, not only did we think badly, but what we +thought, a thousand short-sighted considerations, dignity, objective +discipline, discretion, a hundred kindred aspects of shabbiness of +soul, made us muffle before we told it to our fellow-men. + +"It's all returning now," he said, and told me half soliloquizingly +what was in his mind. + +I wish I could give every word he said to me; he struck out image +after image to my nascent intelligence, with swift broken fragments +of speech. If I had a precise full memory of that morning I should +give it you, verbatim, minutely. But here, save for the little +sharp things that stand out, I find only blurred general impressions. +Throughout I have to make up again his half-forgotten sentences +and speeches, and be content with giving you the general effect. +But I can see and hear him now as he said, "The dream got worst at +the end. The war--a perfectly horrible business! Horrible! And it +was just like a nightmare, you couldn't do anything to escape from +it--every one was driven!" + +His sense of indiscretion was gone. + +He opened the war out to me--as every one sees it now. Only that +morning it was astonishing. He sat there on the ground, absurdly +forgetful of his bare and swollen foot, treating me as the humblest +accessory and as altogether an equal, talking out to himself the +great obsessions of his mind. "We could have prevented it! Any of +us who chose to speak out could have prevented it. A little decent +frankness. What was there to prevent us being frank with one another? +Their emperor--his position was a pile of ridiculous assumptions, +no doubt, but at bottom--he was a sane man." He touched off the +emperor in a few pithy words, the German press, the German people, +and our own. He put it as we should put it all now, but with a +certain heat as of a man half guilty and wholly resentful. "Their +damned little buttoned-up professors!" he cried, incidentally. +"Were there ever such men? And ours! Some of us might have taken +a firmer line. . . . If a lot of us had taken a firmer line and +squashed that nonsense early. . . ." + +He lapsed into inaudible whisperings, into silence. . . . + +I stood regarding him, understanding him, learning marvelously +from him. It is a fact that for the best part of the morning of +the Change I forgot Nettie and Verrall as completely as though they +were no more than characters in some novel that I had put aside to +finish at my leisure, in order that I might talk to this man. + +"Eh, well," he said, waking startlingly from his thoughts. "Here we +are awakened! The thing can't go on now; all this must end. How it +ever began------! My dear boy, how did all those things ever begin? +I feel like a new Adam. . . . Do you think this has happened--generally? +Or shall we find all these gnomes and things? . . . Who cares?" + +He made as if to rise, and remembered his ankle. He suggested I should +help him as far as his bungalow. There seemed nothing strange to +either of us that he should requisition my services or that I should +cheerfully obey. I helped him bandage his ankle, and we set out, +I his crutch, the two of us making up a sort of limping quadruped, +along the winding lane toward the cliffs and the sea. + + + +Section 6 + +His bungalow beyond the golf links was, perhaps, a mile and a +quarter from the lane. We went down to the beach margin and along +the pallid wave-smoothed sands, and we got along by making a swaying, +hopping, tripod dance forward until I began to give under him, and +then, as soon as we could, sitting down. His ankle was, in fact, +broken, and he could not put it to the ground without exquisite +pain. So that it took us nearly two hours to get to the house, +and it would have taken longer if his butler-valet had not come +out to assist me. They had found motor-car and chauffeur smashed +and still at the bend of the road near the house, and had been on +that side looking for Melmount, or they would have seen us before. + +For most of that time we were sitting now on turf, now on a chalk +boulder, now on a timber groin, and talking one to the other, with +the frankness proper to the intercourse of men of good intent, +without reservations or aggressions, in the common, open fashion +of contemporary intercourse to-day, but which then, nevertheless, +was the rarest and strangest thing in the world. He for the most +part talked, but at some shape of a question I told him--as plainly +as I could tell of passions that had for a time become incomprehensible +to me--of my murderous pursuit of Nettie and her lover, and how the +green vapors overcame me. He watched me with grave eyes and nodded +understandingly, and afterwards he asked me brief penetrating +questions about my education, my upbringing, my work. There was a +deliberation in his manner, brief full pauses, that had in them no +element of delay. + +"Yes," he said, "yes--of course. What a fool I have been!" and said +no more until we had made another of our tripod struggles along +the beach. At first I did not see the connection of my story with +that self-accusation. + +"Suppose," he said, panting on the groin, "there had been such a +thing as a statesman! . . ." + +He turned to me. "If one had decided all this muddle shall end! If +one had taken it, as an artist takes his clay, as a man who builds +takes site and stone, and made------" He flung out his big broad hand +at the glories of sky and sea, and drew a deep breath, "something +to fit that setting." + +He added in explanation, "Then there wouldn't have been such stories +as yours at all, you know. . . ." + +"Tell me more about it," he said, "tell me all about yourself. I +feel all these things have passed away, all these things are to be +changed for ever. . . . You won't be what you have been from this +time forth. All the things you have done--don't matter now. To +us, at any rate, they don't matter at all. We have met, who were +separated in that darkness behind us. Tell me. + +"Yes," he said; and I told my story straight and as frankly as I +have told it to you. "And there, where those little skerries of weed +rock run out to the ebb, beyond the headland, is Bungalow village. +What did you do with your pistol?" + +"I left it lying there--among the barley." + +He glanced at me from under his light eyelashes. "If others feel +like you and I," he said, "there'll be a lot of pistols left among +the barley to-day. . . ." + +So we talked, I and that great, strong man, with the love of +brothers so plain between us it needed not a word. Our souls went +out to one another in stark good faith; never before had I had +anything but a guarded watchfulness for any fellow-man. Still I +see him, upon that wild desolate beach of the ebb tide, I see him +leaning against the shelly buttress of a groin, looking down at the +poor drowned sailor whose body we presently found. For we found a +newly drowned man who had just chanced to miss this great dawn in +which we rejoiced. We found him lying in a pool of water, among +brown weeds in the dark shadow of the timberings. You must not +overrate the horrors of the former days; in those days it was scarcely +more common to see death in England than it would be to-day. This +dead man was a sailor from the Rother Adler, the great German +battleship that--had we but known it--lay not four miles away along +the coast amidst ploughed-up mountains of chalk ooze, a torn and +battered mass of machinery, wholly submerged at high water, and +holding in its interstices nine hundred drowned brave men, all +strong and skilful, all once capable of doing fine things. . . . + +I remember that poor boy very vividly. He had been drowned during +the anaesthesia of the green gas, his fair young face was quiet +and calm, but the skin of his chest had been crinkled by scalding +water and his right arm was bent queerly back. Even to this needless +death and all its tale of cruelty, beauty and dignity had come. +Everything flowed together to significance as we stood there, I, +the ill-clad, cheaply equipped proletarian, and Melmount in his +great fur-trimmed coat--he was hot with walking but he had not +thought to remove it--leaning upon the clumsy groins and pitying +this poor victim of the war he had helped to make. "Poor lad!" he +said, "poor lad! A child we blunderers sent to death! Do look at +the quiet beauty of that face, that body--to be flung aside like +this!" + +(I remember that near this dead man's hand a stranded star-fish +writhed its slowly feeling limbs, struggling back toward the sea. +It left grooved traces in the sand.) + +"There must be no more of this," panted Melmount, leaning on my +shoulder, "no more of this. . . ." + +But most I recall Melmount as he talked a little later, sitting upon +a great chalk boulder with the sunlight on his big, perspiration-dewed +face. He made his resolves. "We must end war," he said, in that +full whisper of his; "it is stupidity. With so many people able +to read and think--even as it is--there is no need of anything of +the sort. Gods! What have we rulers been at? . . . Drowsing like +people in a stifling room, too dull and sleepy and too base toward +each other for any one to get up and open the window. What haven't +we been at?" + +A great powerful figure he sits there still in my memory, perplexed +and astonished at himself and all things. "We must change all this," +he repeated, and threw out his broad hands in a powerful gesture +against the sea and sky. "We have done so weakly--Heaven alone +knows why!" I can see him now, queer giant that he looked on that +dawnlit beach of splendor, the sea birds flying about us and that +crumpled death hard by, no bad symbol in his clumsiness and needless +heat of the unawakened powers of the former time. I remember it +as an integral part of that picture that far away across the sandy +stretches one of those white estate boards I have described, stuck +up a little askew amidst the yellow-green turf upon the crest of +the low cliffs. + +He talked with a sort of wonder of the former things. "Has it ever +dawned upon you to imagine the pettiness--the pettiness!--of every +soul concerned in a declaration of war?" he asked. He went on, +as though speech was necessary to make it credible, to describe +Laycock, who first gave the horror words at the cabinet council, +"an undersized Oxford prig with a tenoring voice and a garbage of +Greek--the sort of little fool who is brought up on the +admiration of his elder sisters. . . . + +"All the time almost," he said, "I was watching him--thinking what +an ass he was to be trusted with men's lives. . . . I might have +done better to have thought that of myself. I was doing nothing +to prevent it all! The damned little imbecile was up to his neck +in the drama of the thing, he liked to trumpet it out, he goggled +round at us. 'Then it is war!' he said. Richover shrugged his +shoulders. I made some slight protest and gave in. . . . Afterward +I dreamt of him. + +"What a lot we were! All a little scared at ourselves--all, +as it were, instrumental. . . . + +"And it's fools like that lead to things like this!" He jerked his +head at that dead man near by us. + +"It will be interesting to know what has happened to the world. . . . +This green vapor--queer stuff. But I know what has happened to me. +It's Conversion. I've always known. . . . But this is being a fool. +Talk! I'm going to stop it." + +He motioned to rise with his clumsy outstretched hands. + +"Stop what?" said I, stepping forward instinctively to help him. + +"War," he said in his great whisper, putting his big hand on my +shoulder but making no further attempt to arise, "I'm going to put +an end to war--to any sort of war! And all these things that must +end. The world is beautiful, life is great and splendid, we had +only to lift up our eyes and see. Think of the glories through which +we have been driving, like a herd of swine in a garden place. The +color in life--the sounds--the shapes! We have had our jealousies, +our quarrels, our ticklish rights, our invincible prejudices, our +vulgar enterprise and sluggish timidities, we have chattered and +pecked one another and fouled the world--like daws in the temple, +like unclean birds in the holy place of God. All my life has been +foolishness and pettiness, gross pleasures and mean discretions--all. +I am a meagre dark thing in this morning's glow, a penitence, a +shame! And, but for God's mercy, I might have died this night--like +that poor lad there--amidst the squalor of my sins! No more of +this! No more of this!--whether the whole world has changed or no, +matters nothing. WE TWO HAVE SEEN THIS DAWN! . . ." + +He paused. + +"I will arise and go unto my Father," he began presently, "and will +say unto Him------" + +His voice died away in an inaudible whisper. His hand +tightened painfully on my shoulder and he rose. . . . + + + + +CHAPTER THE SECOND + +THE AWAKENING + + + +Section 1 + +So the great Day came to me. + +And even as I had awakened so in that same dawn the whole world +awoke. + +For the whole world of living things had been overtaken by the +same tide of insensibility; in an hour, at the touch of this new +gas in the comet, the shiver of catalytic change had passed about +the globe. They say it was the nitrogen of the air, the old AZOTE, +that in the twinkling of an eye was changed out of itself, and in an +hour or so became a respirable gas, differing indeed from oxygen, +but helping and sustaining its action, a bath of strength and +healing for nerve and brain. I do not know the precise changes +that occurred, nor the names our chemists give them, my work has +carried me away from such things, only this I know--I and all men +were renewed. + +I picture to myself this thing happening in space, a planetary +moment, the faint smudge, the slender whirl of meteor, drawing +nearer to this planet,--this planet like a ball, like a shaded +rounded ball, floating in the void, with its little, nearly impalpable +coat of cloud and air, with its dark pools of ocean, its gleaming +ridges of land. And as that midge from the void touches it, the +transparent gaseous outer shell clouds in an instant green +and then slowly clears again. . . . + +Thereafter, for three hours or more,--we know the minimum time for +the Change was almost exactly three hours because all the clocks +and watches kept going--everywhere, no man nor beast nor bird nor +any living thing that breathes the air stirred at all but lay still. . . . + +Everywhere on earth that day, in the ears of every one who breathed, +there had been the same humming in the air, the same rush of green +vapors, the crepitation, the streaming down of shooting stars. +The Hindoo had stayed his morning's work in the fields to stare +and marvel and fall, the blue-clothed Chinaman fell head foremost +athwart his midday bowl of rice, the Japanese merchant came out +from some chaffering in his office amazed and presently lay there +before his door, the evening gazers by the Golden Gates were overtaken +as they waited for the rising of the great star. This had happened +in every city of the world, in every lonely valley, in every home +and house and shelter and every open place. On the high seas, the +crowding steamship passengers, eager for any wonder, gaped and +marveled, and were suddenly terror-stricken, and struggled for the +gangways and were overcome, the captain staggered on the bridge +and fell, the stoker fell headlong among his coals, the engines +throbbed upon their way untended, the fishing craft drove by +without a hail, with swaying rudder, heeling and dipping. . . . + +The great voice of material Fate cried Halt! And in the midst of +the play the actors staggered, dropped, and were still. The figure +runs from my pen. In New York that very thing occurred. Most of +the theatrical audiences dispersed, but in two crowded houses the +company, fearing a panic, went on playing amidst the gloom, and the +people, trained by many a previous disaster, stuck to their seats. +There they sat, the back rows only moving a little, and there, in +disciplined lines, they drooped and failed, nodded, and fell forward +or slid down upon the floor. I am told by Parload--though indeed I +know nothing of the reasoning on which his confidence rests---that +within an hour of the great moment of impact the first green +modification of nitrogen had dissolved and passed away, leaving the +air as translucent as ever. The rest of that wonderful interlude +was clear, had any had eyes to see its clearness. In London it +was night, but in New York, for example, people were in the full +bustle of the evening's enjoyment, in Chicago they were sitting +down to dinner, the whole world was abroad. The moonlight must have +illuminated streets and squares littered with crumpled figures, +through which such electric cars as had no automatic brakes had +ploughed on their way until they were stopped by the fallen bodies. +People lay in their dress clothes, in dining-rooms, restaurants, +on staircases, in halls, everywhere just as they had been overcome. +Men gambling, men drinking, thieves lurking in hidden places, sinful +couples, were caught, to arise with awakened mind and conscience +amidst the disorder of their sin. America the comet reached in the +full tide of evening life, but Britain lay asleep. But as I have +told, Britain did not slumber so deeply but that she was in the +full tide of what may have been battle and a great victory. Up and +down the North Sea her warships swept together like a net about +their foes. On land, too, that night was to have decided great +issues. The German camps were under arms from Redingen to Markirch, +their infantry columns were lying in swathes like mown hay, in +arrested night march on every track between Longuyon and Thiancourt, +and between Avricourt and Donen. The hills beyond Spincourt were +dusted thick with hidden French riflemen; the thin lash of the French +skirmishers sprawled out amidst spades and unfinished rifle-pits +in coils that wrapped about the heads of the German columns, +thence along the Vosges watershed and out across the frontier +near Belfort nearly to the Rhine. . . . + +The Hungarian, the Italian peasant, yawned and thought the morning +dark, and turned over to fall into a dreamless sleep; the Mahometan +world spread its carpet and was taken in prayer. And in Sydney, +in Melbourne, in New Zealand, the thing was a fog in the afternoon, +that scattered the crowd on race-courses and cricket-fields, +and stopped the unloading of shipping and brought men out from +their afternoon rest to stagger and litter the streets. . . . + + + +Section 2 + +My thoughts go into the woods and wildernesses and jungles of the +world, to the wild life that shared man's suspension, and I think +of a thousand feral acts interrupted and truncated--as it were +frozen, like the frozen words Pantagruel met at sea. Not only men +it was that were quieted, all living creatures that breathe the air +became insensible, impassive things. Motionless brutes and birds +lay amidst the drooping trees and herbage in the universal twilight, +the tiger sprawled beside his fresh-struck victim, who bled to +death in a dreamless sleep. The very flies came sailing down the +air with wings outspread; the spider hung crumpled in his loaded +net; like some gaily painted snowflake the butterfly drifted +to earth and grounded, and was still. And as a queer contrast +one gathers that the fishes in the sea suffered not at all. . . . + +Speaking of the fishes reminds me of a queer little inset upon that +great world-dreaming. The odd fate of the crew of the submarine +vessel B 94 has always seemed memorable to me. So far as I know, +they were the only men alive who never saw that veil of green drawn +across the world. All the while that the stillness held above, they +were working into the mouth of the Elbe, past the booms and the +mines, very slowly and carefully, a sinister crustacean of steel, +explosive crammed, along the muddy bottom. They trailed a long +clue that was to guide their fellows from the mother ship floating +awash outside. Then in the long channel beyond the forts they came +up at last to mark down their victims and get air. That must have +been before the twilight of dawn, for they tell of the brightness +of the stars. They were amazed to find themselves not three hundred +yards from an ironclad that had run ashore in the mud, and heeled +over with the falling tide. It was afire amidships, but no one heeded +that--no one in all that strange clear silence heeded that--and +not only this wrecked vessel, but all the dark ships lying about +them, it seemed to their perplexed and startled minds must be full +of dead men! + +Theirs I think must have been one of the strangest of all experiences; +they were never insensible; at once, and, I am told, with a sudden +catch of laughter, they began to breathe the new air. None of +them has proved a writer; we have no picture of their wonder, no +description of what was said. But we know these men were active and +awake for an hour and a half at least before the general awakening +came, and when at last the Germans stirred and sat up they found +these strangers in possession of their battleship, the submarine +carelessly adrift, and the Englishmen, begrimed and weary, but +with a sort of furious exultation, still busy, in the bright dawn, +rescuing insensible enemies from the sinking conflagration. . . . + +But the thought of certain stokers the sailors of the submarine +failed altogether to save brings me back to the thread of grotesque +horror that runs through all this event, the thread I cannot overlook +for all the splendors of human well-being that have come from it. +I cannot forget the unguided ships that drove ashore, that went +down in disaster with all their sleeping hands, nor how, inland, +motor-cars rushed to destruction upon the roads, and trains upon +the railways kept on in spite of signals, to be found at last by +their amazed, reviving drivers standing on unfamiliar lines, their +fires exhausted, or, less lucky, to be discovered by astonished +peasants or awakening porters smashed and crumpled up into heaps +of smoking, crackling ruin. The foundry fires of the Four Towns +still blazed, the smoke of our burning still denied the sky. +Fires burnt indeed the brighter for the Change--and spread. . . . + + + +Section 3 + +Picture to yourself what happened between the printing and composing +of the copy of the New Paper that lies before me now. It was the +first newspaper that was printed upon earth after the Great Change. +It was pocket-worn and browned, made of a paper no man ever intended +for preservation. I found it on the arbor table in the inn garden +while I was waiting for Nettie and Verrall, before that last +conversation of which I have presently to tell. As I look at it all +that scene comes back to me, and Nettie stands in her white raiment +against a blue-green background of sunlit garden, scrutinizing +my face as I read. . . . + +It is so frayed that the sheet cracks along the folds and comes to +pieces in my hands. It lies upon my desk, a dead souvenir of the +dead ages of the world, of the ancient passions of my heart. I know +we discussed its news, but for the life of me I cannot recall what +we said, only I remember that Nettie said very little, and that +Verrall for a time read it over my shoulder. And I did not like +him to read over my shoulder. . . . + +The document before me must have helped us through the first +awkwardness of that meeting. + +But of all that we said and did then I must tell in a later chapter. . . . + +It is easy to see the New Paper had been set up overnight, and then +large pieces of the stereo plates replaced subsequently. I do not +know enough of the old methods of printing to know precisely what +happened. The thing gives one an impression of large pieces of +type having been cut away and replaced by fresh blocks. There is +something very rough and ready about it all, and the new portions +print darker and more smudgily than the old, except toward the +left, where they have missed ink and indented. A friend of mine, +who knows something of the old typography, has suggested to me that +the machinery actually in use for the New Paper was damaged that +night, and that on the morning of the Change Banghurst borrowed a +neighboring office--perhaps in financial dependence upon him--to +print in. + +The outer pages belong entirely to the old period, the only parts +of the paper that had undergone alteration are the two middle +leaves. Here we found set forth in a curious little four-column +oblong of print, WHAT HAS HAPPENED. This cut across a column with +scare headings beginning, "Great Naval Battle Now in Progress. The +Fate of Two Empires in the Balance. Reported Loss of Two More------" + +These things, one gathered, were beneath notice now. Probably it +was guesswork, and fabricated news in the first instance. + +It is curious to piece together the worn and frayed fragments, and +reread this discolored first intelligence of the new epoch. + +The simple clear statements in the replaced portion of the paper +impressed me at the time, I remember, as bald and strange, in that +framework of shouting bad English. Now they seem like the voice of +a sane man amidst a vast faded violence. But they witness to the +prompt recovery of London from the gas; the new, swift energy of +rebound in that huge population. I am surprised now, as I reread, +to note how much research, experiment, and induction must have been +accomplished in the day that elapsed before the paper was printed. +. . . But that is by the way. As I sit and muse over this partly +carbonized sheet, that same curious remote vision comes again to me +that quickened in my mind that morning, a vision of those newspaper +offices I have already described to you going through the crisis. + +The catalytic wave must have caught the place in full swing, in +its nocturnal high fever, indeed in a quite exceptional state of +fever, what with the comet and the war, and more particularly with +the war. Very probably the Change crept into the office imperceptibly, +amidst the noise and shouting, and the glare of electric light that +made the night atmosphere in that place; even the green flashes +may have passed unobserved there, the preliminary descending trails +of green vapor seemed no more than unseasonable drifting wisps +of London fog. (In those days London even in summer was not safe +against dark fogs.) And then at the last the Change poured in and +overtook them. + +If there was any warning at all for them, it must have been a sudden +universal tumult in the street, and then a much more universal +quiet. They could have had no other intimation. + +There was no time to stop the presses before the main development +of green vapor had overwhelmed every one. It must have folded +about them, tumbled them to the earth, masked and stilled them. +My imagination is always curiously stirred by the thought of that, +because I suppose it is the first picture I succeeded in making for +myself of what had happened in the towns. It has never quite lost +its strangeness for me that when the Change came, machinery went +on working. I don't precisely know why that should have seemed so +strange to me, but it did, and still to a certain extent does. One +is so accustomed, I suppose, to regard machinery as an extension +of human personality that the extent of its autonomy the Change +displayed came as a shock to me. The electric lights, for example, +hazy green-haloed nebulas, must have gone on burning at least +for a time; amidst the thickening darkness the huge presses must +have roared on, printing, folding, throwing aside copy after copy +of that fabricated battle report with its quarter column of scare +headlines, and all the place must have still quivered and throbbed +with the familiar roar of the engines. And this though no men ruled +there at all any more! Here and there beneath that thickening fog +the crumpled or outstretched forms of men lay still. + +A wonderful thing that must have seemed, had any man had by chance +the power of resistance to the vapor, and could he have walked +amidst it. + +And soon the machines must have exhausted their feed of ink and +paper, and thumped and banged and rattled emptily amidst the general +quiet. Then I suppose the furnaces failed for want of stoking, the +steam pressure fell in the pistons, the machinery slackened, the +lights burnt dim, and came and went with the ebb of energy from the +power-station. Who can tell precisely the sequence of these things +now? + +And then, you know, amidst the weakening and terminating noises +of men, the green vapor cleared and vanished, in an hour indeed it +had gone, and it may be a breeze stirred and blew and went about +the earth. + +The noises of life were all dying away, but some there were that +abated nothing, that sounded triumphantly amidst the universal +ebb. To a heedless world the church towers tolled out two and then +three. Clocks ticked and chimed everywhere about the earth +to deafened ears. . . . + +And then came the first flush of morning, the first rustlings +of the revival. Perhaps in that office the filaments of the lamps +were still glowing, the machinery was still pulsing weakly, when +the crumpled, booted heaps of cloth became men again and began to +stir and stare. The chapel of the printers was, no doubt, shocked +to find itself asleep. Amidst that dazzling dawn the New Paper +woke to wonder, stood up and blinked at its amazing self. . . . + +The clocks of the city churches, one pursuing another, struck four. +The staffs, crumpled and disheveled, but with a strange refreshment +in their veins, stood about the damaged machinery, marveling and +questioning; the editor read his overnight headlines with incredulous +laughter. There was much involuntary laughter that morning. Outside, +the mail men patted the necks and rubbed the knees of their +awakening horses. . . . + +Then, you know, slowly and with much conversation and doubt, they +set about to produce the paper. + +Imagine those bemused, perplexed people, carried on by the inertia +of their old occupations and doing their best with an enterprise +that had suddenly become altogether extraordinary and irrational. +They worked amidst questionings, and yet light-heartedly. At every +stage there must have been interruptions for discussion. The paper +only got down to Menton five days late. + + + +Section 4 + +Then let me give you a vivid little impression I received of a +certain prosaic person, a grocer, named Wiggins, and how he passed +through the Change. I heard this man's story in the post-office at +Menton, when, in the afternoon of the First Day, I bethought me to +telegraph to my mother. The place was also a grocer's shop, and I +found him and the proprietor talking as I went in. They were trade +competitors, and Wiggins had just come across the street to break +the hostile silence of a score of years. The sparkle of the Change +was in their eyes, their slightly flushed cheeks, their more elastic +gestures, spoke of new physical influences that had invaded their +beings. + +"It did us no good, all our hatred," Mr. Wiggins said to me, +explaining the emotion of their encounter; "it did our customers +no good. I've come to tell him that. You bear that in mind, young +man, if ever you come to have a shop of your own. It was a sort +of stupid bitterness possessed us, and I can't make out we didn't +see it before in that light. Not so much downright wickedness it +wasn't as stupidity. A stupid jealousy! Think of it!--two human +beings within a stone's throw, who have not spoken for twenty years, +hardening our hearts against each other!" + +"I can't think how we came to such a state, Mr. Wiggins," said +the other, packing tea into pound packets out of mere habit as he +spoke. "It was wicked pride and obstinacy. We KNEW it was foolish +all the time." + +I stood affixing the adhesive stamp to my telegram. + +"Only the other morning," he went on to me, "I was cutting French +eggs. Selling at a loss to do it. He'd marked down with a great +staring ticket to ninepence a dozen--I saw it as I went past. Here's +my answer!" He indicated a ticket. "'Eightpence a dozen--same as +sold elsewhere for ninepence.' A whole penny down, bang off! Just +a touch above cost--if that--and even then------" He leant over +the counter to say impressively, "NOT THE SAME EGGS!" + +"Now, what people in their senses would do things like that?" said +Mr. Wiggins. + +I sent my telegram--the proprietor dispatched it for me, and while +he did so I fell exchanging experiences with Mr. Wiggins. He knew +no more than I did then the nature of the change that had come over +things. He had been alarmed by the green flashes, he said, so much +so that after watching for a time from behind his bedroom window +blind, he had got up and hastily dressed and made his family get +up also, so that they might be ready for the end. He made them put +on their Sunday clothes. They all went out into the garden together, +their minds divided between admiration at the gloriousness of the +spectacle and a great and growing awe. They were Dissenters, and +very religious people out of business hours, and it seemed to them +in those last magnificent moments that, after all, science must be +wrong and the fanatics right. With the green vapors came +conviction, and they prepared to meet their God. . . . + +This man, you must understand, was a common-looking man, in his +shirt-sleeves and with an apron about his paunch, and he told his +story in an Anglian accent that sounded mean and clipped to my +Staffordshire ears; he told his story without a thought of pride, +and as it were incidentally, and yet he gave me a vision of something +heroic. + +These people did not run hither and thither as many people did. These +four simple, common people stood beyond their back door in their +garden pathway between the gooseberry bushes, with the terrors +of their God and His Judgments closing in upon them, swiftly +and wonderfully--and there they began to sing. There they stood, +father and mother and two daughters, chanting out stoutly, but no +doubt a little flatly after the manner of their kind-- + + "In Zion's Hope abiding, + My soul in Triumph sings---" + +until one by one they fell, and lay still. + +The postmaster had heard them in the gathering darkness, +"In Zion's Hope abiding." . . . + +It was the most extraordinary thing in the world to hear this flushed +and happy-eyed man telling that story of his recent death. It did +not seem at all possible to have happened in the last twelve hours. +It was minute and remote, these people who went singing through +the darkling to their God. It was like a scene shown to me, very +small and very distinctly painted, in a locket. + +But that effect was not confined to this particular thing. A vast +number of things that had happened before the coming of the comet +had undergone the same transfiguring reduction. Other people, too, +I have learnt since, had the same illusion, a sense of enlargement. +It seems to me even now that the little dark creature who had +stormed across England in pursuit of Nettie and her lover must +have been about an inch high, that all that previous life of ours +had been an ill-lit marionette show, acted in the twilight. . . . + + + +Section 5 + +The figure of my mother comes always into my conception of the +Change. + +I remember how one day she confessed herself. + +She had been very sleepless that night, she said, and took the +reports of the falling stars for shooting; there had been rioting +in Clayton and all through Swathinglea all day, and so she got out +of bed to look. She had a dim sense that I was in all such troubles. + +But she was not looking when the Change came. + +"When I saw the stars a-raining down, dear," she said, "and thought +of you out in it, I thought there'd be no harm in saying a prayer +for you, dear? I thought you wouldn't mind that." + +And so I got another of my pictures--the green vapors come and go, +and there by her patched coverlet that dear old woman kneels and +droops, still clasping her poor gnarled hands in the attitude of +prayer--prayer to IT--for me! + +Through the meagre curtains and blinds of the flawed refracting +window I see the stars above the chimneys fade, the pale light of +dawn creeps into the sky, and her candle flares and dies. . . . + +That also went with me through the stillness--that silent +kneeling figure, that frozen prayer to God to shield me, silent +in a silent world, rushing through the emptiness of space. . . . + + + +Section 6 + +With the dawn that awakening went about the earth. I have told how +it came to me, and how I walked in wonder through the transfigured +cornfields of Shaphambury. It came to every one. Near me, and for +the time, clear forgotten by me, Verrall and Nettie woke--woke near +one another, each heard before all other sounds the other's voice +amidst the stillness, and the light. And the scattered people who +had run to and fro, and fallen on the beach of Bungalow village, +awoke; the sleeping villagers of Menton started, and sat up in +that unwonted freshness and newness; the contorted figures in the +garden, with the hymn still upon their lips, stirred amidst the +flowers, and touched each other timidly, and thought of Paradise. +My mother found herself crouched against the bed, and rose--rose +with a glad invincible conviction of accepted prayer. . . . + +Already, when it came to us, the soldiers, crowded between the +lines of dusty poplars along the road to Allarmont, were chatting +and sharing coffee with the French riflemen, who had hailed them +from their carefully hidden pits among the vineyards up the slopes +of Beauville. A certain perplexity had come to these marksmen, who +had dropped asleep tensely ready for the rocket that should wake +the whirr and rattle of their magazines. At the sight and sound of +the stir and human confusion in the roadway below, it had come to +each man individually that he could not shoot. One conscript, at +least, has told his story of his awakening, and how curious he thought +the rifle there beside him in his pit, how he took it on his knees +to examine. Then, as his memory of its purpose grew clearer, he +dropped the thing, and stood up with a kind of joyful horror at +the crime escaped, to look more closely at the men he was to have +assassinated. "Brave types," he thought, they looked for such +a fate. The summoning rocket never flew. Below, the men did not +fall into ranks again, but sat by the roadside, or stood in groups +talking, discussing with a novel incredulity the ostensible causes +of the war. "The Emperor!" said they; and "Oh, nonsense! We're +civilized men. Get some one else for this job! . . . Where's the +coffee?" + +The officers held their own horses, and talked to the men frankly, +regardless of discipline. Some Frenchmen out of the rifle-pits came +sauntering down the hill. Others stood doubtfully, rifles still in +hand. Curious faces scanned these latter. Little arguments sprang +as: "Shoot at us! Nonsense! They're respectable French citizens." +There is a picture of it all, very bright and detailed in the +morning light, in the battle gallery amidst the ruins at old Nancy, +and one sees the old-world uniform of the "soldier," the odd caps +and belts and boots, the ammunition-belt, the water-bottle, the +sort of tourist's pack the men carried, a queer elaborate equipment. +The soldiers had awakened one by one, first one and then another. +I wonder sometimes whether, perhaps, if the two armies had come +awake in an instant, the battle, by mere habit and inertia, might +not have begun. But the men who waked first, sat up, looked +about them in astonishment, had time to think a little. . . . + + + +Section 7 + +Everywhere there was laughter, everywhere tears. + +Men and women in the common life, finding themselves suddenly lit +and exalted, capable of doing what had hitherto been impossible, +incapable of doing what had hitherto been irresistible, happy, +hopeful, unselfishly energetic, rejected altogether the supposition +that this was merely a change in the blood and material texture of +life. They denied the bodies God had given them, as once the Upper +Nile savages struck out their canine teeth, because these made +them like the beasts. They declared that this was the coming of a +spirit, and nothing else would satisfy their need for explanations. +And in a sense the Spirit came. The Great Revival sprang directly +from the Change--the last, the deepest, widest, and most enduring +of all the vast inundations of religious emotion that go by that +name. + +But indeed it differed essentially from its innumerable predecessors. +The former revivals were a phase of fever, this was the first +movement of health, it was altogether quieter, more intellectual, +more private, more religious than any of those others. In the old +time, and more especially in the Protestant countries where the +things of religion were outspoken, and the absence of confession +and well-trained priests made religious states of emotion explosive +and contagious, revivalism upon various scales was a normal phase +in the religious life, revivals were always going on--now a little +disturbance of consciences in a village, now an evening of emotion +in a Mission Room, now a great storm that swept a continent, and +now an organized effort that came to town with bands and banners +and handbills and motor-cars for the saving of souls. Never at +any time did I take part in nor was I attracted by any of these +movements. My nature, although passionate, was too critical (or +sceptical if you like, for it amounts to the same thing) and shy +to be drawn into these whirls; but on several occasions Parload and +I sat, scoffing, but nevertheless disturbed, in the back seats of +revivalist meetings. + +I saw enough of them to understand their nature, and I am not +surprised to learn now that before the comet came, all about the +world, even among savages, even among cannibals, these same, or +at any rate closely similar, periodic upheavals went on. The world +was stifling; it was in a fever, and these phenomena were neither +more nor less than the instinctive struggle of the organism against +the ebb of its powers, the clogging of its veins, the limitation +of its life. Invariably these revivals followed periods of sordid +and restricted living. Men obeyed their base immediate motives +until the world grew unendurably bitter. Some disappointment, some +thwarting, lit up for them--darkly indeed, but yet enough for +indistinct vision--the crowded squalor, the dark inclosure of life. +A sudden disgust with the insensate smallness of the old-world way +of living, a realization of sin, a sense of the unworthiness of all +individual things, a desire for something comprehensive, sustaining, +something greater, for wider communions and less habitual things, +filled them. Their souls, which were shaped for wider issues, cried +out suddenly amidst the petty interests, the narrow prohibitions, +of life, "Not this! not this!" A great passion to escape from the +jealous prison of themselves, an inarticulate, stammering, weeping +passion shook them. . . . + +I have seen------ I remember how once in Clayton Calvinistic +Methodist chapel I saw--his spotty fat face strangely distorted +under the flickering gas-flares--old Pallet the ironmonger repent. +He went to the form of repentance, a bench reserved for such +exhibitions, and slobbered out his sorrow and disgust for some +sexual indelicacy--he was a widower--and I can see now how his +loose fat body quivered and swayed with his grief. He poured it +out to five hundred people, from whom in common times he hid his +every thought and purpose. And it is a fact, it shows where reality +lay, that we two youngsters laughed not at all at that blubbering +grotesque, we did not even think the distant shadow of a smile. +We two sat grave and intent--perhaps wondering. + +Only afterward and with an effort did we scoff. . . . + +Those old-time revivals were, I say, the convulsive movements of +a body that suffocates. They are the clearest manifestations from +before the Change of a sense in all men that things were not right. +But they were too often but momentary illuminations. Their force +spent itself in inco-ordinated shouting, gesticulations, tears. +They were but flashes of outlook. Disgust of the narrow life, of +all baseness, took shape in narrowness and baseness. The quickened +soul ended the night a hypocrite; prophets disputed for precedence; +seductions, it is altogether indisputable, were frequent among +penitents! and Ananias went home converted and returned with +a falsified gift. And it was almost universal that the converted +should be impatient and immoderate, scornful of reason and +a choice of expedients, opposed to balance, skill, and knowledge. +Incontinently full of grace, like thin old wine-skins overfilled, +they felt they must burst if once they came into contact with hard +fact and sane direction. + +So the former revivals spent themselves, but the Great Revival did +not spend itself, but grew to be, for the majority of Christendom +at least, the permanent expression of the Change. For many it has +taken the shape of an outright declaration that this was the Second +Advent--it is not for me to discuss the validity of that suggestion, +for nearly all it has amounted to an enduring broadening +of all the issues of life. . . . + + + +Section 8 + +One irrelevant memory comes back to me, irrelevant, and yet by some +subtle trick of quality it summarizes the Change for me. It is the +memory of a woman's very beautiful face, a woman with a flushed +face and tear-bright eyes who went by me without speaking, rapt +in some secret purpose. I passed her when in the afternoon of the +first day, struck by a sudden remorse, I went down to Menton to send +a telegram to my mother telling her all was well with me. Whither +this woman went I do not know, nor whence she came; I never saw her +again, and only her face, glowing with that new and luminous +resolve, stands out for me. . . . + +But that expression was the world's. + + + + +CHAPTER THE THIRD + +THE CABINET COUNCIL + + + +Section 1 + +AND what a strange unprecedented thing was that cabinet council at +which I was present, the council that was held two days later in +Melmount's bungalow, and which convened the conference to frame the +constitution of the World State. I was there because it was convenient +for me to stay with Melmount. I had nowhere to go particularly, +and there was no one at his bungalow, to which his broken ankle +confined him, but a secretary and a valet to help him to begin his +share of the enormous labors that evidently lay before the rulers +of the world. I wrote shorthand, and as there was not even a phonograph +available, I went in so soon as his ankle had been dressed, and +sat at his desk to write at his dictation. It is characteristic +of the odd slackness that went with the spasmodic violence of the +old epoch, that the secretary could not use shorthand and that +there was no telephone whatever in the place. Every message had +to be taken to the village post-office in that grocer's shop at +Menton, half a mile away. . . . So I sat in the back of Melmount's +room, his desk had been thrust aside, and made such memoranda as +were needed. At that time his room seemed to me the most beautifully +furnished in the world, and I could identify now the vivid cheerfulness +of the chintz of the sofa on which the great statesman lay just in +front of me, the fine rich paper, the red sealing-wax, the silver +equipage of the desk I used. I know now that my presence in that +room was a strange and remarkable thing, the open door, even the +coming and going of Parker the secretary, innovations. In the old +days a cabinet council was a secret conclave, secrecy and furtiveness +were in the texture of all public life. In the old days everybody +was always keeping something back from somebody, being wary and +cunning, prevaricating, misleading--for the most part for no reason +at all. Almost unnoticed, that secrecy had dropped out of life. + +I close my eyes and see those men again, hear their deliberating +voices. First I see them a little diffusely in the cold explicitness +of daylight, and then concentrated and drawn together amidst the +shadow and mystery about shaded lamps. Integral to this and very +clear is the memory of biscuit crumbs and a drop of spilt water, +that at first stood shining upon and then sank into the +green table-cloth. . . . + +I remember particularly the figure of Lord Adisham. He came to the +bungalow a day before the others, because he was Melmount's personal +friend. Let me describe this statesman to you, this one of the +fifteen men who made the last war. He was the youngest member of +the Government, and an altogether pleasant and sunny man of forty. +He had a clear profile to his clean gray face, a smiling eye, a +friendly, careful voice upon his thin, clean-shaven lips, an easy +disabusing manner. He had the perfect quality of a man who had +fallen easily into a place prepared for him. He had the temperament +of what we used to call a philosopher--an indifferent, that is to say. +The Change had caught him at his week-end recreation, fly-fishing; +and, indeed, he said, I remember, that he recovered to find himself +with his head within a yard of the water's brim. In times of crisis +Lord Adisham invariably went fly-fishing at the week-end to keep his +mind in tone, and when there was no crisis then there was nothing +he liked so much to do as fly-fishing, and so, of course, as there +was nothing to prevent it, he fished. He came resolved, among other +things, to give up fly-fishing altogether. I was present when he +came to Melmount, and heard him say as much; and by a more naive +route it was evident that he had arrived at the same scheme of +intention as my master. I left them to talk, but afterward I came +back to take down their long telegrams to their coming colleagues. +He was, no doubt, as profoundly affected as Melmount by the +Change, but his tricks of civility and irony and acceptable humor +had survived the Change, and he expressed his altered attitude, +his expanded emotions, in a quaint modification of the old-time +man-of-the-world style, with excessive moderation, with a trained +horror of the enthusiasm that swayed him. + +These fifteen men who ruled the British Empire were curiously unlike +anything I had expected, and I watched them intently whenever my +services were not in request. They made a peculiar class at that +time, these English politicians and statesmen, a class that has +now completely passed away. In some respects they were unlike the +statesmen of any other region of the world, and I do not find that +any really adequate account remains of them. . . . Perhaps you are +a reader of the old books. If so, you will find them rendered with +a note of hostile exaggeration by Dickens in "Bleak House," with +a mingling of gross flattery and keen ridicule by Disraeli, who +ruled among them accidentally by misunderstanding them and pleasing +the court, and all their assumptions are set forth, portentously, +perhaps, but truthfully, so far as people of the "permanent +official" class saw them, in the novels of Mrs. Humphry Ward. All +these books are still in this world and at the disposal of the +curious, and in addition the philosopher Bagehot and the picturesque +historian Macaulay give something of their method of thinking, the +novelist Thackeray skirts the seamy side of their social life, and +there are some good passages of irony, personal descriptions, and +reminiscence to be found in the "Twentieth Century Garner" from the +pens of such writers, for example, as Sidney Low. But a picture of +them as a whole is wanting. Then they were too near and too great; +now, very rapidly, they have become incomprehensible. + +We common people of the old time based our conception of our +statesmen almost entirely on the caricatures that formed the most +powerful weapon in political controversy. Like almost every main +feature of the old condition of things these caricatures were an +unanticipated development, they were a sort of parasitic outgrowth +from, which had finally altogether replaced, the thin and vague +aspirations of the original democratic ideals. They presented +not only the personalities who led our public life, but the most +sacred structural conceptions of that life, in ludicrous, vulgar, +and dishonorable aspects that in the end came near to destroying +entirely all grave and honorable emotion or motive toward the State. +The state of Britain was represented nearly always by a red-faced, +purse-proud farmer with an enormous belly, that fine dream +of freedom, the United States, by a cunning, lean-faced rascal +in striped trousers and a blue coat. The chief ministers of state +were pickpockets, washerwomen, clowns, whales, asses, elephants, +and what not, and issues that affected the welfare of millions of +men were dressed and judged like a rally in some idiotic pantomime. +A tragic war in South Africa, that wrecked many thousand homes, +impoverished two whole lands, and brought death and disablement +to fifty thousand men, was presented as a quite comical quarrel +between a violent queer being named Chamberlain, with an eyeglass, +an orchid, and a short temper, and "old Kroojer," an obstinate +and very cunning old man in a shocking bad hat. The conflict was +carried through in a mood sometimes of brutish irritability and +sometimes of lax slovenliness, the merry peculator plied his trade +congenially in that asinine squabble, and behind these fooleries +and masked by them, marched Fate--until at last the clowning of +the booth opened and revealed--hunger and suffering, brands burning +and swords and shame. . . . These men had come to fame and power in +that atmosphere, and to me that day there was the oddest suggestion +in them of actors who have suddenly laid aside grotesque and foolish +parts; the paint was washed from their faces, the posing put aside. + +Even when the presentation was not frankly grotesque and degrading +it was entirely misleading. When I read of Laycock, for example, +there arises a picture of a large, active, if a little wrong-headed, +intelligence in a compact heroic body, emitting that "Goliath" speech +of his that did so much to precipitate hostilities, it tallies not +at all with the stammering, high-pitched, slightly bald, and very +conscience-stricken personage I saw, nor with Melmount's contemptuous +first description of him. I doubt if the world at large will ever +get a proper vision of those men as they were before the Change. +Each year they pass more and more incredibly beyond our intellectual +sympathy. Our estrangement cannot, indeed, rob them of their +portion in the past, but it will rob them of any effect of reality. +The whole of their history becomes more and more foreign, more and +more like some queer barbaric drama played in a forgotten tongue. +There they strut through their weird metamorphoses of caricature, +those premiers and presidents, their height preposterously exaggerated by +political buskins, their faces covered by great resonant inhuman +masks, their voices couched in the foolish idiom of public +utterance, disguised beyond any semblance to sane humanity, roaring +and squeaking through the public press. There it stands, this +incomprehensible faded show, a thing left on one side, and now still +and deserted by any interest, its many emptinesses as inexplicable +now as the cruelties of medieval Venice, the theology of old Byzantium. +And they ruled and influenced the lives of nearly a quarter of +mankind, these politicians, their clownish conflicts swayed the +world, made mirth perhaps, made excitement, and permitted--infinite +misery. + +I saw these men quickened indeed by the Change, but still wearing +the queer clothing of the old time, the manners and conventions of +the old time; if they had disengaged themselves from the outlook +of the old time they still had to refer back to it constantly as a +common starting-point. My refreshed intelligence was equal to that, +so that I think I did indeed see them. There was Gorrell-Browning, +the Chancellor of the Duchy; I remember him as a big round-faced +man, the essential vanity and foolishness of whose expression, whose +habit of voluminous platitudinous speech, triumphed absurdly once +or twice over the roused spirit within. He struggled with it, he +burlesqued himself, and laughed. Suddenly he said simply, intensely--it +was a moment for every one of clean, clear pain, "I have been a +vain and self-indulgent and presumptuous old man. I am of little +use here. I have given myself to politics and intrigues, and life +is gone from me." Then for a long time he sat still. There was +Carton, the Lord Chancellor, a white-faced man with understanding, +he had a heavy, shaven face that might have stood among the busts +of the Caesars, a slow, elaborating voice, with self-indulgent, +slightly oblique, and triumphant lips, and a momentary, voluntary, +humorous twinkle. "We have to forgive," he said. "We have to +forgive--even ourselves." + +These two were at the top corner of the table, so that I saw their +faces well. Madgett, the Home Secretary, a smaller man with wrinkled +eyebrows and a frozen smile on his thin wry mouth, came next to +Carton; he contributed little to the discussion save intelligent +comments, and when the electric lights above glowed out, the shadows +deepened queerly in his eye-sockets and gave him the quizzical +expression of an ironical goblin. Next him was that great peer, +the Earl of Richover, whose self-indulgent indolence had accepted +the role of a twentieth-century British Roman patrician of culture, +who had divided his time almost equally between his jockeys, +politics, and the composition of literary studies in the key of +his role. "We have done nothing worth doing," he said. "As for me, +I have cut a figure!" He reflected--no doubt on his ample patrician +years, on the fine great houses that had been his setting, the +teeming race-courses that had roared his name, the enthusiastic +meetings he had fed with fine hopes, the futile Olympian beginnings. +. . . "I have been a fool," he said compactly. They heard him in +a sympathetic and respectful silence. + +Gurker, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, was partially occulted, so +far as I was concerned, by the back of Lord Adisham. Ever and again +Gurker protruded into the discussion, swaying forward, a deep throaty +voice, a big nose, a coarse mouth with a drooping everted lower lip, +eyes peering amidst folds and wrinkles. He made his confession for +his race. "We Jews," he said, "have gone through the system of this +world, creating nothing, consolidating many things, destroying much. +Our racial self-conceit has been monstrous. We seem to have used our +ample coarse intellectuality for no other purpose than to develop +and master and maintain the convention of property, to turn life into +a sort of mercantile chess and spend our winnings grossly. . . . We +have had no sense of service to mankind. Beauty which is godhead--we +made it a possession." + +These men and these sayings particularly remain in my memory. +Perhaps, indeed, I wrote them down at the time, but that I do not +now remember. How Sir Digby Privet, Revel, Markheimer, and the others +sat I do not now recall; they came in as voices, interruptions, +imperfectly assigned comments. . . . + +One got a queer impression that except perhaps for Gurker or Revel +these men had not particularly wanted the power they held; had +desired to do nothing very much in the positions they had secured. +They had found themselves in the cabinet, and until this moment +of illumination they had not been ashamed; but they had made no +ungentlemanly fuss about the matter. Eight of that fifteen came from +the same school, had gone through an entirely parallel education; +some Greek linguistics, some elementary mathematics, some emasculated +"science," a little history, a little reading in the silent or +timidly orthodox English literature of the seventeenth, eighteenth, +and nineteenth centuries, all eight had imbibed the same dull gentlemanly +tradition of behavior; essentially boyish, unimaginative--with +neither keen swords nor art in it, a tradition apt to slobber into +sentiment at a crisis and make a great virtue of a simple duty rather +clumsily done. None of these eight had made any real experiments +with life, they had lived in blinkers, they had been passed from +nurse to governess, from governess to preparatory school, from Eton +to Oxford, from Oxford to the politico-social routine. Even their +vices and lapses had been according to certain conceptions of good +form. They had all gone to the races surreptitiously from Eton, had +all cut up to town from Oxford to see life--music-hall life--had +all come to heel again. Now suddenly they discovered their +limitations. . . . + +"What are we to do?" asked Melmount. "We have awakened; this empire +in our hands. . . ." I know this will seem the most fabulous of all +the things I have to tell of the old order, but, indeed, I saw it +with my eyes, I heard it with my ears. It is a fact that this group +of men who constituted the Government of one-fifth of the habitable +land of the earth, who ruled over a million of armed men, who +had such navies as mankind had never seen before, whose empire of +nations, tongues, peoples still dazzles in these greater days, had +no common idea whatever of what they meant to do with the world. +They had been a Government for three long years, and before the +Change came to them it had never even occurred to them that it was +necessary to have no common idea. There was no common idea at all. +That great empire was no more than a thing adrift, an aimless thing +that ate and drank and slept and bore arms, and was inordinately +proud of itself because it had chanced to happen. It had no plan, +no intention; it meant nothing at all. And the other great empires +adrift, perilously adrift like marine mines, were in the self-same +case. Absurd as a British cabinet council must seem to you now, it +was no whit more absurd than the controlling ganglion, autocratic +council, president's committee, or what not, of each of +its blind rivals. . . . + + + +Section 2 + +I remember as one thing that struck me very forcibly at the time, +the absence of any discussion, any difference of opinion, about the +broad principles of our present state. These men had lived hitherto +in a system of conventions and acquired motives, loyalty to a party, +loyalty to various secret agreements and understandings, loyalty +to the Crown; they had all been capable of the keenest attention +to precedence, all capable of the most complete suppression of +subversive doubts and inquiries, all had their religious emotions +under perfect control. They had seemed protected by invisible but +impenetrable barriers from all the heady and destructive speculations, +the socialistic, republican, and communistic theories that one may +still trace through the literature of the last days of the comet. +But now it was as if the very moment of the awakening those barriers +and defences had vanished, as if the green vapors had washed +through their minds and dissolved and swept away a hundred once +rigid boundaries and obstacles. They had admitted and assimilated +at once all that was good in the ill-dressed propagandas that had +clamored so vehemently and vainly at the doors of their minds in +the former days. It was exactly like the awakening from an absurd +and limiting dream. They had come out together naturally and +inevitably upon the broad daylight platform of obvious and reasonable +agreement upon which we and all the order of our world now stand. + +Let me try to give the chief things that had vanished from their +minds. There was, first, the ancient system of "ownership" that +made such an extraordinary tangle of our administration of the +land upon which we lived. In the old time no one believed in that +as either just or ideally convenient, but every one accepted it. +The community which lived upon the land was supposed to have waived +its necessary connection with the land, except in certain limited +instances of highway and common. All the rest of the land was +cut up in the maddest way into patches and oblongs and triangles +of various sizes between a hundred square miles and a few acres, +and placed under the nearly absolute government of a series of +administrators called landowners. They owned the land almost as +a man now owns his hat; they bought it and sold it, and cut it up +like cheese or ham; they were free to ruin it, or leave it waste, +or erect upon it horrible and devastating eyesores. If the community +needed a road or a tramway, if it wanted a town or a village in any +position, nay, even if it wanted to go to and fro, it had to do so +by exorbitant treaties with each of the monarchs whose territory +was involved. No man could find foothold on the face of the earth +until he had paid toll and homage to one of them. They had practically +no relations and no duties to the nominal, municipal, or national +Government amidst whose larger areas their own dominions lay. . . . +This sounds, I know, like a lunatic's dream, but mankind was that +lunatic; and not only in the old countries of Europe and Asia, +where this system had arisen out of the rational delegation of local +control to territorial magnates, who had in the universal baseness +of those times at last altogether evaded and escaped their duties, +did it obtain, but the "new countries," as we called them then--the +United States of America, the Cape Colony, Australia, and New +Zealand--spent much of the nineteenth century in the frantic giving +away of land for ever to any casual person who would take it. Was +there coal, was there petroleum or gold, was there rich soil or +harborage, or the site for a fine city, these obsessed and witless +Governments cried out for scramblers, and a stream of shabby, +tricky, and violent adventurers set out to found a new section of +the landed aristocracy of the world. After a brief century of hope +and pride, the great republic of the United States of America, +the hope as it was deemed of mankind, became for the most part a +drifting crowd of landless men; landlords and railway lords, food +lords (for the land is food) and mineral lords ruled its life, +gave it Universities as one gave coins to a mendicant, and spent +its resources upon such vain, tawdry, and foolish luxuries as the +world had never seen before. Here was a thing none of these statesmen +before the Change would have regarded as anything but the natural +order of the world, which not one of them now regarded as anything +but the mad and vanished illusion of a period of dementia. + +And as it was with the question of the land, so was it also +with a hundred other systems and institutions and complicated and +disingenuous factors in the life of man. They spoke of trade, and +I realized for the first time there could be buying and selling +that was no loss to any man; they spoke of industrial organization, +and one saw it under captains who sought no base advantages. The +haze of old associations, of personal entanglements and habitual +recognitions had been dispelled from every stage and process of +the social training of men. Things long hidden appeared discovered +with an amazing clearness and nakedness. These men who had +awakened, laughed dissolvent laughs, and the old muddle of schools +and colleges, books and traditions, the old fumbling, half-figurative, +half-formal teaching of the Churches, the complex of weakening and +confusing suggestions and hints, amidst which the pride and honor +of adolescence doubted and stumbled and fell, became nothing but +a curious and pleasantly faded memory. "There must be a common +training of the young," said Richover; "a frank initiation. We have +not so much educated them as hidden things from them, and set traps. +And it might have been so easy--it can all be done so easily." + +That hangs in my memory as the refrain of that council, "It can +all be done so easily," but when they said it then, it came to my +ears with a quality of enormous refreshment and power. It can all +be done so easily, given frankness, given courage. Time was when +these platitudes had the freshness and wonder of a gospel. + +In this enlarged outlook the war with the Germans--that mythical, +heroic, armed female, Germany, had vanished from men's imaginations--was +a mere exhausted episode. A truce had already been arranged +by Melmount, and these ministers, after some marveling reminiscences, +set aside the matter of peace as a mere question of particular +arrangements. . . . The whole scheme of the world's government had +become fluid and provisional in their minds, in small details as +in great, the unanalyzable tangle of wards and vestries, districts +and municipalities, counties, states, boards, and nations, the +interlacing, overlapping, and conflicting authorities, the felt of +little interests and claims, in which an innumerable and insatiable +multitude of lawyers, agents, managers, bosses, organizers lived +like fleas in a dirty old coat, the web of the conflicts, jealousies, +heated patchings up and jobbings apart, of the old order--they +flung it all on one side. + +"What are the new needs?" said Melmount. "This muddle is too rotten +to handle. We're beginning again. Well, let us begin afresh." + + + +Section 3 + +"Let us begin afresh!" This piece of obvious common sense seemed +then to me instinct with courage, the noblest of words. My heart +went out to him as he spoke. It was, indeed, that day as vague as +it was valiant; we did not at all see the forms of what we were +thus beginning. All that we saw was the clear inevitableness +that the old order should end. . . . + +And then in a little space of time mankind in halting but effectual +brotherhood was moving out to make its world anew. Those early +years, those first and second decades of the new epoch, were in +their daily detail a time of rejoicing toil; one saw chiefly one's +own share in that, and little of the whole. It is only now that I +look back at it all from these ripe years, from this high tower, +that I see the dramatic sequence of its changes, see the cruel old +confusions of the ancient time become clarified, simplified, and +dissolve and vanish away. Where is that old world now? Where is +London, that somber city of smoke and drifting darkness, full of the +deep roar and haunting music of disorder, with its oily, shining, +mud-rimmed, barge-crowded river, its black pinnacles and blackened +dome, its sad wildernesses of smut-grayed houses, its myriads of +draggled prostitutes, its millions of hurrying clerks? The very +leaves upon its trees were foul with greasy black defilements. +Where is lime-white Paris, with its green and disciplined foliage, +its hard unflinching tastefulness, its smartly organized viciousness, +and the myriads of workers, noisily shod, streaming over the bridges +in the gray cold light of dawn. Where is New York, the high city +of clangor and infuriated energy, wind swept and competition swept, +its huge buildings jostling one another and straining ever upward +for a place in the sky, the fallen pitilessly overshadowed. Where +are its lurking corners of heavy and costly luxury, the shameful +bludgeoning bribing vice of its ill ruled underways, and all the +gaunt extravagant ugliness of its strenuous life? And where now is +Philadelphia, with its innumerable small and isolated homes, and +Chicago with its interminable blood-stained stockyards, its polyglot +underworld of furious discontent. + +All these vast cities have given way and gone, even as my native +Potteries and the Black Country have gone, and the lives that were +caught, crippled, starved, and maimed amidst their labyrinths, their +forgotten and neglected maladjustments, and their vast, inhuman, +ill-conceived industrial machinery have escaped--to life. Those +cities of growth and accident are altogether gone, never a chimney +smokes about our world to-day, and the sound of the weeping of +children who toiled and hungered, the dull despair of overburdened +women, the noise of brute quarrels in alleys, all shameful pleasures +and all the ugly grossness of wealthy pride have gone with them, +with the utter change in our lives. As I look back into the past +I see a vast exultant dust of house-breaking and removal rise +up into the clear air that followed the hour of the green vapors, +I live again the Year of Tents, the Year of Scaffolding, and like +the triumph of a new theme in a piece of music--the great cities +of our new days arise. Come Caerlyon and Armedon, the twin cities +of lower England, with the winding summer city of the Thames between, +and I see the gaunt dirt of old Edinburgh die to rise again white +and tall beneath the shadow of her ancient hill; and Dublin too, +reshaped, returning enriched, fair, spacious, the city of rich +laughter and warm hearts, gleaming gaily in a shaft of sunlight +through the soft warm rain. I see the great cities America has +planned and made; the Golden City, with ever-ripening fruit along +its broad warm ways, and the bell-glad City of a Thousand Spires. +I see again as I have seen, the city of theaters and meeting-places, +the City of the Sunlight Bight, and the new city that is still +called Utah; and dominated by its observatory dome and the plain and +dignified lines of the university facade upon the cliff, Martenabar +the great white winter city of the upland snows. And the lesser +places, too, the townships, the quiet resting-places, villages half +forest with a brawl of streams down their streets, villages laced +with avenues of cedar, villages of garden, of roses and wonderful +flowers and the perpetual humming of bees. And through all the +world go our children, our sons the old world would have made into +servile clerks and shopmen, plough drudges and servants; our daughters +who were erst anaemic drudges, prostitutes, sluts, anxiety-racked +mothers or sere, repining failures; they go about this world glad +and brave, learning, living, doing, happy and rejoicing, brave and +free. I think of them wandering in the clear quiet of the ruins of +Rome, among the tombs of Egypt or the temples of Athens, of their +coming to Mainington and its strange happiness, to Orba and the +wonder of its white and slender tower. . . . But who can tell of +the fullness and pleasure of life, who can number all our new cities +in the world?--cities made by the loving hands of men for living +men, cities men weep to enter, so fair they are, so gracious +and so kind. . . . + +Some vision surely of these things must have been vouchsafed me +as I sat there behind Melmount's couch, but now my knowledge of +accomplished things has mingled with and effaced my expectations. +Something indeed I must have foreseen--or else why was my heart so +glad? + + + + + +BOOK THE THIRD + +THE NEW WORLD + + + + +CHAPTER THE FIRST + +LOVE AFTER THE CHANGE + + + +Section 1 + +So far I have said nothing of Nettie. I have departed widely from +my individual story. I have tried to give you the effect of the +change in relation to the general framework of human life, its +effect of swift, magnificent dawn, of an overpowering letting in +and inundation of light, and the spirit of living. In my memory all +my life before the Change has the quality of a dark passage, with +the dimmest side gleams of beauty that come and go. The rest is dull +pain and darkness. Then suddenly the walls, the bitter confines, +are smitten and vanish, and I walk, blinded, perplexed, and yet +rejoicing, in this sweet, beautiful world, in its fair incessant +variety, its satisfaction, its opportunities, exultant in this glorious +gift of life. Had I the power of music I would make a world-wide +motif swell and amplify, gather to itself this theme and that, and +rise at last to sheer ecstasy of triumph and rejoicing. It should +be all sound, all pride, all the hope of outsetting in the morning +brightness, all the glee of unexpected happenings, all the gladness +of painful effort suddenly come to its reward; it should be like +blossoms new opened and the happy play of children, like tearful, +happy mothers holding their first-born, like cities building to +the sound of music, and great ships, all hung with flags and wine +bespattered, gliding down through cheering multitudes to their first +meeting with the sea. Through it all should march Hope, confident +Hope, radiant and invincible, until at last it would be the triumph +march of Hope the conqueror, coming with trumpetings and banners +through the wide-flung gates of the world. + +And then out of that luminous haze of gladness comes Nettie, +transfigured. + +So she came again to me--amazing, a thing incredibly forgotten. + +She comes back, and Verrall is in her company. She comes back +into my memories now, just as she came back then, rather quaintly +at first--at first not seen very clearly, a little distorted by +intervening things, seen with a doubt, as I saw her through the +slightly discolored panes of crinkled glass in the window of the +Menton post-office and grocer's shop. It was on the second day +after the Change, and I had been sending telegrams for Melmount, +who was making arrangements for his departure for Downing Street. +I saw the two of them at first as small, flawed figures. The glass +made them seem curved, and it enhanced and altered their gestures +and paces. I felt it became me to say "Peace" to them, and I went +out, to the jangling of the door-bell. At the sight of me they +stopped short, and Verrall cried with the note of one who has +sought, "Here he is!" And Nettie cried, "Willie!" + +I went toward them, and all the perspectives of my reconstructed +universe altered as I did so. + +I seemed to see these two for the first time; how fine they were, +how graceful and human. It was as though I had never really looked +at them before, and, indeed, always before I had beheld them through +a mist of selfish passion. They had shared the universal darkness +and dwarfing of the former time; they shared the universal exaltation +of the new. Now suddenly Nettie, and the love of Nettie, a great +passion for Nettie, lived again in me. This change which had enlarged +men's hearts had made no end to love. Indeed, it had enormously +enlarged and glorified love. She stepped into the center of that +dream of world reconstruction that filled my mind and took possession +of it all. A little wisp of hair had blown across her cheek, her +lips fell apart in that sweet smile of hers; her eyes were full +of wonder, of a welcoming scrutiny, of an infinitely courageous +friendliness. + +I took her outstretched hand, and wonder overwhelmed me. "I wanted +to kill you," I said simply, trying to grasp that idea. It seemed +now like stabbing the stars, or murdering the sunlight. + +"Afterward we looked for you," said Verrall; "and we could not find +you. . . . We heard another shot." + +I turned my eyes to him, and Nettie's hand fell from me. It was +then I thought of how they had fallen together, and what it must +have been to have awakened in that dawn with Nettie by one's side. +I had a vision of them as I had glimpsed them last amidst the +thickening vapors, close together, hand in hand. The green hawks of +the Change spread their darkling wings above their last stumbling +paces. So they fell. And awoke--lovers together in a morning +of Paradise. Who can tell how bright the sunshine was to them, +how fair the flowers, how sweet the singing of the birds? . . . + +This was the thought of my heart. But my lips were saying, "When +I awoke I threw my pistol away." Sheer blankness kept my thoughts +silent for a little while; I said empty things. "I am very glad +I did not kill you--that you are here, so fair and well. . . ." + +"I am going away back to Clayton on the day after to-morrow," I +said, breaking away to explanations. "I have been writing shorthand +here for Melmount, but that is almost over now. . . ." + +Neither of them said a word, and though all facts had suddenly ceased +to matter anything, I went on informatively, "He is to be taken to +Downing Street where there is a proper staff, so that there will +be no need of me. . . . Of course, you're a little perplexed at +my being with Melmount. You see I met him--by accident--directly +I recovered. I found him with a broken ankle--in that lane. . . . +I am to go now to the Four Towns to help prepare a report. So that +I am glad to see you both again"--I found a catch in my voice--"to +say good-bye to you, and wish you well." + +This was after the quality of what had come into my mind when first +I saw them through the grocer's window, but it was not what I felt +and thought as I said it. I went on saying it because otherwise +there would have been a gap. It had come to me that it was going +to be hard to part from Nettie. My words sounded with an effect of +unreality. I stopped, and we stood for a moment in silence looking +at one another. + +It was I, I think, who was discovering most. I was realizing for +the first time how little the Change had altered in my essential +nature. I had forgotten this business of love for a time in +a world of wonder. That was all. Nothing was lost from my nature, +nothing had gone, only the power of thought and restraint had been +wonderfully increased and new interests had been forced upon me. +The Green Vapors had passed, our minds were swept and garnished, but +we were ourselves still, though living in a new and finer air. My +affinities were unchanged; Nettie's personal charm for me was only +quickened by the enhancement of my perceptions. In her presence, +meeting her eyes, instantly my desire, no longer frantic but sane, +was awake again. + +It was just like going to Checkshill in the old time, after +writing about socialism. . . . + +I relinquished her hand. It was absurd to part in these terms. + +So we all felt it. We hung awkwardly over our sense of that. It +was Verrall, I think, who shaped the thought for me, and said that +to-morrow then we must meet and say good-bye, and so turned our +encounter into a transitory making of arrangements. We settled we +would come to the inn at Menton, all three of us, and take +our midday meal together. . . . + +Yes, it was clear that was all we had to say now. . . . + +We parted a little awkwardly. I went on down the village street, +not looking back, surprised at myself, and infinitely perplexed. +It was as if I had discovered something overlooked that disarranged +all my plans, something entirely disconcerting. For the first time +I went back preoccupied and without eagerness to Melmount's work. +I wanted to go on thinking about Nettie; my mind had suddenly become +voluminously productive concerning her and Verrall. + + + +Section 2 + +The talk we three had together in the dawn of the new time is very +strongly impressed upon my memory. There was something fresh and +simple about it, something young and flushed and exalted. We took +up, we handled with a certain naive timidity, the most difficult +questions the Change had raised for men to solve. I recall we +made little of them. All the old scheme of human life had dissolved +and passed away, the narrow competitiveness, the greed and base +aggression, the jealous aloofness of soul from soul. Where had +it left us? That was what we and a thousand million others +were discussing. . . . + +It chances that this last meeting with Nettie is inseparably +associated--I don't know why--with the landlady of the Menton inn. + +The Menton inn was one of the rare pleasant corners of the old +order; it was an inn of an unusual prosperity, much frequented by +visitors from Shaphambury, and given to the serving of lunches and +teas. It had a broad mossy bowling-green, and round about it were +creeper-covered arbors amidst beds of snap-dragon, and hollyhock, +and blue delphinium, and many such tall familiar summer flowers. +These stood out against a background of laurels and holly, and +above these again rose the gables of the inn and its signpost--a +white-horsed George slaying the dragon--against copper beeches under +the sky. + +While I waited for Nettie and Verrall in this agreeable trysting +place, I talked to the landlady--a broad-shouldered, smiling, +freckled woman--about the morning of the Change. That motherly, +abundant, red-haired figure of health was buoyantly sure that +everything in the world was now to be changed for the better. +That confidence, and something in her voice, made me love her as +I talked to her. "Now we're awake," she said, "all sorts of things +will be put right that hadn't any sense in them. Why? Oh! I'm sure +of it." + +Her kind blue eyes met mine in an infinitude of friendliness. Her +lips in her pauses shaped in a pretty faint smile. + +Old tradition was strong in us; all English inns in those days +charged the unexpected, and I asked what our lunch was to cost. + +"Pay or not," she said, "and what you like. It's holiday these days. +I suppose we'll still have paying and charging, however we manage +it, but it won't be the worry it has been--that I feel sure. It's +the part I never had no fancy for. Many a time I peeped through the +bushes worrying to think what was just and right to me and mine, +and what would send 'em away satisfied. It isn't the money I care +for. There'll be mighty changes, be sure of that; but here I'll +stay, and make people happy--them that go by on the roads. It's a +pleasant place here when people are merry; it's only when they're +jealous, or mean, or tired, or eat up beyond any stomach's digesting, or +when they got the drink in 'em that Satan comes into this garden. +Many's the happy face I've seen here, and many that come again +like friends, but nothing to equal what's going to be, now things +are being set right." + +She smiled, that bounteous woman, with the joy of life and hope. +"You shall have an omelet," she said, "you and your friends; such +an omelet--like they'll have 'em in heaven! I feel there's cooking +in me these days like I've never cooked before. I'm rejoiced +to have it to do. . . ." + +It was just then that Nettie and Verrall appeared under a rustic +archway of crimson roses that led out from the inn. Nettie wore +white and a sun-hat, and Verrall was a figure of gray. "Here +are my friends," I said; but for all the magic of the Change, +something passed athwart the sunlight in my soul like the passing +of the shadow of a cloud. "A pretty couple," said the landlady, +as they crossed the velvet green toward us. . . . + +They were indeed a pretty couple, but that did not greatly gladden +me. No--I winced a little at that. + + + +Section 3 + +This old newspaper, this first reissue of the New Paper, +dessicated last relic of a vanished age, is like the little piece +of identification the superstitious of the old days--those queer +religionists who brought a certain black-clad Mrs. Piper to the +help of Christ--used to put into the hand of a clairvoyant. At +the crisp touch of it I look across a gulf of fifty years and see +again the three of us sitting about that table in the arbor, and I +smell again the smell of the sweet-briar that filled the air about +us, and hear in our long pauses the abundant murmuring of bees +among the heliotrope of the borders. + +It is the dawn of the new time, but we bear, all three of us, the +marks and liveries of the old. + +I see myself, a dark, ill-dressed youth, with the bruise Lord Redcar +gave me still blue and yellow beneath my jaw; and young Verrall +sits cornerwise to me, better grown, better dressed, fair and quiet, +two years my senior indeed, but looking no older than I because of +his light complexion; and opposite me is Nettie, with dark eyes upon +my face, graver and more beautiful than I had ever seen her in the +former time. Her dress is still that white one she had worn when +I came upon her in the park, and still about her dainty neck she +wears her string of pearls and that little coin of gold. She is so +much the same, she is so changed; a girl then and now a woman--and +all my agony and all the marvel of the Change between! Over the end +of the green table about which we sit, a spotless cloth is spread, +it bears a pleasant lunch spread out with a simple equipage. Behind +me is the liberal sunshine of the green and various garden. I see +it all. Again I sit there, eating awkwardly, this paper lies upon +the table and Verrall talks of the Change. + +"You can't imagine," he says in his sure, fine accents, "how much +the Change has destroyed of me. I still don't feel awake. Men of +my sort are so tremendously MADE; I never suspected it before." + +He leans over the table toward me with an evident desire to make +himself perfectly understood. "I find myself like some creature +that is taken out of its shell--soft and new. I was trained to +dress in a certain way, to behave in a certain way, to think in +a certain way; I see now it's all wrong and narrow--most of it +anyhow--a system of class shibboleths. We were decent to each other +in order to be a gang to the rest of the world. Gentlemen indeed! +But it's perplexing------" + +I can hear his voice saying that now, and see the lift of his +eyebrows and his pleasant smile. + +He paused. He had wanted to say that, but it was not the thing we +had to say. + +I leant forward a little and took hold of my glass very tightly. +"You two," I said, "will marry?" + +They looked at one another. + +Nettie spoke very softly. "I did not mean to marry when I came +away," she said. + +"I know," I answered. I looked up with a sense of effort and met +Verrall's eyes. + +He answered me. "I think we two have joined our lives. . . . But +the thing that took us was a sort of madness." + +I nodded. "All passion," I said, "is madness." Then I fell into a +doubting of those words. + +"Why did we do these things?" he said, turning to her suddenly. + +Her hands were clasped under her chin, her eyes downcast. + +"We HAD to," she said, with her old trick of inadequate expression. + +Then she seemed to open out suddenly. + +"Willie," she cried with a sudden directness, with her eyes appealing +to me, "I didn't mean to treat you badly--indeed I didn't. I kept +thinking of you--and of father and mother, all the time. Only it +didn't seem to move me. It didn't move me not one bit from the way +I had chosen." + +"Chosen!" I said. + +"Something seemed to have hold of me," she admitted. "It's all so +unaccountable. . . ." + +She gave a little gesture of despair. + +Verrall's fingers played on the cloth for a space. Then he turned +his face to me again. + +"Something said 'Take her.' Everything. It was a raging desire--for +her. I don't know. Everything contributed to that--or counted for +nothing. You------" + +"Go on," said I. + +"When I knew of you------" + +I looked at Nettie. "You never told him about me?" I said, feeling, +as it were, a sting out of the old time. + +Verrall answered for her. "No. But things dropped; I saw you that +night, my instincts were all awake. I knew it was you." + +"You triumphed over me? . . . If I could I would have triumphed +over you," I said. "But go on!" + +"Everything conspired to make it the finest thing in life. It had +an air of generous recklessness. It meant mischief, it might mean +failure in that life of politics and affairs, for which I was +trained, which it was my honor to follow. That made it all the +finer. It meant ruin or misery for Nettie. That made it all the +finer. No sane or decent man would have approved of what we did. +That made it more splendid than ever. I had all the advantages of +position and used them basely. That mattered not at all." + +"Yes," I said; "it is true. And the same dark wave that lifted you, +swept me on to follow. With that revolver--and blubbering with +hate. And the word to you, Nettie, what was it? 'Give?' Hurl yourself +down the steep?" + +Nettie's hands fell upon the table. "I can't tell what it was," she +said, speaking bare-hearted straight to me. "Girls aren't trained +as men are trained to look into their minds. I can't see it yet. +All sorts of mean little motives were there--over and above the +'must.' Mean motives. I kept thinking of his clothes." She smiled--a +flash of brightness at Verrall. "I kept thinking of being like a +lady and sitting in an hotel--with men like butlers waiting. It's +the dreadful truth, Willie. Things as mean as that! Things meaner +than that!" + +I can see her now pleading with me, speaking with a frankness as +bright and amazing as the dawn of the first great morning. + +"It wasn't all mean," I said slowly, after a pause. + +"No!" They spoke together. + +"But a woman chooses more than a man does," Nettie added. "I saw +it all in little bright pictures. Do you know--that jacket--there's +something------ You won't mind my telling you? But you won't now!" + +I nodded, "No." + +She spoke as if she spoke to my soul, very quietly and very +earnestly, seeking to give the truth. "Something cottony in that +cloth of yours," she said. "I know there's something horrible in +being swung round by things like that, but they did swing me round. +In the old time--to have confessed that! And I hated Clayton--and +the grime of it. That kitchen! Your mother's dreadful kitchen! +And besides, Willie, I was afraid of you. I didn't understand you +and I did him. It's different now--but then I knew what he meant. +And there was his voice." + +"Yes," I said to Verrall, making these discoveries quietly, "yes, +Verrall, you have a good voice. Queer I never thought of that +before!" + +We sat silently for a time before our vivisected passions. + +"Gods!" I cried, "and there was our poor little top-hamper of +intelligence on all these waves of instinct and wordless desire, +these foaming things of touch and sight and feeling, like--like +a coop of hens washed overboard and clucking amidst the seas." + +Verrall laughed approval of the image I had struck out. "A week +ago," he said, trying it further, "we were clinging to our chicken +coops and going with the heave and pour. That was true enough a +week ago. But to-day------?" + +"To-day," I said, "the wind has fallen. The world storm is over. +And each chicken coop has changed by a miracle to a vessel that +makes head against the sea." + + + +Section 4 + +"What are we to do?" asked Verrall. + +Nettie drew a deep crimson carnation from the bowl before us, and +began very neatly and deliberately to turn down the sepals of its +calyx and remove, one by one, its petals. I remember that went +on through all our talk. She put those ragged crimson shreds in a +long row and adjusted them and readjusted them. When at last I was +alone with these vestiges the pattern was still incomplete. + +"Well," said I, "the matter seems fairly simple. You two"--I +swallowed it--"love one another." + +I paused. They answered me by silence, by a thoughtful silence. + +"You belong to each other. I have thought it over and looked at it +from many points of view. I happened to want--impossible things. +. . . I behaved badly. I had no right to pursue you." I turned to +Verrall. "You hold yourself bound to her?" + +He nodded assent. + +"No social influence, no fading out of all this generous clearness +in the air--for that might happen--will change you back . . . ?" + +He answered me with honest eyes meeting mine, "No, Leadford, no!" + +"I did not know you," I said. "I thought of you as something very +different from this." + +"I was," he interpolated. + +"Now," I said, "it is all changed." + +Then I halted--for my thread had slipped away from me. + +"As for me," I went on, and glanced at Nettie's downcast face, and +then sat forward with my eyes upon the flowers between us, "since +I am swayed and shall be swayed by an affection for Nettie, since +that affection is rich with the seeds of desire, since to see her +yours and wholly yours is not to be endured by me--I must turn +about and go from you; you must avoid me and I you. . . . We must +divide the world like Jacob and Esau. . . . I must direct myself +with all the will I have to other things. After all--this passion +is not life! It is perhaps for brutes and savages, but for men. +No! We must part and I must forget. What else is there but that?" + +I did not look up, I sat very tense with the red petals printing +an indelible memory in my brain, but I felt the assent of Verrall's +pose. There were some moments of silence. Then Nettie spoke. +"But------" she said, and ceased. + +I waited for a little while. I sighed and leant back in my chair. +"It is perfectly simple," I smiled, "now that we have cool heads." + +"But IS it simple?" asked Nettie, and slashed my discourse out of +being. + +I looked up and found her with her eyes on Verrall. "You see," +she said, "I like Willie. It's hard to say what one feels--but I +don't want him to go away like that." + +"But then," objected Verrall, "how------?" + +"No," said Nettie, and swept her half-arranged carnation petals back +into a heap of confusion. She began to arrange them very quickly +into one long straight line. + +"It's so difficult------ I've never before in all my life tried +to get to the bottom of my mind. For one thing, I've not treated +Willie properly. He--he counted on me. I know he did. I was +his hope. I was a promised delight--something, something to crown +life--better than anything he had ever had. And a secret pride. . . . +He lived upon me. I knew--when we two began to meet together, +you and I------ It was a sort of treachery to him------" + +"Treachery!" I said. "You were only feeling your way through all +these perplexities." + +"You thought it treachery." + +"I don't now." + +"I did. In a sense I think so still. For you had need of me." + +I made a slight protest at this doctrine and fell thinking. + +"And even when he was trying to kill us," she said to her lover, +"I felt for him down in the bottom of my mind. I can understand +all the horrible things, the humiliation--the humiliation! he went +through." + +"Yes," I said, "but I don't see------" + +"I don't see. I'm only trying to see. But you know, Willie, you +are a part of my life. I have known you longer than I have known +Edward. I know you better. Indeed I know you with all my heart. +You think all your talk was thrown away upon me, that I never +understood that side of you, or your ambitions or anything. I did. +More than I thought at the time. Now--now it is all clear to me. +What I had to understand in you was something deeper than Edward +brought me. I have it now. . . . You are a part of my life, and I +don't want to cut all that off from me now I have comprehended it, +and throw it away." + +"But you love Verrall." + +"Love is such a queer thing! . . . Is there one love? I mean, only +one love?" She turned to Verrall. "I know I love you. I can speak +out about that now. Before this morning I couldn't have done. It's +just as though my mind had got out of a scented prison. But what +is it, this love for you? It's a mass of fancies--things about +you--ways you look, ways you have. It's the senses--and the senses +of certain beauties. Flattery too, things you said, hopes and +deceptions for myself. And all that had rolled up together and taken +to itself the wild help of those deep emotions that slumbered in my +body; it seemed everything. But it wasn't. How can I describe it? +It was like having a very bright lamp with a thick shade--everything +else in the room was hidden. But you take the shade off and there +they are--it is the same light--still there! Only it lights every +one!" + +Her voice ceased. For awhile no one spoke, and Nettie, with a quick +movement, swept the petals into the shape of a pyramid. + +Figures of speech always distract me, and it ran through my mind +like some puzzling refrain, "It is still the same light. . . ." + +"No woman believes these things," she asserted abruptly. + +"What things?" + +"No woman ever has believed them." + +"You have to choose a man," said Verrall, apprehending her before +I did. + +"We're brought up to that. We're told--it's in books, in stories, +in the way people look, in the way they behave--one day there will +come a man. He will be everything, no one else will be anything. +Leave everything else; live in him." + +"And a man, too, is taught that of some woman," said Verrall. + +"Only men don't believe it! They have more obstinate minds. . . . +Men have never behaved as though they believed it. One need not +be old to know that. By nature they don't believe it. But a woman +believes nothing by nature. She goes into a mold hiding her secret +thoughts almost from herself." + +"She used to," I said. + +"You haven't," said Verrall, "anyhow." + +"I've come out. It's this comet. And Willie. And because I never +really believed in the mold at all--even if I thought I did. It's +stupid to send Willie off--shamed, cast out, never to see him +again--when I like him as much as I do. It is cruel, it is wicked +and ugly, to prance over him as if he was a defeated enemy, and +pretend I'm going to be happy just the same. There's no sense in +a rule of life that prescribes that. It's selfish. It's brutish. +It's like something that has no sense. I------" there was a sob in +her voice: "Willie! I WON'T." + +I sat lowering, I mused with my eyes upon her quick fingers. + +"It IS brutish," I said at last, with a careful unemotional +deliberation. "Nevertheless--it is in the nature of things. . . . +No! . . . You see, after all, we are still half brutes, Nettie. +And men, as you say, are more obstinate than women. The comet +hasn't altered that; it's only made it clearer. We have come into +being through a tumult of blind forces. . . . I come back to what +I said just now; we have found our poor reasonable minds, our wills +to live well, ourselves, adrift on a wash of instincts, passions, +instinctive prejudices, half animal stupidities. . . . Here we +are like people clinging to something--like people awakening--upon +a raft." + +"We come back at last to my question," said Verrall, softly; "what +are we to do?" + +"Part," I said. "You see, Nettie, these bodies of ours are not +the bodies of angels. They are the same bodies------ I have read +somewhere that in our bodies you can find evidence of the lowliest +ancestry; that about our inward ears--I think it is--and about our +teeth, there remains still something of the fish, that there are +bones that recall little--what is it?--marsupial forebears--and +a hundred traces of the ape. Even your beautiful body, Nettie, +carries this taint. No! Hear me out." I leant forward earnestly. +"Our emotions, our passions, our desires, the substance of them, +like the substance of our bodies, is an animal, a competing thing, as +well as a desiring thing. You speak to us now a mind to minds--one +can do that when one has had exercise and when one has eaten, when +one is not doing anything--but when one turns to live, one turns +again to matter." + +"Yes," said Nettie, slowly following me, "but you control it." + +"Only through a measure of obedience. There is no magic in the +business--to conquer matter, we must divide the enemy, and take +matter as an ally. Nowadays it is indeed true, by faith a man can +remove mountains; he can say to a mountain, Be thou removed and be +thou cast into the sea; but he does it because he helps and trusts +his brother men, because he has the wit and patience and courage +to win over to his side iron, steel, obedience, dynamite, cranes, +trucks, the money of other people. . . . To conquer my desire for +you, I must not perpetually thwart it by your presence; I must go +away so that I may not see you, I must take up other interests, +thrust myself into struggles and discussions------" + +"And forget?" said Nettie. + +"Not forget," I said; "but anyhow--cease to brood upon you." + +She hung on that for some moments. + +"No," she said, demolished her last pattern and looked up at Verrall +as he stirred. + +Verrall leant forward on the table, elbows upon it, and the fingers +of his two hands intertwined. + +"You know," he said, "I haven't thought much of these things. At +school and the university, one doesn't. . . . It was part of the +system to prevent it. They'll alter all that, no doubt. We seem"--he +thought--"to be skating about over questions that one came to at +last in Greek--with variorum readings--in Plato, but which it never +occurred to any one to translate out of a dead language into living +realities. . . ." He halted and answered some unspoken question +from his own mind with, "No. I think with Leadford, Nettie, that, +as he put it, it is in the nature of things for men to be exclusive. +. . . Minds are free things and go about the world, but only one +man can possess a woman. You must dismiss rivals. We are made for +the struggle for existence--we ARE the struggle for existence; the +things that live are the struggle for existence incarnate--and that +works out that the men struggle for their mates; for each woman +one prevails. The others go away." + +"Like animals," said Nettie. + +"Yes. . . ." + +"There are many things in life," I said, "but that is the rough +universal truth." + +"But," said Nettie, "you don't struggle. That has been altered +because men have minds." + +"You choose," I said. + +"If I don't choose to choose?" + +"You have chosen." + +She gave a little impatient "Oh! Why are women always the slaves of +sex? Is this great age of Reason and Light that has come to alter +nothing of that? And men too! I think it is all--stupid. I do not +believe this is the right solution of the thing, or anything but +the bad habits of the time that was. . . Instinct! You don't let +your instincts rule you in a lot of other things. Here am I between +you. Here is Edward. I--love him because he is gay and pleasant, +and because--because I LIKE him! Here is Willie--a part of me--my +first secret, my oldest friend! Why must I not have both? Am I not +a mind that you must think of me as nothing but a woman? imagine +me always as a thing to struggle for?" She paused; then she made +her distressful proposition to me. "Let us three keep together," +she said. "Let us not part. To part is hate, Willie. Why should we +not anyhow keep friends? Meet and talk?" + +"Talk?" I said. "About this sort of thing?" + +I looked across at Verrall and met his eyes, and we studied one +another. It was the clean, straight scrutiny of honest antagonism. +"No," I decided. "Between us, nothing of that sort can be." + +"Ever?" said Nettie. + +"Never," I said, convinced. + +I made an effort within myself. "We cannot tamper with the law and +customs of these things," I said; "these passions are too close +to one's essential self. Better surgery than a lingering disease! +From Nettie my love--asks all. A man's love is not devotion--it is +a demand, a challenge. And besides"--and here I forced my theme--"I +have given myself now to a new mistress--and it is I, Nettie, who +am unfaithful. Behind you and above you rises the coming City +of the World, and I am in that building. Dear heart! you are only +happiness--and that------Indeed that calls! If it is only that my +life blood shall christen the foundation stones--I could almost +hope that should be my part, Nettie--I will join myself in that." +I threw all the conviction I could into these words. . . . "No +conflict of passion." I added a little lamely, "must distract me." + +There was a pause. + +"Then we must part," said Nettie, with the eyes of a woman one +strikes in the face. + +I nodded assent. . . . + +There was a little pause, and then I stood up. We stood up, all +three. We parted almost sullenly, with no more memorable words, +and I was left presently in the arbor alone. + +I do not think I watched them go. I only remember myself left there +somehow--horribly empty and alone. I sat down again and fell into +a deep shapeless musing. + + + +Section 5 + +Suddenly I looked up. Nettie had come back and stood looking down +at me. + +"Since we talked I have been thinking," she said. "Edward has let +me come to you alone. And I feel perhaps I can talk better to you +alone." + +I said nothing and that embarrassed her. + +"I don't think we ought to part," she said. + +"No--I don't think we ought to part," she repeated. + +"One lives," she said, "in different ways. I wonder if you will +understand what I am saying, Willie. It is hard to say what I feel. +But I want it said. If we are to part for ever I want it said--very +plainly. Always before I have had the woman's instinct and the +woman's training which makes one hide. But------ Edward is not all +of me. Think of what I am saying--Edward is not all of me. . . . I +wish I could tell you better how I see it. I am not all of myself. +You, at any rate, are a part of me and I cannot bear to leave you. +And I cannot see why I should leave you. There is a sort of blood +link between us, Willie. We grew together. We are in one another's +bones. I understand you. Now indeed I understand. In some way +I have come to an understanding at a stride. Indeed I understand +you and your dream. I want to help you. Edward--Edward has no dreams. +. . . It is dreadful to me, Willie, to think we two are to part." + +"But we have settled that--part we must." + +"But WHY?" + +"I love you." + +"Well, and why should I hide it Willie?--I love you. . . ." Our +eyes met. She flushed, she went on resolutely: "You are stupid. +The whole thing is stupid. I love you both." + +I said, "You do not understand what you say. No!" + +"You mean that I must go." + +"Yes, yes. Go!" + +For a moment we looked at one another, mute, as though deep down +in the unfathomable darkness below the surface and present reality +of things dumb meanings strove to be. She made to speak and desisted. + +"But MUST I go?" she said at last, with quivering lips, and the +tears in her eyes were stars. Then she began, "Willie------" + +"Go!" I interrupted her. . . . "Yes." + +Then again we were still. + +She stood there, a tearful figure of pity, longing for me, pitying +me. Something of that wider love, that will carry our descendants +at last out of all the limits, the hard, clear obligations of our +personal life, moved us, like the first breath of a coming wind +out of heaven that stirs and passes away. I had an impulse to take +her hand and kiss it, and then a trembling came to me, and I knew +that if I touched her, my strength would all pass from me. . . . + +And so, standing at a distance one from the other, we parted, and +Nettie went, reluctant and looking back, with the man she had chosen, +to the lot she had chosen, out of my life--like the sunlight +out of my life. . . . + +Then, you know, I suppose I folded up this newspaper and put it +in my pocket. But my memory of that meeting ends with the face of +Nettie turning to go. + + + +Section 6 + +I remember all that very distinctly to this day. I could almost +vouch for the words I have put into our several mouths. Then comes +a blank. I have a dim memory of being back in the house near the +Links and the bustle of Melmount's departure, of finding Parker's +energy distasteful, and of going away down the road with a strong +desire to say good-bye to Melmount alone. + +Perhaps I was already doubting my decision to part for ever from +Nettie, for I think I had it in mind to tell him all that +had been said and done. . . . + +I don't think I had a word with him or anything but a hurried hand +clasp. I am not sure. It has gone out of my mind. But I have a +very clear and certain memory of my phase of bleak desolation as +I watched his car recede and climb and vanish over Mapleborough +Hill, and that I got there my first full and definite intimation +that, after all, this great Change and my new wide aims in life, +were not to mean indiscriminate happiness for me. I had a sense of +protest, as against extreme unfairness, as I saw him go. "It is +too soon," I said to myself, "to leave me alone." + +I felt I had sacrificed too much, that after I had said good-bye to +the hot immediate life of passion, to Nettie and desire, to physical +and personal rivalry, to all that was most intensely myself, it was +wrong to leave me alone and sore hearted, to go on at once with +these steely cold duties of the wider life. I felt new born, and +naked, and at a loss. + +"Work!" I said with an effort at the heroic, and turned about with +a sigh, and I was glad that the way I had to go would at +least take me to my mother. . . . + +But, curiously enough, I remember myself as being fairly cheerful +in the town of Birmingham that night, I recall an active and +interested mood. I spent the night in Birmingham because the train +service on was disarranged, and I could not get on. I went to listen +to a band that was playing its brassy old-world music in the public +park, and I fell into conversation with a man who said he had been +a reporter upon one of their minor local papers. He was full and +keen upon all the plans of reconstruction that were now shaping +over the lives of humanity, and I know that something of that +noble dream came back to me with his words and phrases. We walked +up to a place called Bourneville by moonlight, and talked of the +new social groupings that must replace the old isolated homes, and +how the people would be housed. + +This Bourneville was germane to that matter. It had been an +attempt on the part of a private firm of manufacturers to improve +the housing of their workers. To our ideas to-day it would seem the +feeblest of benevolent efforts, but at the time it was extraordinary +and famous, and people came long journeys to see its trim cottages +with baths sunk under the kitchen floors (of all conceivable +places), and other brilliant inventions. No one seemed to see the +danger to liberty in that aggressive age, that might arise through +making workpeople tenants and debtors of their employer, though an +Act called the Truck Act had long ago intervened to prevent minor +developments in the same direction. . . . But I and my chance +acquaintance seemed that night always to have been aware of that +possibility, and we had no doubt in our minds of the public nature +of the housing duty. Our interest lay rather in the possibility of +common nurseries and kitchens and public rooms that should economize +toil and give people space and freedom. + +It was very interesting, but still a little cheerless, and when I +lay in bed that night I thought of Nettie and the queer modifications +of preference she had made, and among other things and in a way, I +prayed. I prayed that night, let me confess it, to an image I had +set up in my heart, an image that still serves with me as a symbol +for things inconceivable, to a Master Artificer, the unseen captain +of all who go about the building of the world, the making of mankind. + +But before and after I prayed I imagined I was talking and reasoning +and meeting again with Nettie. . . . She never came into the temple +of that worshiping with me. + + + + +CHAPTER THE SECOND + +MY MOTHER'S LAST DAYS + + + +Section 1 + +NEXT day I came home to Clayton. + +The new strange brightness of the world was all the brighter there, +for the host of dark distressful memories, of darkened childhood, +toilsome youth, embittered adolescence that wove about the place +for me. It seemed to me that I saw morning there for the first time. +No chimneys smoked that day, no furnaces were burning, the people +were busy with other things. The clear strong sun, the sparkle in +the dustless air, made a strange gaiety in the narrow streets. I +passed a number of smiling people coming home from the public +breakfasts that were given in the Town Hall until better things +could be arranged, and happened on Parload among them. "You were +right about that comet," I sang out at the sight of him; and he +came toward me and clasped my hand. + +"What are people doing here?" said I. + +"They're sending us food from outside," he said, "and we're going +to level all these slums--and shift into tents on to the moors;" +and he began to tell me of many things that were being arranged, +the Midland land committees had got to work with remarkable celerity +and directness of purpose, and the redistribution of population +was already in its broad outlines planned. He was working at +an improvised college of engineering. Until schemes of work were +made out, almost every one was going to school again to get as much +technical training as they could against the demands of the huge +enterprise of reconstruction that was now beginning. + +He walked with me to my door, and there I met old Pettigrew coming +down the steps. He looked dusty and tired, but his eye was brighter +than it used to be, and he carried in a rather unaccustomed manner, +a workman's tool basket. + +"How's the rheumatism, Mr. Pettigrew?" I asked. + +"Dietary," said old Pettigrew, "can work wonders. . . ." He looked +me in the eye. "These houses," he said, "will have to come down, +I suppose, and our notions of property must undergo very considerable +revision--in the light of reason; but meanwhile I've been doing +something to patch that disgraceful roof of mine! To think that +I could have dodged and evaded------" + +He raised a deprecatory hand, drew down the loose corners of his +ample mouth, and shook his old head. + +"The past is past, Mr. Pettigrew." + +"Your poor dear mother! So good and honest a woman! So simple and +kind and forgiving! To think of it! My dear young man!"--he said +it manfully--"I'm ashamed." + +"The whole world blushed at dawn the other day, Mr. Pettigrew," I +said, "and did it very prettily. That's over now. God knows, who +is NOT ashamed of all that came before last Tuesday." + +I held out a forgiving hand, naively forgetful that in this place +I was a thief, and he took it and went his way, shaking his head +and repeating he was ashamed, but I think a little comforted. + +The door opened and my poor old mother's face, marvelously cleaned, +appeared. "Ah, Willie, boy! YOU. You!" + +I ran up the steps to her, for I feared she might fall. + +How she clung to me in the passage, the dear woman! . . . + +But first she shut the front door. The old habit of respect for my +unaccountable temper still swayed her. "Ah deary!" she said, "ah +deary! But you were sorely tried," and kept her face close to my +shoulder, lest she should offend me by the sight of the tears that +welled within her. + +She made a sort of gulping noise and was quiet for a while, holding +me very tightly to her heart with her worn, long hands . . . + +She thanked me presently for my telegram, and I put my arm about +her and drew her into the living room. + +"It's all well with me, mother dear," I said, "and the dark times +are over--are done with for ever, mother." + +Whereupon she had courage and gave way and sobbed aloud, none +chiding her. + +She had not let me know she could still weep for five grimy years. . . . + + + +Section 2 + +Dear heart! There remained for her but a very brief while in this +world that had been renewed. I did not know how short that time +would be, but the little I could do--perhaps after all it was not +little to her--to atone for the harshness of my days of wrath and +rebellion, I did. I took care to be constantly with her, for I +perceived now her curious need of me. It was not that we had ideas +to exchange or pleasures to share, but she liked to see me at table, +to watch me working, to have me go to and fro. There was no toil +for her any more in the world, but only such light services as +are easy and pleasant for a worn and weary old woman to do, and I +think she was happy even at her end. + +She kept to her queer old eighteenth century version of religion, +too, without a change. She had worn this particular amulet so +long it was a part of her. Yet the Change was evident even in that +persistence. I said to her one day, "But do you still believe in +that hell of flame, dear mother? You--with your tender heart!" + +She vowed she did. + +Some theological intricacy made it necessary to her, but still------ + +She looked thoughtfully at a bank of primulas before her for a time, +and then laid her tremulous hand impressively on my arm. "You know, +Willie, dear," she said, as though she was clearing up a childish +misunderstanding of mine, "I don't think any one will GO there. I +never DID think that. . . ." + + + +Section 3 + +That talk stands out in my memory because of that agreeable theological +decision of hers, but it was only one of a great number of talks. +It used to be pleasant in the afternoon, after the day's work was +done and before one went on with the evening's study--how odd it +would have seemed in the old time for a young man of the industrial +class to be doing post-graduate work in sociology, and how much +a matter of course it seems now!--to walk out into the gardens +of Lowchester House, and smoke a cigarette or so and let her talk +ramblingly of the things that interested her. . . . Physically +the Great Change did not do so very much to reinvigorate her--she +had lived in that dismal underground kitchen in Clayton too long +for any material rejuvenescence--she glowed out indeed as a dying +spark among the ashes might glow under a draught of fresh air--and +assuredly it hastened her end. But those closing days were very +tranquil, full of an effortless contentment. With her, life was like +a rainy, windy day that clears only to show the sunset afterglow. +The light has passed. She acquired no new habits amid the comforts +of the new life, did no new things, but only found a happier light +upon the old. + +She lived with a number of other old ladies belonging to our commune +in the upper rooms of Lowchester House. Those upper apartments +were simple and ample, fine and well done in the Georgian style, +and they had been organized to give the maximum of comfort and +conveniences and to economize the need of skilled attendance. We +had taken over the various "great houses," as they used to be +called, to make communal dining-rooms and so forth--their kitchens +were conveniently large--and pleasant places for the old people +of over sixty whose time of ease had come, and for suchlike public +uses. We had done this not only with Lord Redcar's house, but also +with Checkshill House--where old Mrs. Verrall made a dignified +and capable hostess,--and indeed with most of the fine residences +in the beautiful wide country between the Four Towns district and +the Welsh mountains. About these great houses there had usually +been good outbuildings, laundries, married servants' quarters, +stabling, dairies, and the like, suitably masked by trees, we +turned these into homes, and to them we added first tents and wood +chalets and afterward quadrangular residential buildings. In order +to be near my mother I had two small rooms in the new collegiate +buildings which our commune was almost the first to possess, and they +were very convenient for the station of the high-speed electric +railway that took me down to our daily conferences and my secretarial +and statistical work in Clayton. + +Ours had been one of the first modern communes to get in order; we +were greatly helped by the energy of Lord Redcar, who had a fine +feeling for the picturesque associations of his ancestral home--the +detour that took our line through the beeches and bracken and +bluebells of the West Wood and saved the pleasant open wildness +of the park was one of his suggestions; and we had many reasons to +be proud of our surroundings. Nearly all the other communes that +sprang up all over the pleasant parkland round the industrial +valley of the Four Towns, as the workers moved out, came to us to +study the architecture of the residential squares and quadrangles +with which we had replaced the back streets between the great +houses and the ecclesiastical residences about the cathedral, and +the way in which we had adapted all these buildings to our new +social needs. Some claimed to have improved on us. But they could +not emulate the rhododendron garden out beyond our shrubberies; that +was a thing altogether our own in our part of England, because of +its ripeness and of the rarity of good peat free from lime. + +These gardens had been planned under the third Lord Redcar, fifty +years ago and more; they abounded in rhododendra and azaleas, and +were in places so well sheltered and sunny that great magnolias +flourished and flowered. There were tall trees smothered in crimson +and yellow climbing roses, and an endless variety of flowering +shrubs and fine conifers, and such pampas grass as no other garden +can show. And barred by the broad shadows of these, were glades and +broad spaces of emerald turf, and here and there banks of pegged +roses, and flower-beds, and banks given over some to spring bulbs, +and some to primroses and primulas and polyanthuses. My mother +loved these latter banks and the little round staring eyes of their +innumerable yellow, ruddy brown, and purple corollas, more than +anything else the gardens could show, and in the spring of the Year +of Scaffolding she would go with me day after day to the seat that +showed them in the greatest multitude. + +It gave her, I think, among other agreeable impressions, a sense +of gentle opulence. In the old time she had never known what it was +to have more than enough of anything agreeable in the world at all. + +We would sit and think, or talk--there was a curious effect of +complete understanding between us whether we talked or were still. + +"Heaven," she said to me one day, "Heaven is a garden." + +I was moved to tease her a little. "There's jewels, you know, walls +and gates of jewels--and singing." + +"For such as like them," said my mother firmly, and thought for +a while. "There'll be things for all of us, o' course. But for me +it couldn't be Heaven, dear, unless it was a garden--a nice sunny +garden. . . . And feeling such as we're fond of, are close and +handy by" + +You of your happier generation cannot realize the wonderfulness +of those early days in the new epoch, the sense of security, the +extraordinary effects of contrast. In the morning, except in high +summer, I was up before dawn, and breakfasted upon the swift, smooth +train, and perhaps saw the sunrise as I rushed out of the little +tunnel that pierced Clayton Crest, and so to work like a man. Now +that we had got all the homes and schools and all the softness of +life away from our coal and iron ore and clay, now that a thousand +obstructive "rights" and timidities had been swept aside, we could +let ourselves go, we merged this enterprise with that, cut across +this or that anciently obstructive piece of private land, joined and +separated, effected gigantic consolidations and gigantic economies, +and the valley, no longer a pit of squalid human tragedies and +meanly conflicting industries, grew into a sort of beauty of its +own, a savage inhuman beauty of force and machinery and flames. +One was a Titan in that Etna. Then back one came at midday to bath +and change in the train, and so to the leisurely gossiping lunch +in the club dining-room in Lowchester House, and the refreshment +of these green and sunlit afternoon tranquillities. + +Sometimes in her profounder moments my mother doubted whether all +this last phase of her life was not a dream. + +"A dream," I used to say, "a dream indeed--but a dream that is one +step nearer awakening than that nightmare of the former days." + +She found great comfort and assurance in my altered clothes--she +liked the new fashions of dress, she alleged. It was not simply +altered clothes. I did grow two inches, broaden some inches +round my chest, and increase in weight three stones before I was +twenty-three. I wore a soft brown cloth and she would caress my +sleeve and admire it greatly--she had the woman's sense of texture +very strong in her. + +Sometimes she would muse upon the past, rubbing together her poor +rough hands--they never got softened--one over the other. She told +me much I had not heard before about my father, and her own early +life. It was like finding flat and faded flowers in a book still +faintly sweet, to realize that once my mother had been loved with +passion; that my remote father had once shed hot tears of tenderness in +her arms. And she would sometimes even speak tentatively in those +narrow, old-world phrases that her lips could rob of all their +bitter narrowness, of Nettie. + +"She wasn't worthy of you, dear," she would say abruptly, leaving +me to guess the person she intended. + +"No man is worthy of a woman's love," I answered. "No woman is +worthy of a man's. I love her, dear mother, and that you cannot +alter." + +"There's others," she would muse. + +"Not for me," I said. "No! I didn't fire a shot that time; I burnt +my magazine. I can't begin again, mother, not from the beginning." + +She sighed and said no more then. + +At another time she said--I think her words were: "You'll be lonely +when I'm gone dear." + +"You'll not think of going, then," I said. + +"Eh, dear! but man and maid should come together." + +I said nothing to that. + +"You brood overmuch on Nettie, dear. If I could see you married to +some sweet girl of a woman, some good, KIND girl------" + +"Dear mother, I'm married enough. Perhaps some day------ Who knows? +I can wait." + +"But to have nothing to do with women!" + +"I have my friends. Don't you trouble, mother. There's plentiful +work for a man in this world though the heart of love is cast out +from him. Nettie was life and beauty for me--is--will be. Don't +think I've lost too much, mother." + +(Because in my heart I told myself the end had still to come.) + +And once she sprang a question on me suddenly that surprised me. + +"Where are they now?" she asked. + +"Who?" + +"Nettie and--him." + +She had pierced to the marrow of my thoughts. "I don't know," I +said shortly. + +Her shriveled hand just fluttered into touch of mine. + +"It's better so," she said, as if pleading. "Indeed . . . it is +better so." + +There was something in her quivering old voice that for a moment +took me back across an epoch, to the protests of the former time, +to those counsels of submission, those appeals not to offend It, +that had always stirred an angry spirit of rebellion within me. + +"That is the thing I doubt," I said, and abruptly I felt I could +talk no more to her of Nettie. I got up and walked away from her, +and came back after a while, to speak of other things, with a bunch +of daffodils for her in my hand. + +But I did not always spend my afternoons with her. There were days +when my crushed hunger for Nettie rose again, and then I had to be +alone; I walked, or bicycled, and presently I found a new interest +and relief in learning to ride. For the horse was already very +swiftly reaping the benefit to the Change. Hardly anywhere was the +inhumanity of horse traction to be found after the first year of +the new epoch, everywhere lugging and dragging and straining was +done by machines, and the horse had become a beautiful instrument +for the pleasure and carriage of youth. I rode both in the saddle +and, what is finer, naked and barebacked. I found violent exercises +were good for the states of enormous melancholy that came upon me, +and when at last horse riding palled, I went and joined the aviators +who practised soaring upon aeroplanes beyond Horsemarden Hill. . . . +But at least every alternate day I spent with my mother, and +altogether I think I gave her two-thirds of my afternoons. + + + +Section 4 + +When presently that illness, that fading weakness that made an euthanasia +for so many of the older people in the beginning of the new time, +took hold upon my mother, there came Anna Reeves to daughter +her--after our new custom. She chose to come. She was already +known to us a little from chance meetings and chance services she +had done my mother in the garden; she sought to give her help. She +seemed then just one of those plainly good girls the world at its +worst has never failed to produce, who were indeed in the dark old +times the hidden antiseptic of all our hustling, hating, faithless +lives. They made their secret voiceless worship, they did their +steadfast, uninspired, unthanked, unselfish work as helpful daughters, +as nurses, as faithful servants, as the humble providences of homes. +She was almost exactly three years older than I. At first I found +no beauty in her, she was short but rather sturdy and ruddy, with +red-tinged hair, and fair hairy brows and red-brown eyes. But her +freckled hands I found, were full of apt help, her voice +carried good cheer. . . . + +At first she was no more than a blue-clad, white-aproned benevolence, +that moved in the shadows behind the bed on which my old mother lay +and sank restfully to death. She would come forward to anticipate +some little need, to proffer some simple comfort, and always then +my mother smiled on her. In a little while I discovered the beauty +of that helpful poise of her woman's body, I discovered the grace +of untiring goodness, the sweetness of a tender pity, and the +great riches of her voice, of her few reassuring words and phrases. +I noted and remembered very clearly how once my mother's lean old +hand patted the firm gold-flecked strength of hers, as it went by +upon its duties with the coverlet. + +"She is a good girl to me," said my mother one day. "A good girl. +Like a daughter should be. . . . I never had a daughter--really." +She mused peacefully for a space. "Your little sister died," she +said. + +I had never heard of that little sister. + +"November the tenth," said my mother. "Twenty-nine months and three +days. . . . I cried. I cried. That was before you came, dear. So +long ago--and I can see it now. I was a young wife then, and your +father was very kind. But I can see its hands, its dear little +quiet hands. . . . Dear, they say that now--now they will not let +the little children die." + +"No, dear mother," I said. "We shall do better now." + +"The club doctor could not come. Your father went twice. There +was some one else, some one who paid. So your father went on into +Swathinglea, and that man wouldn't come unless he had his fee. And +your father had changed his clothes to look more respectful and he +hadn't any money, not even his tram fare home. It seemed cruel to +be waiting there with my baby thing in pain. . . . And I can't help +thinking perhaps we might have saved her. . . . But it was like +that with the poor always in the bad old times--always. When the +doctor came at last he was angry. 'Why wasn't I called before?' +he said, and he took no pains. He was angry because some one hadn't +explained. I begged him--but it was too late." + +She said these things very quietly with drooping eyelids, like one +who describes a dream. "We are going to manage all these things +better now," I said, feeling a strange resentment at this pitiful +little story her faded, matter-of-fact voice was telling me. + +"She talked," my mother went on. "She talked for her age wonderfully. +. . . Hippopotamus." + +"Eh?" I said. + +"Hippopotamus, dear--quite plainly one day, when her father was +showing her pictures. . . And her little prayers. 'Now I lay me. +. . . down to sleep.' . . . I made her little socks. Knitted they +was, dear, and the heel most difficult." + +Her eyes were closed now. She spoke no longer to me but to herself. +She whispered other vague things, little sentences, ghosts of long +dead moments. . . . Her words grew less distinct. + +Presently she was asleep and I got up and went out of the room, +but my mind was queerly obsessed by the thought of that little life +that had been glad and hopeful only to pass so inexplicably out of +hope again into nonentity, this sister of whom I had never +heard before. . . . + +And presently I was in a black rage at all the irrecoverable sorrows +of the past, of that great ocean of avoidable suffering of which +this was but one luminous and quivering red drop. I walked in the +garden and the garden was too small for me; I went out to wander +on the moors. "The past is past," I cried, and all the while across +the gulf of five and twenty years I could hear my poor mother's +heart-wrung weeping for that daughter baby who had suffered and +died. Indeed that old spirit of rebellion has not altogether died +in me, for all the transformation of the new time. . . . I quieted +down at last to a thin and austere comfort in thinking that the +whole is not told to us, that it cannot perhaps be told to such +minds as ours; and anyhow, and what was far more sustaining, that +now we have strength and courage and this new gift of wise love, +whatever cruel and sad things marred the past, none of these sorrowful +things that made the very warp and woof of the old life, need now +go on happening. We could foresee, we could prevent and save. "The +past is past," I said, between sighing and resolve, as I came into +view again on my homeward way of the hundred sunset-lit windows of +old Lowchester House. "Those sorrows are sorrows no more." + +But I could not altogether cheat that common sadness of the new +time, that memory, and insoluble riddle of the countless lives that +had stumbled and failed in pain and darkness before our air grew +clear. + + + + +CHAPTER THE THIRD + +BELTANE AND NEW YEAR'S EVE + + + +Section 1 + +IN the end my mother died rather suddenly, and her death came as +a shock to me. Diagnosis was still very inadequate at that time. +The doctors were, of course, fully alive to the incredible defects +of their common training and were doing all they could to supply +its deficiencies, but they were still extraordinarily ignorant. +Some unintelligently observed factor of her illness came into play +with her, and she became feverish and sank and died very quickly. +I do not know what remedial measures were attempted. I hardly knew +what was happening until the whole thing was over. + +At that time my attention was much engaged by the stir of the great +Beltane festival that was held on May-day in the Year of Scaffolding. +It was the first of the ten great rubbish burnings that opened the +new age. Young people nowadays can scarcely hope to imagine the +enormous quantities of pure litter and useless accumulation with +which we had to deal; had we not set aside a special day and season, +the whole world would have been an incessant reek of small fires; +and it was, I think, a happy idea to revive this ancient festival of +the May and November burnings. It was inevitable that the old idea +of purification should revive with the name, it was felt to be a +burning of other than material encumbrances, innumerable quasi-spiritual +things, deeds, documents, debts, vindictive records, went up on +those great flares. People passed praying between the fires, and +it was a fine symbol of the new and wiser tolerance that had come +to men, that those who still found their comfort in the orthodox +faiths came hither unpersuaded, to pray that all hate might be burnt +out of their professions. For even in the fires of Baal, now that +men have done with base hatred, one may find the living God. + +Endless were the things we had to destroy in those great purgings. +First, there were nearly all the houses and buildings of the old +time. In the end we did not save in England one building in five +thousand that was standing when the comet came. Year by year, as +we made our homes afresh in accordance with the saner needs of our +new social families, we swept away more and more of those horrible +structures, the ancient residential houses, hastily built, without +imagination, without beauty, without common honesty, without even +comfort or convenience, in which the early twentieth century had +sheltered until scarcely one remained; we saved nothing but what +was beautiful or interesting out of all their gaunt and melancholy +abundance. The actual houses, of course, we could not drag to +our fires, but we brought all their ill-fitting deal doors, their +dreadful window sashes, their servant-tormenting staircases, their +dank, dark cupboards, the verminous papers from their scaly walls, +their dust and dirt-sodden carpets, their ill-designed and yet +pretentious tables and chairs, sideboards and chests of drawers, +the old dirt-saturated books, their ornaments--their dirty, decayed, +and altogether painful ornaments--amidst which I remember there +were sometimes even STUFFED DEAD BIRDS!--we burnt them all. The +paint-plastered woodwork, with coat above coat of nasty paint, that +in particular blazed finely. I have already tried to give you an +impression of old-world furniture, of Parload's bedroom, my mother's +room, Mr. Gabbitas's sitting-room, but, thank Heaven! there is +nothing in life now to convey the peculiar dinginess of it all. For +one thing, there is no more imperfect combustion of coal going on +everywhere, and no roadways like grassless open scars along the +earth from which dust pours out perpetually. We burnt and destroyed +most of our private buildings and all the woodwork, all our furniture, +except a few score thousand pieces of distinct and intentional +beauty, from which our present forms have developed, nearly all +our hangings and carpets, and also we destroyed almost every scrap +of old-world clothing. Only a few carefully disinfected types and +vestiges of that remain now in our museums. + +One writes now with a peculiar horror of the dress of the old world. +The men's clothes were worn without any cleansing process at all, +except an occasional superficial brushing, for periods of a year +or so; they were made of dark obscurely mixed patterns to conceal +the stage of defilement they had reached, and they were of a felted +and porous texture admirably calculated to accumulate drifting +matter. Many women wore skirts of similar substances, and of so +long and inconvenient a form that they inevitably trailed among +all the abomination of our horse-frequented roads. It was our boast +in England that the whole of our population was booted--their feet +were for the most part ugly enough to need it,--but it becomes +now inconceivable how they could have imprisoned their feet in the +amazing cases of leather and imitations of leather they used. I +have heard it said that a large part of the physical decline that +was apparent in our people during the closing years of the nineteenth +century, though no doubt due in part to the miscellaneous badness +of the food they ate, was in the main attributable to the vileness +of the common footwear. They shirked open-air exercise altogether +because their boots wore out ruinously and pinched and hurt them +if they took it. I have mentioned, I think, the part my own boots +played in the squalid drama of my adolescence. I had a sense +of unholy triumph over a fallen enemy when at last I found myself +steering truck after truck of cheap boots and shoes (unsold stock +from Swathinglea) to the run-off by the top of the Glanville blast +furnaces. + +"Plup!" they would drop into the cone when Beltane came, and the +roar of their burning would fill the air. Never a cold would come +from the saturation of their brown paper soles, never a corn from +their foolish shapes, never a nail in them get home at last in +suffering flesh. . . . + +Most of our public buildings we destroyed and burnt as we reshaped +our plan of habitation, our theater sheds, our banks, and inconvenient +business warrens, our factories (these in the first year of all), +and all the "unmeaning repetition" of silly little sham Gothic +churches and meeting-houses, mean looking shells of stone and +mortar without love, invention, or any beauty at all in them, that +men had thrust into the face of their sweated God, even as they +thrust cheap food into the mouths of their sweated workers; all +these we also swept away in the course of that first decade. Then +we had the whole of the superseded steam-railway system to scrap +and get rid of, stations, signals, fences, rolling stock; a plant +of ill-planned, smoke-distributing nuisance apparatus, that would, +under former conditions, have maintained an offensive dwindling +obstructive life for perhaps half a century. Then also there was a +great harvest of fences, notice boards, hoardings, ugly sheds, all +the corrugated iron in the world, and everything that was smeared +with tar, all our gas works and petroleum stores, all our horse +vehicles and vans and lorries had to be erased. . . . But I have +said enough now perhaps to give some idea of the bulk and quality +of our great bonfires, our burnings up, our meltings down, our +toil of sheer wreckage, over and above the constructive effort, in +those early years. + +But these were the coarse material bases of the Phoenix fires +of the world. These were but the outward and visible signs of the +innumerable claims, rights, adhesions, debts, bills, deeds, and +charters that were cast upon the fires; a vast accumulation of +insignia and uniforms neither curious enough nor beautiful enough +to preserve, went to swell the blaze, and all (saving a few truly +glorious trophies and memories) of our symbols, our apparatus and +material of war. Then innumerable triumphs of our old, bastard, +half-commercial, fine-art were presently condemned, great oil +paintings, done to please the half-educated middle-class, glared +for a moment and were gone, Academy marbles crumbled to useful lime, +a gross multitude of silly statuettes and decorative crockery, and +hangings, and embroideries, and bad music, and musical instruments +shared this fate. And books, countless books, too, and bales +of newspapers went also to these pyres. From the private houses +in Swathinglea alone--which I had deemed, perhaps not unjustly, +altogether illiterate--we gathered a whole dust-cart full of cheap +ill-printed editions of the minor English classics--for the most +part very dull stuff indeed and still clean--and about a truckload +of thumbed and dog-eared penny fiction, watery base stuff, the +dropsy of our nation's mind. . . . And it seemed to me that when +we gathered those books and papers together, we gathered together +something more than print and paper, we gathered warped and +crippled ideas and contagious base suggestions, the formulae of dull +tolerances and stupid impatiences, the mean defensive ingenuities +of sluggish habits of thinking and timid and indolent evasions. +There was more than a touch of malignant satisfaction for me in +helping gather it all together. + +I was so busy, I say, with my share in this dustman's work that +I did not notice, as I should otherwise have done, the little +indications of change in my mother's state. Indeed, I thought her +a little stronger; she was slightly flushed, slightly more talkative. . . . + +On Beltane Eve, and our Lowchester rummage being finished, I went +along the valley to the far end of Swathinglea to help sort the +stock of the detached group of potbanks there--their chief output +had been mantel ornaments in imitation of marble, and there was +very little sorting, I found, to be done--and there it was nurse +Anna found me at last by telephone, and told me my mother had died +in the morning suddenly and very shortly after my departure. + +For a while I did not seem to believe it; this obviously imminent +event stunned me when it came, as though I had never had an +anticipatory moment. For a while I went on working, and then almost +apathetically, in a mood of half-reluctant curiosity, I started +for Lowchester. + +When I got there the last offices were over, and I was shown my +old mother's peaceful white face, very still, but a little cold +and stern to me, a little unfamiliar, lying among white flowers. + +I went in alone to her, into that quiet room, and stood for +a long time by her bedside. I sat down then and thought. . . . + +Then at last, strangely hushed, and with the deeps of my loneliness +opening beneath me, I came out of that room and down into the world +again, a bright-eyed, active world, very noisy, happy, and busy +with its last preparations for the mighty cremation of past and +superseded things. + + + +Section 2 + +I remember that first Beltane festival as the most terribly lonely +night in my life. It stands in my mind in fragments, fragments of +intense feeling with forgotten gaps between. + +I recall very distinctly being upon the great staircase of Lowchester +House (though I don't remember getting there from the room in which +my mother lay), and how upon the landing I met Anna ascending as I +came down. She had but just heard of my return, and she was hurrying +upstairs to me. She stopped and so did I, and we stood and clasped +hands, and she scrutinized my face in the way women sometimes do. +So we remained for a second or so. I could say nothing to her at +all, but I could feel the wave of her emotion. I halted, answered +the earnest pressure of her hand, relinquished it, and after +a queer second of hesitation went on down, returning to my own +preoccupations. It did not occur to me at all then to ask myself +what she might be thinking or feeling. + +I remember the corridor full of mellow evening light, and how I +went mechanically some paces toward the dining-room. Then at the +sight of the little tables, and a gusty outburst of talking voices +as some one in front of me swung the door open and to, I remembered +that I did not want to eat. . . . After that comes an impression +of myself walking across the open grass in front of the house, and +the purpose I had of getting alone upon the moors, and how somebody +passing me said something about a hat. I had come out without my +hat. + +A fragment of thought has linked itself with an effect of long +shadows upon turf golden with the light of the sinking sun. The +world was singularly empty, I thought, without either Nettie or my +mother. There wasn't any sense in it any more. Nettie was +already back in my mind then. . . . + +Then I am out on the moors. I avoided the crests where the +bonfires were being piled, and sought the lonely places. . . . + +I remember very clearly sitting on a gate beyond the park, in a +fold just below the crest, that hid the Beacon Hill bonfire and its +crowd, and I was looking at and admiring the sunset. The golden +earth and sky seemed like a little bubble that floated in the globe +of human futility. . . . Then in the twilight I walked along an +unknown, bat-haunted road between high hedges. + +I did not sleep under a roof that night. But I hungered and ate. +I ate near midnight at a little inn over toward Birmingham, and +miles away from my home. Instinctively I had avoided the crests +where the bonfire crowds gathered, but here there were many people, +and I had to share a table with a man who had some useless mortgage +deeds to burn. I talked to him about them--but my soul stood at a +great distance behind my lips. . . . + +Soon each hilltop bore a little tulip-shaped flame flower. Little +black figures clustered round and dotted the base of its petals, +and as for the rest of the multitude abroad, the kindly night +swallowed them up. By leaving the roads and clear paths and wandering +in the fields I contrived to keep alone, though the confused noise +of voices and the roaring and crackling of great fires was always +near me. + +I wandered into a lonely meadow, and presently in a hollow of +deep shadows I lay down to stare at the stars. I lay hidden in the +darkness, and ever and again the sough and uproar of the Beltane +fires that were burning up the sere follies of a vanished age, and +the shouting of the people passing through the fires and praying to +be delivered from the prison of themselves, reached my ears. . . . + +And I thought of my mother, and then of my new loneliness and the +hunger of my heart for Nettie. + +I thought of many things that night, but chiefly of the overflowing +personal love and tenderness that had come to me in the wake of +the Change, of the greater need, the unsatisfied need in which I +stood, for this one person who could fulfil all my desires. So long +as my mother had lived, she had in a measure held my heart, given +me a food these emotions could live upon, and mitigated that emptiness +of spirit, but now suddenly that one possible comfort had left me. +There had been many at the season of the Change who had thought that +this great enlargement of mankind would abolish personal love; but +indeed it had only made it finer, fuller, more vitally necessary. +They had thought that, seeing men now were all full of the joyful +passion to make and do, and glad and loving and of willing service +to all their fellows, there would be no need of the one intimate +trusting communion that had been the finest thing of the former +life. And indeed, so far as this was a matter of advantage and +the struggle for existence, they were right. But so far as it was +a matter of the spirit and the fine perceptions of life, it was +altogether wrong. + +We had indeed not eliminated personal love, we had but stripped it +of its base wrappings, of its pride, its suspicions, its mercenary +and competitive elements, until at last it stood up in our minds +stark, shining and invincible. Through all the fine, divaricating +ways of the new life, it grew ever more evident, there were for +every one certain persons, mysteriously and indescribably in the +key of one's self, whose mere presence gave pleasure, whose mere +existence was interest, whose idiosyncrasy blended with accident +to make a completing and predominant harmony for their predestined +lovers. They were the essential thing in life. Without them the +fine brave show of the rejuvenated world was a caparisoned steed +without a rider, a bowl without a flower, a theater without a play. +. . . And to me that night of Beltane, it was as clear as white +flames that Nettie, and Nettie alone, roused those harmonies in +me. And she had gone! I had sent her from me; I knew not whither +she had gone. I had in my first virtuous foolishness cut her out +of my life for ever! + +So I saw it then, and I lay unseen in the darkness and called upon +Nettie, and wept for her, lay upon my face and wept for her, while +the glad people went to and fro, and the smoke streamed thick +across the distant stars, and the red reflections, the shadows and +the fluctuating glares, danced over the face of the world. + +No! the Change had freed us from our baser passions indeed, from +habitual and mechanical concupiscence and mean issues and coarse +imaginings, but from the passions of love it had not freed us. It +had but brought the lord of life, Eros, to his own. All through the +long sorrow of that night I, who had rejected him, confessed +his sway with tears and inappeasable regrets. . . . + +I cannot give the remotest guess of when I rose up, nor of +my tortuous wanderings in the valleys between the midnight fires, +nor how I evaded the laughing and rejoicing multitudes who went +streaming home between three and four, to resume their lives, swept +and garnished, stripped and clean. But at dawn, when the ashes of +the world's gladness were ceasing to glow--it was a bleak dawn that +made me shiver in my thin summer clothes--I came across a field +to a little copse full of dim blue hyacinths. A queer sense +of familiarity arrested my steps, and I stood puzzled. Then I was +moved to go a dozen paces from the path, and at once a singularly +misshapen tree hitched itself into a notch in my memory. This was +the place! Here I had stood, there I had placed my old kite, and +shot with my revolver, learning to use it, against the day when I +should encounter Verrall. + +Kite and revolver had gone now, and all my hot and narrow past, its +last vestiges had shriveled and vanished in the whirling gusts of +the Beltane fires. So I walked through a world of gray ashes at +last, back to the great house in which the dead, deserted image of +my dear lost mother lay. + + + +Section 3 + +I came back to Lowchester House very tired, very wretched; exhausted +by my fruitless longing for Nettie. I had no thought of what lay +before me. + +A miserable attraction drew me into the great house to look again +on the stillness that had been my mother's face, and as I came into +that room, Anna, who had been sitting by the open window, rose to +meet me. She had the air of one who waits. She, too, was pale with +watching; all night she had watched between the dead within and +the Beltane fires abroad, and longed for my coming. I stood +mute between her and the bedside. . . . + +"Willie," she whispered, and eyes and body seemed incarnate pity. + +An unseen presence drew us together. My mother's face became resolute, +commanding. I turned to Anna as a child may turn to its nurse. I +put my hands about her strong shoulders, she folded me to her, and +my heart gave way. I buried my face in her breast and clung +to her weakly, and burst into a passion of weeping. . . . + +She held me with hungry arms. She whispered to me, "There, there!" +as one whispers comfort to a child. . . . Suddenly she was kissing +me. She kissed me with a hungry intensity of passion, on my cheeks, +on my lips. She kissed me on my lips with lips that were +salt with tears. And I returned her kisses. . . . + +Then abruptly we desisted and stood apart--looking at one another. + + + +Section 4 + +It seems to me as if the intense memory of Nettie vanished utterly +out of my mind at the touch of Anna's lips. I loved Anna. + +We went to the council of our group--commune it was then called--and +she was given me in marriage, and within a year she had borne me +a son. We saw much of one another, and talked ourselves very close +together. My faithful friend she became and has been always, and +for a time we were passionate lovers. Always she has loved me and +kept my soul full of tender gratitude and love for her; always +when we met our hands and eyes clasped in friendly greeting, all +through our lives from that hour we have been each other's secure +help and refuge, each other's ungrudging fastness of help and sweetly +frank and open speech. . . . And after a little while my love and +desire for Nettie returned as though it had never faded away. + +No one will have a difficulty now in understanding how that could +be, but in the evil days of the world malaria, that would have been +held to be the most impossible thing. I should have had to crush +that second love out of my thoughts, to have kept it secret from +Anna, to have lied about it to all the world. The old-world theory +was there was only one love--we who float upon a sea of love find +that hard to understand. The whole nature of a man was supposed to +go out to the one girl or woman who possessed him, her whole nature +to go out to him. Nothing was left over--it was a discreditable +thing to have any overplus at all. They formed a secret secluded +system of two, two and such children as she bore him. All other +women he was held bound to find no beauty in, no sweetness, no +interest; and she likewise, in no other man. The old-time men and +women went apart in couples, into defensive little houses, like +beasts into little pits, and in these "homes" they sat down purposing +to love, but really coming very soon to jealous watching of this +extravagant mutual proprietorship. All freshness passed very +speedily out of their love, out of their conversation, all pride +out of their common life. To permit each other freedom was blank +dishonor. That I and Anna should love, and after our love-journey +together, go about our separate lives and dine at the public tables, +until the advent of her motherhood, would have seemed a terrible +strain upon our unmitigable loyalty. And that I should have it +in me to go on loving Nettie--who loved in different manner both +Verrall and me--would have outraged the very quintessence of the +old convention. + +In the old days love was a cruel proprietary thing. But now Anna +could let Nettie live in the world of my mind, as freely as a rose +will suffer the presence of white lilies. If I could hear notes that +were not in her compass, she was glad, because she loved me, that +I should listen to other music than hers. And she, too, could see +the beauty of Nettie. Life is so rich and generous now, giving +friendship, and a thousand tender interests and helps and comforts, that +no one stints another of the full realization of all possibilities +of beauty. For me from the beginning Nettie was the figure of beauty, +the shape and color of the divine principle that lights the world. +For every one there are certain types, certain faces and forms, +gestures, voices and intonations that have that inexplicable +unanalyzable quality. These come through the crowd of kindly friendly +fellow-men and women--one's own. These touch one mysteriously, stir +deeps that must otherwise slumber, pierce and interpret the world. +To refuse this interpretation is to refuse the sun, to darken and +deaden all life. . . . I loved Nettie, I loved all who were like +her, in the measure that they were like her, in voice, or eyes, or +form, or smile. And between my wife and me there was no bitterness +that the great goddess, the life-giver, Aphrodite, Queen of the +living Seas, came to my imagination so. It qualified our mutual +love not at all, since now in our changed world love is unstinted; +it is a golden net about our globe that nets all humanity together. + +I thought of Nettie much, and always movingly beautiful things +restored me to her, all fine music, all pure deep color, all +tender and solemn things. The stars were hers, and the mystery of +moonlight; the sun she wore in her hair, powdered finely, beaten +into gleams and threads of sunlight in the wisps and strands of her +hair. . . . Then suddenly one day a letter came to me from her, in +her unaltered clear handwriting, but in a new language of expression, +telling me many things. She had learnt of my mother's death, and +the thought of me had grown so strong as to pierce the silence I +had imposed on her. We wrote to one another--like common friends +with a certain restraint between us at first, and with a great +longing to see her once more arising in my heart. For a time I left +that hunger unexpressed, and then I was moved to tell it to her. And +so on New Year's Day in the Year Four, she came to Lowchester and +me. How I remember that coming, across the gulf of fifty years! I +went out across the park to meet her, so that we should meet alone. +The windless morning was clear and cold, the ground new carpeted +with snow, and all the trees motionless lace and glitter of frosty +crystals. The rising sun had touched the white with a spirit +of gold, and my heart beat and sang within me. I remember now the +snowy shoulder of the down, sunlit against the bright blue sky. And +presently I saw the woman I loved coming through the white +still trees. . . . + +I had made a goddess of Nettie, and behold she was a fellow-creature! +She came, warm-wrapped and tremulous, to me, with the tender promise +of tears in her eyes, with her hands outstretched and that dear +smile quivering upon her lips. She stepped out of the dream I had +made of her, a thing of needs and regrets and human kindliness. Her +hands as I took them were a little cold. The goddess shone through +her indeed, glowed in all her body, she was a worshipful temple of +love for me--yes. But I could feel, like a thing new discovered, +the texture and sinews of her living, her dear personal +and mortal hands. . . . + + + + +THE EPILOGUE + +THE WINDOW OF THE TOWER + +This was as much as this pleasant-looking, gray-haired man +had written. I had been lost in his story throughout the earlier +portions of it, forgetful of the writer and his gracious room, and +the high tower in which he was sitting. But gradually, as I drew +near the end, the sense of strangeness returned to me. It was more +and more evident to me that this was a different humanity from any +I had known, unreal, having different customs, different beliefs, +different interpretations, different emotions. It was no mere change +in conditions and institutions the comet had wrought. It had made +a change of heart and mind. In a manner it had dehumanized the +world, robbed it of its spites, its little intense jealousies, its +inconsistencies, its humor. At the end, and particularly after +the death of his mother, I felt his story had slipped away from my +sympathies altogether. Those Beltane fires had burnt something in +him that worked living still and unsubdued in me, that rebelled in +particular at that return of Nettie. I became a little inattentive. +I no longer felt with him, nor gathered a sense of complete +understanding from his phrases. His Lord Eros indeed! He and these +transfigured people--they were beautiful and noble people, like the +people one sees in great pictures, like the gods of noble sculpture, +but they had no nearer fellowship than these to men. As the change +was realized, with every stage of realization the gulf widened and +it was harder to follow his words. + +I put down the last fascicle of all, and met his friendly eyes. It +was hard to dislike him. + +I felt a subtle embarrassment in putting the question that perplexed +me. And yet it seemed so material to me I had to put it. "And did +you--?" I asked. "Were you--lovers?" + +His eyebrows rose. "Of course." + +"But your wife--?" + +It was manifest he did not understand me. + +I hesitated still more. I was perplexed by a conviction of baseness. +"But--" I began. "You remained lovers?" + +"Yes." I had grave doubts if I understood him. Or he me. + +I made a still more courageous attempt. "And had Nettie no other +lovers?" + +"A beautiful woman like that! I know not how many loved beauty in +her, nor what she found in others. But we four from that time were +very close, you understand, we were friends, helpers, personal +lovers in a world of lovers." + +"Four?" + +"There was Verrall." + +Then suddenly it came to me that the thoughts that stirred in my mind +were sinister and base, that the queer suspicions, the coarseness +and coarse jealousies of my old world were over and done for these +more finely living souls. "You made," I said, trying to be liberal +minded, "a home together." + +"A home!" He looked at me, and, I know not why, I glanced down at +my feet. What a clumsy, ill-made thing a boot is, and how hard and +colorless seemed my clothing! How harshly I stood out amidst these +fine, perfected things. I had a moment of rebellious detestation. +I wanted to get out of all this. After all, it wasn't my style. I +wanted intensely to say something that would bring him down a peg, +make sure, as it were, of my suspicions by launching an offensive +accusation. I looked up and he was standing. + +"I forgot," he said. "You are pretending the old world is still +going on. A home!" + +He put out his hand, and quite noiselessly the great window widened +down to us, and the splendid nearer prospect of that dreamland city +was before me. There for one clear moment I saw it; its galleries +and open spaces, its trees of golden fruit and crystal waters, +its music and rejoicing, love and beauty without ceasing flowing +through its varied and intricate streets. And the nearer people I +saw now directly and plainly, and no longer in the distorted mirror +that hung overhead. They really did not justify my suspicions, and +yet--! They were such people as one sees on earth--save that they +were changed. How can I express that change? As a woman is changed +in the eyes of her lover, as a woman is changed by the love of a +lover. They were exalted. . . . + +I stood up beside him and looked out. I was a little flushed, my +ears a little reddened, by the inconvenience of my curiosities, +and by my uneasy sense of profound moral differences. He +was taller than I. . . . + +"This is our home," he said smiling, and with thoughtful eyes on me. + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of In the Days of the Comet, by H. G. 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Hart +and may be reprinted only when these Etexts are free of all fees.] +[Project Gutenberg is a TradeMark and may not be used in any sales +of Project Gutenberg Etexts or other materials be they hardware or +software or any other related product without express permission.] + +*END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.07/27/01*END* + + + + + +This etext was produced by Dudley P. Duck. + + + + + + + + + +This etext was produced by Judy Boss. + + + + + +IN THE DAYS OF THE COMET + +BY H. G. WELLS + + + + +"The World's Great Age begins anew, +The Golden Years return, +The Earth doth like a Snake renew +Her Winter Skin outworn: +Heaven smiles, and Faiths and Empires gleam +Like Wrecks of a Dissolving Dream. + + + + + +CONTENTS + +PROLOGUE + +PAGE + +THE MAN WHO WROTE IN THE TOWER . 3 + + +BOOK THE FIRST + +THE COMET + +CHAPTER + + I. DUST IN THE SHADOWS . . . . . . 9 + II. NETTIE . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 +III. THE REVOLVER . . . . . . . . . 89 + IV. WAR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152 + V. THE PURSUIT OF THE TWO LOVERS . . 184 + + +BOOK THE SECOND + +THE GREEN VAPORS + + I. THE CHANGE . . . . . . . . . 221 + II. THE AWAKENING . . . . . . . . . 252 +III. THE CABINET COUNCIL . . . . . . . 279 + + +BOOK THE THIRD + +THE NEW WORLD + +CHAPTER PAGE + + I. LOVE AFTER THE CHANGE . . . . . . 303 + II. MY MOTHER'S LAST DAYS . . . . . . 335 +III. BELTANE AND NEW YEAR'S EVE . . . 353 + + +EPILOGUE + +THE WINDOW OF THE TOWER . . . . . . . 375 + + + + + +IN THE DAYS OF THE COMET + +PROLOGUE + +THE MAN WHO WROTE IN THE TOWER + + +I SAW a gray-haired man, a figure of hale age, sitting at a desk +and writing: + +He seemed to be in a room in a tower, very high, so that through +the tall window on his left one perceived only distances, a remote +horizon of sea, a headland and that vague haze and glitter in the +sunset that many miles away marks a city. All the appointments of +this room were orderly and beautiful, and in some subtle quality, +in this small difference and that, new to me and strange. They were +in no fashion I could name, and the simple costume the man wore +suggested neither period nor country. It might, I thought, be the +Happy Future, or Utopia, or the Land of Simple Dreams; an errant +mote of memory, Henry James's phrase and story of "The Great Good +Place," twinkled across my mind, and passed and left no light. + +The man I saw wrote with a thing like a fountain pen, a modern touch +that prohibited any historical retrospection, and as he finished +each sheet, writing in an easy flowing hand, he added it to a growing +pile upon a graceful little table under the window. His last done +sheets lay loose, partly covering others that were clipped together +into fascicles. + +Clearly he was unaware of my presence, and I stood waiting until +his pen should come to a pause. Old as he certainly was +he wrote with a steady hand. . . . + +I discovered that a concave speculum hung slantingly high over his +head; a movement in this caught my attention sharply, and I looked +up to see, distorted and made fantastic but bright and beautifully +colored, the magnified, reflected, evasive rendering of a palace, +of a terrace, of the vista of a great roadway with many people, +people exaggerated, impossible-looking because of the curvature of +the mirror, going to and fro. I turned my head quickly that I might +see more clearly through the window behind me, but it was too high +for me to survey this nearer scene directly, and after a momentary +pause I came back to that distorting mirror again. + +But now the writer was leaning back in his chair. He put down his +pen and sighed the half resentful sigh--"ah! you, work, you! how +you gratify and tire me!"--of a man who has been writing to his +satisfaction. + +"What is this place," I asked, "and who are you?" + +He looked around with the quick movement of surprise. + +"What is this place?" I repeated, "and where am I?" + +He regarded me steadfastly for a moment under his wrinkled brows, +and then his expression softened to a smile. He pointed to a chair +beside the table. "I am writing," he said. + +"About this?" + +"About the change." + +I sat down. It was a very comfortable chair, and well placed under +the light. + +"If you would like to read--" he said. + +I indicated the manuscript. "This explains?" I asked. + +"That explains," he answered. + +He drew a fresh sheet of paper toward him as he looked at me. + +I glanced from him about his apartment and back to the little +table. A fascicle marked very distinctly "1" caught my attention, +and I took it up. I smiled in his friendly eyes. "Very well," said +I, suddenly at my ease, and he nodded and went on writing. And in +a mood between confidence and curiosity, I began to read. + +This is the story that happy, active-looking old man in that pleasant +place had written. + + + + + +BOOK THE FIRST + +THE COMET + + + + +CHAPTER THE FIRST + +DUST IN THE SHADOWS + + + +Section 1 + +I HAVE set myself to write the story of the Great Change, so far +as it has affected my own life and the lives of one or two people +closely connected with me, primarily to please myself. + +Long ago in my crude unhappy youth, I conceived the desire of +writing a book. To scribble secretly and dream of authorship was +one of my chief alleviations, and I read with a sympathetic envy +every scrap I could get about the world of literature and the +lives of literary people. It is something, even amidst this present +happiness, to find leisure and opportunity to take up and partially +realize these old and hopeless dreams. But that alone, in a world +where so much of vivid and increasing interest presents itself to +be done, even by an old man, would not, I think, suffice to set +me at this desk. I find some such recapitulation of my past as +this will involve, is becoming necessary to my own secure mental +continuity. The passage of years brings a man at last to retrospection; +at seventy-two one's youth is far more important than it was at +forty. And I am out of touch with my youth. The old life seems so +cut off from the new, so alien and so unreasonable, that at times +I find it bordering upon the incredible. The data have gone, the +buildings and places. I stopped dead the other afternoon in my walk +across the moor, where once the dismal outskirts of Swathinglea +straggled toward Leet, and asked, "Was it here indeed that I +crouched among the weeds and refuse and broken crockery and loaded +my revolver ready for murder? Did ever such a thing happen in my +life? Was such a mood and thought and intention ever possible to +me? Rather, has not some queer nightmare spirit out of dreamland +slipped a pseudo-memory into the records of my vanished life?" +There must be many alive still who have the same perplexities. And +I think too that those who are now growing up to take our places +in the great enterprise of mankind, will need many such narratives +as mine for even the most partial conception of the old world +of shadows that came before our day. It chances too that my case +is fairly typical of the Change; I was caught midway in a gust +of passion; and a curious accident put me for a time in the very +nucleus of the new order. + +My memory takes me back across the interval of fifty years to a +little ill-lit room with a sash window open to a starry sky, and +instantly there returns to me the characteristic smell of that +room, the penetrating odor of an ill-trimmed lamp, burning cheap +paraffin. Lighting by electricity had then been perfected for fifteen +years, but still the larger portion of the world used these lamps. +All this first scene will go, in my mind at least, to that olfactory +accompaniment. That was the evening smell of the room. By day +it had a more subtle aroma, a closeness, a peculiar sort of faint +pungency that I associate--I know not why--with dust. + +Let me describe this room to you in detail. It was perhaps eight +feet by seven in area and rather higher than either of these +dimensions; the ceiling was of plaster, cracked and bulging in +places, gray with the soot of the lamp, and in one place discolored +by a system of yellow and olive-green stains caused by the percolation +of damp from above. The walls were covered with dun-colored paper, +upon which had been printed in oblique reiteration a crimson shape, +something of the nature of a curly ostrich feather, or an acanthus +flower, that had in its less faded moments a sort of dingy gaiety. +There were several big plaster-rimmed wounds in this, caused by +Parload's ineffectual attempts to get nails into the wall, whereby +there might hang pictures. One nail had hit between two bricks and +got home, and from this depended, sustained a little insecurely +by frayed and knotted blind-cord, Parload's hanging bookshelves, +planks painted over with a treacly blue enamel and further decorated +by a fringe of pinked American cloth insecurely fixed by tacks. Below +this was a little table that behaved with a mulish vindictiveness +to any knee that was thrust beneath it suddenly; it was covered +with a cloth whose pattern of red and black had been rendered less +monotonous by the accidents of Parload's versatile ink bottle, and +on it, leit motif of the whole, stood and stank the lamp. This lamp, +you must understand, was of some whitish translucent substance that +was neither china nor glass, it had a shade of the same substance, +a shade that did not protect the eyes of a reader in any measure, +and it seemed admirably adapted to bring into pitiless prominence +the fact that, after the lamp's trimming, dust and paraffin had +been smeared over its exterior with a reckless generosity. + +The uneven floor boards of this apartment were covered with scratched +enamel of chocolate hue, on which a small island of frayed carpet +dimly blossomed in the dust and shadows. + +There was a very small grate, made of cast-iron in one piece and +painted buff, and a still smaller misfit of a cast-iron fender +that confessed the gray stone of the hearth. No fire was laid, only +a few scraps of torn paper and the bowl of a broken corn-cob pipe +were visible behind the bars, and in the corner and rather thrust +away was an angular japanned coal-box with a damaged hinge. It +was the custom in those days to warm every room separately from a +separate fireplace, more prolific of dirt than heat, and the rickety +sash window, the small chimney, and the loose-fitting door were +expected to organize the ventilation of the room among themselves +without any further direction. + +Parload's truckle bed hid its gray sheets beneath an old patchwork +counterpane on one side of the room, and veiled his boxes and +suchlike oddments, and invading the two corners of the window were +an old whatnot and the washhandstand, on which were distributed +the simple appliances of his toilet. + +This washhandstand had been made of deal by some one with an +excess of turnery appliances in a hurry, who had tried to distract +attention from the rough economies of his workmanship by an arresting +ornamentation of blobs and bulbs upon the joints and legs. Apparently +the piece had then been placed in the hands of some person of +infinite leisure equipped with a pot of ocherous paint, varnish, +and a set of flexible combs. This person had first painted the +article, then, I fancy, smeared it with varnish, and then sat down +to work with the combs to streak and comb the varnish into a weird +imitation of the grain of some nightmare timber. The washhandstand so +made had evidently had a prolonged career of violent use, had been +chipped, kicked, splintered, punched, stained, scorched, hammered, +dessicated, damped, and defiled, had met indeed with almost every +possible adventure except a conflagration or a scrubbing, until at +last it had come to this high refuge of Parload's attic to sustain +the simple requirements of Parload's personal cleanliness. There +were, in chief, a basin and a jug of water and a slop-pail of tin, +and, further, a piece of yellow soap in a tray, a tooth-brush, a +rat-tailed shaving brush, one huckaback towel, and one or two other +minor articles. In those days only very prosperous people had more +than such an equipage, and it is to be remarked that every drop +of water Parload used had to be carried by an unfortunate servant +girl,--the "slavey," Parload called her--up from the basement to +the top of the house and subsequently down again. Already we begin +to forget how modern an invention is personal cleanliness. It is a +fact that Parload had never stripped for a swim in his life; never +had a simultaneous bath all over his body since his childhood. Not +one in fifty of us did in the days of which I am telling you. + +A chest, also singularly grained and streaked, of two large and +two small drawers, held Parload's reserve of garments, and pegs +on the door carried his two hats and completed this inventory +of a "bed-sitting-room" as I knew it before the Change. But I had +forgotten--there was also a chair with a "squab" that apologized +inadequately for the defects of its cane seat. I forgot that for +the moment because I was sitting on the chair on the occasion that +best begins this story. + +I have described Parload's room with such particularity because it +will help you to understand the key in which my earlier chapters +are written, but you must not imagine that this singular equipment +or the smell of the lamp engaged my attention at that time to the +slightest degree. I took all this grimy unpleasantness as if it +were the most natural and proper setting for existence imaginable. +It was the world as I knew it. My mind was entirely occupied then +by graver and intenser matters, and it is only now in the distant +retrospect that I see these details of environment as being +remarkable, as significant, as indeed obviously the outward visible +manifestations of the old world disorder in our hearts. + + + +Section 2 + +Parload stood at the open window, opera-glass in hand, and sought +and found and was uncertain about and lost again, the new comet. + +I thought the comet no more than a nuisance then because I wanted +to talk of other matters. But Parload was full of it. My head was +hot, I was feverish with interlacing annoyances and bitterness, +I wanted to open my heart to him--at least I wanted to relieve my +heart by some romantic rendering of my troubles--and I gave but +little heed to the things he told me. It was the first time I had +heard of this new speck among the countless specks of heaven, and +I did not care if I never heard of the thing again. + +We were two youths much of an age together, Parload was two and +twenty, and eight months older than I. He was--I think his proper +definition was "engrossing clerk" to a little solicitor in Overcastle, +while I was third in the office staff of Rawdon's pot-bank in +Clayton. We had met first in the "Parliament" of the Young Men's +Christian Association of Swathinglea; we had found we attended +simultaneous classes in Overcastle, he in science and I in shorthand, +and had started a practice of walking home together, and so our +friendship came into being. (Swathinglea, Clayton, and Overcastle +were contiguous towns, I should mention, in the great industrial +area of the Midlands.) We had shared each other's secret of religious +doubt, we had confided to one another a common interest in Socialism, +he had come twice to supper at my mother's on a Sunday night, and +I was free of his apartment. He was then a tall, flaxen-haired, +gawky youth, with a disproportionate development of neck and wrist, +and capable of vast enthusiasm; he gave two evenings a week to +the evening classes of the organized science school in Overcastle, +physiography was his favorite "subject," and through this insidious +opening of his mind the wonder of outer space had come to take +possession of his soul. He had commandeered an old opera-glass +from his uncle who farmed at Leet over the moors, he had bought a +cheap paper planisphere and Whitaker's Almanac, and for a time day +and moonlight were mere blank interruptions to the one satisfactory +reality in his life--star-gazing. It was the deeps that had seized +him, the immensities, and the mysterious possibilities that might +float unlit in that unplumbed abyss. With infinite labor and the +help of a very precise article in The Heavens, a little monthly +magazine that catered for those who were under this obsession, he +had at last got his opera-glass upon the new visitor to our system +from outer space. He gazed in a sort of rapture upon that quivering +little smudge of light among the shining pin-points--and gazed. My +troubles had to wait for him. + +"Wonderful," he sighed, and then as though his first emphasis did +not satisfy him, "wonderful!" + +He turned to me. "Wouldn't you like to see?" + +I had to look, and then I had to listen, how that this scarce-visible +intruder was to be, was presently to be, one of the largest comets +this world has ever seen, how that its course must bring it within +at most--so many score of millions of miles from the earth, a mere +step, Parload seemed to think that; how that the spectroscope was +already sounding its chemical secrets, perplexed by the unprecedented +band in the green, how it was even now being photographed in the +very act of unwinding--in an unusual direction--a sunward tail +(which presently it wound up again), and all the while in a sort +of undertow I was thinking first of Nettie Stuart and the letter +she had just written me, and then of old Rawdon's detestable face +as I had seen it that afternoon. Now I planned answers to Nettie +and now belated repartees to my employer, and then again "Nettie" +was blazing all across the background of my thoughts. . . . + +Nettie Stuart was daughter of the head gardener of the rich Mr. +Verrall's widow, and she and I had kissed and become sweethearts +before we were eighteen years old. My mother and hers were second +cousins and old schoolfellows, and though my mother had been widowed +untimely by a train accident, and had been reduced to letting lodgings +(she was the Clayton curate's landlady), a position esteemed much +lower than that of Mrs. Stuart, a kindly custom of occasional +visits to the gardener's cottage at Checkshill Towers still kept +the friends in touch. Commonly I went with her. And I remember it +was in the dusk of one bright evening in July, one of those long +golden evenings that do not so much give way to night as admit at +last, upon courtesy, the moon and a choice retinue of stars, that +Nettie and I, at the pond of goldfish where the yew-bordered walks +converged, made our shy beginners' vow. I remember still--something +will always stir in me at that memory--the tremulous emotion of +that adventure. Nettie was dressed in white, her hair went off in +waves of soft darkness from above her dark shining eyes; there was +a little necklace of pearls about her sweetly modeled neck, and +a little coin of gold that nestled in her throat. I kissed her +half-reluctant lips, and for three years of my life thereafter--nay! +I almost think for all the rest of her life and mine--I could have +died for her sake. + +You must understand--and every year it becomes increasingly difficult +to understand--how entirely different the world was then from what +it is now. It was a dark world; it was full of preventable disorder, +preventable diseases, and preventable pain, of harshness and stupid +unpremeditated cruelties, but yet, it may be even by virtue of +the general darkness, there were moments of a rare and evanescent +beauty that seem no longer possible in my experience. The +great Change has come for ever more, happiness and beauty are our +atmosphere, there is peace on earth and good will to all men. None +would dare to dream of returning to the sorrows of the former time, +and yet that misery was pierced, ever and again its gray curtain was +stabbed through and through by joys of an intensity, by perceptions +of a keenness that it seems to me are now altogether gone out +of life. Is it the Change, I wonder, that has robbed life of its +extremes, or is it perhaps only this, that youth has left me--even +the strength of middle years leaves me now--and taken its despairs +and raptures, leaving me judgment, perhaps, sympathy, memories? + +I cannot tell. One would need to be young now and to have been +young then as well, to decide that impossible problem. + +Perhaps a cool observer even in the old days would have found little +beauty in our grouping. I have our two photographs at hand in this +bureau as I write, and they show me a gawky youth in ill-fitting +ready-made clothing, and Nettie--Indeed Nettie is badly dressed, +and her attitude is more than a little stiff; but I can see her +through the picture, and her living brightness and something of +that mystery of charm she had for me, comes back again to my mind. +Her face has triumphed over the photographer --or I would long ago +have cast this picture away. + +The reality of beauty yields itself to no words. I wish that I had +the sister art and could draw in my margin something that escapes +description. There was a sort of gravity in her eyes. There was +something, a matter of the minutest difference, about her upper +lip so that her mouth closed sweetly and broke very sweetly to a +smile. That grave, sweet smile! + +After we had kissed and decided not to tell our parents for awhile +of the irrevocable choice we had made, the time came for us to part, +shyly and before others, and I and my mother went off back across +the moonlit park--the bracken thickets rustling with startled deer--to +the railway station at Checkshill and so to our dingy basement in +Clayton, and I saw no more of Nettie--except that I saw her in my +thoughts--for nearly a year. But at our next meeting it was decided +that we must correspond, and this we did with much elaboration +of secrecy, for Nettie would have no one at home, not even her +only sister, know of her attachment. So I had to send my precious +documents sealed and under cover by way of a confidential schoolfellow +of hers who lived near London. . . . I could write that address +down now, though house and street and suburb have gone beyond any +man's tracing. + +Our correspondence began our estrangement, because for the first +time we came into more than sensuous contact and our minds sought +expression. + +Now you must understand that the world of thought in those days was +in the strangest condition, it was choked with obsolete inadequate +formulae, it was tortuous to a maze-like degree with secondary +contrivances and adaptations, suppressions, conventions, and +subterfuges. Base immediacies fouled the truth on every man's +lips. I was brought up by my mother in a quaint old-fashioned narrow +faith in certain religious formulae, certain rules of conduct, +certain conceptions of social and political order, that had no more +relevance to the realities and needs of everyday contemporary life +than if they were clean linen that had been put away with lavender +in a drawer. Indeed, her religion did actually smell of lavender; +on Sundays she put away all the things of reality, the garments and +even the furnishings of everyday, hid her hands, that were gnarled +and sometimes chapped with scrubbing, in black, carefully mended +gloves, assumed her old black silk dress and bonnet and took me, +unnaturally clean and sweet also, to church. There we sang and +bowed and heard sonorous prayers and joined in sonorous responses, +and rose with a congregational sigh refreshed and relieved when the +doxology, with its opening "Now to God the Father, God the Son," +bowed out the tame, brief sermon. There was a hell in that religion +of my mother's, a red-haired hell of curly flames that had once +been very terrible; there was a devil, who was also ex officio the +British King's enemy, and much denunciation of the wicked lusts +of the flesh; we were expected to believe that most of our poor +unhappy world was to atone for its muddle and trouble here by +suffering exquisite torments for ever after, world without end, +Amen. But indeed those curly flames looked rather jolly. The whole +thing had been mellowed and faded into a gentle unreality long +before my time; if it had much terror even in my childhood I have +forgotten it, it was not so terrible as the giant who was killed +by the Beanstalk, and I see it all now as a setting for my poor +old mother's worn and grimy face, and almost lovingly as a part +of her. And Mr. Gabbitas, our plump little lodger, strangely +transformed in his vestments and lifting his voice manfully to +the quality of those Elizabethan prayers, seemed, I think, to give +her a special and peculiar interest with God. She radiated her +own tremulous gentleness upon Him, and redeemed Him from all the +implications of vindictive theologians; she was in truth, had I +but perceived it, the effectual answer to all she would have taught +me. + +So I see it now, but there is something harsh in the earnest +intensity of youth, and having at first taken all these things quite +seriously, the fiery hell and God's vindictiveness at any neglect, +as though they were as much a matter of fact as Bladden's iron-works +and Rawdon's pot-bank, I presently with an equal seriousness flung +them out of my mind again. + +Mr. Gabbitas, you see, did sometimes, as the phrase went, "take +notice" of me, he had induced me to go on reading after I left +school, and with the best intentions in the world and to anticipate +the poison of the times, he had lent me Burble's "Scepticism +Answered," and drawn my attention to the library of the Institute +in Clayton. + +The excellent Burble was a great shock to me. It seemed clear from +his answers to the sceptic that the case for doctrinal orthodoxy +and all that faded and by no means awful hereafter, which I had +hitherto accepted as I accepted the sun, was an extremely poor +one, and to hammer home that idea the first book I got from the +Institute happened to be an American edition of the collected works +of Shelley, his gassy prose as well as his atmospheric verse. I was +soon ripe for blatant unbelief. And at the Young Men's Christian +Association I presently made the acquaintance of Parload, who told +me, under promises of the most sinister secrecy, that he was "a +Socialist out and out." He lent me several copies of a periodical +with the clamant title of The Clarion, which was just taking up a +crusade against the accepted religion. The adolescent years of any +fairly intelligent youth lie open, and will always lie healthily +open, to the contagion of philosophical doubts, of scorns and new +ideas, and I will confess I had the fever of that phase badly. Doubt, +I say, but it was not so much doubt--which is a complex thing--as +startled emphatic denial. "Have I believed THIS!" And I was also, +you must remember, just beginning love-letters to Nettie. + +We live now in these days, when the Great Change has been in most +things accomplished, in a time when every one is being educated to a +sort of intellectual gentleness, a gentleness that abates nothing +from our vigor, and it is hard to understand the stifled and +struggling manner in which my generation of common young men did +its thinking. To think at all about certain questions was an act +of rebellion that set one oscillating between the furtive and the +defiant. People begin to find Shelley--for all his melody--noisy +and ill conditioned now because his Anarchs have vanished, yet there +was a time when novel thought HAD to go to that tune of breaking +glass. It becomes a little difficult to imagine the yeasty state +of mind, the disposition to shout and say, "Yah!" at constituted +authority, to sustain a persistent note of provocation such as we +raw youngsters displayed. I began to read with avidity such writing +as Carlyle, Browning, and Heine have left for the perplexity +of posterity, and not only to read and admire but to imitate. My +letters to Nettie, after one or two genuinely intended displays of +perfervid tenderness, broke out toward theology, sociology, and the +cosmos in turgid and startling expressions. No doubt they puzzled +her extremely. + +I retain the keenest sympathy and something inexplicably near to +envy for my own departed youth, but I should find it difficult to +maintain my case against any one who would condemn me altogether as +having been a very silly, posturing, emotional hobbledehoy indeed +and quite like my faded photograph. And when I try to recall what +exactly must have been the quality and tenor of my more sustained +efforts to write memorably to my sweetheart, I confess I shiver. +. . Yet I wish they were not all destroyed. + +Her letters to me were simple enough, written in a roundish, +unformed hand and badly phrased. Her first two or three showed a +shy pleasure in the use of the word "dear," and I remember being +first puzzled and then, when I understood, delighted, because she +had written "Willie ASTHORE" under my name. "Asthore," I gathered, +meant "darling." But when the evidences of my fermentation began, +her answers were less happy. + +I will not weary you with the story of how we quarreled in our +silly youthful way, and how I went the next Sunday, all uninvited, +to Checkshill, and made it worse, and how afterward I wrote a letter +that she thought was "lovely," and mended the matter. Nor will I +tell of all our subsequent fluctuations of misunderstanding. Always +I was the offender and the final penitent until this last trouble +that was now beginning; and in between we had some tender near +moments, and I loved her very greatly. There was this misfortune +in the business, that in the darkness, and alone, I thought with +great intensity of her, of her eyes, of her touch, of her sweet +and delightful presence, but when I sat down to write I thought of +Shelley and Burns and myself, and other such irrelevant matters. +When one is in love, in this fermenting way, it is harder to make +love than it is when one does not love at all. And as for Nettie, +she loved, I know, not me but those gentle mysteries. It was not +my voice should rouse her dreams to passion. . . So our letters +continued to jar. Then suddenly she wrote me one doubting whether +she could ever care for any one who was a Socialist and did not +believe in Church, and then hard upon it came another note with +unexpected novelties of phrasing. She thought we were not suited +to each other, we differed so in tastes and ideas, she had long +thought of releasing me from our engagement. In fact, though I really +did not apprehend it fully at the first shock, I was dismissed. +Her letter had reached me when I came home after old Rawdon's none +too civil refusal to raise my wages. On this particular evening of +which I write, therefore, I was in a state of feverish adjustment +to two new and amazing, two nearly overwhelming facts, that I was +neither indispensable to Nettie nor at Rawdon's. And to talk of +comets! + +Where did I stand? + +I had grown so accustomed to think of Nettie as inseparably +mine--the whole tradition of "true love" pointed me to that--that +for her to face about with these precise small phrases toward +abandonment, after we had kissed and whispered and come so close +in the little adventurous familiarities of the young, shocked me +profoundly. I! I! And Rawdon didn't find me indispensable either. +I felt I was suddenly repudiated by the universe and threatened +with effacement, that in some positive and emphatic way I must at +once assert myself. There was no balm in the religion I had learnt, +or in the irreligion I had adopted, for wounded self-love. + +Should I fling up Rawdon's place at once and then in some extraordinary, +swift manner make the fortune of Frobisher's adjacent and closely +competitive pot-bank? + +The first part of that program, at any rate, would be easy of +accomplishment, to go to Rawdon and say, "You will hear from me +again," but for the rest, Frobisher might fail me. That, however, +was a secondary issue. The predominant affair was with Nettie. +I found my mind thick-shot with flying fragments of rhetoric that +might be of service in the letter I would write her. Scorn, irony, +tenderness--what was it to be? + +"Brother!" said Parload, suddenly. + +"What?" said I. + +"They're firing up at Bladden's iron-works, and the smoke comes +right across my bit of sky." + +The interruption came just as I was ripe to discharge my thoughts +upon him. + +"Parload," said I, "very likely I shall have to leave all this. Old +Rawdon won't give me a rise in my wages, and after having asked I +don't think I can stand going on upon the old terms anymore. See? +So I may have to clear out of Clayton for good and all." + + + +Section 3 + +That made Parload put down the opera-glass and look at me. + +"It's a bad time to change just now," he said after a little pause. + +Rawdon had said as much, in a less agreeable tone. + +But with Parload I felt always a disposition to the heroic note. +"I'm tired," I said, "of humdrum drudgery for other men. One may +as well starve one's body out of a place as to starve one's soul +in one." + +"I don't know about that altogether," began Parload, slowly. . . . + +And with that we began one of our interminable conversations, one +of those long, wandering, intensely generalizing, diffusely personal +talks that will be dear to the hearts of intelligent youths until +the world comes to an end. The Change has not abolished that, +anyhow. + +It would be an incredible feat of memory for me now to recall all +that meandering haze of words, indeed I recall scarcely any of it, +though its circumstances and atmosphere stand out, a sharp, clear +picture in my mind. I posed after my manner and behaved very foolishly +no doubt, a wounded, smarting egotist, and Parload played his part +of the philosopher preoccupied with the deeps. + +We were presently abroad, walking through the warm summer's night +and talking all the more freely for that. But one thing that I +said I can remember. "I wish at times," said I, with a gesture at +the heavens, "that comet of yours or some such thing would indeed +strike this world--and wipe us all away, strikes, wars, tumults, +loves, jealousies, and all the wretchedness of life!" + +"Ah!" said Parload, and the thought seemed to hang about him. + +"It could only add to the miseries of life," he said irrelevantly, +when presently I was discoursing of other things. + +"What would?" + +"Collision with a comet. It would only throw things back. It would +only make what was left of life more savage than it is at present." + +"But why should ANYTHING be left of life?" said I. . . . + +That was our style, you know, and meanwhile we walked together up +the narrow street outside his lodging, up the stepway and the lanes +toward Clayton Crest and the high road. + +But my memories carry me back so effectually to those days before +the Change that I forget that now all these places have been altered +beyond recognition, that the narrow street and the stepway and the +view from Clayton Crest, and indeed all the world in which I was +born and bred and made, has vanished clean away, out of space and +out of time, and wellnigh out of the imagination of all those who +are younger by a generation than I. You cannot see, as I can see, +the dark empty way between the mean houses, the dark empty way +lit by a bleary gas-lamp at the corner, you cannot feel the hard +checkered pavement under your boots, you cannot mark the dimly lit +windows here and there, and the shadows upon the ugly and often +patched and crooked blinds of the people cooped within. Nor can you +presently pass the beerhouse with its brighter gas and its queer, +screening windows, nor get a whiff of foul air and foul language +from its door, nor see the crumpled furtive figure--some rascal +child--that slinks past us down the steps. + +We crossed the longer street, up which a clumsy steam tram, vomiting +smoke and sparks, made its clangorous way, and adown which one +saw the greasy brilliance of shop fronts and the naphtha flares of +hawkers' barrows dripping fire into the night. A hazy movement of +people swayed along that road, and we heard the voice of an itinerant +preacher from a waste place between the houses. You cannot see these +things as I can see them, nor can you figure--unless you know the +pictures that great artist Hyde has left the world--the effect of +the great hoarding by which we passed, lit below by a gas-lamp and +towering up to a sudden sharp black edge against the pallid sky. + +Those hoardings! They were the brightest colored things in all +that vanished world. Upon them, in successive layers of paste and +paper, all the rough enterprises of that time joined in chromatic +discord; pill vendors and preachers, theaters and charities, +marvelous soaps and astonishing pickles, typewriting machines and +sewing machines, mingled in a sort of visualized clamor. And passing +that there was a muddy lane of cinders, a lane without a light, +that used its many puddles to borrow a star or so from the sky. We +splashed along unheeding as we talked. + +Then across the allotments, a wilderness of cabbages and evil-looking +sheds, past a gaunt abandoned factory, and so to the high road. +The high road ascended in a curve past a few houses and a beerhouse +or so, and round until all the valley in which four industrial +towns lay crowded and confluent was overlooked. + +I will admit that with the twilight there came a spell of weird +magnificence over all that land and brooded on it until dawn. The +horrible meanness of its details was veiled, the hutches that were +homes, the bristling multitudes of chimneys, the ugly patches of +unwilling vegetation amidst the makeshift fences of barrel-stave +and wire. The rusty scars that framed the opposite ridges where +the iron ore was taken and the barren mountains of slag from the +blast furnaces were veiled; the reek and boiling smoke and dust +from foundry, pot-bank, and furnace, transfigured and assimilated +by the night. The dust-laden atmosphere that was gray oppression +through the day became at sundown a mystery of deep translucent +colors, of blues and purples, of somber and vivid reds, of strange +bright clearnesses of green and yellow athwart the darkling sky. +Each upstart furnace, when its monarch sun had gone, crowned itself +with flames, the dark cinder heaps began to glow with quivering +fires, and each pot-bank squatted rebellious in a volcanic coronet of +light. The empire of the day broke into a thousand feudal baronies +of burning coal. The minor streets across the valley picked themselves +out with gas-lamps of faint yellow, that brightened and mingled at +all the principal squares and crossings with the greenish pallor of +incandescent mantles and the high cold glare of the electric arc. +The interlacing railways lifted bright signal-boxes over their +intersections, and signal stars of red and green in rectangular +constellations. The trains became articulated black serpents +breathing fire. + +Moreover, high overhead, like a thing put out of reach and near +forgotten, Parload had rediscovered a realm that was ruled by +neither sun nor furnace, the universe of stars. + +This was the scene of many a talk we two had held together. And +if in the daytime we went right over the crest and looked westward +there was farmland, there were parks and great mansions, the spire +of a distant cathedral, and sometimes when the weather was near +raining, the crests of remote mountains hung clearly in the sky. +Beyond the range of sight indeed, out beyond, there was Checkshill; +I felt it there always, and in the darkness more than I did by day. +Checkshill, and Nettie! + +And to us two youngsters as we walked along the cinder path beside +the rutted road and argued out our perplexities, it seemed that +this ridge gave us compendiously a view of our whole world. + +There on the one hand in a crowded darkness, about the ugly factories +and work-places, the workers herded together, ill clothed, ill +nourished, ill taught, badly and expensively served at every occasion +in life, uncertain even of their insufficient livelihood from day +to day, the chapels and churches and public-houses swelling up amidst +their wretched homes like saprophytes amidst a general corruption, +and on the other, in space, freedom, and dignity, scarce heeding +the few cottages, as overcrowded as they were picturesque, in which +the laborers festered, lived the landlords and masters who owned +pot-banks and forge and farm and mine. Far away, distant, beautiful, +irrelevant, from out of a little cluster of secondhand bookshops, +ecclesiastical residences, and the inns and incidentals of a decaying +market town, the cathedral of Lowchester pointed a beautiful, +unemphatic spire to vague incredible skies. So it seemed to us that +the whole world was planned in those youthful first impressions. + +We saw everything simple, as young men will. We had our angry, confident +solutions, and whosoever would criticize them was a friend of the +robbers. It was a clear case of robbery, we held, visibly so; there +in those great houses lurked the Landlord and the Capitalist, with +his scoundrel the Lawyer, with his cheat the Priest, and we others +were all the victims of their deliberate villainies. No doubt they +winked and chuckled over their rare wines, amidst their dazzling, +wickedly dressed women, and plotted further grinding for the faces +of the poor. And amidst all the squalor on the other hand, amidst +brutalities, ignorance, and drunkenness, suffered multitudinously +their blameless victim, the Working Man. And we, almost at the +first glance, had found all this out, it had merely to be asserted +now with sufficient rhetoric and vehemence to change the face +of the whole world. The Working Man would arise--in the form of a +Labor Party, and with young men like Parload and myself to represent +him--and come to his own, and then------? + +Then the robbers would get it hot, and everything would be extremely +satisfactory. + +Unless my memory plays me strange tricks that does no injustice +to the creed of thought and action that Parload and I held as the +final result of human wisdom. We believed it with heat, and rejected +with heat the most obvious qualification of its harshness. At +times in our great talks we were full of heady hopes for the near +triumph of our doctrine, more often our mood was hot resentment +at the wickedness and stupidity that delayed so plain and simple a +reconstruction of the order of the world. Then we grew malignant, +and thought of barricades and significant violence. I was very +bitter, I know, upon this night of which I am now particularly +telling, and the only face upon the hydra of Capitalism and Monopoly +that I could see at all clearly, smiled exactly as old Rawdon had +smiled when he refused to give me more than a paltry twenty shillings +a week. + +I wanted intensely to salve my self-respect by some revenge upon +him, and I felt that if that could be done by slaying the hydra, I +might drag its carcass to the feet of Nettie, and settle my other +trouble as well. "What do you think of me NOW, Nettie?" + +That at any rate comes near enough to the quality of my thinking, +then, for you to imagine how I gesticulated and spouted to Parload +that night. You figure us as little black figures, unprepossessing in +the outline, set in the midst of that desolating night of flaming +industrialism, and my little voice with a rhetorical twang +protesting, denouncing. . . . + +You will consider those notions of my youth poor silly violent +stuff; particularly if you are of the younger generation born since +the Change you will be of that opinion. Nowadays the whole world +thinks clearly, thinks with deliberation, pellucid certainties, you +find it impossible to imagine how any other thinking could have +been possible. Let me tell you then how you can bring yourself +to something like the condition of our former state. In the first +place you must get yourself out of health by unwise drinking and +eating, and out of condition by neglecting your exercise, then you +must contrive to be worried very much and made very anxious and +uncomfortable, and then you must work very hard for four or five +days and for long hours every day at something too petty to be +interesting, too complex to be mechanical, and without any personal +significance to you whatever. This done, get straightway into +a room that is not ventilated at all, and that is already full of +foul air, and there set yourself to think out some very complicated +problem. In a very little while you will find yourself in a state +of intellectual muddle, annoyed, impatient, snatching at the obvious +presently in choosing and rejecting conclusions haphazard. Try +to play chess under such conditions and you will play stupidly and +lose your temper. Try to do anything that taxes the brain or temper +and you will fail. + +Now, the whole world before the Change was as sick and feverish as +that, it was worried and overworked and perplexed by problems that +would not get stated simply, that changed and evaded solution, it +was in an atmosphere that had corrupted and thickened past breathing; +there was no thorough cool thinking in the world at all. There +was nothing in the mind of the world anywhere but half-truths, +hasty assumptions, hallucinations, and emotions. Nothing. . . . + +I know it seems incredible, that already some of the younger men +are beginning to doubt the greatness of the Change our world has +undergone, but read--read the newspapers of that time. Every age +becomes mitigated and a little ennobled in our minds as it recedes +into the past. It is the part of those who like myself have stories +of that time to tell, to supply, by a scrupulous spiritual realism, +some antidote to that glamour. + + + +Section 4 + +Always with Parload I was chief talker. + +I can look back upon myself with, I believe, an almost perfect +detachment, things have so changed that indeed now I am another +being, with scarce anything in common with that boastful foolish +youngster whose troubles I recall. I see him vulgarly theatrical, +egotistical, insincere, indeed I do not like him save with +that instinctive material sympathy that is the fruit of incessant +intimacy. Because he was myself I may be able to feel and write +understandingly about motives that will put him out of sympathy +with nearly every reader, but why should I palliate or defend his +quality? + +Always, I say, I did the talking, and it would have amazed me +beyond measure if any one had told me that mine was not the greater +intelligence in these wordy encounters. Parload was a quiet youth, +and stiff and restrained in all things, while I had that supreme +gift for young men and democracies, the gift of copious expression. +Parload I diagnosed in my secret heart as a trifle dull; he posed +as pregnant quiet, I thought, and was obsessed by the congenial +notion of "scientific caution." I did not remark that while my hands +were chiefly useful for gesticulation or holding a pen Parload's +hands could do all sorts of things, and I did not think therefore +that fibers must run from those fingers to something in his brain. +Nor, though I bragged perpetually of my shorthand, of my literature, +of my indispensable share in Rawdon's business, did Parload lay +stress on the conics and calculus he "mugged" in the organized +science school. Parload is a famous man now, a great figure in +a great time, his work upon intersecting radiations has broadened +the intellectual horizon of mankind for ever, and I, who am at best +a hewer of intellectual wood, a drawer of living water, can smile, +and he can smile, to think how I patronized and posed and jabbered +over him in the darkness of those early days. + +That night I was shrill and eloquent beyond measure. Rawdon was, of +course, the hub upon which I went round--Rawdon and the Rawdonesque +employer and the injustice of "wages slavery" and all the immediate +conditions of that industrial blind alley up which it seemed our +lives were thrust. But ever and again I glanced at other things. +Nettie was always there in the background of my mind, regarding +me enigmatically. It was part of my pose to Parload that I had +a romantic love-affair somewhere away beyond the sphere of our +intercourse, and that note gave a Byronic resonance to many of the +nonsensical things I produced for his astonishment. + +I will not weary you with too detailed an account of the talk of a +foolish youth who was also distressed and unhappy, and whose voice +was balm for the humiliations that smarted in his eyes. Indeed, +now in many particulars I cannot disentangle this harangue of which +I tell from many of the things I may have said in other talks to +Parload. For example, I forget if it was then or before or afterwards +that, as it were by accident, I let out what might be taken as an +admission that I was addicted to drugs. + +"You shouldn't do that," said Parload, suddenly. "It won't do to +poison your brains with that." + +My brains, my eloquence, were to be very important assets +to our party in the coming revolution. . . . + +But one thing does clearly belong to this particular conversation +I am recalling. When I started out it was quite settled in the back +of my mind that I must not leave Rawdon's. I simply wanted to abuse +my employer to Parload. But I talked myself quite out of touch +with all the cogent reasons there were for sticking to my place, +and I got home that night irrevocably committed to a spirited--not +to say a defiant--policy with my employer. + +"I can't stand Rawdon's much longer," I said to Parload by way of +a flourish. + +"There's hard times coming," said Parload. + +"Next winter." + +"Sooner. The Americans have been overproducing, and they mean to +dump. The iron trade is going to have convulsions." + +"I don't care. Pot-banks are steady." + +"With a corner in borax? No. I've heard--" + +"What have you heard?" + +"Office secrets. But it's no secret there's trouble coming to +potters. There's been borrowing and speculation. The masters don't +stick to one business as they used to do. I can tell that much. +Half the valley may be 'playing' before two months are out." Parload +delivered himself of this unusually long speech in his most pithy +and weighty manner. + +"Playing" was our local euphemism for a time when there was no work +and no money for a man, a time of stagnation and dreary hungry +loafing day after day. Such interludes seemed in those days a +necessary consequence of industrial organization. + +"You'd better stick to Rawdon's," said Parload. + +"Ugh," said I, affecting a noble disgust. + +"There'll be trouble," said Parload. + +"Who cares?" said I. "Let there be trouble --the more the better. +This system has got to end, sooner or later. These capitalists with +their speculation and corners and trusts make things go from bad to +worse. Why should I cower in Rawdon's office, like a frightened dog, +while hunger walks the streets? Hunger is the master revolutionary. +When he comes we ought to turn out and salute him. Anyway, I'M +going to do so now." + +"That's all very well," began Parload. + +"I'm tired of it," I said. "I want to come to grips with all these +Rawdons. I think perhaps if I was hungry and savage I could talk +to hungry men--" + +"There's your mother," said Parload, in his slow judicial way. + +That WAS a difficulty. + +I got over it by a rhetorical turn. "Why should one sacrifice +the future of the world--why should one even sacrifice one's own +future--because one's mother is totally destitute of imagination?" + + + +Section 5 + +It was late when I parted from Parload and came back to my own +home. + +Our house stood in a highly respectable little square near +the Clayton parish church. Mr. Gabbitas, the curate of all work, +lodged on our ground floor, and upstairs there was an old lady, +Miss Holroyd, who painted flowers on china and maintained her blind +sister in an adjacent room; my mother and I lived in the basement +and slept in the attics. The front of the house was veiled by +a Virginian creeper that defied the Clayton air and clustered in +untidy dependant masses over the wooden porch. + +As I came up the steps I had a glimpse of Mr. Gabbitas printing +photographs by candle light in his room. It was the chief delight +of his little life to spend his holiday abroad in the company of a +queer little snap-shot camera, and to return with a great multitude +of foggy and sinister negatives that he had made in beautiful and +interesting places. These the camera company would develop for him +on advantageous terms, and he would spend his evenings the year +through in printing from them in order to inflict copies upon his +undeserving friends. There was a long frameful of his work in the +Clayton National School, for example, inscribed in old English +lettering, "Italian Travel Pictures, by the Rev. E. B. Gabbitas." +For this it seemed he lived and traveled and had his being. It was +his only real joy. By his shaded light I could see his sharp little +nose, his little pale eyes behind his glasses, his mouth pursed up +with the endeavor of his employment. + +"Hireling Liar," I muttered, for was not he also part of the system, +part of the scheme of robbery that made wages serfs of Parload and +me?--though his share in the proceedings was certainly small. + +"Hireling Liar," said I, standing in the darkness, outside +even his faint glow of traveled culture. . . + +My mother let me in. + +She looked at me, mutely, because she knew there was something +wrong and that it was no use for her to ask what. + +"Good night, mummy," said I, and kissed her a little roughly, and +lit and took my candle and went off at once up the staircase to +bed, not looking back at her. + +"I've kept some supper for you, dear." + +"Don't want any supper." + +"But, dearie------" + +"Good night, mother," and I went up and slammed my door upon her, +blew out my candle, and lay down at once upon my bed, lay there a +long time before I got up to undress. + +There were times when that dumb beseeching of my mother's face +irritated me unspeakably. It did so that night. I felt I had to +struggle against it, that I could not exist if I gave way to its +pleadings, and it hurt me and divided me to resist it, almost beyond +endurance. It was clear to me that I had to think out for myself +religious problems, social problems, questions of conduct, questions +of expediency, that her poor dear simple beliefs could not help me +at all--and she did not understand! Hers was the accepted religion, +her only social ideas were blind submissions to the accepted +order--to laws, to doctors, to clergymen, lawyers, masters, and all +respectable persons in authority over us, and with her to believe +was to fear. She knew from a thousand little signs--though still at +times I went to church with her--that I was passing out of touch of +all these things that ruled her life, into some terrible unknown. +From things I said she could infer such clumsy concealments as I +made. She felt my socialism, felt my spirit in revolt against the +accepted order, felt the impotent resentments that filled me with +bitterness against all she held sacred. Yet, you know, it was not +her dear gods she sought to defend so much as me! She seemed always +to be wanting to say to me, "Dear, I know it's hard--but revolt +is harder. Don't make war on it, dear--don't! Don't do anything to +offend it. I'm sure it will hurt you if you do--it will hurt you +if you do." + +She had been cowed into submission, as so many women of that time +had been, by the sheer brutality of the accepted thing. The existing +order dominated her into a worship of abject observances. It had +bent her, aged her, robbed her of eyesight so that at fifty-five +she peered through cheap spectacles at my face, and saw it only +dimly, filled her with a habit of anxiety, made her hands------ +Her poor dear hands! Not in the whole world now could you find a +woman with hands so grimy, so needle-worn, so misshapen by toil, +so chapped and coarsened, so evilly entreated. . . . At any rate, +there is this I can say for myself, that my bitterness against the +world and fortune was for her sake as well as for my own. + +Yet that night I pushed by her harshly. I answered her curtly, +left her concerned and perplexed in the passage, and slammed my +door upon her. + +And for a long time I lay raging at the hardship and evil of life, +at the contempt of Rawdon, and the loveless coolness of Nettie's +letter, at my weakness and insignificance, at the things I found +intolerable, and the things I could not mend. Over and over went +my poor little brain, tired out and unable to stop on my treadmill +of troubles. Nettie. Rawdon. My mother. Gabbitas. Nettie. . . + +Suddenly I came upon emotional exhaustion. Some clock was striking +midnight. After all, I was young; I had these quick transitions. +I remember quite distinctly, I stood up abruptly, undressed very +quickly in the dark, and had hardly touched my pillow again before +I was asleep. + +But how my mother slept that night I do not know. + +Oddly enough, I do not blame myself for behaving like this to my +mother, though my conscience blames me acutely for my arrogance to +Parload. I regret my behavior to my mother before the days of the +Change, it is a scar among my memories that will always be a little +painful to the end of my days, but I do not see how something of +the sort was to be escaped under those former conditions. In that +time of muddle and obscurity people were overtaken by needs and +toil and hot passions before they had the chance of even a year or +so of clear thinking; they settled down to an intense and strenuous +application to some partial but immediate duty, and the growth of +thought ceased in them. They set and hardened into narrow ways. +Few women remained capable of a new idea after five and twenty, +few men after thirty-one or two. Discontent with the thing that +existed was regarded as immoral, it was certainly an annoyance, and +the only protest against it, the only effort against that universal +tendency in all human institutions to thicken and clog, to work +loosely and badly, to rust and weaken towards catastrophes, came +from the young--the crude unmerciful young. It seemed in those +days to thoughtful men the harsh law of being--that either we must +submit to our elders and be stifled, or disregard them, disobey them, +thrust them aside, and make our little step of progress before we +too ossified and became obstructive in our turn. + +My pushing past my mother, my irresponsive departure to my own +silent meditations, was, I now perceive, a figure of the whole hard +relationship between parents and son in those days. There appeared +no other way; that perpetually recurring tragedy was, it seemed, +part of the very nature of the progress of the world. We did not +think then that minds might grow ripe without growing rigid, or +children honor their parents and still think for themselves. We were +angry and hasty because we stifled in the darkness, in a poisoned +and vitiated air. That deliberate animation of the intelligence +which is now the universal quality, that vigor with consideration, +that judgment with confident enterprise which shine through all +our world, were things disintegrated and unknown in the corrupting +atmosphere of our former state. + + +(So the first fascicle ended. I put it aside and looked for the +second. + +"Well?" said the man who wrote. + +"This is fiction?" + +"It's my story." + +"But you-- Amidst this beauty-- You are not this ill-conditioned, +squalidly bred lad of whom I have been reading?" + +He smiled. "There intervenes a certain Change," he said. "Have I +not hinted at that?" + +I hesitated upon a question, then saw the second fascicle at hand, +and picked it up.) + + + + +CHAPTER THE SECOND + +NETTIE + + + +Section 1 + +I CANNOT now remember (the story resumed), what interval separated +that evening on which Parload first showed me the comet--I think +I only pretended to see it then--and the Sunday afternoon I spent +at Checkshill. + +Between the two there was time enough for me to give notice and +leave Rawdon's, to seek for some other situation very strenuously +in vain, to think and say many hard and violent things to my mother +and to Parload, and to pass through some phases of very profound +wretchedness. There must have been a passionate correspondence +with Nettie, but all the froth and fury of that has faded now out +of my memory. All I have clear now is that I wrote one magnificent +farewell to her, casting her off forever, and that I got in reply +a prim little note to say, that even if there was to be an end to +everything, that was no excuse for writing such things as I had done, +and then I think I wrote again in a vein I considered satirical. +To that she did not reply. That interval was at least three weeks, +and probably four, because the comet which had been on the first +occasion only a dubious speck in the sky, certainly visible only +when it was magnified, was now a great white presence, brighter +than Jupiter, and casting a shadow on its own account. It was +now actively present in the world of human thought, every one was +talking about it, every one was looking for its waxing splendor +as the sun went down --the papers, the music-halls, the hoardings, +echoed it. + +Yes; the comet was already dominant before I went over to make +everything clear to Nettie. And Parload had spent two hoarded pounds +in buying himself a spectroscope, so that he could see for himself, +night after night, that mysterious, that stimulating line--the +unknown line in the green. How many times I wonder did I look at +the smudgy, quivering symbol of the unknown things that were rushing +upon us out of the inhuman void, before I rebelled? But at last I +could stand it no longer, and I reproached Parload very bitterly +for wasting his time in "astronomical dilettantism." + +"Here," said I. "We're on the verge of the biggest lock-out in the +history of this countryside; here's distress and hunger coming, +here's all the capitalistic competitive system like a wound inflamed, +and you spend your time gaping at that damned silly streak of +nothing in the sky!" + +Parload stared at me. "Yes, I do," he said slowly, as though it +was a new idea. "Don't I? . . . I wonder why." + +"I want to start meetings of an evening on Howden's Waste." + +"You think they'd listen?" + +"They'd listen fast enough now." + +"They didn't before," said Parload, looking at his pet instrument. + +"There was a demonstration of unemployed at Swathinglea on Sunday. +They got to stone throwing." + +Parload said nothing for a little while and I said several things. +He seemed to be considering something. + +"But, after all," he said at last, with an awkward movement towards +his spectroscope, "that does signify something." + +"The comet?" + +"Yes." + +"What can it signify? You don't want me to believe in astrology. +What does it matter what flames in the heavens--when men are starving +on earth?" + +"It's--it's science." + +"Science! What we want now is socialism--not science." + +He still seemed reluctant to give up his comet. + +"Socialism's all right," he said, "but if that thing up there WAS +to hit the earth it might matter." + +"Nothing matters but human beings." + +"Suppose it killed them all." + +"Oh," said I, "that's Rot," + +"I wonder," said Parload, dreadfully divided in his allegiance. + +He looked at the comet. He seemed on the verge of repeating his +growing information about the nearness of the paths of the earth +and comet, and all that might ensue from that. So I cut in with +something I had got out of a now forgotten writer called Ruskin, +a volcano of beautiful language and nonsensical suggestions, who +prevailed very greatly with eloquent excitable young men in those +days. Something it was about the insignificance of science and the +supreme importance of Life. Parload stood listening, half turned +towards the sky with the tips of his fingers on his spectroscope. +He seemed to come to a sudden decision. + +"No. I don't agree with you, Leadford," he said. "You don't understand +about science." + +Parload rarely argued with that bluntness of opposition. I was so +used to entire possession of our talk that his brief contradiction +struck me like a blow. "Don't agree with me!" I repeated. + +"No," said Parload + +"But how?" + +"I believe science is of more importance than socialism," he said. +"Socialism's a theory. Science--science is something more." + +And that was really all he seemed to be able to say. + +We embarked upon one of those queer arguments illiterate young men +used always to find so heating. Science or Socialism? It was, of +course, like arguing which is right, left handedness or a taste for +onions, it was altogether impossible opposition. But the range of +my rhetoric enabled me at last to exasperate Parload, and his mere +repudiation of my conclusions sufficed to exasperate me, and we +ended in the key of a positive quarrel. "Oh, very well!" said I. +"So long as I know where we are!" + +I slammed his door as though I dynamited his house, and went raging +down the street, but I felt that he was already back at the window +worshiping his blessed line in the green, before I got round the +corner. + +I had to walk for an hour or so, before I was cool enough to go +home. + +And it was Parload who had first introduced me to socialism! + +Recreant! + +The most extraordinary things used to run through my head in those +days. I will confess that my mind ran persistently that evening upon +revolutions after the best French pattern, and I sat on a Committee +of Safety and tried backsliders. Parload was there, among the +prisoners, backsliderissimus, aware too late of the error of his +ways. His hands were tied behind his back ready for the shambles; +through the open door one heard the voice of justice, the rude +justice of the people. I was sorry, but I had to do my duty. + +"If we punish those who would betray us to Kings," said I, with +a sorrowful deliberation, "how much the more must we punish those +who would give over the State to the pursuit of useless knowledge"; +and so with a gloomy satisfaction sent him off to the guillotine. + +"Ah, Parload! Parload! If only you'd listened to me earlier, Parload." . . + +None the less that quarrel made me extremely unhappy. Parload was +my only gossip, and it cost me much to keep away from him and think +evil of him with no one to listen to me, evening after evening. + +That was a very miserable time for me, even before my last visit +to Checkshill. My long unemployed hours hung heavily on my hands. +I kept away from home all day, partly to support a fiction that +I was sedulously seeking another situation, and partly to escape +the persistent question in my mother's eyes. "Why did you quarrel +with Mr. Rawdon? Why DID you? Why do you keep on going about with +a sullen face and risk offending IT more? I spent most of the morning +in the newspaper-room of the public library, writing impossible +applications for impossible posts--I remember that among other +things of the sort I offered my services to a firm of private +detectives, a sinister breed of traders upon base jealousies now +happily vanished from the world, and wrote apropos of an advertisement +for "stevedores" that I did not know what the duties of a stevedore +might be, but that I was apt and willing to learn--and in the +afternoons and evenings I wandered through the strange lights and +shadows of my native valley and hated all created things. Until my +wanderings were checked by the discovery that I was wearing out my +boots. + +The stagnant inconclusive malaria of that time! + +I perceive that I was an evil-tempered, ill-disposed youth with a +great capacity for hatred, BUT-- + +There was an excuse for hate. + +It was wrong of me to hate individuals, to be rude, harsh, +and vindictive to this person or that, but indeed it would have +been equally wrong to have taken the manifest offer life made me, +without resentment. I see now clearly and calmly, what I then felt +obscurely and with an unbalanced intensity, that my conditions were +intolerable. My work was tedious and laborious and it took up an +unreasonable proportion of my time, I was ill clothed, ill fed, +ill housed, ill educated and ill trained, my will was suppressed +and cramped to the pitch of torture, I had no reasonable pride in +myself and no reasonable chance of putting anything right. It was +a life hardly worth living. That a large proportion of the people +about me had no better a lot, that many had a worse, does not +affect these facts. It was a life in which contentment would have +been disgraceful. If some of them were contented or resigned, so +much the worse for every one. No doubt it was hasty and foolish +of me to throw up my situation, but everything was so obviously +aimless and foolish in our social organization that I do not feel +disposed to blame myself even for that, except in so far as it +pained my mother and caused her anxiety. + +Think of the one comprehensive fact of the lock-out! + +That year was a bad year, a year of world-wide economic disorganization. +Through their want of intelligent direction the great "Trust" of +American ironmasters, a gang of energetic, narrow-minded furnace +owners, had smelted far more iron than the whole world had any demand +for. (In those days there existed no means of estimating any need +of that sort beforehand.) They had done this without even consulting +the ironmasters of any other country. During their period of activity +they had drawn into their employment a great number of workers, +and had erected a huge productive plant. It is manifestly just that +people who do headlong stupid things of this sort should suffer, +but in the old days it was quite possible, it was customary for +the real blunderers in such disasters, to shift nearly all the +consequences of their incapacity. No one thought it wrong for a +light-witted "captain of industry" who had led his workpeople into +overproduction, into the disproportionate manufacture, that is to +say, of some particular article, to abandon and dismiss them, nor +was there anything to prevent the sudden frantic underselling of +some trade rival in order to surprise and destroy his trade, secure +his customers for one's own destined needs, and shift a portion of +one's punishment upon him. This operation of spasmodic underselling +was known as "dumping." The American ironmasters were now dumping on +the British market. The British employers were, of course, taking +their loss out of their workpeople as much as possible, but in addition +they were agitating for some legislation that would prevent--not +stupid relative excess in production, but "dumping"--not the disease, +but the consequences of the disease. The necessary knowledge to +prevent either dumping or its causes, the uncorrelated production +of commodities, did not exist, but this hardly weighed with them +at all, and in answer to their demands there had arisen a curious +party of retaliatory-protectionists who combined vague proposals +for spasmodic responses to these convulsive attacks from foreign +manufacturers, with the very evident intention of achieving +financial adventures. The dishonest and reckless elements were +indeed so evident in this movement as to add very greatly to the +general atmosphere of distrust and insecurity, and in the recoil +from the prospect of fiscal power in the hands of the class of men +known as the "New Financiers," one heard frightened old-fashioned +statesmen asserting with passion that "dumping" didn't occur, or +that it was a very charming sort of thing to happen. Nobody would +face and handle the rather intricate truth of the business. The +whole effect upon the mind of a cool observer was of a covey of +unsubstantial jabbering minds drifting over a series of irrational +economic cataclysms, prices and employment tumbled about like towers +in an earthquake, and amidst the shifting masses were the common +work-people going on with their lives as well as they could, +suffering, perplexed, unorganized, and for anything but violent, +fruitless protests, impotent. You cannot hope now to understand +the infinite want of adjustment in the old order of things. At one +time there were people dying of actual starvation in India, while +men were burning unsalable wheat in America. It sounds like the +account of a particularly mad dream, does it not? It was a dream, +a dream from which no one on earth expected an awakening. + +To us youngsters with the positiveness, the rationalism of youth, +it seemed that the strikes and lockouts, the overproduction and +misery could not possibly result simply from ignorance and want +of thought and feeling. We needed more dramatic factors than these +mental fogs, these mere atmospheric devils. We fled therefore to +that common refuge of the unhappy ignorant, a belief in callous +insensate plots--we called them "plots"--against the poor. + +You can still see how we figured it in any museum by looking up +the caricatures of capital and labor that adorned the German and +American socialistic papers of the old time. + + + +Section 2 + +I had cast Nettie off in an eloquent epistle, had really imagined +the affair was over forever --"I've done with women," I said to +Parload--and then there was silence for more than a week. + +Before that week was over I was wondering with a growing emotion +what next would happen between us. + +I found myself thinking constantly of Nettie, picturing her--sometimes +with stern satisfaction, sometimes with sympathetic remorse--mourning, +regretting, realizing the absolute end that had come between us. +At the bottom of my heart I no more believed that there was an end +between us, than that an end would come to the world. Had we not +kissed one another, had we not achieved an atmosphere of whispering +nearness, breached our virgin shyness with one another? Of course +she was mine, of course I was hers, and separations and final +quarrels and harshness and distance were no more than flourishes +upon that eternal fact. So at least I felt the thing, however I +shaped my thoughts. + +Whenever my imagination got to work as that week drew to its close, +she came in as a matter of course, I thought of her recurrently +all day and dreamt of her at night. On Saturday night I dreamt of +her very vividly. Her face was flushed and wet with tears, her +hair a little disordered, and when I spoke to her she turned away. +In some manner this dream left in my mind a feeling of distress +and anxiety. In the morning I had a raging thirst to see her. + +That Sunday my mother wanted me to go to church very particularly. +She had a double reason for that; she thought that it would certainly +exercise a favorable influence upon my search for a situation +throughout the next week, and in addition Mr. Gabbitas, with +a certain mystery behind his glasses, had promised to see what he +could do for me, and she wanted to keep him up to that promise. I +half consented, and then my desire for Nettie took hold of me. I +told my mother I wasn't going to church, and set off about eleven +to walk the seventeen miles to Checkshill. + +It greatly intensified the fatigue of that long tramp that the +sole of my boot presently split at the toe, and after I had cut the +flapping portion off, a nail worked through and began to torment +me. However, the boot looked all right after that operation and +gave no audible hint of my discomfort. I got some bread and cheese +at a little inn on the way, and was in Checkshill park about four. +I did not go by the road past the house and so round to the gardens, +but cut over the crest beyond the second keeper's cottage, along +a path Nettie used to call her own. It was a mere deer track. It +led up a miniature valley and through a pretty dell in which we +had been accustomed to meet, and so through the hollies and along +a narrow path close by the wall of the shrubbery to the gardens. + +In my memory that walk through the park before I came upon Nettie +stands out very vividly. The long tramp before it is foreshortened +to a mere effect of dusty road and painful boot, but the bracken +valley and sudden tumult of doubts and unwonted expectations that +came to me, stands out now as something significant, as something +unforgettable, something essential to the meaning of all that +followed. Where should I meet her? What would she say? I had asked +these questions before and found an answer. Now they came again +with a trail of fresh implications and I had no answer for them at +all. As I approached Nettie she ceased to be the mere butt of my +egotistical self-projection, the custodian of my sexual pride, and +drew together and became over and above this a personality of her +own, a personality and a mystery, a sphinx I had evaded only to +meet again. + +I find a little difficulty in describing the quality of the old-world +love-making so that it may be understandable now. + +We young people had practically no preparation at all for the stir +and emotions of adolescence. Towards the young the world maintained +a conspiracy of stimulating silences. There came no initiation. +There were books, stories of a curiously conventional kind that +insisted on certain qualities in every love affair and greatly +intensified one's natural desire for them, perfect trust, perfect +loyalty, lifelong devotion. Much of the complex essentials of +love were altogether hidden. One read these things, got accidental +glimpses of this and that, wondered and forgot, and so one grew. +Then strange emotions, novel alarming desires, dreams strangely +charged with feeling; an inexplicable impulse of self-abandonment +began to tickle queerly amongst the familiar purely egotistical +and materialistic things of boyhood and girlhood. We were like +misguided travelers who had camped in the dry bed of a tropical +river. Presently we were knee deep and neck deep in the flood. +Our beings were suddenly going out from ourselves seeking other +beings--we knew not why. This novel craving for abandonment to +some one of the other sex, bore us away. We were ashamed and full +of desire. We kept the thing a guilty secret, and were resolved to +satisfy it against all the world. In this state it was we drifted +in the most accidental way against some other blindly seeking +creature, and linked like nascent atoms. + +We were obsessed by the books we read, by all the talk about us +that once we had linked ourselves we were linked for life. Then +afterwards we discovered that other was also an egotism, a thing +of ideas and impulses, that failed to correspond with ours. + +So it was, I say, with the young of my class and most of the young +people in our world. So it came about that I sought Nettie on the +Sunday afternoon and suddenly came upon her, light bodied, slenderly +feminine, hazel eyed, with her soft sweet young face under the shady +brim of her hat of straw, the pretty Venus I had resolved should +be wholly and exclusively mine. + +There, all unaware of me still, she stood, my essential feminine, +the embodiment of the inner thing in life for me--and moreover an +unknown other, a person like myself. + +She held a little book in her hand, open as if she were walking +along and reading it. That chanced to be her pose, but indeed she was +standing quite still, looking away towards the gray and lichenous +shrubbery wall and, as I think now, listening. Her lips were a +little apart, curved to that faint, sweet shadow of a smile. + + + +Section 3 + +I recall with a vivid precision her queer start when she heard the +rustle of my approaching feet, her surprise, her eyes almost of +dismay for me. I could recollect, I believe, every significant word +she spoke during our meeting, and most of what I said to her. At +least, it seems I could, though indeed I may deceive myself. But +I will not make the attempt. We were both too ill-educated to +speak our full meanings, we stamped out our feelings with clumsy +stereotyped phrases; you who are better taught would fail to catch +our intention. The effect would be inanity. But our first words +I may give you, because though they conveyed nothing to me at the +time, afterwards they meant much. + +"YOU, Willie!" she said. + +"I have come," I said--forgetting in the instant all the elaborate +things I had intended to say. "I thought I would surprise you--" + +"Surprise me?" + +"Yes." + +She stared at me for a moment. I can see her pretty face now as +it looked at me--her impenetrable dear face. She laughed a queer +little laugh and her color went for a moment, and then so soon as +she had spoken, came back again. + +"Surprise me at what?" she said with a rising note. + +I was too intent to explain myself to think of what might lie in +that. + +"I wanted to tell you," I said, "that I didn't mean quite . . . +the things I put in my letter." + + + +Section 4 + +When I and Nettie had been sixteen we had been just of an age and +contemporaries altogether. Now we were a year and three-quarters +older, and she--her metamorphosis was almost complete, and I was +still only at the beginning of a man's long adolescence. + +In an instant she grasped the situation. The hidden motives of her +quick ripened little mind flashed out their intuitive scheme of +action. She treated me with that neat perfection of understanding +a young woman has for a boy. + +"But how did you come?" she asked. + +I told her I had walked. + +"Walked!" In an instant she was leading me towards the gardens. +I MUST be tired. I must come home with her at once and sit down. +Indeed it was near tea-time (the Stuarts had tea at the old-fashioned +hour of five). Every one would be SO surprised to see me. Fancy +walking! Fancy! But she supposed a man thought nothing of seventeen +miles. When COULD I have started! + +All the while, keeping me at a distance, without even the touch of +her hand. + +"But, Nettie! I came over to talk to you?" + +"My dear boy! Tea first, if you please! And besides--aren't we +talking?" + +The "dear boy" was a new note, that sounded oddly to me. + +She quickened her pace a little. + +"I wanted to explain--" I began. + +Whatever I wanted to explain I had no chance to do so. I said a few +discrepant things that she answered rather by her intonation than +her words. + +When we were well past the shrubbery, she slackened a little in +her urgency, and so we came along the slope under the beeches to +the garden. She kept her bright, straightforward-looking girlish +eyes on me as we went; it seemed she did so all the time, but now +I know, better than I did then, that every now and then she glanced +over me and behind me towards the shrubbery. And all the while, +behind her quick breathless inconsecutive talk she was thinking. + +Her dress marked the end of her transition. + +Can I recall it? + +Not, I am afraid, in the terms a woman would use. But her bright +brown hair, which had once flowed down her back in a jolly pig-tail +tied with a bit of scarlet ribbon, was now caught up into an +intricacy of pretty curves above her little ear and cheek, and the +soft long lines of her neck; her white dress had descended to her +feet; her slender waist, which had once been a mere geographical +expression, an imaginary line like the equator, was now a thing +of flexible beauty. A year ago she had been a pretty girl's face +sticking out from a little unimportant frock that was carried upon +an extremely active and efficient pair of brown-stockinged legs. +Now there was coming a strange new body that flowed beneath her +clothes with a sinuous insistence. Every movement, and particularly +the novel droop of her hand and arm to the unaccustomed skirts she +gathered about her, and a graceful forward inclination that had come +to her, called softly to my eyes. A very fine scarf--I suppose you +would call it a scarf--of green gossamer, that some new wakened +instinct had told her to fling about her shoulders, clung now closely +to the young undulations of her body, and now streamed fluttering +out for a moment in a breath of wind, and like some shy independent +tentacle with a secret to impart, came into momentary contact with +my arm. + +She caught it back and reproved it. + +We went through the green gate in the high garden wall. I held it +open for her to pass through, for this was one of my restricted +stock of stiff politenesses, and then for a second she was near +touching me. So we came to the trim array of flower-beds near the +head gardener's cottage and the vistas of "glass" on our left. We +walked between the box edgings and beds of begonias and into the +shadow of a yew hedge within twenty yards of that very pond with +the gold-fish, at whose brim we had plighted our vows, and so we +came to the wistaria-smothered porch. + +The door was wide open, and she walked in before me. "Guess who +has come to see us!" she cried. + +Her father answered indistinctly from the parlor, and a chair +creaked. I judged he was disturbed in his nap. + +"Mother!" she called in her clear young voice. "Puss!" + +Puss was her sister. + +She told them in a marveling key that I had walked all the way from +Clayton, and they gathered about me and echoed her notes of surprise. + +"You'd better sit down, Willie," said her father; "now you hae got +here. How's your mother?" + +He looked at me curiously as he spoke. + +He was dressed in his Sunday clothes, a sort of brownish tweeds, but +the waistcoat was unbuttoned for greater comfort in his slumbers. +He was a brown-eyed ruddy man, and I still have now in my mind the +bright effect of the red-golden hairs that started out from his +cheek to flow down into his beard. He was short but strongly built, +and his beard and mustache were the biggest things about him. She +had taken all the possibility of beauty he possessed, his clear +skin, his bright hazel-brown eyes, and wedded them to a certain +quickness she got from her mother. Her mother I remember as +a sharp-eyed woman of great activity; she seems to me now to have +been perpetually bringing in or taking out meals or doing some +such service, and to me--for my mother's sake and my own--she was +always welcoming and kind. Puss was a youngster of fourteen perhaps, +of whom a hard bright stare, and a pale skin like her mother's, are +the chief traces on my memory. All these people were very kind to +me, and among them there was a common recognition, sometimes very +agreeably finding expression, that I was--"clever." They all stood +about me as if they were a little at a loss. + +"Sit down!" said her father. "Give him a chair, Puss." + +We talked a little stiffly--they were evidently surprised by my +sudden apparition, dusty, fatigued, and white faced; but Nettie +did not remain to keep the conversation going. + +"There!" she cried suddenly, as if she were vexed. "I declare!" +and she darted out of the room. + +"Lord! what a girl it is!" said Mrs. Stuart. "I don't know what's +come to her." + +It was half an hour before Nettie came back. It seemed a long time +to me, and yet she had been running, for when she came in again +she was out of breath. In the meantime, I had thrown out casually +that I had given up my place at Rawdon's. "I can do better than +that," I said. + +"I left my book in the dell," she said, panting. "Is tea +ready?" and that was her apology. . . + +We didn't shake down into comfort even with the coming of the +tea-things. Tea at the gardener's cottage was a serious meal, with +a big cake and little cakes, and preserves and fruit, a fine spread +upon a table. You must imagine me, sullen, awkward, and preoccupied, +perplexed by the something that was inexplicably unexpected in +Nettie, saying little, and glowering across the cake at her, and all +the eloquence I had been concentrating for the previous twenty-four +hours, miserably lost somewhere in the back of my mind. Nettie's +father tried to set me talking; he had a liking for my gift of ready +speech, for his own ideas came with difficulty, and it pleased and +astonished him to hear me pouring out my views. Indeed, over there +I was, I think, even more talkative than with Parload, though to +the world at large I was a shy young lout. "You ought to write it +out for the newspapers," he used to say. "That's what you ought to +do. I never heard such nonsense." + +Or, "You've got the gift of the gab, young man. We ought to ha' +made a lawyer of you." + +But that afternoon, even in his eyes, I didn't shine. Failing any +other stimulus, he reverted to my search for a situation, but even +that did not engage me. + + + +Section 5 + +For a long time I feared I should have to go back to Clayton without +another word to Nettie, she seemed insensible to the need I felt +for a talk with her, and I was thinking even of a sudden demand +for that before them all. It was a transparent manoeuver of her +mother's who had been watching my face, that sent us out at last +together to do something--I forget now what--in one of the greenhouses. +Whatever that little mission may have been it was the merest, most +barefaced excuse, a door to shut, or a window to close, and I don't +think it got done. + +Nettie hesitated and obeyed. She led the way through one of +the hot-houses. It was a low, steamy, brick-floored alley between +staging that bore a close crowd of pots and ferns, and behind big +branching plants that were spread and nailed overhead so as to make +an impervious cover of leaves, and in that close green privacy she +stopped and turned on me suddenly like a creature at bay. + +"Isn't the maidenhair fern lovely?" she said, and looked at me with +eyes that said, "NOW." + +"Nettie," I began, "I was a fool to write to you as I did." + +She startled me by the assent that flashed out upon her face. But +she said nothing, and stood waiting. + +"Nettie," I plunged, "I can't do without you. I--I love you." + +"If you loved me," she said trimly, watching the white fingers +she plunged among the green branches of a selaginella, "could you +write the things you do to me?" + +"I don't mean them," I said. "At least not always." + +I thought really they were very good letters, and that Nettie was +stupid to think otherwise, but I was for the moment clearly aware +of the impossibility of conveying that to her. + +"You wrote them." + +"But then I tramp seventeen miles to say I don't mean them." + +"Yes. But perhaps you do." + +I think I was at a loss; then I said, not very clearly, "I don't." + +"You think you--you love me, Willie. But you don't." + +"I do. Nettie! You know I do." + +For answer she shook her head. + +I made what I thought was a most heroic plunge. "Nettie," I said, +"I'd rather have you than--than my own opinions." + +The selaginella still engaged her. "You think so now," she said. + +I broke out into protestations. + +"No," she said shortly. "It's different now." + +"But why should two letters make so much difference?" I said. + +"It isn't only the letters. But it is different. It's different +for good." + +She halted a little with that sentence, seeking her expression. +She looked up abruptly into my eyes and moved, indeed slightly, +but with the intimation that she thought our talk might end. + +But I did not mean it to end like that. + +"For good?" said I. "No! . . Nettie! Nettie! You don't mean that!" + +"I do," she said deliberately, still looking at me, and with all +her pose conveying her finality. She seemed to brace herself for +the outbreak that must follow. + +Of course I became wordy. But I did not submerge her. She stood +entrenched, firing her contradictions like guns into my scattered +discursive attack. I remember that our talk took the absurd form +of disputing whether I could be in love with her or not. And there +was I, present in evidence, in a deepening and widening distress +of soul because she could stand there, defensive, brighter and +prettier than ever, and in some inexplicable way cut off from me +and inaccessible. + +You know, we had never been together before without little enterprises +of endearment, without a faintly guilty, quite delightful excitement. + +I pleaded, I argued. I tried to show that even my harsh and difficult +letters came from my desire to come wholly into contact with her. +I made exaggerated fine statements of the longing I felt for her +when I was away, of the shock and misery of finding her estranged +and cool. She looked at me, feeling the emotion of my speech and +impervious to its ideas. I had no doubt--whatever poverty in my +words, coolly written down now--that I was eloquent then. I meant +most intensely what I said, indeed I was wholly concentrated upon +it. I was set upon conveying to her with absolute sincerity my +sense of distance, and the greatness of my desire. I toiled toward +her painfully and obstinately through a jungle of words. + +Her face changed very slowly--by such imperceptible degrees as when +at dawn light comes into a clear sky. I could feel that I touched +her, that her hardness was in some manner melting, her determination +softening toward hesitations. The habit of an old familiarity lurked +somewhere within her. But she would not let me reach her. + +"No," she cried abruptly, starting into motion. + +She laid a hand on my arm. A wonderful new friendliness came into +her voice. "It's impossible, Willie. Everything is different now +--everything. We made a mistake. We two young sillies made a mistake +and everything is different for ever. Yes, yes." + +She turned about. + +"Nettie!" cried I, and still protesting, pursued her along the narrow +alley between the staging toward the hot-house door. I pursued her +like an accusation, and she went before me like one who is guilty +and ashamed. So I recall it now. + +She would not let me talk to her again. + +Yet I could see that my talk to her had altogether abolished +the clear-cut distance of our meeting in the park. Ever and again +I found her hazel eyes upon me. They expressed something novel--a +surprise, as though she realized an unwonted relationship, and a +sympathetic pity. And still--something defensive. + +When we got back to the cottage, I fell talking rather more freely +with her father about the nationalization of railways, and my spirits +and temper had so far mended at the realization that I could still +produce an effect upon Nettie, that I was even playful with Puss. +Mrs. Stuart judged from that that things were better with me than +they were, and began to beam mightily. + +But Nettie remained thoughtful and said very little. She was lost +in perplexities I could not fathom, and presently she slipped away +from us and went upstairs. + + + +Section 6 + +I was, of course, too footsore to walk back to Clayton, but I had +a shilling and a penny in my pocket for the train between Checkshill +and Two-Mile Stone, and that much of the distance I proposed to +do in the train. And when I got ready to go, Nettie amazed me by +waking up to the most remarkable solicitude for me. I must, she +said, go by the road. It was altogether too dark for the short way +to the lodge gates. + +I pointed out that it was moonlight. "With the comet thrown in," +said old Stuart. + +"No," she insisted, "you MUST go by the road." + +I still disputed. + +She was standing near me. "To please ME," she urged, in a quick +undertone, and with a persuasive look that puzzled me. Even in the +moment I asked myself why should this please her? + +I might have agreed had she not followed that up with, "The hollies +by the shrubbery are as dark as pitch. And there's the deer-hounds." + +"I'm not afraid of the dark," said I. "Nor of the deer-hounds, +either." + +"But those dogs! Supposing one was loose!" + +That was a girl's argument, a girl who still had to understand that +fear is an overt argument only for her own sex. I thought too of +those grisly lank brutes straining at their chains and the chorus +they could make of a night when they heard belated footsteps along +the edge of the Killing Wood, and the thought banished my wish to +please her. Like most imaginative natures I was acutely capable of +dreads and retreats, and constantly occupied with their suppression +and concealment, and to refuse the short cut when it might appear +that I did it on account of half a dozen almost certainly chained +dogs was impossible. + +So I set off in spite of her, feeling valiant and glad to be +so easily brave, but a little sorry that she should think herself +crossed by me. + +A thin cloud veiled the moon, and the way under the beeches was +dark and indistinct. I was not so preoccupied with my love-affairs +as to neglect what I will confess was always my custom at night +across that wild and lonely park. I made myself a club by fastening +a big flint to one end of my twisted handkerchief and tying the +other about my wrist, and with this in my pocket, went on comforted. + +And it chanced that as I emerged from the hollies by the corner +of the shrubbery I was startled to come unexpectedly upon a young +man in evening dress smoking a cigar. + +I was walking on turf, so that the sound I made was slight. He +stood clear in the moonlight, his cigar glowed like a blood-red +star, and it did not occur to me at the time that I advanced towards +him almost invisibly in an impenetrable shadow. + +"Hullo," he cried, with a sort of amiable challenge. "I'm here +first!" + +I came out into the light. "Who cares if you are?" said I. + +I had jumped at once to an interpretation of his words. I knew that +there was an intermittent dispute between the House people and the +villager public about the use of this track, and it is needless to +say where my sympathies fell in that dispute. + +"Eh?" he cried in surprise. + +"Thought I would run away, I suppose," said I, and came close up +to him. + +All my enormous hatred of his class had flared up at the sight of +his costume, at the fancied challenge of his words. I knew him. He +was Edward Verrall, son of the man who owned not only this great +estate but more than half of Rawdon's pot-bank, and who had interests +and possessions, collieries and rents, all over the district of +the Four Towns. He was a gallant youngster, people said, and very +clever. Young as he was there was talk of parliament for him; he had +been a great success at the university, and he was being sedulously +popularized among us. He took with a light confidence, as a matter +of course, advantages that I would have faced the rack to get, and +I firmly believed myself a better man than he. He was, as he stood +there, a concentrated figure of all that filled me with bitterness. +One day he had stopped in a motor outside our house, and I remember +the thrill of rage with which I had noted the dutiful admiration +in my mother's eyes as she peered through her blind at him. "That's +young Mr. Verrall," she said. "They say he's very clever." + +"They would," I answered. "Damn them and him!" + +But that is by the way. + +He was clearly astonished to find himself face to face with a man. +His note changed. + +"Who the devil are YOU?" he asked. + +My retort was the cheap expedient of re-echoing, "Who the devil +are you?" + +"WELL," he said. + +"I'm coming along this path if I like," I said. "See? It's a public +path--just as this used to be public land. You've stolen the land +--you and yours, and now you want to steal the right of way. You'll +ask us to get off the face of the earth next. I sha'n't oblige. +See?" + +I was shorter and I suppose a couple of years younger than he, but +I had the improvised club in my pocket gripped ready, and I would +have fought with him very cheerfully. But he fell a step backward +as I came toward him. + +"Socialist, I presume?" he said, alert and quiet and with the +faintest note of badinage. + +"One of many." + +"We're all socialists nowadays," he remarked philosophically, "and +I haven't the faintest intention of disputing your right of way." + +"You'd better not," I said. + +"No!" + +"No." + +He replaced his cigar, and there was a brief pause. "Catching a +train?" he threw out. + +It seemed absurd not to answer. "Yes," I said shortly. + +He said it was a pleasant evening for a walk. + +I hovered for a moment and there was my path before me, and he +stood aside. There seemed nothing to do but go on. "Good night," +said he, as that intention took effect. + +I growled a surly good-night. + +I felt like a bombshell of swearing that must presently burst with +some violence as I went on my silent way. He had so completely got +the best of our encounter. + + + +Section 7 + +There comes a memory, an odd intermixture of two entirely divergent +things, that stands out with the intensest vividness. + +As I went across the last open meadow, following the short cut to +Checkshill station, I perceived I had two shadows. + +The thing jumped into my mind and stopped its tumid flow for a +moment. I remember the intelligent detachment of my sudden interest. +I turned sharply, and stood looking at the moon and the great white +comet, that the drift of the clouds had now rather suddenly unveiled. + +The comet was perhaps twenty degrees from the moon. What a wonderful +thing it looked floating there, a greenish-white apparition in +the dark blue deeps! It looked brighter than the moon because it +was smaller, but the shadow it cast, though clearer cut, was much +fainter than the moon's shadow. . . I went on noting these facts, +watching my two shadows precede me. + +I am totally unable to account for the sequence of my thoughts +on this occasion. But suddenly, as if I had come on this new fact +round a corner, the comet was out of my mind again, and I was face +to face with an absolutely new idea. I wonder sometimes if the two +shadows I cast, one with a sort of feminine faintness with regard +to the other and not quite so tall, may not have suggested the +word or the thought of an assignation to my mind. All that I have +clear is that with the certitude of intuition I knew what it was +that had brought the youth in evening dress outside the shrubbery. +Of course! He had come to meet Nettie! + +Once the mental process was started it took no time at all. The +day which had been full of perplexities for me, the mysterious +invisible thing that had held Nettie and myself apart, the unaccountable +strange something in her manner, was revealed and explained. + +I knew now why she had looked guilty at my appearance, what had +brought her out that afternoon, why she had hurried me in, the +nature of the "book" she had run back to fetch, the reason why she +had wanted me to go back by the high-road, and why she had pitied +me. It was all in the instant clear to me. + +You must imagine me a black little creature, suddenly stricken +still--for a moment standing rigid--and then again suddenly +becoming active with an impotent gesture, becoming audible with an +inarticulate cry, with two little shadows mocking my dismay, and +about this figure you must conceive a great wide space of moonlit +grass, rimmed by the looming suggestion of distant trees--trees +very low and faint and dim, and over it all the domed serenity of +that wonderful luminous night. + +For a little while this realization stunned my mind. My thoughts +came to a pause, staring at my discovery. Meanwhile my feet and my +previous direction carried me through the warm darkness to Checkshill +station with its little lights, to the ticket-office window, and +so to the train. + +I remember myself as it were waking up to the thing--I was alone +in one of the dingy "third-class" compartments of that time--and +the sudden nearly frantic insurgence of my rage. I stood up with the +cry of an angry animal, and smote my fist with all my strength +against the panel of wood before me. . . . + +Curiously enough I have completely forgotten my mood after that +for a little while, but I know that later, for a minute perhaps, I +hung for a time out of the carriage with the door open, contemplating +a leap from the train. It was to be a dramatic leap, and then I +would go storming back to her, denounce her, overwhelm her; and I +hung, urging myself to do it. I don't remember how it was I decided +not to do this, at last, but in the end I didn't. + +When the train stopped at the next station I had given up all +thoughts of going back. I was sitting in the corner of the carriage +with my bruised and wounded hand pressed under my arm, and still +insensible to its pain, trying to think out clearly a scheme of +action--action that should express the monstrous indignation that +possessed me. + + + + +CHAPTER THE THIRD + +THE REVOLVER + + + +Section 1 + +"THAT comet is going to hit the earth!" + +So said one of the two men who got into the train and settled down. + +"Ah!" said the other man. + +"They do say that it is made of gas, that comet. We sha'n't +blow up, shall us?". . . + +What did it matter to me? + +I was thinking of revenge--revenge against the primary conditions +of my being. I was thinking of Nettie and her lover. I was firmly +resolved he should not have her--though I had to kill them both to +prevent it. I did not care what else might happen, if only that end +was ensured. All my thwarted passions had turned to rage. I would +have accepted eternal torment that night without a second thought, +to be certain of revenge. A hundred possibilities of action, a +hundred stormy situations, a whirl of violent schemes, chased one +another through my shamed, exasperated mind. The sole prospect I +could endure was of some gigantic, inexorably cruel vindication of +my humiliated self. + +And Nettie? I loved Nettie still, but now with the intensest +jealousy, with the keen, unmeasuring hatred of wounded pride, and +baffled, passionate desire. + + + +Section 2 + +As I came down the hill from Clayton Crest --for my shilling and +a penny only permitted my traveling by train as far as Two-Mile +Stone, and thence I had to walk over the hill--I remember very +vividly a little man with a shrill voice who was preaching under +a gas-lamp against a hoarding to a thin crowd of Sunday evening +loafers. He was a short man, bald, with a little fair curly beard +and hair and watery blue eyes, and he was preaching that the end +of the world drew near. + +I think that is the first time I heard any one link the comet with +the end of the world. He had got that jumbled up with international +politics and prophecies from the Book of Daniel. + +I stopped to hear him only for a moment or so. I do not think I +should have halted at all but his crowd blocked my path, and the +sight of his queer wild expression, the gesture of his upward-pointing +finger, held me. + +"There is the end of all your Sins and Follies," he bawled. "There! +There is the Star of Judgments, the Judgments of the most High +God! It is appointed unto all men to die--unto all men to die"--his +voice changed to a curious flat chant--"and after death, the +Judgment! The Judgment!" + +I pushed and threaded my way through the bystanders and went on, +and his curious harsh flat voice pursued me. I went on with the +thoughts that had occupied me before--where I could buy a revolver, +and how I might master its use--and probably I should have forgotten +all about him had he not taken a part in the hideous dream that +ended the little sleep I had that night. For the most part I lay +awake thinking of Nettie and her lover. + +Then came three strange days--three days that seem now to have been +wholly concentrated upon one business. + +This dominant business was the purchase of my revolver. I held +myself resolutely to the idea that I must either restore myself by +some extraordinary act of vigor and violence in Nettie's eyes or I +must kill her. I would not let myself fall away from that. I felt +that if I let this matter pass, my last shred of pride and honor +would pass with it, that for the rest of my life I should never +deserve the slightest respect or any woman's love. Pride kept me +to my purpose between my gusts of passion. + +Yet it was not easy to buy that revolver. + +I had a kind of shyness of the moment when I should have to face +the shopman, and I was particularly anxious to have a story ready +if he should see fit to ask questions why I bought such a thing. +I determined to say I was going to Texas, and I thought it might +prove useful there. Texas in those days had the reputation of a +wild lawless land. As I knew nothing of caliber or impact, I wanted +also to be able to ask with a steady face at what distance a man +or woman could be killed by the weapon that might be offered me. +I was pretty cool-headed in relation to such practical aspects of +my affair. I had some little difficulty in finding a gunsmith. In +Clayton there were some rook-rifles and so forth in a cycle shop, +but the only revolvers these people had impressed me as being too +small and toylike for my purpose. It was in a pawnshop window in +the narrow High Street of Swathinglea that I found my choice, a +reasonably clumsy and serious-looking implement ticketed "As used +in the American army." + +I had drawn out my balance from the savings bank, matter of two +pounds and more, to make this purchase, and I found it at last +a very easy transaction. The pawnbroker told me where I could get +ammunition, and I went home that night with bulging pockets, an +armed man. + +The purchase of my revolver was, I say, the chief business of +those days, but you must not think I was so intent upon it as to +be insensible to the stirring things that were happening in the +streets through which I went seeking the means to effect my purpose. +They were full of murmurings: the whole region of the Four Towns +scowled lowering from its narrow doors. The ordinary healthy flow +of people going to work, people going about their business, was +chilled and checked. Numbers of men stood about the streets in knots +and groups, as corpuscles gather and catch in the blood-vessels in +the opening stages of inflammation. The woman looked haggard and +worried. The ironworkers had refused the proposed reduction of +their wages, and the lockout had begun. They were already at "play." +The Conciliation Board was doing its best to keep the coal-miners +and masters from a breach, but young Lord Redcar, the greatest of +our coal owners and landlord of all Swathinglea and half Clayton, was +taking a fine upstanding attitude that made the breach inevitable. +He was a handsome young man, a gallant young man; his pride revolted +at the idea of being dictated to by a "lot of bally miners," and +he meant, he said, to make a fight for it. The world had treated +him sumptuously from his earliest years; the shares in the common +stock of five thousand people had gone to pay for his handsome +upbringing, and large, romantic, expensive ambitions filled +his generously nurtured mind. He had early distinguished himself +at Oxford by his scornful attitude towards democracy. There was +something that appealed to the imagination in his fine antagonism +to the crowd--on the one hand, was the brilliant young nobleman, +picturesquely alone; on the other, the ugly, inexpressive multitude, +dressed inelegantly in shop-clothes, under-educated, under-fed, +envious, base, and with a wicked disinclination for work and a wicked +appetite for the good things it could so rarely get. For common +imaginative purposes one left out the policeman from the design, +the stalwart policeman protecting his lordship, and ignored the +fact that while Lord Redcar had his hands immediately and legally +on the workman's shelter and bread, they could touch him to the +skin only by some violent breach of the law. + +He lived at Lowchester House, five miles or so beyond Checkshill; +but partly to show how little he cared for his antagonists, and +partly no doubt to keep himself in touch with the negotiations that +were still going on, he was visible almost every day in and about +the Four Towns, driving that big motor car of his that could take +him sixty miles an hour. The English passion for fair play one +might have thought sufficient to rob this bold procedure of any +dangerous possibilities, but he did not go altogether free from +insult, and on one occasion at least an intoxicated Irish +woman shook her fist at him. . . . + +A dark, quiet crowd, that was greater each day, a crowd more than +half women, brooded as a cloud will sometimes brood permanently upon +a mountain crest, in the market-place outside the Clayton +Town Hall, where the conference was held. . . . + +I consider myself justified in regarding Lord Redcar's passing +automobile with a special animosity because of the leaks in our +roof. + +We held our little house on lease; the owner was a mean, saving +old man named Pettigrew, who lived in a villa adorned with plaster +images of dogs and goats, at Overcastle, and in spite of our specific +agreement, he would do no repairs for us at all. He rested secure +in my mother's timidity. Once, long ago, she had been behind-hand +with her rent, with half of her quarter's rent, and he had extended +the days of grace a month; her sense that some day she might need +the same mercy again made her his abject slave. She was afraid even +to ask that he should cause the roof to be mended for fear he might +take offence. But one night the rain poured in on her bed and gave +her a cold, and stained and soaked her poor old patchwork counterpane. +Then she got me to compose an excessively polite letter to old +Pettigrew, begging him as a favor to perform his legal obligations. +It is part of the general imbecility of those days that such one-sided +law as existed was a profound mystery to the common people, its +provisions impossible to ascertain, its machinery impossible to set +in motion. Instead of the clearly written code, the lucid statements +of rules and principles that are now at the service of every one, +the law was the muddle secret of the legal profession. Poor people, +overworked people, had constantly to submit to petty wrongs because +of the intolerable uncertainty not only of law but of cost, and of +the demands upon time and energy, proceedings might make. There +was indeed no justice for any one too poor to command a good +solicitor's deference and loyalty; there was nothing but rough +police protection and the magistrate's grudging or eccentric advice +for the mass of the population. The civil law, in particular, was +a mysterious upper-class weapon, and I can imagine no injustice that +would have been sufficient to induce my poor old mother to appeal +to it. + +All this begins to sound incredible. I can only assure you that it +was so. + +But I, when I learned that old Pettigrew had been down to tell my +mother all about his rheumatism, to inspect the roof, and to allege +that nothing was needed, gave way to my most frequent emotion in +those days, a burning indignation, and took the matter into my own +hands. I wrote and asked him, with a withering air of technicality, +to have the roof repaired "as per agreement," and added, "if not +done in one week from now we shall be obliged to take proceedings." +I had not mentioned this high line of conduct to my mother at first, +and so when old Pettigrew came down in a state of great agitation +with my letter in his hand, she was almost equally agitated. + +"How could you write to old Mr. Pettigrew like that?" she asked +me. + +I said that old Pettigrew was a shameful old rascal, or words to +that effect, and I am afraid I behaved in a very undutiful way to +her when she said that she had settled everything with him--she +wouldn't say how, but I could guess well enough--and that I was +to promise her, promise her faithfully, to do nothing more in the +matter. I wouldn't promise her. + +And--having nothing better to employ me then--I presently went +raging to old Pettigrew in order to put the whole thing before him +in what I considered the proper light. Old Pettigrew evaded my +illumination; he saw me coming up his front steps--I can still see +his queer old nose and the crinkled brow over his eye and the little +wisp of gray hair that showed over the corner of his window-blind--and +he instructed his servant to put up the chain when she answered +the door, and to tell me that he would not see me. So I had to fall +back upon my pen. + +Then it was, as I had no idea what were the proper "proceedings" +to take, the brilliant idea occurred to me of appealing to Lord +Redcar as the ground landlord, and, as it were, our feudal chief, +and pointing out to him that his security for his rent was depreciating +in old Pettigrew's hands. I added some general observations on +leaseholds, the taxation of ground rents, and the private ownership +of the soil. And Lord Redcar, whose spirit revolted at democracy, +and who cultivated a pert humiliating manner with his inferiors to +show as much, earned my distinguished hatred for ever by causing +his secretary to present his compliments to me, and his request +that I would mind my own business and leave him to manage his. At +which I was so greatly enraged that I first tore this note into +minute innumerable pieces, and then dashed it dramatically all over +the floor of my room--from which, to keep my mother from the job, +I afterward had to pick it up laboriously on all-fours. + +I was still meditating a tremendous retort, an indictment of all +Lord Redcar's class, their manners, morals, economic and political +crimes, when my trouble with Nettie arose to swamp all minor +troubles. Yet, not so completely but that I snarled aloud when his +lordship's motor-car whizzed by me, as I went about upon my long +meandering quest for a weapon. And I discovered after a time that +my mother had bruised her knee and was lame. Fearing to irritate +me by bringing the thing before me again, she had set herself to +move her bed out of the way of the drip without my help, and she +had knocked her knee. All her poor furnishings, I discovered, were +cowering now close to the peeling bedroom walls; there had come a +vast discoloration of the ceiling, and a washing-tub was +in occupation of the middle of her chamber. . . . + +It is necessary that I should set these things before you, should +give the key of inconvenience and uneasiness in which all things +were arranged, should suggest the breath of trouble that stirred +along the hot summer streets, the anxiety about the strike, the +rumors and indignations, the gatherings and meetings, the increasing +gravity of the policemen's faces, the combative headlines of the +local papers, the knots of picketers who scrutinized any one who +passed near the silent, smokeless forges, but in my mind, you must +understand, such impressions came and went irregularly; they made +a moving background, changing undertones, to my preoccupation by +that darkly shaping purpose to which a revolver was so imperative +an essential. + +Along the darkling streets, amidst the sullen crowds, the thought +of Nettie, my Nettie, and her gentleman lover made ever a vivid +inflammatory spot of purpose in my brain. + + + +Section 3 + +It was three days after this--on Wednesday, that is to say--that +the first of those sinister outbreaks occurred that ended in the +bloody affair of Peacock Grove and the flooding out of the entire +line of the Swathinglea collieries. It was the only one of these +disturbances I was destined to see, and at most a mere trivial +preliminary of that struggle. + +The accounts that have been written of this affair vary very widely. +To read them is to realize the extraordinary carelessness of truth +that dishonored the press of those latter days. In my bureau I +have several files of the daily papers of the old time--I collected +them, as a matter of fact--and three or four of about that date I +have just this moment taken out and looked through to refresh my +impression of what I saw. They lie before me--queer, shriveled, +incredible things; the cheap paper has already become brittle and +brown and split along the creases, the ink faded or smeared, and I +have to handle them with the utmost care when I glance among their +raging headlines. As I sit here in this serene place, their quality +throughout, their arrangement, their tone, their arguments and +exhortations, read as though they came from drugged and drunken men. +They give one the effect of faded bawling, of screams and shouts +heard faintly in a little gramophone. . . . It is only on Monday +I find, and buried deep below the war news, that these publications +contain any intimation that unusual happenings were forward in +Clayton and Swathinglea. + +What I saw was towards evening. I had been learning to shoot with +my new possession. I had walked out with it four or five miles +across a patch of moorland and down to a secluded little coppice +full of blue-bells, halfway along the high-road between Leet and +Stafford. Here I had spent the afternoon, experimenting and practising +with careful deliberation and grim persistence. I had brought an +old kite-frame of cane with me, that folded and unfolded, and each +shot-hole I made I marked and numbered to compare with my other +endeavors. At last I was satisfied that I could hit a playing-card +at thirty paces nine times out of ten; the light was getting too +bad for me to see my penciled bull's-eye, and in that state of +quiet moodiness that sometimes comes with hunger to passionate men, +I returned by the way of Swathinglea towards my home. + +The road I followed came down between banks of wretched-looking +working-men's houses, in close-packed rows on either side, and took +upon itself the role of Swathinglea High Street, where, at a lamp +and a pillar-box, the steam-trams began. So far that dirty hot way +had been unusually quiet and empty, but beyond the corner, where +the first group of beershops clustered, it became populous. It was +very quiet still, even the children were a little inactive, but +there were a lot of people standing dispersedly in little groups, +and with a general direction towards the gates of the Bantock Burden +coalpit. + +The place was being picketed, although at that time the miners +were still nominally at work, and the conferences between masters +and men still in session at Clayton Town Hall. But one of the men +employed at the Bantock Burden pit, Jack Briscoe, was a socialist, +and he had distinguished himself by a violent letter upon the crisis +to the leading socialistic paper in England, The Clarion, in which +he had adventured among the motives of Lord Redcar. The publication +of this had been followed by instant dismissal. As Lord Redcar wrote +a day or so later to the Times--I have that Times, I have all the +London papers of the last month before the Change-- + +"The man was paid off and kicked out. Any self-respecting employer +would do the same." The thing had happened overnight, and the men +did not at once take a clear line upon what was, after all, a very +intricate and debatable occasion. But they came out in a sort of +semiofficial strike from all Lord Redcar's collieries beyond the +canal that besets Swathinglea. They did so without formal notice, +committing a breach of contract by this sudden cessation. But in +the long labor struggles of the old days the workers were constantly +putting themselves in the wrong and committing illegalities +through that overpowering craving for dramatic promptness natural +to uneducated minds. + +All the men had not come out of the Bantock Burden pit. Something +was wrong there, an indecision if nothing else; the mine was still +working, and there was a rumor that men from Durham had been held +in readiness by Lord Redcar, and were already in the mine. Now, it +is absolutely impossible to ascertain certainly how things stood at +that time. The newspapers say this and that, but nothing trustworthy +remains. + +I believe I should have gone striding athwart the dark stage of +that stagnant industrial drama without asking a question, if Lord +Redcar had not chanced to come upon the scene about the same time +as myself and incontinently end its stagnation. + +He had promised that if the men wanted a struggle he would put +up the best fight they had ever had, and he had been active all +that afternoon in meeting the quarrel half way, and preparing as +conspicuously as possible for the scratch force of "blacklegs"--as +we called them --who were, he said and we believed, to replace the +strikers in his pits. + +I was an eye-witness of the whole of the affair outside the Bantock +Burden pit, and--I do not know what happened. + +Picture to yourself how the thing came to me. + +I was descending a steep, cobbled, excavated road between banked-up +footways, perhaps six feet high, upon which, in a monotonous +series, opened the living room doors of rows of dark, low cottages. +The perspective of squat blue slate roofs and clustering chimneys +drifted downward towards the irregular open space before the +colliery--a space covered with coaly, wheel-scarred mud, with a +patch of weedy dump to the left and the colliery gates to the right. +Beyond, the High Street with shops resumed again in good earnest +and went on, and the lines of the steam-tramway that started out +from before my feet, and were here shining and acutely visible +with reflected skylight and here lost in a shadow, took up for one +acute moment the greasy yellow irradiation of a newly lit gaslamp +as they vanished round the bend. Beyond, spread a darkling marsh +of homes, an infinitude of little smoking hovels, and emergent, +meager churches, public-houses, board schools, and other buildings +amidst the prevailing chimneys of Swathinglea. To the right, very +clear and relatively high, the Bantock Burden pit-mouth was marked +by a gaunt lattice bearing a great black wheel, very sharp and +distinct in the twilight, and beyond, in an irregular perspective, +were others following the lie of the seams. The general effect, +as one came down the hill, was of a dark compressed life beneath +a very high and wide and luminous evening sky, against which these +pit-wheels rose. And ruling the calm spaciousness of that heaven +was the great comet, now green-white, and wonderful for all who +had eyes to see. + +The fading afterglow of the sunset threw up all the contours and +skyline to the west, and the comet rose eastward out of the pouring +tumult of smoke from Bladden's forges. The moon had still to rise. + +By this time the comet had begun to assume the cloudlike form still +familiar through the medium of a thousand photographs and sketches. +At first it had been an almost telescopic speck; it had brightened +to the dimensions of the greatest star in the heavens; it had +still grown, hour by hour, in its incredibly swift, its noiseless +and inevitable rush upon our earth, until it had equaled and surpassed +the moon. Now it was the most splendid thing this sky of earth has +ever held. I have never seen a photograph that gave a proper idea +of it. Never at any time did it assume the conventional tailed +outline, comets are supposed to have. Astronomers talked of its +double tail, one preceding it and one trailing behind it, but these +were foreshortened to nothing, so that it had rather the form of a +bellying puff of luminous smoke with an intenser, brighter heart. +It rose a hot yellow color, and only began to show its distinctive +greenness when it was clear of the mists of the evening. + +It compelled attention for a space. For all my earthly concentration of +mind, I could but stare at it for a moment with a vague anticipation +that, after all, in some way so strange and glorious an object +must have significance, could not possibly be a matter of absolute +indifference to the scheme and values of my life. + +But how? + +I thought of Parload. I thought of the panic and uneasiness that +was spreading in this very matter, and the assurances of scientific +men that the thing weighed so little--at the utmost a few hundred +tons of thinly diffused gas and dust--that even were it to smite +this earth fully, nothing could possibly ensue. And, after all, +said I, what earthly significance has any one found in the stars? + +Then, as one still descended, the houses and buildings rose up, +the presence of those watching groups of people, the tension of +the situation; and one forgot the sky. + +Preoccupied with myself and with my dark dream about Nettie and my +honor, I threaded my course through the stagnating threat of this +gathering, and was caught unawares, when suddenly the whole +scene flashed into drama. . . . + +The attention of every one swung round with an irresistible magnetism +towards the High Street, and caught me as a rush of waters might +catch a wisp of hay. Abruptly the whole crowd was sounding one note. +It was not a word, it was a sound that mingled threat and protest, +something between a prolonged "Ah!" and "Ugh!" Then with a hoarse +intensity of anger came a low heavy booing, "Boo! boo --oo!" a note +stupidly expressive of animal savagery. "Toot, toot!" said Lord +Redcar's automobile in ridiculous repartee. "Toot, toot!" One heard +it whizzing and throbbing as the crowd obliged it to slow down. + +Everybody seemed in motion towards the colliery gates, I, too, with +the others. + +I heard a shout. Through the dark figures about me I saw the motor-car +stop and move forward again, and had a glimpse of something writhing +on the ground. + +It was alleged afterwards that Lord Redcar was driving, and that +he quite deliberately knocked down a little boy who would not get +out of his way. It is asserted with equal confidence that the boy +was a man who tried to pass across the front of the motor-car as it +came slowly through the crowd, who escaped by a hair's breadth, and +then slipped on the tram-rail and fell down. I have both accounts +set forth, under screaming headlines, in two of these sere newspapers +upon my desk. No one could ever ascertain the truth. Indeed, in +such a blind tumult of passion, could there be any truth? + +There was a rush forward, the horn of the car sounded, everything +swayed violently to the right for perhaps ten yards or so, and +there was a report like a pistol-shot. + +For a moment every one seemed running away. A woman, carrying a +shawl-wrapped child, blundered into me, and sent me reeling back. +Every one thought of firearms, but, as a matter of fact, something +had gone wrong with the motor, what in those old-fashioned contrivances +was called a backfire. A thin puff of bluish smoke hung in the air +behind the thing. The majority of the people scattered back in a +disorderly fashion, and left a clear space about the struggle that +centered upon the motor-car. + +The man or boy who had fallen was lying on the ground with no one +near him, a black lump, an extended arm and two sprawling feet. +The motor-car had stopped, and its three occupants were standing +up. Six or seven black figures surrounded the car, and appeared +to be holding on to it as if to prevent it from starting again; +one--it was Mitchell, a well-known labor leader --argued in fierce +low tones with Lord Redcar. I could not hear anything they said, +I was not near enough. Behind me the colliery gates were open, +and there was a sense of help coming to the motor-car from that +direction. There was an unoccupied muddy space for fifty yards, +perhaps, between car and gate, and then the wheels and head of the +pit rose black against the sky. I was one of a rude semicircle of +people that hung as yet indeterminate in action about this dispute. + +It was natural, I suppose, that my fingers should close upon the +revolver in my pocket. + +I advanced with the vaguest intentions in the world, and not so +quickly but that several men hurried past me to join the little +knot holding up the car. + +Lord Redcar, in his big furry overcoat, towered up over the group +about him; his gestures were free and threatening, and his voice +loud. He made a fine figure there, I must admit; he was a big, +fair, handsome young man with a fine tenor voice and an instinct +for gallant effect. My eyes were drawn to him at first wholly. He +seemed a symbol, a triumphant symbol, of all that the theory of +aristocracy claims, of all that filled my soul with resentment. +His chauffeur sat crouched together, peering at the crowd under +his lordship's arm. But Mitchell showed as a sturdy figure also, +and his voice was firm and loud. + +"You've hurt that lad," said Mitchell, over and over again. "You'll +wait here till you see if he's hurt." + +"I'll wait here or not as I please," said Redcar; and to the +chauffeur, "Here! get down and look at it!" + +"You'd better not get down," said Mitchell; and the chauffeur stood +bent and hesitating on the step. + +The man on the back seat stood up, leant forward, and spoke to Lord +Redcar, and for the first time my attention was drawn to him. It +was young Verrall! His handsome face shone clear and fine in the +green pallor of the comet. + +I ceased to hear the quarrel that was raising the voice of Mitchell +and Lord Redcar. This new fact sent them spinning into the background. +Young Verrall! + +It was my own purpose coming to meet me half way. + +There was to be a fight here, it seemed certain to come to a scuffle, +and here we were-- + +What was I to do? I thought very swiftly. Unless my memory cheats +me, I acted with swift decision. My hand tightened on my revolver, +and then I remembered it was unloaded. I had thought my course out +in an instant. I turned round and pushed my way out of the angry +crowd that was now surging back towards the motor-car. + +It would be quiet and out of sight, I thought, among the dump +heaps across the road, and there I might load unobserved. . . + +A big young man striding forward with his fists clenched, halted +for one second at the sight of me. + +"What!" said he. "Ain't afraid of them, are you?" + +I glanced over my shoulder and back at him, was near showing him my +pistol, and the expression changed in his eyes. He hung perplexed +at me. Then with a grunt he went on. + +I heard the voices growing loud and sharp behind me. + +I hesitated, half turned towards the dispute, then set off running +towards the heaps. Some instinct told me not to be detected loading. +I was cool enough therefore to think of the aftermath of the thing +I meant to do. + +I looked back once again towards the swaying discussion--or was +it a fight now? and then I dropped into the hollow, knelt among +the weeds, and loaded with eager trembling fingers. I loaded one +chamber, got up and went back a dozen paces, thought of possibilities, +vacillated, returned and loaded all the others. I did it slowly +because I felt a little clumsy, and at the end came a moment of +inspection--had I forgotten any thing? And then for a few seconds +I crouched before I rose, resisting the first gust of reaction +against my impulse. I took thought, and for a moment that great +green-white meteor overhead swam back into my conscious mind. For +the first time then I linked it clearly with all the fierce violence +that had crept into human life. I joined up that with what I meant +to do. I was going to shoot young Verrall as it were under the +benediction of that green glare. + +But about Nettie? + +I found it impossible to think out that obvious complication. + +I came up over the heap again, and walked slowly back towards the +wrangle. + +Of course I had to kill him. . . . + +Now I would have you believe I did not want to murder young Verrall +at all at that particular time. I had not pictured such circumstances +as these, I had never thought of him in connection with Lord Redcar +and our black industrial world. He was in that distant other world +of Checkshill, the world of parks and gardens, the world of sunlit +emotions and Nettie. His appearance here was disconcerting. I was +taken by surprise. I was too tired and hungry to think clearly, and +the hard implication of our antagonism prevailed with me. In the +tumult of my passed emotions I had thought constantly of conflicts, +confrontations, deeds of violence, and now the memory of these things +took possession of me as though they were irrevocable resolutions. + +There was a sharp exclamation, the shriek of a woman, and the crowd +came surging back. The fight had begun. + +Lord Redcar, I believe, had jumped down from his car and felled +Mitchell, and men were already running out to his assistance from +the colliery gates. + +I had some difficulty in shoving through the crowd; I can still +remember very vividly being jammed at one time between two big men +so that my arms were pinned to my sides, but all the other details +are gone out of my mind until I found myself almost violently +projected forward into the "scrap." + +I blundered against the corner of the motor-car, and came round it +face to face with young Verrall, who was descending from the back +compartment. His face was touched with orange from the automobile's +big lamps, which conflicted with the shadows of the comet light, +and distorted him oddly. That effect lasted but an instant, but it +put me out. Then he came a step forward, and the ruddy lights and +queerness vanished. + +I don't think he recognized me, but he perceived immediately I +meant attacking. He struck out at once at me a haphazard blow, and +touched me on the cheek. + +Instinctively I let go of the pistol, snatched my right hand out +of my pocket and brought it up in a belated parry, and then let +out with my left full in his chest. + +It sent him staggering, and as he went back I saw recognition mingle +with astonishment in his face. + +"You know me, you swine," I cried and hit again. + +Then I was spinning sideways, half-stunned, with a huge lump of a +fist under my jaw. I had an impression of Lord Redcar as a great +furry bulk, towering like some Homeric hero above the fray. I went +down before him--it made him seem to rush up--and he ignored me +further. His big flat voice counseled young Verrall-- + +"Cut, Teddy! It won't do. The picketa's got i'on bahs. . . ." + +Feet swayed about me, and some hobnailed miner kicked my ankle and +went stumbling. There were shouts and curses, and then everything +had swept past me. I rolled over on my face and beheld the chauffeur, +young Verrall, and Lord Redcar--the latter holding up his long +skirts of fur, and making a grotesque figure--one behind the other, +in full bolt across a coldly comet-lit interval, towards the open +gates of the colliery. + +I raised myself up on my hands. + +Young Verrall! + +I had not even drawn my revolver--I had forgotten it. I was covered +with coaly mud--knees, elbows, shoulders, back. I had not +even drawn my revolver! . . + +A feeling of ridiculous impotence overwhelmed me. I struggled +painfully to my feet. + +I hesitated for a moment towards the gates of the colliery, and then +went limping homeward, thwarted, painful, confused, and ashamed. +I had not the heart nor desire to help in the wrecking and burning +of Lord Redcar's motor. + + + +Section 4 + +In the night, fever, pain, fatigue--it may be the indigestion of +my supper of bread and cheese--roused me at last out of a hag-rid +sleep to face despair. I was a soul lost amidst desolations and +shame, dishonored, evilly treated, hopeless. I raged against the +God I denied, and cursed him as I lay. + +And it was in the nature of my fever, which was indeed only half +fatigue and illness, and the rest the disorder of passionate youth, +that Nettie, a strangely distorted Nettie, should come through the +brief dreams that marked the exhaustions of that vigil, to dominate +my misery. I was sensible, with an exaggerated distinctness, of +the intensity of her physical charm for me, of her every grace and +beauty; she took to herself the whole gamut of desire in me and +the whole gamut of pride. She, bodily, was my lost honor. It was +not only loss but disgrace to lose her. She stood for life and all +that was denied; she mocked me as a creature of failure and defeat. +My spirit raised itself towards her, and then the bruise upon my +jaw glowed with a dull heat, and I rolled in the mud again before +my rivals. + +There were times when something near madness took me, and I gnashed +my teeth and dug my nails into my hands and ceased to curse and cry +out only by reason of the insufficiency of words. And once towards +dawn I got out of bed, and sat by my looking-glass with my revolver +loaded in my hand. I stood up at last and put it carefully in my +drawer and locked it--out of reach of any gusty impulse. After +that I slept for a little while. + +Such nights were nothing rare and strange in that old order of the +world. Never a city, never a night the whole year round, but amidst +those who slept were those who waked, plumbing the deeps of wrath +and misery. Countless thousands there were so ill, so troubled, +they agonize near to the very border-line of madness, each +one the center of a universe darkened and lost. . . + +The next day I spent in gloomy lethargy. + +I had intended to go to Checkshill that day, but my bruised ankle +was too swollen for that to be possible. I sat indoors in the +ill-lit downstairs kitchen, with my foot bandaged, and mused darkly +and read. My dear old mother waited on me, and her brown eyes watched +me and wondered at my black silences, my frowning preoccupations. +I had not told her how it was my ankle came to be bruised and my +clothes muddy. She had brushed my clothes in the morning before I +got up. + +Ah well! Mothers are not treated in that way now. That I suppose +must console me. I wonder how far you will be able to picture that +dark, grimy, untidy room, with its bare deal table, its tattered +wall paper, the saucepans and kettle on the narrow, cheap, but +by no means economical range, the ashes under the fireplace, the +rust-spotted steel fender on which my bandaged feet rested; I wonder +how near you can come to seeing the scowling pale-faced hobbledehoy +I was, unshaven and collarless, in the Windsor chair, and the little +timid, dirty, devoted old woman who hovered about me with +love peering out from her puckered eyelids. . . + +When she went out to buy some vegetables in the middle of the +morning she got me a half-penny journal. It was just such a one as +these upon my desk, only that the copy I read was damp from the +press, and these are so dry and brittle, they crack if I touch +them. I have a copy of the actual issue I read that morning; it +was a paper called emphatically the New Paper, but everybody bought +it and everybody called it the "yell." It was full that morning of +stupendous news and still more stupendous headlines, so stupendous +that for a little while I was roused from my egotistical broodings +to wider interests. For it seemed that Germany and England were on +the brink of war. + +Of all the monstrous irrational phenomena of the former time, war +was certainly the most strikingly insane. In reality it was probably +far less mischievous than such quieter evil as, for example, the +general acquiescence in the private ownership of land, but its evil +consequences showed so plainly that even in those days of stifling +confusion one marveled at it. On no conceivable grounds was there +any sense in modern war. Save for the slaughter and mangling of a +multitude of people, the destruction of vast quantities of material, +and the waste of innumerable units of energy, it effected nothing. +The old war of savage and barbaric nations did at least change +humanity, you assumed yourselves to be a superior tribe in physique +and discipline, you demonstrated this upon your neighbors, and +if successful you took their land and their women and perpetuated +and enlarged your superiority. The new war changed nothing but the +color of maps, the design of postage stamps, and the relationship +of a few accidentally conspicuous individuals. In one of the last +of these international epileptic fits, for example, the English, +with much dysentery and bad poetry, and a few hundred deaths in +battle, conquered the South African Boers at a gross cost of about +three thousand pounds per head --they could have bought the whole +of that preposterous imitation of a nation for a tenth of that +sum--and except for a few substitutions of personalities, this +group of partially corrupt officials in the place of that, and so +forth, the permanent change was altogether insignificant. (But +an excitable young man in Austria committed suicide when at length +the Transvaal ceased to be a "nation.") Men went through the seat +of that war after it was all over, and found humanity unchanged, +except for a general impoverishment, and the convenience of an +unlimited supply of empty ration tins and barbed wire and cartridge +cases--unchanged and resuming with a slight perplexity all its old +habits and misunderstandings, the nigger still in his slum-like +kraal, the white in his ugly ill-managed shanty. . . + +But we in England saw all these things, or did not see them, +through the mirage of the New Paper, in a light of mania. All my +adolescence from fourteen to seventeen went to the music of that +monstrous resonating futility, the cheering, the anxieties, the +songs and the waving of flags, the wrongs of generous Buller and +the glorious heroism of De Wet--who ALWAYS got away; that was the +great point about the heroic De Wet--and it never occurred to us +that the total population we fought against was less than half the +number of those who lived cramped ignoble lives within the compass +of the Four Towns. + +But before and after that stupid conflict of stupidities, a greater +antagonism was coming into being, was slowly and quietly defining +itself as a thing inevitable, sinking now a little out of attention +only to resume more emphatically, now flashing into some acute +definitive expression and now percolating and pervading some new +region of thought, and that was the antagonism of Germany and Great +Britain. + +When I think of that growing proportion of readers who belong +entirely to the new order, who are growing up with only the vaguest +early memories of the old world, I find the greatest difficulty +in writing down the unintelligible confusions that were matter of +fact to their fathers. + +Here were we British, forty-one millions of people, in a state of +almost indescribably aimless, economic, and moral muddle that we had +neither the courage, the energy, nor the intelligence to improve, +that most of us had hardly the courage to think about, and with our +affairs hopelessly entangled with the entirely different confusions +of three hundred and fifty million other persons scattered about +the globe, and here were the Germans over against us, fifty-six +millions, in a state of confusion no whit better than our own, +and the noisy little creatures who directed papers and wrote books +and gave lectures, and generally in that time of world-dementia +pretended to be the national mind, were busy in both countries, +with a sort of infernal unanimity, exhorting--and not only exhorting +but successfully persuading--the two peoples to divert such small +common store of material, moral and intellectual energy as either +possessed, into the purely destructive and wasteful business of war. +And--I have to tell you these things even if you do not believe +them, because they are vital to my story--there was not a man alive +who could have told you of any real permanent benefit, of anything +whatever to counterbalance the obvious waste and evil, that would +result from a war between England and Germany, whether England +shattered Germany or was smashed and overwhelmed, or whatever the +end might be. + +The thing was, in fact, an enormous irrational obsession, it was, +in the microcosm of our nation, curiously parallel to the egotistical +wrath and jealousy that swayed my individual microcosm. It measured +the excess of common emotion over the common intelligence, the +legacy of inordinate passion we have received from the brute from +which we came. Just as I had become the slave of my own surprise and +anger and went hither and thither with a loaded revolver, seeking +and intending vague fluctuating crimes, so these two nations went +about the earth, hot eared and muddle headed, with loaded navies +and armies terribly ready at hand. Only there was not even a Nettie +to justify their stupidity. There was nothing but quiet imaginary +thwarting on either side. + +And the press was the chief instrument that kept these two huge +multitudes of people directed against one another. + +The press--those newspapers that are now so strange to us--like +the "Empires," the "Nations," the Trusts, and all the other great +monstrous shapes of that extraordinary time--was in the nature +of an unanticipated accident. It had happened, as weeds happen in +abandoned gardens, just as all our world has happened,--because +there was no clear Will in the world to bring about anything better. +Towards the end this "press" was almost entirely under the direction +of youngish men of that eager, rather unintelligent type, that +is never able to detect itself aimless, that pursues nothing with +incredible pride and zeal, and if you would really understand this +mad era the comet brought to an end, you must keep in mind that every +phase in the production of these queer old things was pervaded by +a strong aimless energy and happened in a concentrated rush. + +Let me describe to you, very briefly, a newspaper day. + +Figure first, then, a hastily erected and still more hastily +designed building in a dirty, paper-littered back street of old +London, and a number of shabbily dressed men coming and going in +this with projectile swiftness, and within this factory companies +of printers, tensely active with nimble fingers--they were always +speeding up the printers--ply their type-setting machines, and cast +and arrange masses of metal in a sort of kitchen inferno, above +which, in a beehive of little brightly lit rooms, disheveled men +sit and scribble. There is a throbbing of telephones and a clicking +of telegraph needles, a rushing of messengers, a running to and fro +of heated men, clutching proofs and copy. Then begins a clatter +roar of machinery catching the infection, going faster and faster, +and whizzing and banging,--engineers, who have never had time to +wash since their birth, flying about with oil-cans, while paper +runs off its rolls with a shudder of haste. The proprietor you +must suppose arriving explosively on a swift motor-car, leaping +out before the thing is at a standstill, with letters and documents +clutched in his hand, rushing in, resolute to "hustle," getting +wonderfully in everybody's way. At the sight of him even the messenger +boys who are waiting, get up and scamper to and fro. Sprinkle your +vision with collisions, curses, incoherencies. You imagine all the +parts of this complex lunatic machine working hysterically toward +a crescendo of haste and excitement as the night wears on. At last +the only things that seem to travel slowly in all those tearing +vibrating premises are the hands of the clock. + +Slowly things draw on toward publication, the consummation of all +those stresses. Then in the small hours, into the now dark and +deserted streets comes a wild whirl of carts and men, the place +spurts paper at every door, bales, heaps, torrents of papers, +that are snatched and flung about in what looks like a free fight, +and off with a rush and clatter east, west, north, and south. The +interest passes outwardly; the men from the little rooms are going +homeward, the printers disperse yawning, the roaring presses slacken. +The paper exists. Distribution follows manufacture, and we follow +the bundles. + +Our vision becomes a vision of dispersal. You see those bundles +hurling into stations, catching trains by a hair's breadth, speeding +on their way, breaking up, smaller bundles of them hurled with +a fierce accuracy out upon the platforms that rush by, and then +everywhere a division of these smaller bundles into still smaller +bundles, into dispersing parcels, into separate papers, and the +dawn happens unnoticed amidst a great running and shouting of boys, +a shoving through letter slots, openings of windows, spreading out +upon book-stalls. For the space of a few hours you must figure the +whole country dotted white with rustling papers--placards everywhere +vociferating the hurried lie for the day; men and women in trains, +men and women eating and reading, men by study-fenders, people +sitting up in bed, mothers and sons and daughters waiting for father +to finish--a million scattered people reading--reading headlong +--or feverishly ready to read. It is just as if some vehement jet +had sprayed that white foam of papers over the surface of the land. . . + +And then you know, wonderfully gone--gone utterly, vanished as foam +might vanish upon the sand. + +Nonsense! The whole affair a noisy paroxysm of nonsense, unreasonable +excitement, witless mischief, and waste of strength--signifying +nothing. . . . + +And one of those white parcels was the paper I held in my hands, +as I sat with a bandaged foot on the steel fender in that dark +underground kitchen of my mother's, clean roused from my personal +troubles by the yelp of the headlines. She sat, sleeves tucked up +from her ropy arms, peeling potatoes as I read. + +It was like one of a flood of disease germs that have invaded a +body, that paper. There I was, one corpuscle in the big amorphous +body of the English community, one of forty-one million such +corpuscles and, for all my preoccupations, these potent headlines, +this paper ferment, caught me and swung me about. And all over the +country that day, millions read as I read, and came round into line +with me, under the same magnetic spell, came round--how did we say +it?--Ah!--"to face the foe." + +The comet had been driven into obscurity overleaf. The column +headed "Distinguished Scientist says Comet will Strike our Earth. +Does it Matter?" went unread. "Germany"--I usually figured this +mythical malignant creature as a corseted stiff-mustached Emperor +enhanced by heraldic black wings and a large sword--had insulted +our flag. That was the message of the New Paper, and the monster +towered over me, threatening fresh outrages, visibly spitting +upon my faultless country's colors. Somebody had hoisted a British +flag on the right bank of some tropical river I had never heard of +before, and a drunken German officer under ambiguous instructions +had torn it down. Then one of the convenient abundant natives +of the country, a British subject indisputably, had been shot in +the leg. But the facts were by no means clear. Nothing was clear +except that we were not going to stand any nonsense from Germany. +Whatever had or had not happened we meant to have an apology for, +and apparently they did not mean apologizing. + +"HAS WAR COME AT LAST?" + +That was the headline. One's heart leapt to assent. . . . + +There were hours that day when I clean forgot Nettie, in dreaming +of battles and victories by land and sea, of shell fire, and +entrenchments, and the heaped slaughter of many thousands of men. + +But the next morning I started for Checkshill, started, I remember, +in a curiously hopeful state of mind, oblivious of comets, strikes, +and wars. + + + +Section 3 + +You must understand that I had no set plan of murder when I walked +over to Checkshill. I had no set plan of any sort. There was a +great confusion of dramatically conceived intentions in my head, +scenes of threatening and denunciation and terror, but I did not mean +to kill. The revolver was to turn upon my rival my disadvantage +in age and physique. . . . + +But that was not it really! The revolver!--I took the revolver +because I had the revolver and was a foolish young lout. It was a +dramatic sort of thing to take. I had, I say, no plan at all. + +Ever and again during that second trudge to Checkshill I was +irradiated with a novel unreasonable hope. I had awakened in the +morning with the hope, it may have been the last unfaded trail of +some obliterated dream, that after all Nettie might relent toward me, +that her heart was kind toward me in spite of all that I imagined +had happened. I even thought it possible that I might have misinterpreted +what I had seen. Perhaps she would explain everything. My revolver +was in my pocket for all that. + +I limped at the outset, but after the second mile my ankle warmed +to forgetfulness, and the rest of the way I walked well. Suppose, +after all, I was wrong? + +I was still debating that, as I came through the park. By the corner +of the paddock near the keeper's cottage, I was reminded by some +belated blue hyacinths of a time when I and Nettie had gathered +them together. It seemed impossible that we could really have parted +ourselves for good and all. A wave of tenderness flowed over me, +and still flooded me as I came through the little dell and drew +towards the hollies. But there the sweet Nettie of my boy's love +faded, and I thought of the new Nettie of desire and the man I had +come upon in the moonlight, I thought of the narrow, hot purpose +that had grown so strongly out of my springtime freshness, and my +mood darkened to night. + +I crossed the beech wood and came towards the gardens with a resolute +and sorrowful heart. When I reached the green door in the garden +wall I was seized for a space with so violent a trembling that I +could not grip the latch to lift it, for I no longer had any doubt +how this would end. That trembling was succeeded by a feeling +of cold, and whiteness, and self-pity. I was astonished to find +myself grimacing, to feel my cheeks wet, and thereupon I gave way +completely to a wild passion of weeping. I must take just a little +time before the thing was done. . . . I turned away from the door +and stumbled for a little distance, sobbing loudly, and lay down +out of sight among the bracken, and so presently became calm again. +I lay there some time. I had half a mind to desist, and then my +emotion passed like the shadow of a cloud, and I walked very coolly +into the gardens. + +Through the open door of one of the glass houses I saw old Stuart. +He was leaning against the staging, his hands in his pockets, and +so deep in thought he gave no heed to me. + +I hesitated and went on towards the cottage, slowly. + +Something struck me as unusual about the place, but I could not +tell at first what it was. One of the bedroom windows was open, +and the customary short blind, with its brass upper rail partly +unfastened, drooped obliquely across the vacant space. It looked +negligent and odd, for usually everything about the cottage was +conspicuously trim. + +The door was standing wide open, and everything was still. But giving +that usually orderly hall an odd look--it was about half-past two +in the afternoon--was a pile of three dirty plates, with used knives +and forks upon them, on one of the hall chairs. + +I went into the hall, looked into either room, and hesitated. + +Then I fell to upon the door-knocker and gave a loud rat-tat-too, +and followed this up with an amiable "Hel-lo!" + +For a time no one answered me, and I stood listening and expectant, +with my fingers about my weapon. Some one moved about upstairs +presently, and was still again. The tension of waiting seemed to +brace my nerves. + +I had my hand on the knocker for the second time, when Puss appeared +in the doorway. + +For a moment we remained staring at one another without speaking. +Her hair was disheveled, her face dirty, tear-stained, and irregularly +red. Her expression at the sight of me was pure astonishment. +I thought she was about to say something, and then she had darted +away out of the house again. + +"I say, Puss!" I said. "Puss!" + +I followed her out of the door. "Puss! What's the matter? Where's +Nettie?" + +She vanished round the corner of the house. + +I hesitated, perplexed whether I should pursue her. What did it +all mean? Then I heard some one upstairs. + +"Willie!" cried the voice of Mrs. Stuart. "Is that you?" + +"Yes," I answered. "Where's every one? Where's Nettie? I want to +have a talk with her." + +She did not answer, but I heard her dress rustle as she moved. I +Judged she was upon the landing overhead. + +I paused at the foot of the stairs, expecting her to appear and +come down. + +Suddenly came a strange sound, a rush of sounds, words jumbled +and hurrying, confused and shapeless, borne along upon a note of +throaty distress that at last submerged the words altogether and +ended in a wail. Except that it came from a woman's throat it was +exactly the babbling sound of a weeping child with a grievance. "I +can't," she said, "I can't," and that was all I could distinguish. +It was to my young ears the strangest sound conceivable from a +kindly motherly little woman, whom I had always thought of chiefly +as an unparalleled maker of cakes. It frightened me. I went upstairs +at once in a state of infinite alarm, and there she was upon the +landing, leaning forward over the top of the chest of drawers beside +her open bedroom door, and weeping. I never saw such weeping. One +thick strand of black hair had escaped, and hung with a spiral +twist down her back; never before had I noticed that she had gray +hairs. + +As I came up upon the landing her voice rose again. "Oh that I should +have to tell you, Willie! Oh that I should have to tell you!" She +dropped her head again, and a fresh gust of tears swept all further +words away. + +I said nothing, I was too astonished; but I drew nearer +to her, and waited. . . . + +I never saw such weeping; the extraordinary wetness of her dripping +handkerchief abides with me to this day. + +"That I should have lived to see this day!" she wailed. "I had +rather a thousand times she was struck dead at my feet." + +I began to understand. + +"Mrs. Stuart," I said, clearing my throat; "what has become of +Nettie?" + +"That I should have lived to see this day!" she said by way of +reply. + +I waited till her passion abated. + +There came a lull. I forgot the weapon in my pocket. I said nothing, +and suddenly she stood erect before me, wiping her swollen eyes. +"Willie," she gulped, "she's gone!" + +"Nettie?" + +"Gone! . . . Run away. . . . Run away from her home. Oh, Willie, +Willie! The shame of it! The sin and shame of it!" + +She flung herself upon my shoulder, and clung to me, and began +again to wish her daughter lying dead at our feet. + +"There, there," said I, and all my being was a-tremble. "Where has +she gone?" I said as softly as I could. + +But for the time she was preoccupied with her own sorrow, and I had +to hold her there, and comfort her with the blackness of finality +spreading over my soul. + +"Where has she gone?" I asked for the fourth time. + +"I don't know--we don't know. And oh, Willie, she went out yesterday +morning! I said to her, 'Nettie,' I said to her, 'you're mighty +fine for a morning call.' 'Fine clo's for a fine day,' she said, +and that was her last words to me!--Willie!--the child I suckled +at my breast!" + +"Yes, yes. But where has she gone?" I said. + +She went on with sobs, and now telling her story with a sort of +fragmentary hurry: "She went out bright and shining, out of this +house for ever. She was smiling, Willie--as if she was glad to be +going. ("Glad to be going," I echoed with soundless lips.) 'You're +mighty fine for the morning,' I says; 'mighty fine.' 'Let the girl +be pretty,' says her father, 'while she's young!' And somewhere +she'd got a parcel of her things hidden to pick up, and she was +going off--out of this house for ever!" + +She became quiet. + +"Let the girl be pretty," she repeated; "let the girl be pretty +while she's young. . . . Oh! how can we go on LIVING, Willie? He +doesn't show it, but he's like a stricken beast. He's wounded to +the heart. She was always his favorite. He never seemed to care +for Puss like he did for her. And she's wounded him--" + +"Where has she gone?" I reverted at last to that. + +"We don't know. She leaves her own blood, she trusts herself-- Oh, +Willie, it'll kill me! I wish she and me together were lying in +our graves." + +"But"--I moistened my lips and spoke slowly --"she may have gone +to marry." + +"If that was so! I've prayed to God it might be so, Willie. I've +prayed that he'd take pity on her--him, I mean, she's with." + +I jerked out: "Who's that?" + +"In her letter, she said he was a gentleman. She did say he was +a gentleman." + +"In her letter. Has she written? Can I see her letter?" + +"Her father took it." + +"But if she writes-- When did she write?" + +"It came this morning." + +"But where did it come from? You can tell--" + +"She didn't say. She said she was happy. She said love took one +like a storm--" + +"Curse that! Where is her letter? Let me see it. And as for this +gentleman--" + +She stared at me. + +"You know who it is." + +"Willie!" she protested. + +"You know who it is, whether she said or not?" Her eyes made a mute +unconfident denial. + +"Young Verrall?" + +She made no answer. "All I could do for you, Willie," she began +presently. + +"Was it young Verrall?" I insisted. + +For a second, perhaps, we faced one another in stark understanding. +. . . Then she plumped back to the chest of drawers, and her wet +pocket-handkerchief, and I knew she sought refuge from my relentless +eyes. + +My pity for her vanished. She knew it was her mistress's son as +well as I! And for some time she had known, she had felt. + +I hovered over her for a moment, sick with amazed disgust. I suddenly +bethought me of old Stuart, out in the greenhouse, and turned and +went downstairs. As I did so, I looked up to see Mrs. Stuart moving +droopingly and lamely back into her own room. + + + +Section 6 + +Old Stuart was pitiful. + +I found him still inert in the greenhouse where I had first seen +him. He did not move as I drew near him; he glanced at me, and then +stared hard again at the flowerpots before him. + +"Eh, Willie," he said, "this is a black day for all of us." + +"What are you going to do?" I asked. + +"The missus takes on so," he said. "I came out here." + +"What do you mean to do?" + +"What IS a man to do in such a case?" + +"Do!" I cried, "why-- Do!" + +"He ought to marry her," he said. + +"By God, yes!" I cried. "He must do that anyhow." + +"He ought to. It's--it's cruel. But what am I to do? Suppose he +won't? Likely he won't. What then?" + +He drooped with an intensified despair. + +"Here's this cottage," he said, pursuing some contracted argument. +"We've lived here all our lives, you might say. . . . Clear out. +At my age. . . . One can't die in a slum." + +I stood before him for a space, speculating what thoughts might +fill the gaps between these broken words. I found his lethargy, and +the dimly shaped mental attitudes his words indicated, abominable. +I said abruptly, "You have her letter?" + +He dived into his breast-pocket, became motionless for ten seconds, +then woke up again and produced her letter. He drew it clumsily +from its envelope, and handed it to me silently. + +"Why!" he cried, looking at me for the first time, "What's come to +your chin, Willie?" + +"It's nothing," I said. "It's a bruise;" and I opened the letter. + +It was written on greenish tinted fancy note-paper, and with all +and more than Nettie's usual triteness and inadequacy of expression. +Her handwriting bore no traces of emotion; it was round and upright +and clear as though it had been done in a writing lesson. Always +her letters were like masks upon her image; they fell like curtains +before the changing charm of her face; one altogether forgot the +sound of her light clear voice, confronted by a perplexing stereotyped +thing that had mysteriously got a hold upon one's heart and pride. +How did that letter run?-- + + +"MY DEAR MOTHER, + +"Do not be distressed at my going away. I have gone somewhere safe, +and with some one who cares for me very much. I am sorry for your +sakes, but it seems that it had to be. Love is a very difficult +thing, and takes hold of one in ways one does not expect. Do not +think I am ashamed about this, I glory in my love, and you must not +trouble too much about me. I am very, very happy (deeply underlined). + +"Fondest love to Father and Puss. "Your loving "Nettie." + +That queer little document! I can see it now for the childish simple +thing it was, but at the time I read it in a suppressed anguish of +rage. It plunged me into a pit of hopeless shame; there seemed to +remain no pride for me in life until I had revenge. I stood staring +at those rounded upstanding letters, not trusting myself to speak +or move. At last I stole a glance at Stuart. + +He held the envelope in his hand, and stared down at the postmark +between his horny thumbnails. + +"You can't even tell where she is," he said, turning the thing +round in a hopeless manner, and then desisting. "It's hard on us, +Willie. Here she is; she hadn't anything to complain of; a sort of +pet for all of us. Not even made to do her share of the 'ousework. +And she goes off and leaves us like a bird that's learnt to fly. +Can't TRUST us, that's what takes me. Puts 'erself-- But there! +What's to happen to her?" + +"What's to happen to him?" + +He shook his head to show that problem was beyond him. + +"You'll go after her," I said in an even voice; "you'll make him +marry her?" + +"Where am I to go?" he asked helplessly, and held out the envelope +with a gesture; "and what could I do? Even if I knew-- How could +I leave the gardens?" + +"Great God!" I cried, "not leave these gardens! It's your Honor, +man! If she was my daughter--if she was my daughter--I'd tear the +world to pieces!" . . I choked. "You mean to stand it?" + +"What can I do?" + +"Make him marry her! Horsewhip him! Horsewhip him, I say!--I'd +strangle him!" + +He scratched slowly at his hairy cheek, opened his mouth, and +shook his head. Then, with an intolerable note of sluggish gentle +wisdom, he said, "People of our sort, Willie, can't do things like +that." + +I came near to raving. I had a wild impulse to strike him in the +face. Once in my boyhood I happened upon a bird terribly mangled +by some cat, and killed it in a frenzy of horror and pity. I had +a gust of that same emotion now, as this shameful mutilated soul +fluttered in the dust, before me. Then, you know, I dismissed him +from the case. + +"May I look?" I asked. + +He held out the envelope reluctantly. + +"There it is," he said, and pointing with his garden-rough forefinger. +"I.A.P.A.M.P. What can you make of that?" + +I took the thing in my hands. The adhesive stamp customary in those +days was defaced by a circular postmark, which bore the name of +the office of departure and the date. The impact in this particular +case had been light or made without sufficient ink, and half the +letters of the name had left no impression. I could distinguish-- + +I A P A M P + +and very faintly below D.S.O. + +I guessed the name in an instant flash of intuition. It was +Shaphambury. The very gaps shaped that to my mind. Perhaps in a +sort of semi-visibility other letters were there, at least hinting +themselves. It was a place somewhere on the east coast, I knew, +either in Norfolk or Suffolk. + +"Why!" cried I--and stopped. + +What was the good of telling him? + +Old Stuart had glanced up sharply, I am inclined to think almost +fearfully, into my face. "You--you haven't got it?" he said. + +Shaphambury--I should remember that. + +"You don't think you got it?" he said. + +I handed the envelope back to him. + +"For a moment I thought it might be Hampton," I said. + +"Hampton," he repeated. "Hampton. How could you make Hampton?" He +turned the envelope about. "H.A.M.--why, Willie, you're a worse +hand at the job than me!" + +He replaced the letter in the envelope and stood erect to put this +back in his breast pocket. + +I did not mean to take any risks in this affair. I drew a stump +of pencil from my waistcoat pocket, turned a little away from him +and wrote "Shaphambury" very quickly on my frayed and rather grimy +shirt cuff. + +"Well," said I, with an air of having done nothing remarkable. + +I turned to him with some unimportant observation --I have forgotten +what. + +I never finished whatever vague remark I commenced. + +I looked up to see a third person waiting at the greenhouse door. + + + +Section 7 + +It was old Mrs. Verrall. + +I wonder if I can convey the effect of her to you. She was a little +old lady with extraordinarily flaxen hair, her weak aquiline features +were pursed up into an assumption of dignity, and she was richly +dressed. I would like to underline that "richly dressed," or have +the words printed in florid old English or Gothic lettering. No +one on earth is now quite so richly dressed as she was, no one old +or young indulges in so quiet and yet so profound a sumptuosity. +But you must not imagine any extravagance of outline or any beauty +or richness of color. The predominant colors were black and fur +browns, and the effect of richness was due entirely to the extreme +costliness of the materials employed. She affected silk brocades +with rich and elaborate patterns, priceless black lace over creamy +or purple satin, intricate trimmings through which threads and +bands of velvet wriggled, and in the winter rare furs. Her gloves +fitted exquisitely, and ostentatiously simple chains of fine gold +and pearls, and a great number of bracelets, laced about her little +person. One was forced to feel that the slightest article she wore +cost more than all the wardrobe of a dozen girls like Nettie; her +bonnet affected the simplicity that is beyond rubies. Richness, +that is the first quality about this old lady that I would like to +convey to you, and the second was cleanliness. You felt that old +Mrs. Verrall was exquisitely clean. If you had boiled my poor dear +old mother in soda for a month you couldn't have got her so clean +as Mrs. Verrall constantly and manifestly was. And pervading all +her presence shone her third great quality, her manifest confidence +in the respectful subordination of the world. + +She was pale and a little out of breath that day, but without any +loss of her ultimate confidence, and it was clear to me that she +had come to interview Stuart upon the outbreak of passion that had +bridged the gulf between their families. + +And here again I find myself writing in an unknown language, so far +as my younger readers are concerned. You who know only the world +that followed the Great Change will find much that I am telling +inconceivable. Upon these points I cannot appeal, as I have appealed +for other confirmations, to the old newspapers; these were the things +that no one wrote about because every one understood and every one +had taken up an attitude. There were in England and America, and +indeed throughout the world, two great informal divisions of human +beings--the Secure and the Insecure. There was not and never had +been in either country a nobility --it was and remains a common +error that the British peers were noble--neither in law nor custom +were there noble families, and we altogether lacked the edification +one found in Russia, for example, of a poor nobility. A peerage +was an hereditary possession that, like the family land, concerned +only the eldest sons of the house; it radiated no luster of noblesse +oblige. The rest of the world were in law and practice common--and +all America was common. But through the private ownership of land +that had resulted from the neglect of feudal obligations in Britain +and the utter want of political foresight in the Americas, large +masses of property had become artificially stable in the hands +of a small minority, to whom it was necessary to mortgage all new +public and private enterprises, and who were held together not by +any tradition of service and nobility but by the natural sympathy +of common interests and a common large scale of living. It was a class +without any very definite boundaries; vigorous individualities, by +methods for the most part violent and questionable, were constantly +thrusting themselves from insecurity to security, and the sons +and daughters of secure people, by marrying insecurity or by wild +extravagance or flagrant vice, would sink into the life of anxiety +and insufficiency which was the ordinary life of man. The rest +of the population was landless and, except by working directly or +indirectly for the Secure, had no legal right to exist. And such +was the shallowness and insufficiency of our thought, such the +stifled egotism of all our feelings before the Last Days, that very +few indeed of the Secure could be found to doubt that this was the +natural and only conceivable order of the world. + +It is the life of the Insecure under the old order that I am +displaying, and I hope that I am conveying something of its hopeless +bitterness to you, but you must not imagine that the Secure lived +lives of paradisiacal happiness. The pit of insecurity below them +made itself felt, even though it was not comprehended. Life about +them was ugly; the sight of ugly and mean houses, of ill-dressed +people, the vulgar appeals of the dealers in popular commodities, +were not to be escaped. There was below the threshold of their minds +an uneasiness; they not only did not think clearly about social +economy but they displayed an instinctive disinclination to think. +Their security was not so perfect that they had not a dread of +falling towards the pit, they were always lashing themselves by +new ropes, their cultivation of "connexions," of interests, their +desire to confirm and improve their positions, was a constant +ignoble preoccupation. You must read Thackeray to get the full +flavor of their lives. Then the bacterium was apt to disregard class +distinctions, and they were never really happy in their servants. +Read their surviving books. Each generation bewails the decay +of that "fidelity" of servants, no generation ever saw. A world +that is squalid in one corner is squalid altogether, but that they +never understood. They believed there was not enough of anything +to go round, they believed that this was the intention of God and +an incurable condition of life, and they held passionately and with +a sense of right to their disproportionate share. They maintained +a common intercourse as "Society" of all who were practically +secure, and their choice of that word is exhaustively eloquent +of the quality of their philosophy. But, if you can master these +alien ideas upon which the old system rested, just in the same +measure will you understand the horror these people had for marriages +with the Insecure. In the case of their girls and women it was +extraordinarily rare, and in the case of either sex it was regarded +as a disastrous social crime. Anything was better than that. + +You are probably aware of the hideous fate that was only too probably +the lot, during those last dark days, of every girl of the insecure +classes who loved and gave way to the impulse of self-abandonment +without marriage, and so you will understand the peculiar situation +of Nettie with young Verrall. One or other had to suffer. And as +they were both in a state of great emotional exaltation and capable +of strange generosities toward each other, it was an open question +and naturally a source of great anxiety to a mother in Mrs. Verrall's +position, whether the sufferer might not be her son--whether as +the outcome of that glowing irresponsible commerce Nettie might +not return prospective mistress of Checkshill Towers. The chances +were greatly against that conclusion, but such things did occur. + +These laws and customs sound, I know, like a record of some +nasty-minded lunatic's inventions. They were invincible facts in +that vanished world into which, by some accident, I had been born, +and it was the dream of any better state of things that was scouted +as lunacy. Just think of it! This girl I loved with all my soul, +for whom I was ready to sacrifice my life, was not good enough to +marry young Verrall. And I had only to look at his even, handsome, +characterless face to perceive a creature weaker and no better +than myself. She was to be his pleasure until he chose to cast her +aside, and the poison of our social system had so saturated her +nature--his evening dress, his freedom and his money had seemed +so fine to her and I so clothed in squalor--that to that prospect +she had consented. And to resent the social conventions that +created their situation, was called "class envy," and gently born +preachers reproached us for the mildest resentment against an injustice +no living man would now either endure or consent to profit by. + +What was the sense of saying "peace" when there was no peace? If +there was one hope in the disorders of that old world it lay in +revolt and conflict to the death. + +But if you can really grasp the shameful grotesqueness of the old +life, you will begin to appreciate the interpretation of old Mrs. +Verrall's appearance that leapt up at once in my mind. + +She had come to compromise the disaster! + +And the Stuarts WOULD compromise! I saw that only too well. + +An enormous disgust at the prospect of the imminent encounter between +Stuart and his mistress made me behave in a violent and irrational +way. I wanted to escape seeing that, seeing even Stuart's first +gesture in that, at any cost. + +"I'm off," said I, and turned my back on him without any further +farewell. + +My line of retreat lay by the old lady, and so I advanced toward +her. + +I saw her expression change, her mouth fell a little way open, her +forehead wrinkled, and her eyes grew round. She found me a queer +customer even at the first sight, and there was something in the +manner of my advance that took away her breath. + +She stood at the top of the three or four steps that descended to +the level of the hothouse floor. She receded a pace or two, with +a certain offended dignity at the determination of my rush. + +I gave her no sort of salutation. + +Well, as a matter of fact, I did give her a sort of salutation. +There is no occasion for me to begin apologizing now for the thing +I said to her--I strip these things before you--if only I can get +them stark enough you will understand and forgive. I was filled +with a brutal and overpowering desire to insult her. + +And so I addressed this poor little expensive old woman in +the following terms, converting her by a violent metonymy into a +comprehensive plural. "You infernal land thieves!" I said point-blank +into her face. "HAVE YOU COME TO OFFER THEM MONEY?" + +And without waiting to test her powers of repartee I passed rudely +beyond her and vanished, striding with my fists clenched, +out of her world again. . . + +I have tried since to imagine how the thing must have looked to +her. So far as her particular universe went I had not existed at +all, or I had existed only as a dim black thing, an insignificant +speck, far away across her park in irrelevant, unimportant transit, +until this moment when she came, sedately troubled, into her own +secure gardens and sought for Stuart among the greenhouses. Then +abruptly I flashed into being down that green-walled, brick-floored +vista as a black-avised, ill-clad young man, who first stared and +then advanced scowling toward her. Once in existence I developed +rapidly. I grew larger in perspective and became more and more +important and sinister every moment. I came up the steps with +inconceivable hostility and disrespect in my bearing, towered +over her, becoming for an instant at least a sort of second French +Revolution, and delivered myself with the intensest concentration +of those wicked and incomprehensible words. Just for a second I +threatened annihilation. Happily that was my climax. + +And then I had gone by, and the Universe was very much as it had +always been except for the wild swirl in it, and the faint sense +of insecurity my episode left in its wake. + +The thing that never entered my head in those days was that a large +proportion of the rich were rich in absolute good faith. I thought +they saw things exactly as I saw them, and wickedly denied. But indeed +old Mrs. Verrall was no more capable of doubting the perfection +of her family's right to dominate a wide country side, than she was +of examining the Thirty-nine Articles or dealing with any other of +the adamantine pillars upon which her universe rested in security. + +No doubt I startled and frightened her tremendously. But she could +not understand. + +None of her sort of people ever did seem to understand such livid +flashes of hate, as ever and again lit the crowded darkness below +their feet. The thing leapt out of the black for a moment and +vanished, like a threatening figure by a desolate roadside lit for +a moment by one's belated carriage-lamp and then swallowed up by +the night. They counted it with nightmares, and did their best to +forget what was evidently as insignificant as it was disturbing. + + + + +CHAPTER THE FOURTH + +WAR + + + +Section 1 + +FROM that moment when I insulted old Mrs. Verrall I became +representative, I was a man who stood for all the disinherited of +the world. I had no hope of pride or pleasure left in me, I was +raging rebellion against God and mankind. There were no more vague +intentions swaying me this way and that; I was perfectly clear now +upon what I meant to do. I would make my protest and die. + +I would make my protest and die. I was going to kill Nettie--Nettie +who had smiled and promised and given herself to another, and who +stood now for all the conceivable delightfulnesses, the lost imaginations +of the youthful heart, the unattainable joys in life; and Verrall +who stood for all who profited by the incurable injustice of our +social order. I would kill them both. And that being done I would +blow my brains out and see what vengeance followed my blank refusal +to live. + +So indeed I was resolved. I raged monstrously. And above me, +abolishing the stars, triumphant over the yellow waning moon that +followed it below, the giant meteor towered up towards the zenith. + +"Let me only kill!" I cried. "Let me only kill!" + +So I shouted in my frenzy. I was in a fever that defied hunger +and fatigue; for a long time I had prowled over the heath towards +Lowchester talking to myself, and now that night had fully come I +was tramping homeward, walking the long seventeen miles without a +thought of rest. And I had eaten nothing since the morning. + +I suppose I must count myself mad, but I can recall my ravings. + +There were times when I walked weeping through that brightness that +was neither night nor day. There were times when I reasoned in a +topsy-turvy fashion with what I called the Spirit of All Things. +But always I spoke to that white glory in the sky. + +"Why am I here only to suffer ignominies?" I asked. "Why have you +made me with pride that cannot be satisfied, with desires that +turn and rend me? Is it a jest, this world--a joke you play on your +guests? I--even I--have a better humor than that!" + +"Why not learn from me a certain decency of mercy? Why not undo? +Have I ever tormented --day by day, some wretched worm--making +filth for it to trail through, filth that disgusts it, starving it, +bruising it, mocking it? Why should you? Your jokes are clumsy. +Try--try some milder fun up there; do you hear? Something that +doesn't hurt so infernally." + +"You say this is your purpose--your purpose with me. You are making +something with me--birth pangs of a soul. Ah! How can I believe +you? You forget I have eyes for other things. Let my own case go, +but what of that frog beneath the cart-wheel, God?--and the bird +the cat had torn?" + +And after such blasphemies I would fling out a ridiculous little +debating society hand. "Answer me that!" + +A week ago it had been moonlight, white and black and hard across +the spaces of the park, but now the light was livid and full of +the quality of haze. An extraordinarily low white mist, not three +feet above the ground, drifted broodingly across the grass, and +the trees rose ghostly out of that phantom sea. Great and shadowy +and strange was the world that night, no one seemed abroad; I and my +little cracked voice drifted solitary through the silent mysteries. +Sometimes I argued as I have told, sometimes I tumbled along in +moody vacuity, sometimes my torment was vivid and acute. + +Abruptly out of apathy would come a boiling paroxysm of fury, when +I thought of Nettie mocking me and laughing, and of her and Verrall +clasped in one another's arms. + +"I will not have it so!" I screamed. "I will not have it so!" + +And in one of these raving fits I drew my revolver from my pocket +and fired into the quiet night. Three times I fired it. + +The bullets tore through the air, the startled trees told one another +in diminishing echoes the thing I had done, and then, with a slow +finality, the vast and patient night healed again to calm. My shots, +my curses and blasphemies, my prayers --for anon I prayed--that +Silence took them all. + +It was--how can I express it?--a stifled outcry tranquilized, +lost, amid the serene assumptions, the overwhelming empire of that +brightness. The noise of my shots, the impact upon things, had +for the instant been enormous, then it had passed away. I found +myself standing with the revolver held up, astonished, my emotions +penetrated by something I could not understand. Then I looked up +over my shoulder at the great star, and remained staring at it. + +"Who are YOU?" I said at last. + +I was like a man in a solitary desert who has suddenly heard a voice. . . . + +That, too, passed. + +As I came over Clayton Crest I recalled that I missed the multitude +that now night after night walked out to stare at the comet, and +the little preacher in the waste beyond the hoardings, who warned +sinners to repent before the Judgment, was not in his usual place. + +It was long past midnight, and every one had gone home. But I did +not think of this at first, and the solitude perplexed me and left +a memory behind. The gas-lamps were all extinguished because of the +brightness of the comet, and that too was unfamiliar. The little +newsagent in the still High Street had shut up and gone to bed, +but one belated board had been put out late and forgotten, and it +still bore its placard. + +The word upon it--there was but one word upon it in staring +letters--was: "WAR." + +You figure that empty mean street, emptily echoing to my footsteps--no +soul awake and audible but me. Then my halt at the placard. And +amidst that sleeping stillness, smeared hastily upon the board, +a little askew and crumpled, but quite distinct beneath that cool +meteoric glare, preposterous and appalling, the measureless evil +of that word-- + +"WAR!" + + + +Section 2 + +I awoke in that state of equanimity that so often follows an +emotional drenching. + +It was late, and my mother was beside my bed. She had some breakfast +for me on a battered tray. + +"Don't get up yet, dear," she said. "You've been sleeping. It was +three o'clock when you got home last night. You must have been +tired out." + +"Your poor face," she went on, "was as white as a sheet and your +eyes shining. . . . It frightened me to let you in. And you stumbled +on the stairs." + +My eyes went quietly to my coat pocket, where something still bulged. +She probably had not noticed. "I went to Checkshill," I said. "You +know--perhaps--?" + +"I got a letter last evening, dear," and as she bent near me to put +the tray upon my knees, she kissed my hair softly. For a moment we +both remained still, resting on that, her cheek just touching my +head. + +I took the tray from her to end the pause. + +"Don't touch my clothes, mummy," I said sharply, as she moved +towards them. "I'm still equal to a clothes-brush." + +And then, as she turned away, I astonished her by saying, "You dear +mother, you! A little --I understand. Only--now--dear mother; oh! +let me be! Let me be!" + +And, with the docility of a good servant, she went from me. Dear +heart of submission that the world and I had used so ill! + +It seemed to me that morning that I could never give way to a gust +of passion again. A sorrowful firmness of the mind possessed me. +My purpose seemed now as inflexible as iron; there was neither love +nor hate nor fear left in me--only I pitied my mother greatly for +all that was still to come. I ate my breakfast slowly, and thought +where I could find out about Shaphambury, and how I might hope to +get there. I had not five shillings in the world. + +I dressed methodically, choosing the least frayed of my collars, +and shaving much more carefully than was my wont; then I went down +to the Public Library to consult a map. + +Shaphambury was on the coast of Essex, a long and complicated +journey from Clayton. I went to the railway-station and made some +memoranda from the time-tables. The porters I asked were not very +clear about Shaphambury, but the booking-office clerk was helpful, +and we puzzled out all I wanted to know. Then I came out into the +coaly street again. At the least I ought to have two pounds. + +I went back to the Public Library and into the newspaper room to +think over this problem. + +A fact intruded itself upon me. People seemed in an altogether +exceptional stir about the morning journals, there was something +unusual in the air of the room, more people and more talking than +usual, and for a moment I was puzzled. Then I bethought me: "This +war with Germany, of course!" A naval battle was supposed to be in +progress in the North Sea. Let them! I returned to the consideration +of my own affairs. + +Parload? + +Could I go and make it up with him, and then borrow? I weighed the +chances of that. Then I thought of selling or pawning something, +but that seemed difficult. My winter overcoat had not cost a pound +when it was new, my watch was not likely to fetch many shillings. +Still, both these things might be factors. I thought with a certain +repugnance of the little store my mother was probably making for +the rent. She was very secretive about that, and it was locked in +an old tea-caddy in her bedroom. I knew it would be almost impossible +to get any of that money from her willingly, and though I told +myself that in this issue of passion and death no detail mattered, +I could not get rid of tormenting scruples whenever I thought of +that tea-caddy. Was there no other course? Perhaps after every +other source had been tapped I might supplement with a few shillings +frankly begged from her. "These others," I said to myself, thinking +without passion for once of the sons of the Secure, "would find it +difficult to run their romances on a pawnshop basis. However, we +must manage it." + +I felt the day was passing on, but I did not get excited about +that. "Slow is swiftest," Parload used to say, and I meant to get +everything thought out completely, to take a long aim and then to +act as a bullet flies. + +I hesitated at a pawnshop on my way home to my midday meal, but I +determined not to pledge my watch until I could bring my overcoat +also. + +I ate silently, revolving plans. + + + +Section 3 + +After our midday dinner--it was a potato-pie, mostly potato with +some scraps of cabbage and bacon--I put on my overcoat and got it +out of the house while my mother was in the scullery at the back. + +A scullery in the old world was, in the case of such houses as +ours, a damp, unsavory, mainly subterranean region behind the dark +living-room kitchen, that was rendered more than typically dirty +in our case by the fact that into it the coal-cellar, a yawning +pit of black uncleanness, opened, and diffused small crunchable +particles about the uneven brick floor. It was the region of +"washing-up," that greasy, damp function that followed every meal; +its atmosphere had ever a cooling steaminess and the memory of +boiled cabbage, and the sooty black stains where saucepan or kettle +had been put down for a minute, scraps of potato-peel caught by +the strainer of the escape-pipe, and rags of a quite indescribable +horribleness of acquisition, called "dish-clouts," rise in my +memory at the name. The altar of this place was the "sink," a tank +of stone, revolting to a refined touch, grease-filmed and unpleasant +to see, and above this was a tap for cold water, so arranged that +when the water descended it splashed and wetted whoever had turned +it on. This tap was our water supply. And in such a place you +must fancy a little old woman, rather incompetent and very gentle, +a soul of unselfishness and sacrifice, in dirty clothes, all come +from their original colors to a common dusty dark gray, in worn, +ill-fitting boots, with hands distorted by ill use, and untidy +graying hair--my mother. In the winter her hands would be "chapped," +and she would have a cough. And while she washes up I go out, to +sell my overcoat and watch in order that I may desert her. + +I gave way to queer hesitations in pawning my two negotiable articles. +A weakly indisposition to pawn in Clayton, where the pawnbroker +knew me, carried me to the door of the place in Lynch Street, +Swathinglea, where I had bought my revolver. Then came an idea that +I was giving too many facts about myself to one man, and I came +back to Clayton after all. I forget how much money I got, but I +remember that it was rather less than the sum I had made out to be +the single fare to Shaphambury. Still deliberate, I went back to +the Public Library to find out whether it was possible, by walking +for ten or twelve miles anywhere, to shorten the journey. My boots +were in a dreadful state, the sole of the left one also was now +peeling off, and I could not help perceiving that all my plans +might be wrecked if at this crisis I went on shoe leather in which +I could only shuffle. So long as I went softly they would serve, +but not for hard walking. I went to the shoemaker in Hacker Street, +but he would not promise any repairs for me under forty-eight hours. + +I got back home about five minutes to three, resolved to start by +the five train for Birmingham in any case, but still dissatisfied +about my money. I thought of pawning a book or something of that +sort, but I could think of nothing of obvious value in the house. +My mother's silver--two gravy-spoons and a salt-cellar--had been +pawned for some weeks, since, in fact, the June quarter day. But +my mind was full of hypothetical opportunities. + +As I came up the steps to our door, I remarked that Mr. Gabbitas +looked at me suddenly round his dull red curtains with a sort of +alarmed resolution in his eye and vanished, and as I walked along +the passage he opened his door upon me suddenly and intercepted +me. + +You are figuring me, I hope, as a dark and sullen lout in shabby, +cheap, old-world clothes that are shiny at all the wearing surfaces, +and with a discolored red tie and frayed linen. My left hand keeps +in my pocket as though there is something it prefers to keep a grip +upon there. Mr. Gabbitas was shorter than I, and the first note +he struck in the impression he made upon any one was of something +bright and birdlike. I think he wanted to be birdlike, he possessed +the possibility of an avian charm, but, as a matter of fact, there +was nothing of the glowing vitality of the bird in his being. And +a bird is never out of breath and with an open mouth. He was in +the clerical dress of that time, that costume that seems now almost +the strangest of all our old-world clothing, and he presented it in +its cheapest form--black of a poor texture, ill-fitting, strangely +cut. Its long skirts accentuated the tubbiness of his body, the +shortness of his legs. The white tie below his all-round collar, +beneath his innocent large-spectacled face, was a little grubby, +and between his not very clean teeth he held a briar pipe. His +complexion was whitish, and although he was only thirty-three or +four perhaps, his sandy hair was already thinning from the top of +his head. + +To your eye, now, he would seem the strangest figure, in the utter +disregard of all physical beauty or dignity about him. You would +find him extraordinarily odd, but in the old days he met not only +with acceptance but respect. He was alive until within a year or so +ago, but his later appearance changed. As I saw him that afternoon +he was a very slovenly, ungainly little human being indeed, not only +was his clothing altogether ugly and queer, but had you stripped +the man stark, you would certainly have seen in the bulging paunch +that comes from flabby muscles and flabbily controlled appetites, +and in the rounded shoulders and flawed and yellowish skin, the same +failure of any effort toward clean beauty. You had an instinctive +sense that so he had been from the beginning. You felt he was not +only drifting through life, eating what came in his way, believing +what came in his way, doing without any vigor what came in his way, +but that into life also he had drifted. You could not believe him +the child of pride and high resolve, or of any splendid passion of +love. He had just HAPPENED. . . But we all happened then. Why am +I taking this tone over this poor little curate in particular? + +"Hello!" he said, with an assumption of friendly ease. "Haven't +seen you for weeks! Come in and have a gossip." + +An invitation from the drawing-room lodger was in the nature of a +command. I would have liked very greatly to have refused it, never +was invitation more inopportune, but I had not the wit to think +of an excuse. "All right," I said awkwardly, and he held the door +open for me. + +"I'd be very glad if you would," he amplified. "One doesn't get +much opportunity of intelligent talk in this parish." + +What the devil was he up to, was my secret preoccupation. He fussed +about me with a nervous hospitality, talking in jumpy fragments, +rubbing his hands together, and taking peeps at me over and round +his glasses. As I sat down in his leather-covered armchair, I had +an odd memory of the one in the Clayton dentist's operating-room--I +know not why. + +"They're going to give us trouble in the North Sea, it seems," he +remarked with a sort of innocent zest. "I'm glad they mean fighting." + +There was an air of culture about his room that always cowed me, +and that made me constrained even on this occasion. The table under +the window was littered with photographic material and the later +albums of his continental souvenirs, and on the American cloth +trimmed shelves that filled the recesses on either side of the +fireplace were what I used to think in those days a quite incredible +number of books--perhaps eight hundred altogether, including +the reverend gentleman's photograph albums and college and school +text-books. This suggestion of learning was enforced by the +little wooden shield bearing a college coat-of-arms that hung over +the looking-glass, and by a photograph of Mr. Gabbitas in cap and +gown in an Oxford frame that adorned the opposite wall. And in the +middle of that wall stood his writing-desk, which I knew to have +pigeon-holes when it was open, and which made him seem not merely +cultured but literary. At that he wrote sermons, composing them +himself! + +"Yes," he said, taking possession of the hearthrug, "the war had +to come sooner or later. If we smash their fleet for them now; +well, there's an end to the matter!" + +He stood on his toes and then bumped down on his heels, and looked +blandly through his spectacles at a water-color by his sister--the +subject was a bunch of violets--above the sideboard which was his +pantry and tea-chest and cellar. "Yes," he said as he did so. + +I coughed, and wondered how I might presently get away. + +He invited me to smoke--that queer old practice! --and then when +I declined, began talking in a confidential tone of this "dreadful +business" of the strikes. "The war won't improve THAT outlook," he +said, and was very grave for a moment. + +He spoke of the want of thought for their wives and children shown +by the colliers in striking merely for the sake of the union, and +this stirred me to controversy, and distracted me a little from my +resolution to escape. + +"I don't quite agree with that," I said, clearing my throat. "If +the men didn't strike for the union now, if they let that be broken +up, where would they be when the pinch of reductions did come?" + +To which he replied that they couldn't expect to get top-price +wages when the masters were selling bottom-price coal. I replied, +"That isn't it. The masters don't treat them fairly. They have to +protect themselves." + +To which Mr. Gabbitas answered, "Well, I don't know. I've been in +the Four Towns some time, and I must say I don't think the balance +of injustice falls on the masters' side." + +"It falls on the men," I agreed, wilfully misunderstanding him. + +And so we worked our way toward an argument. "Confound this +argument!" I thought; but I had no skill in self-extraction, and +my irritation crept into my voice. Three little spots of color came +into the cheeks and nose of Mr. Gabbitas, but his voice showed +nothing of his ruffled temper. + +"You see," I said, "I'm a socialist. I don't think this world was +made for a small minority to dance on the faces of every one else." + +"My dear fellow," said the Rev. Gabbitas, "I'M a socialist too. +Who isn't. But that doesn't lead me to class hatred." + +"You haven't felt the heel of this confounded system. I have." + +"Ah!" said he; and catching him on that note came a rap at the front +door, and, as he hung suspended, the sound of my mother letting +some one in and a timid rap. + +"NOW," thought I, and stood up, resolutely, but he would not let +me. "No, no, no!" said he. "It's only for the Dorcas money." + +He put his hand against my chest with an effect of physical +compulsion, and cried, "Come in!" + +"Our talk's just getting interesting," he protested; and there +entered Miss Ramell, an elderly little young lady who was mighty +in Church help in Clayton. + +He greeted her--she took no notice of me--and went to his bureau, +and I remained standing by my chair but unable to get out of the +room. "I'm not interrupting?" asked Miss Ramell. + +"Not in the least," he said; drew out the carriers and opened his +desk. I could not help seeing what he did. + +I was so fretted by my impotence to leave him that at the moment +it did not connect at all with the research of the morning that +he was taking out money. I listened sullenly to his talk with Miss +Ramell, and saw only, as they say in Wales, with the front of my +eyes, the small flat drawer that had, it seemed, quite a number +of sovereigns scattered over its floor. "They're so unreasonable," +complained Miss Ramell. Who could be otherwise in a social +organization that bordered on insanity? + +I turned away from them, put my foot on the fender, stuck my elbow +on the plush-fringed mantelboard, and studied the photographs, +pipes, and ash-trays that adorned it. What was it I had to think +out before I went to the station? + +Of course! My mind made a queer little reluctant leap--it felt like +being forced to leap over a bottomless chasm--and alighted upon the +sovereigns that were just disappearing again as Mr. Gabbitas shut +his drawer. + +"I won't interrupt your talk further," said Miss Ramell, receding +doorward. + +Mr. Gabbitas played round her politely, and opened the door for her +and conducted her into the passage, and for a moment or so I had +the fullest sense of proximity to those--it seemed to me +there must be ten or twelve--sovereigns. . . . + +The front door closed and he returned. My chance of escape had +gone. + + + +Section 4 + +"I MUST be going," I said, with a curiously reinforced desire to +get away out of that room. + +"My dear chap!" he insisted, "I can't think of it. Surely--there's +nothing to call you away." Then with an evident desire to shift the +venue of our talk, he asked, "You never told me what you thought +of Burble's little book." + +I was now, beneath my dull display of submission, furiously angry +with him. It occurred to me to ask myself why I should defer +and qualify my opinions to him. Why should I pretend a feeling +of intellectual and social inferiority toward him. He asked what +I thought of Burble. I resolved to tell him--if necessary with +arrogance. Then perhaps he would release me. I did not sit down +again, but stood by the corner of the fireplace. + +"That was the little book you lent me last summer?" I said. + +"He reasons closely, eh?" he said, and indicated the armchair with +a flat hand, and beamed persuasively. + +I remained standing. "I didn't think much of his reasoning powers," +I said. + +"He was one of the cleverest bishops London ever had." + +"That may be. But he was dodging about in a jolly feeble case," +said I. + +"You mean?" + +"That he's wrong. I don't think he proves his case. I don't think +Christianity is true. He knows himself for the pretender he is. +His reasoning's--Rot." + +Mr. Gabbitas went, I think, a shade paler than his wont, and propitiation +vanished from his manner. His eyes and mouth were round, his face +seemed to get round, his eyebrows curved at my remarks. + +"I'm sorry you think that," he said at last, with a catch in his +breath. + +He did not repeat his suggestion that I should sit. He made a step +or two toward the window and turned. "I suppose you will admit--" he +began, with a faintly irritating note of intellectual condescension. +. . . . + +I will not tell you of his arguments or mine. You will find if +you care to look for them, in out-of-the-way corners of our book +museums, the shriveled cheap publications--the publications of the +Rationalist Press Association, for example --on which my arguments +were based. Lying in that curious limbo with them, mixed up with +them and indistinguishable, are the endless "Replies" of orthodoxy, +like the mixed dead in some hard-fought trench. All those disputes +of our fathers, and they were sometimes furious disputes, have +gone now beyond the range of comprehension. You younger people, I +know, read them with impatient perplexity. You cannot understand +how sane creatures could imagine they had joined issue at all +in most of these controversies. All the old methods of systematic +thinking, the queer absurdities of the Aristotelian logic, have +followed magic numbers and mystical numbers, and the Rumpelstiltskin +magic of names now into the blackness of the unthinkable. You can +no more understand our theological passions than you can understand +the fancies that made all ancient peoples speak of their gods only +by circumlocutions, that made savages pine away and die because +they had been photographed, or an Elizabethan farmer turn back from +a day's expedition because he had met three crows. Even I, who have +been through it all, recall our controversies now with something +near incredulity. + +Faith we can understand to-day, all men live by faith, but in the +old time every one confused quite hopelessly Faith and a forced, +incredible Belief in certain pseudo-concrete statements. I am +inclined to say that neither believers nor unbelievers had faith as +we understand it--they had insufficient intellectual power. They +could not trust unless they had something to see and touch and +say, like their barbarous ancestors who could not make a bargain +without exchange of tokens. If they no longer worshipped stocks and +stones, or eked out their needs with pilgrimages and images, they +still held fiercely to audible images, to printed words and formulae. + +But why revive the echoes of the ancient logomachies? + +Suffice it that we lost our tempers very readily in pursuit of +God and Truth, and said exquisitely foolish things on either side. +And on the whole--from the impartial perspective of my three and +seventy years--I adjudicate that if my dialectic was bad, that of +the Rev. Gabbitas was altogether worse. + +Little pink spots came into his cheeks, a squealing note into his +voice. We interrupted each other more and more rudely. We invented +facts and appealed to authorities whose names I mispronounced; +and, finding Gabbitas shy of the higher criticism and the Germans, +I used the names of Karl Marx and Engels as Bible exegetes with no +little effect. A silly wrangle! a preposterous wrangle!--you must +imagine our talk becoming louder, with a developing quarrelsome +note--my mother no doubt hovering on the staircase and listening +in alarm as who should say, "My dear, don't offend it! Oh, don't +offend it! Mr. Gabbitas enjoys its friendship. Try to think whatever +Mr. Gabbitas says"--though we still kept in touch with a pretence +of mutual deference. The ethical superiority of Christianity to +all other religions came to the fore--I know not how. We dealt with +the matter in bold, imaginative generalizations, because of the +insufficiency of our historical knowledge. I was moved to denounce +Christianity as the ethic of slaves, and declare myself a disciple +of a German writer of no little vogue in those days, named Nietzsche. + +For a disciple I must confess I was particularly ill acquainted +with the works of the master. Indeed, all I knew of him had come +to me through a two-column article in The Clarion for the previous +week. . . . But the Rev. Gabbitas did not read The Clarion. + +I am, I know, putting a strain upon your credulity when I tell you +that I now have little doubt that the Rev. Gabbitas was absolutely +ignorant even of the name of Nietzsche, although that writer presented +a separate and distinct attitude of attack upon the faith that was +in the reverend gentleman's keeping. + +"I'm a disciple of Nietzsche," said I, with an air of extensive +explanation. + +He shied away so awkwardly at the name that I repeated it at once. + +"But do you know what Nietzsche says?" I pressed him viciously. + +"He has certainly been adequately answered," said he, still trying +to carry it off. + +"Who by?" I rapped out hotly. "Tell me that!" and became mercilessly +expectant. + + + +Section 5 + +A happy accident relieved Mr. Gabbitas from the embarrassment +of that challenge, and carried me another step along my course of +personal disaster. + +It came on the heels of my question in the form of a clatter of +horses without, and the gride and cessation of wheels. I glimpsed +a straw-hatted coachman and a pair of grays. It seemed an incredibly +magnificent carriage for Clayton. + +"Eh!" said the Rev. Gabbitas, going to the window. "Why, it's old +Mrs. Verrall! It's old Mrs. Verrall. Really! What CAN she want with +me?" + +He turned to me, and the flush of controversy had passed and his +face shone like the sun. It was not every day, I perceived, that +Mrs. Verrall came to see him. + +"I get so many interruptions," he said, almost grinning. "You must +excuse me a minute! Then--then I'll tell you about that fellow. +But don't go. I pray you don't go. I can assure you. . . . MOST +interesting." + +He went out of the room waving vague prohibitory gestures. + +"I MUST go," I cried after him. + +"No, no, no!" in the passage. "I've got your answer," I think it +was he added, and "quite mistaken;" and I saw him running down the +steps to talk to the old lady. + +I swore. I made three steps to the window, and this brought me +within a yard of that accursed drawer. + +I glanced at it, and then at that old woman who was so absolutely +powerful, and instantly her son and Nettie's face were flaming in +my brain. The Stuarts had, no doubt, already accepted accomplished +facts. And I too-- + +What was I doing here? + +What was I doing here while judgment escaped me? + +I woke up. I was injected with energy. I took one reassuring look +at the curate's obsequious back, at the old lady's projected nose +and quivering hand, and then with swift, clean movements I had the +little drawer open, four sovereigns in my pocket, and the drawer +shut again. Then again at the window--they were still talking. + +That was all right. He might not look in that drawer for hours. I +glanced at his clock. Twenty minutes still before the Birmingham +train. Time to buy a pair of boots and get away. But how I was to +get to the station? + +I went out boldly into the passage, and took my hat and stick. . +. . Walk past him? + +Yes. That was all right! He could not argue with me while so +important a person engaged him. . . . I came boldly down the steps. + +"I want a list made, Mr. Gabbitas, of all the really DESERVING +cases," old Mrs. Verrall was saying. + +It is curious, but it did not occur to me that here was a mother +whose son I was going to kill. I did not see her in that aspect +at all. Instead, I was possessed by a realization of the blazing +imbecility of a social system that gave this palsied old woman +the power to give or withhold the urgent necessities of life from +hundreds of her fellow-creatures just according to her poor, foolish +old fancies of desert. + +"We could make a PROVISIONAL list of that sort," he was saying, +and glanced round with a preoccupied expression at me. + +"I MUST go," I said at his flash of inquiry, and added, "I'll be +back in twenty minutes," and went on my way. He turned again to +his patroness as though he forgot me on the instant. Perhaps after +all he was not sorry. + +I felt extraordinarily cool and capable, exhilarated, if anything, +by this prompt, effectual theft. After all, my great determination +would achieve itself. I was no longer oppressed by a sense +of obstacles, I felt I could grasp accidents and turn them to my +advantage. I would go now down Hacker Street to the little shoemaker's +--get a sound, good pair of boots--ten minutes--and then to the +railway-station--five minutes more--and off! I felt as efficient +and non-moral as if I was Nietzsche's Over-man already come. It did +not occur to me that the curate's clock might have a considerable +margin of error. + + + +Section 6 + +I missed the train. + +Partly that was because the curate's clock was slow, and partly +it was due to the commercial obstinacy of the shoemaker, who would +try on another pair after I had declared my time was up. I bought +the final pair however, gave him a wrong address for the return of +the old ones, and only ceased to feel like the Nietzschean Over-man, +when I saw the train running out of the station. + +Even then I did not lose my head. It occurred to me almost at once +that, in the event of a prompt pursuit, there would be a great +advantage in not taking a train from Clayton; that, indeed, to have +done so would have been an error from which only luck had saved +me. As it was, I had already been very indiscreet in my inquiries +about Shaphambury; for once on the scent the clerk could not fail +to remember me. Now the chances were against his coming into the +case. I did not go into the station therefore at all, I made no +demonstration of having missed the train, but walked quietly past, +down the road, crossed the iron footbridge, and took the way back +circuitously by White's brickfields and the allotments to the way +over Clayton Crest to Two-Mile Stone, where I calculated I should +have an ample margin for the 6.13 train. + +I was not very greatly excited or alarmed then. Suppose, I reasoned, +that by some accident the curate goes to that drawer at once: will +he be certain to miss four out of ten or eleven sovereigns? If he +does, will he at once think I have taken them? If he does, will +he act at once or wait for my return? If he acts at once, will he +talk to my mother or call in the police? Then there are a dozen +roads and even railways out of the Clayton region, how is he to +know which I have taken? Suppose he goes straight at once to the +right station, they will not remember my departure for the simple +reason that I didn't depart. But they may remember about Shaphambury? +It was unlikely. + +I resolved not to go directly to Shaphambury from Birmingham, but +to go thence to Monkshampton, thence to Wyvern, and then come down +on Shaphambury from the north. That might involve a night at some +intermediate stopping-place but it would effectually conceal me +from any but the most persistent pursuit. And this was not a case +of murder yet, but only the theft of four sovereigns. + +I had argued away all anxiety before I reached Clayton Crest. + +At the Crest I looked back. What a world it was! And suddenly it +came to me that I was looking at this world for the last time. If +I overtook the fugitives and succeeded, I should die with them--or +hang. I stopped and looked back more attentively at that wide ugly +valley. + +It was my native valley, and I was going out of it, I thought never +to return, and yet in that last prospect, the group of towns that +had borne me and dwarfed and crippled and made me, seemed, in some +indefinable manner, strange. I was, perhaps, more used to seeing it +from this comprehensive view-point when it was veiled and softened +by night; now it came out in all its weekday reek, under a clear +afternoon sun. That may account a little for its unfamiliarity. +And perhaps, too, there was something in the emotions through which +I had been passing for a week and more, to intensify my insight, +to enable me to pierce the unusual, to question the accepted. But +it came to me then, I am sure, for the first time, how promiscuous, +how higgledy-piggledy was the whole of that jumble of mines and +homes, collieries and potbanks, railway yards, canals, schools, +forges and blast furnaces, churches, chapels, allotment hovels, +a vast irregular agglomeration of ugly smoking accidents in which +men lived as happy as frogs in a dustbin. Each thing jostled and +damaged the other things about it, each thing ignored the other +things about it; the smoke of the furnace defiled the potbank clay, +the clatter of the railway deafened the worshipers in church, the +public-house thrust corruption at the school doors, the dismal +homes squeezed miserably amidst the monstrosities of industrialism, +with an effect of groping imbecility. Humanity choked amidst its +products, and all its energy went in increasing its disorder, like +a blind stricken thing that struggles and sinks in a morass. + +I did not think these things clearly that afternoon. Much less did +I ask how I, with my murderous purpose, stood to them all. I write +down that realization of disorder and suffocation here and now as +though I had thought it, but indeed then I only felt it, felt it +transitorily as I looked back, and then stood with the thing escaping +from my mind. + +I should never see that country-side again. + +I came back to that. At any rate I wasn't sorry. The chances were +I should die in sweet air, under a clean sky. + +From distant Swathinglea came a little sound, the minute undulation +of a remote crowd, and then rapidly three shots. + +That held me perplexed for a space. . . . Well, anyhow I was +leaving it all! Thank God I was leaving it all! Then, as I turned +to go on, I thought of my mother. + +It seemed an evil world in which to leave one's mother. My thoughts +focused upon her very vividly for a moment. Down there, under that +afternoon light, she was going to and fro, unaware as yet that +she had lost me, bent and poking about in the darkling underground +kitchen, perhaps carrying a lamp into the scullery to trim, or +sitting patiently, staring into the fire, waiting tea for me. A +great pity for her, a great remorse at the blacker troubles that +lowered over her innocent head, came to me. Why, after all, was +I doing this thing? + +Why? + +I stopped again dead, with the hill crest rising between me and +home. I had more than half a mind to return to her. + +Then I thought of the curate's sovereigns. If he has missed them +already, what should I return to? And, even if I returned, how +could I put them back? + +And what of the night after I renounced my revenge? What of the +time when young Verrall came back? And Nettie? + +No! The thing had to be done. + +But at least I might have kissed my mother before I came away, left +her some message, reassured her at least for a little while. +All night she would listen and wait for me. . . . . + +Should I send her a telegram from Two-Mile Stone? + +It was no good now; too late, too late. To do that would be to tell +the course I had taken, to bring pursuit upon me, swift and sure, +if pursuit there was to be. No. My mother must suffer! + +I went on grimly toward Two-Mile Stone, but now as if some greater +will than mine directed my footsteps thither. + +I reached Birmingham before darkness came, and just caught the last +train for Monkshampton, where I had planned to pass the night. + + + + +CHAPTER THE FIFTH + +THE PURSUIT OF THE TWO LOVERS + + + +Section 1 + +As the train carried me on from Birmingham to Monkshampton, it +carried me not only into a country where I had never been before, +but out of the commonplace daylight and the touch and quality +of ordinary things, into the strange unprecedented night that was +ruled by the giant meteor of the last days. + +There was at that time a curious accentuation of the common alternation +of night and day. They became separated with a widening difference +of value in regard to all mundane affairs. During the day, the +comet was an item in the newspapers, it was jostled by a thousand +more living interests, it was as nothing in the skirts of the war +storm that was now upon us. It was an astronomical phenomenon, +somewhere away over China, millions of miles away in the deeps. +We forgot it. But directly the sun sank one turned ever and again +toward the east, and the meteor resumed its sway over us. + +One waited for its rising, and yet each night it came as a surprise. +Always it rose brighter than one had dared to think, always larger and +with some wonderful change in its outline, and now with a strange, +less luminous, greener disk upon it that grew with its growth, the +umbra of the earth. It shone also with its own light, so that this +shadow was not hard or black, but it shone phosphorescently and with +a diminishing intensity where the stimulus of the sun's rays was +withdrawn. As it ascended toward the zenith, as the last trailing +daylight went after the abdicating sun, its greenish white illumination +banished the realities of day, diffused a bright ghostliness over +all things. It changed the starless sky about it to an extraordinary +deep blue, the profoundest color in the world, such as I have never +seen before or since. I remember, too, that as I peered from the +train that was rattling me along to Monkshampton, I perceived and +was puzzled by a coppery red light that mingled with all the shadows +that were cast by it. + +It turned our ugly English industrial towns to phantom cities. +Everywhere the local authorities discontinued street lighting--one +could read small print in the glare,--and so at Monkshampton I +went about through pale, white, unfamiliar streets, whose electric +globes had shadows on the path. Lit windows here and there burnt +ruddy orange, like holes cut in some dream curtain that hung before +a furnace. A policeman with noiseless feet showed me an inn woven +of moonshine, a green-faced man opened to us, and there I abode +the night. And the next morning it opened with a mighty clatter, +and was a dirty little beerhouse that stank of beer, and there was +a fat and grimy landlord with red spots upon his neck, and much +noisy traffic going by on the cobbles outside. + +I came out, after I had paid my bill, into a street that echoed +to the bawlings of two newsvendors and to the noisy yappings of a +dog they had raised to emulation. They were shouting: "Great British +disaster in the North Sea. A battleship lost with all hands!" + +I bought a paper, went on to the railway station reading such +details as were given of this triumph of the old civilization, of +the blowing up of this great iron ship, full of guns and explosives +and the most costly and beautiful machinery of which that time was +capable, together with nine hundred able-bodied men, all of them +above the average, by a contact mine towed by a German submarine. +I read myself into a fever of warlike emotions. Not only did I +forget the meteor, but for a time I forgot even the purpose that +took me on to the railway station, bought my ticket, and was now +carrying me onward to Shaphambury. + +So the hot day came to its own again, and people forgot the night. + +Each night, there shone upon us more and more insistently, beauty, +wonder, the promise of the deeps, and we were hushed, and marveled +for a space. And at the first gray sounds of dawn again, at the +shooting of bolts and the noise of milk-carts, we forgot, and the +dusty habitual day came yawning and stretching back again. The +stains of coal smoke crept across the heavens, and we rose to the +soiled disorderly routine of life. + +"Thus life has always been," we said; "thus it will always be." + +The glory of those nights was almost universally regarded as +spectacular merely. It signified nothing to us. So far as western +Europe went, it was only a small and ignorant section of the lower +classes who regarded the comet as a portent of the end of the +world. Abroad, where there were peasantries, it was different, but +in England the peasantry had already disappeared. Every one read. +The newspaper, in the quiet days before our swift quarrel with Germany +rushed to its climax, had absolutely dispelled all possibilities +of a panic in this matter. The very tramps upon the high-roads, the +children in the nursery, had learnt that at the utmost the whole +of that shining cloud could weigh but a few score tons. This fact +had been shown quite conclusively by the enormous deflections that +had at last swung it round squarely at our world. It had passed +near three of the smallest asteroids without producing the minutest +perceptible deflection in their course; while, on its own part, it +had described a course through nearly three degrees. When it struck +our earth there was to be a magnificent spectacle, no doubt, for +those who were on the right side of our planet to see, but beyond +that nothing. It was doubtful whether we were on the right side. +The meteor would loom larger and larger in the sky, but with the +umbra of our earth eating its heart of brightness out, and at last +it would be the whole sky, a sky of luminous green clouds, with +a white brightness about the horizon, west and east. Then a pause +--a pause of not very exactly definite duration--and then, no doubt, +a great blaze of shooting stars. They might be of some unwonted +color because of the unknown element that line in the green revealed. +For a little while the zenith would spout shooting stars. Some, +it was hoped, would reach the earth and be available for analysis. + +That, science said, would be all. The green clouds would whirl and +vanish, and there might be thunderstorms. But through the attenuated +wisps of comet shine, the old sky, the old stars, would reappear, +and all would be as it had been before. And since this was to happen +between one and eleven in the morning of the approaching Tuesday--I +slept at Monkshampton on Saturday night,--it would be only partially +visible, if visible at all, on our side of the earth. Perhaps, if +it came late, one would see no more than a shooting star low down +in the sky. All this we had with the utmost assurances of science. +Still it did not prevent the last nights being the most beautiful +and memorable of human experiences. + +The nights had become very warm, and when next day I had ranged +Shaphambury in vain, I was greatly tormented, as that unparalleled +glory of the night returned, to think that under its splendid +benediction young Verrall and Nettie made love to one another. + +I walked backward and forward, backward and forward, along the sea +front, peering into the faces of the young couples who promenaded, +with my hand in my pocket ready, and a curious ache in my heart +that had no kindred with rage. Until at last all the promenaders +had gone home to bed, and I was alone with the star. + +My train from Wyvern to Shaphambury that morning was a whole hour +late; they said it was on account of the movement of troops to meet +a possible raid from the Elbe. + + + +Section 2 + +Shaphambury seemed an odd place to me even then. But something was +quickening in me at that time to feel the oddness of many accepted +things. Now in the retrospect I see it as intensely queer. The whole +place was strange to my untraveled eyes; the sea even was strange. +Only twice in my life had I been at the seaside before, and then +I had gone by excursion to places on the Welsh coast whose great +cliffs of rock and mountain backgrounds made the effect of the horizon +very different from what it is upon the East Anglian seaboard. Here +what they call a cliff was a crumbling bank of whitey-brown earth +not fifty feet high. + +So soon as I arrived I made a systematic exploration of Shaphambury. +To this day I retain the clearest memories of the plan I shaped +out then, and how my inquiries were incommoded by the overpowering +desire of every one to talk of the chances of a German raid, before +the Channel Fleet got round to us. I slept at a small public-house +in a Shaphambury back street on Sunday night. I did not get on to +Shaphambury from Wyvern until two in the afternoon, because of the +infrequency of Sunday trains, and I got no clue whatever until late +in the afternoon of Monday. As the little local train bumped into +sight of the place round the curve of a swelling hill, one saw +a series of undulating grassy spaces, amidst which a number of +conspicuous notice-boards appealed to the eye and cut up the distant +sea horizon. Most of these referred to comestibles or to remedies +to follow the comestibles; and they were colored with a view to be +memorable rather than beautiful, to "stand out" amidst the gentle +grayish tones of the east coast scenery. The greater number, I may +remark, of the advertisements that were so conspicuous a factor +in the life of those days, and which rendered our vast tree-pulp +newspapers possible, referred to foods, drinks, tobacco, and the +drugs that promised a restoration of the equanimity these other +articles had destroyed. Wherever one went one was reminded in glaring +letters that, after all, man was little better than a worm, that +eyeless, earless thing that burrows and lives uncomplainingly +amidst nutritious dirt, "an alimentary canal with the subservient +appendages thereto." But in addition to such boards there were also +the big black and white boards of various grandiloquently named +"estates." The individualistic enterprise of that time had led to +the plotting out of nearly all the country round the seaside towns +into roads and building-plots--all but a small portion of the south +and east coast was in this condition, and had the promises of those +schemes been realized the entire population of the island might +have been accommodated upon the sea frontiers. Nothing of the sort +happened, of course; the whole of this uglification of the coast-line +was done to stimulate a little foolish gambling in plots, and +one saw everywhere agents' boards in every state of freshness and +decay, ill-made exploitation roads overgrown with grass, and here +and there, at a corner, a label, "Trafalgar Avenue," or "Sea View +Road." Here and there, too, some small investor, some shopman with +"savings," had delivered his soul to the local builders and built +himself a house, and there it stood, ill-designed, mean-looking, +isolated, ill-placed on a cheaply fenced plot, athwart which his +domestic washing fluttered in the breeze amidst a bleak desolation +of enterprise. Then presently our railway crossed a high road, +and a row of mean yellow brick houses--workmen's cottages, and +the filthy black sheds that made the "allotments" of that time a +universal eyesore, marked our approach to the more central areas +of--I quote the local guidebook --"one of the most delightful resorts +in the East Anglian poppy-land." Then more mean houses, the gaunt +ungainliness of the electric force station--it had a huge chimney, +because no one understood how to make combustion of coal complete--and +then we were in the railway station, and barely three-quarters of +a mile from the center of this haunt of health and pleasure. + +I inspected the town thoroughly before I made my inquiries. The +road began badly with a row of cheap, pretentious, insolvent-looking +shops, a public-house, and a cab-stand, but, after an interval of +little red villas that were partly hidden amidst shrubbery gardens, +broke into a confusedly bright but not unpleasing High Street, +shuttered that afternoon and sabbatically still. Somewhere in the +background a church bell jangled, and children in bright, new-looking +clothes were going to Sunday-school. Thence through a square of +stuccoed lodging-houses, that seemed a finer and cleaner version of +my native square, I came to a garden of asphalt and euonymus--the +Sea Front. I sat down on a cast-iron seat, and surveyed first of all +the broad stretches of muddy, sandy beach, with its queer wheeled +bathing machines, painted with the advertisements of somebody's +pills--and then at the house fronts that stared out upon these visceral +counsels. Boarding-houses, private hotels, and lodging-houses in +terraces clustered closely right and left of me, and then came to +an end; in one direction scaffolding marked a building enterprise +in progress, in the other, after a waste interval, rose a monstrous +bulging red shape, a huge hotel, that dwarfed all other things. +Northward were low pale cliffs with white denticulations of tents, +where the local volunteers, all under arms, lay encamped, and +southward, a spreading waste of sandy dunes, with occasional bushes +and clumps of stunted pine and an advertisement board or so. A +hard blue sky hung over all this prospect, the sunshine cast inky +shadows, and eastward was a whitish sea. It was Sunday, and the +midday meal still held people indoors. + +A queer world! thought I even then--to you now it must seem impossibly +queer,--and after an interval I forced myself back to my own affair. + +How was I to ask? What was I to ask for? I puzzled for a long time +over that--at first I was a little tired and indolent--and then +presently I had a flow of ideas. + +My solution was fairly ingenious. I invented the following story. +I happened to be taking a holiday in Shaphambury, and I was making +use of the opportunity to seek the owner of a valuable feather boa, +which had been left behind in the hotel of my uncle at Wyvern by a +young lady, traveling with a young gentleman--no doubt a youthful +married couple. They had reached Shaphambury somewhen on Thursday. +I went over the story many times, and gave my imaginary uncle and +his hotel plausible names. At any rate this yarn would serve as +a complete justification for all the questions I might wish to ask. + +I settled that, but I still sat for a time, wanting the energy to +begin. Then I turned toward the big hotel. Its gorgeous magnificence +seemed to my inexpert judgment to indicate the very place a rich +young man of good family would select. + +Huge draught-proof doors were swung round for me by an ironically +polite under-porter in a magnificent green uniform, who looked at +my clothes as he listened to my question and then with a German +accent referred me to a gorgeous head porter, who directed me to +a princely young man behind a counter of brass and polish, like a +bank--like several banks. This young man, while he answered me, kept +his eye on my collar and tie--and I knew that they were abominable. + +"I want to find a lady and gentleman who came to Shaphambury on +Tuesday," I said. + +"Friends of yours?" he asked with a terrible fineness of irony. + +I made out at last that here at any rate the young people had not +been. They might have lunched there, but they had had no room. But +I went out--door opened again for me obsequiously --in a state of +social discomfiture, and did not attack any other establishment +that afternoon. + +My resolution had come to a sort of ebb. More people were promenading, +and their Sunday smartness abashed me. I forgot my purpose in an +acute sense of myself. I felt that the bulge of my pocket caused +by the revolver was conspicuous, and I was ashamed. I went along +the sea front away from the town, and presently lay down among +pebbles and sea poppies. This mood of reaction prevailed with me +all that afternoon. In the evening, about sundown, I went to the +station and asked questions of the outporters there. But outporters, +I found, were a class of men who remembered luggage rather than +people, and I had no sort of idea what luggage young Verrall and +Nettie were likely to have with them. + +Then I fell into conversation with a salacious wooden-legged old +man with a silver ring, who swept the steps that went down to the +beach from the parade. He knew much about young couples, but only +in general terms, and nothing of the particular young couple I +sought. He reminded me in the most disagreeable way of the sensuous +aspects of life, and I was not sorry when presently a gunboat +appeared in the offing signalling the coastguard and the camp, and +cut short his observations upon holidays, beaches, and morals. + +I went, and now I was past my ebb, and sat in a seat upon the parade, +and watched the brightening of those rising clouds of chilly fire +that made the ruddy west seem tame. My midday lassitude was going, +my blood was running warmer again. And as the twilight and that filmy +brightness replaced the dusty sunlight and robbed this unfamiliar +place of all its matter-of-fact queerness, its sense of aimless +materialism, romance returned to me, and passion, and my thoughts +of honor and revenge. I remember that change of mood as occurring +very vividly on this occasion, but I fancy that less distinctly I +had felt this before many times. In the old times, night and the +starlight had an effect of intimate reality the daytime did not possess. +The daytime--as one saw it in towns and populous places--had hold +of one, no doubt, but only as an uproar might, it was distracting, +conflicting, insistent. Darkness veiled the more salient aspects of +those agglomerations of human absurdity, and one could exist--one +could imagine. + +I had a queer illusion that night, that Nettie and her lover were +close at hand, that suddenly I should come on them. I have already +told how I went through the dusk seeking them in every couple that +drew near. And I dropped asleep at last in an unfamiliar bedroom +hung with gaudily decorated texts, cursing myself for having wasted +a day. + + + +Section 3 + +I sought them in vain the next morning, but after midday I came in +quick succession on a perplexing multitude of clues. After failing +to find any young couple that corresponded to young Verrall +and Nettie, I presently discovered an unsatisfactory quartette of +couples. + +Any of these four couples might have been the one I sought; with +regard to none of them was there conviction. They had all arrived +either on Wednesday or Thursday. Two couples were still in occupation +of their rooms, but neither of these were at home. Late in the +afternoon I reduced my list by eliminating a young man in drab, with +side whiskers and long cuffs, accompanied by a lady, of thirty or +more, of consciously ladylike type. I was disgusted at the sight +of them; the other two young people had gone for a long walk, and +though I watched their boarding-house until the fiery cloud shone +out above, sharing and mingling in an unusually splendid sunset, +I missed them. Then I discovered them dining at a separate table +in the bow window, with red-shaded candles between them, peering +out ever and again at this splendor that was neither night nor day. +The girl in her pink evening dress looked very light and pretty +to me--pretty enough to enrage me,--she had well shaped arms and +white, well-modeled shoulders, and the turn of her cheek and the +fair hair about her ears was full of subtle delights; but she was +not Nettie, and the happy man with her was that odd degenerate type +our old aristocracy produced with such odd frequency, chinless, +large bony nose, small fair head, languid expression, and a neck +that had demanded and received a veritable sleeve of collar. I +stood outside in the meteor's livid light, hating them and cursing +them for having delayed me so long. I stood until it was evident +they remarked me, a black shape of envy, silhouetted against the +glare. + +That finished Shaphambury. The question I now had to debate was +which of the remaining couples I had to pursue. + +I walked back to the parade trying to reason my next step out, and +muttering to myself, because there was something in that luminous +wonderfulness that touched one's brain, and made one feel a little +light-headed. + +One couple had gone to London; the other had gone to the Bungalow +village at Bone Cliff. Where, I wondered, was Bone Cliff? + +I came upon my wooden-legged man at the top of his steps. + +"Hullo," said I. + +He pointed seaward with his pipe, his silver ring shone in the sky +light. + +"Rum," he said. + +"What is?" I asked. + +"Search-lights! Smoke! Ships going north! If it wasn't for this +blasted Milky Way gone green up there, we might see." + +He was too intent to heed my questions for a time. Then he vouchsafed +over his shoulder-- + +"Know Bungalow village?--rather. Artis' and such. Nice goings on! +Mixed bathing--something scandalous. Yes." + +"But where is it?" I said, suddenly exasperated. + +"There!" he said. "What's that flicker? A gunflash--or I'm a lost +soul!" + +"You'd hear," I said, "long before it was near enough to see a +flash." + +He didn't answer. Only by making it clear I would distract him until +he told me what I wanted to know could I get him to turn from his +absorbed contemplation of that phantom dance between the sea rim and +the shine. Indeed I gripped his arm and shook him. Then he turned +upon me cursing. + +"Seven miles," he said, "along this road. And now go to 'ell with +yer!" + +I answered with some foul insult by way of thanks, and so we parted, +and I set off towards the bungalow village. + +I found a policeman, standing star-gazing, a little way beyond the +end of the parade, and verified the wooden-legged man's directions. + +"It's a lonely road, you know," he called after me. . . . + +I had an odd intuition that now at last I was on the right track. +I left the dark masses of Shaphambury behind me, and pushed out +into the dim pallor of that night, with the quiet assurance of a +traveler who nears his end. + +The incidents of that long tramp I do not recall in any orderly +succession, the one progressive thing is my memory of a growing +fatigue. The sea was for the most part smooth and shining like a +mirror, a great expanse of reflecting silver, barred by slow broad +undulations, but at one time a little breeze breathed like a faint +sigh and ruffled their long bodies into faint scaly ripples that +never completely died out again. The way was sometimes sandy, thick +with silvery colorless sand, and sometimes chalky and lumpy, with +lumps that had shining facets; a black scrub was scattered, sometimes +in thickets, sometimes in single bunches, among the somnolent +hummocks of sand. At one place came grass, and ghostly great sheep +looming up among the gray. After a time black pinewoods intervened, +and made sustained darknesses along the road, woods that frayed +out at the edges to weirdly warped and stunted trees. Then isolated +pine witches would appear, and make their rigid gestures at me as +I passed. Grotesquely incongruous amidst these forms, I presently +came on estate boards, appealing, "Houses can be built to suit +purchaser," to the silence, to the shadows, and the glare. + +Once I remember the persistent barking of a dog from somewhere inland +of me, and several times I took out and examined my revolver very +carefully. I must, of course, have been full of my intention when +I did that, I must have been thinking of Nettie and revenge, but +I cannot now recall those emotions at all. Only I see again very +distinctly the greenish gleams that ran over lock and barrel as I +turned the weapon in my hand. + +Then there was the sky, the wonderful, luminous, starless, moonless +sky, and the empty blue deeps of the edge of it, between the meteor +and the sea. And once--strange phantoms!-- I saw far out upon +the shine, and very small and distant, three long black warships, +without masts, or sails, or smoke, or any lights, dark, deadly, +furtive things, traveling very swiftly and keeping an equal distance. +And when I looked again they were very small, and then the shine +had swallowed them up. + +Then once a flash and what I thought was a gun, until I looked +up and saw a fading trail of greenish light still hanging in the +sky. And after that there was a shiver and whispering in the air, +a stronger throbbing in one's arteries, a sense of refreshment, +a renewal of purpose. . . . + +Somewhere upon my way the road forked, but I do not remember +whether that was near Shaphambury or near the end of my walk. The +hesitation between two rutted unmade roads alone remains clear in +my mind. + +At last I grew weary. I came to piled heaps of decaying seaweed +and cart tracks running this way and that, and then I had missed +the road and was stumbling among sand hummocks quite close to the +sea. I came out on the edge of the dimly glittering sandy beach, +and something phosphorescent drew me to the water's edge. I bent +down and peered at the little luminous specks that floated in the +ripples. + +Presently with a sigh I stood erect, and contemplated the lonely +peace of that last wonderful night. The meteor had now trailed its +shining nets across the whole space of the sky and was beginning +to set; in the east the blue was coming to its own again; the sea +was an intense edge of blackness, and now, escaped from that great +shine, and faint and still tremulously valiant, one weak elusive +star could just be seen, hovering on the verge of the invisible. + +How beautiful it was! how still and beautiful! Peace! peace!--the +peace that passeth understanding, robed in light descending! . . . + +My heart swelled, and suddenly I was weeping. + +There was something new and strange in my blood. It came to me that +indeed I did not want to kill. + +I did not want to kill. I did not want to be the servant of my +passions any more. A great desire had come to me to escape from +life, from the daylight which is heat and conflict and desire, into +that cool night of eternity--and rest. I had played--I had done. + +I stood upon the edge of the great ocean, and I was filled with an +inarticulate spirit of prayer, and I desired greatly--peace from +myself. + +And presently, there in the east, would come again the red discoloring +curtain over these mysteries, the finite world again, the gray and +growing harsh certainties of dawn. My resolve I knew would take up +with me again. This was a rest for me, an interlude, but to-morrow +I should be William Leadford once more, ill-nourished, ill-dressed, +ill-equipped and clumsy, a thief and shamed, a wound upon the face +of life, a source of trouble and sorrow even to the mother I loved; +no hope in life left for me now but revenge before my death. + +Why this paltry thing, revenge? It entered into my thoughts that +I might end the matter now and let these others go. + +To wade out into the sea, into this warm lapping that mingled the +natures of water and light, to stand there breast-high, to thrust +my revolver barrel into my mouth------? + +Why not? + +I swung about with an effort. I walked slowly up the beach thinking. . . . + +I turned and looked back at the sea. No! Something within me said, +"No!" + +I must think. + +It was troublesome to go further because the hummocks and +the tangled bushes began. I sat down amidst a black cluster of +shrubs, and rested, chin on hand. I drew my revolver from my pocket +and looked at it, and held it in my hand. Life? Or Death? . . . + +I seemed to be probing the very deeps of being, but indeed +imperceptibly I fell asleep, and sat dreaming. + + + +Section 4 + +Two people were bathing in the sea. + +I had awakened. It was still that white and wonderful night, and +the blue band of clear sky was no wider than before. These people +must have come into sight as I fell asleep, and awakened me almost +at once. They waded breast-deep in the water, emerging, coming +shoreward, a woman, with her hair coiled about her head, and in +pursuit of her a man, graceful figures of black and silver, with a +bright green surge flowing off from them, a pattering of flashing +wavelets about them. He smote the water and splashed it toward +her, she retaliated, and then they were knee-deep, and then for an +instant their feet broke the long silver margin of the sea. + +Each wore a tightly fitting bathing dress that hid nothing of the +shining, dripping beauty of their youthful forms. + +She glanced over her shoulder and found him nearer than she thought, +started, gesticulated, gave a little cry that pierced me to the +heart, and fled up the beach obliquely toward me, running like the +wind, and passed me, vanished amidst the black distorted bushes, +and was gone --she and her pursuer, in a moment, over the ridge of +sand. + +I heard him shout between exhaustion and laughter. . . . + +And suddenly I was a thing of bestial fury, standing up with hands +held up and clenched, rigid in gesture of impotent threatening, +against the sky. . . . + +For this striving, swift thing of light and beauty was Nettie--and +this was the man for whom I had been betrayed! + +And, it blazed upon me, I might have died there by the sheer ebbing +of my will--unavenged! + +In another moment I was running and stumbling, revolver in hand, in +quiet unsuspected pursuit of them, through the soft and noiseless +sand. + + + +Section 5 + +I came up over the little ridge and discovered the bungalow village +I had been seeking, nestling in a crescent lap of dunes. A door +slammed, the two runners had vanished, and I halted staring. + +There was a group of three bungalows nearer to me than the others. +Into one of these three they had gone, and I was too late to see +which. All had doors and windows carelessly open, and none showed +a light. + +This place, upon which I had at last happened, was a fruit of the +reaction of artistic-minded and carelessly living people against +the costly and uncomfortable social stiffness of the more formal +seaside resorts of that time. It was, you must understand, the custom +of the steam-railway companies to sell their carriages after they +had been obsolete for a sufficient length of years, and some genius +had hit upon the possibility of turning these into little habitable +cabins for the summer holiday. The thing had become a fashion with +a certain Bohemian-spirited class; they added cabin to cabin, and +these little improvised homes, gaily painted and with broad verandas +and supplementary leantos added to their accommodation, made the +brightest contrast conceivable to the dull rigidities of the decorous +resorts. Of course there were many discomforts in such camping that +had to be faced cheerfully, and so this broad sandy beach was sacred +to high spirits and the young. Art muslin and banjoes, Chinese +lanterns and frying, are leading "notes," I find, in the impression +of those who once knew such places well. But so far as I was +concerned this odd settlement of pleasure-squatters was a mystery +as well as a surprise, enhanced rather than mitigated by an +imaginative suggestion or so I had received from the wooden-legged +man at Shaphambury. I saw the thing as no gathering of light +hearts and gay idleness, but grimly--after the manner of poor men +poisoned by the suppression of all their cravings after joy. To the +poor man, to the grimy workers, beauty and cleanness were absolutely +denied; out of a life of greasy dirt, of muddied desires, they +watched their happier fellows with a bitter envy and foul, tormenting +suspicions. Fancy a world in which the common people held love +to be a sort of beastliness, own sister to being drunk! . . . + +There was in the old time always something cruel at the bottom of +this business of sexual love. At least that is the impression I +have brought with me across the gulf of the great Change. To succeed +in love seemed such triumph as no other success could give, +but to fail was as if one was tainted. . . . + +I felt no sense of singularity that this thread of savagery should +run through these emotions of mine and become now the whole strand +of these emotions. I believed, and I think I was right in believing, +that the love of all true lovers was a sort of defiance then, that +they closed a system in each other's arms and mocked the world +without. You loved against the world, and these two loved AT me. +They had their business with one another, under the threat of a +watchful fierceness. A sword, a sharp sword, the keenest edge in +life, lay among their roses. + +Whatever may be true of this for others, for me and my imagination, +at any rate, it was altogether true. I was never for dalliance, I was +never a jesting lover. I wanted fiercely; I made love impatiently. +Perhaps I had written irrelevant love-letters for that +very reason; because with this stark theme I could not play. . . + +The thought of Nettie's shining form, of her shrinking bold abandon +to her easy conqueror, gave me now a body of rage that was nearly +too strong for my heart and nerves and the tense powers of my merely +physical being. I came down among the pale sand-heaps slowly toward +that queer village of careless sensuality, and now within my puny +body I was coldly sharpset for pain and death, a darkly gleaming +hate, a sword of evil, drawn. + + + +Section 6 + +I halted, and stood planning what I had to do. + +Should I go to bungalow after bungalow until one of the two I sought +answered to my rap? But suppose some servant intervened! + +Should I wait where I was--perhaps until morning--watching? And +meanwhile------ + +All the nearer bungalows were very still now. If I walked softly +to them, from open windows, from something seen or overheard, +I might get a clue to guide me. Should I advance circuitously, +creeping upon them, or should I walk straight to the door? It was +bright enough for her to recognize me clearly at a distance of many +paces. + +The difficulty to my mind lay in this, that if I involved other +people by questions, I might at last confront my betrayers with +these others close about me, ready to snatch my weapon and seize +my hands. Besides, what names might they bear here? + +"Boom!" the sound crept upon my senses, and then again it came. + +I turned impatiently as one turns upon an impertinence, and beheld +a great ironclad not four miles out, steaming fast across the +dappled silver, and from its funnels sparks, intensely red, poured +out into the night. As I turned, came the hot flash of its guns, +firing seaward, and answering this, red flashes and a streaming +smoke in the line between sea and sky. So I remembered it, and I +remember myself staring at it--in a state of stupid arrest. It was +an irrelevance. What had these things to do with me? + +With a shuddering hiss, a rocket from a headland beyond the village +leapt up and burst hot gold against the glare, and the sound of +the third and fourth guns reached me. + +The windows of the dark bungalows, one after another, leapt out, +squares of ruddy brightness that flared and flickered and became +steadily bright. Dark heads appeared looking seaward, a door opened, +and sent out a brief lane of yellow to mingle and be lost in the +comet's brightness. That brought me back to the business in hand. + +"Boom! boom!" and when I looked again at the great ironclad, +a little torchlike spurt of flame wavered behind her funnels. I +could hear the throb and clangor of her straining engines. . . . + +I became aware of the voices of people calling to one another in +the village. A white-robed, hooded figure, some man in a bathing +wrap, absurdly suggestive of an Arab in his burnous, came out from +one of the nearer bungalows, and stood clear and still and shadowless +in the glare. + +He put his hands to shade his seaward eyes, and shouted to people +within. + +The people within--MY people! My fingers tightened on my revolver. +What was this war nonsense to me? I would go round among the hummocks +with the idea of approaching the three bungalows inconspicuously +from the flank. This fight at sea might serve my purpose--except +for that, it had no interest for me at all. Boom! boom! The huge +voluminous concussions rushed past me, beat at my heart and passed. +In a moment Nettie would come out to see. + +First one and then two other wrappered figures came out of the +bungalows to join the first. His arm pointed seaward, and his voice, +a full tenor, rose in explanation. I could hear some of the words. +"It's a German!" he said. "She's caught." + +Some one disputed that, and there followed a little indistinct +babble of argument. I went on slowly in the circuit I had marked +out, watching these people as I went. + +They shouted together with such a common intensity of direction +that I halted and looked seaward. I saw the tall fountain flung by +a shot that had just missed the great warship. A second rose still +nearer us, a third, and a fourth, and then a great uprush of dust, +a whirling cloud, leapt out of the headland whence the rocket had +come, and spread with a slow deliberation right and left. Hard on +that an enormous crash, and the man with the full voice leapt and +cried, "Hit!" + +Let me see! Of course, I had to go round beyond the bungalows, and +then come up towards the group from behind. + +A high-pitched woman's voice called, "Honeymooners! honeymooners! +Come out and see!" + +Something gleamed in the shadow of the nearer bungalow, and +a man's voice answered from within. What he said I did not catch, +but suddenly I heard Nettie calling very distinctly, "We've been +bathing." + +The man who had first come out shouted, "Don't you hear the guns? +They're fighting--not five miles from shore." + +"Eh?" answered the bungalow, and a window opened. + +"Out there!" + +I did not hear the reply, because of the faint rustle of my own +movements. Clearly these people were all too much occupied by the +battle to look in my direction, and so I walked now straight toward +the darkness that held Nettie and the black desire of my heart. + +"Look!" cried some one, and pointed skyward. + +I glanced up, and behold! The sky was streaked with bright green +trails. They radiated from a point halfway between the western +horizon and the zenith, and within the shining clouds of the meteor +a streaming movement had begun, so that it seemed to be pouring +both westwardly and back toward the east, with a crackling sound, as +though the whole heaven was stippled over with phantom pistol-shots. +It seemed to me then as if the meteor was coming to help me, +descending with those thousand pistols like a curtain to fend off +this unmeaning foolishness of the sea. + +"Boom!" went a gun on the big ironclad, and "boom!" and the guns +of the pursuing cruisers flashed in reply. + +To glance up at that streaky, stirring light scum of the sky made +one's head swim. I stood for a moment dazed, and more than a little +giddy. I had a curious instant of purely speculative thought. Suppose, +after all, the fanatics were right, and the world WAS coming to an +end! What a score that would be for Parload! + +Then it came into my head that all these things were happening to +consecrate my revenge! The war below, the heavens above, were the +thunderous garment of my deed. I heard Nettie's voice cry out not +fifty yards away, and my passion surged again. I was to return to +her amid these terrors bearing unanticipated death. I was to possess +her, with a bullet, amidst thunderings and fear. At the thought I +lifted up my voice to a shout that went unheard, and advanced now +recklessly, revolver displayed in my hand. + +It was fifty yards, forty yards, thirty yards --the little group +of people, still heedless of me, was larger and more important now, +the green-shot sky and the fighting ships remoter. Some one darted +out from the bungalow, with an interrupted question, and stopped, +suddenly aware of me. It was Nettie, with some coquettish dark +wrap about her, and the green glare shining on her sweet face and +white throat. I could see her expression, stricken with dismay and +terror, at my advance, as though something had seized her by the +heart and held her still--a target for my shots. + +"Boom!" came the ironclad's gunshot like a command. "Bang!" the +bullet leapt from my hand. Do you know, I did not want to shoot +her then. Indeed I did not want to shoot her then! Bang! and I +had fired again, still striding on, and--each time it seemed I had +missed. + +She moved a step or so toward me, still staring, and then someone +intervened, and near beside her I saw young Verrall. + +A heavy stranger, the man in the hooded bath-gown, a fat, foreign-looking +man, came out of nowhere like a shield before them. He seemed a +preposterous interruption. His face was full of astonishment and +terror. He rushed across my path with arms extended and open hands, +as one might try to stop a runaway horse. He shouted some nonsense. +He seemed to want to dissuade me, as though dissuasion had anything +to do with it now. + +"Not you, you fool!" I said hoarsely. "Not you!" But he hid Nettie +nevertheless. + +By an enormous effort I resisted a mechanical impulse to shoot +through his fat body. Anyhow, I knew I mustn't shoot him. For +a moment I was in doubt, then I became very active, turned aside +abruptly and dodged his pawing arm to the left, and so found two +others irresolutely in my way. I fired a third shot in the air, just +over their heads, and ran at them. They hastened left and right; I +pulled up and faced about within a yard of a foxy-faced young man +coming sideways, who seemed about to grapple me. At my resolute +halt he fell back a pace, ducked, and threw up a defensive arm, +and then I perceived the course was clear, and ahead of me, young +Verrall and Nettie --he was holding her arm to help her--running +away. "Of course!" said I. + +I fired a fourth ineffectual shot, and then in an access of fury +at my misses, started out to run them down and shoot them barrel to +backbone. "These people!" I said, dismissing all these interferences. +. . ."A yard," I panted, speaking aloud to myself, "a yard! Till +then, take care, you mustn't--mustn't shoot again." + +Some one pursued me, perhaps several people --I do not +know, we left them all behind. . . . + +We ran. For a space I was altogether intent upon the swift monotony +of flight and pursuit. The sands were changed to a whirl of green +moonshine, the air was thunder. A luminous green haze rolled about +us. What did such things matter? We ran. Did I gain or lose? that +was the question. They ran through a gap in a broken fence that +sprang up abruptly out of nothingness and turned to the right. I +noted we were in a road. But this green mist! One seemed to plough +through it. They were fading into it, and at that thought I made +a spurt that won a dozen feet or more. + +She staggered. He gripped her arm, and dragged her forward. They +doubled to the left. We were off the road again and on turf. It +felt like turf. I tripped and fell at a ditch that was somehow +full of smoke, and was up again, but now they were phantoms +half gone into the livid swirls about me. . . . + +Still I ran. + +On, on! I groaned with the violence of my effort. I staggered +again and swore. I felt the concussions of great guns tear past me +through the murk. + +They were gone! Everything was going, but I kept on running. Once +more I stumbled. There was something about my feet that impeded +me, tall grass or heather, but I could not see what it was, only +this smoke that eddied about my knees. There was a noise and spinning +in my brain, a vain resistance to a dark green curtain that was +falling, falling, falling, fold upon fold. Everything grew darker +and darker. + +I made one last frantic effort, and raised my revolver, fired my +penultimate shot at a venture, and fell headlong to the ground. +And behold! the green curtain was a black one, and the earth and +I and all things ceased to be. + + + + + +BOOK THE SECOND + +THE GREEN VAPORS + + + + +CHAPTER THE FIRST + +THE CHANGE + + + +Section 1 + +I SEEMED to awaken out of a refreshing sleep. + +I did not awaken with a start, but opened my eyes, and lay very +comfortably looking at a line of extraordinarily scarlet poppies +that glowed against a glowing sky. It was the sky of a magnificent +sunrise, and an archipelago of gold-beached purple islands floated in +a sea of golden green. The poppies too, swan-necked buds, blazing +corollas, translucent stout seed-vessels, stoutly upheld, had a +luminous quality, seemed wrought only from some more solid kind of +light. + +I stared unwonderingly at these things for a time, and then there +rose upon my consciousness, intermingling with these, the bristling +golden green heads of growing barley. + +A remote faint question, where I might be, drifted and vanished +again in my mind. Everything was very still. + +Everything was as still as death. + +I felt very light, full of the sense of physical well-being. +I perceived I was lying on my side in a little trampled space +in a weedy, flowering barley field, that was in some inexplicable +way saturated with light and beauty. I sat up, and remained for a +long time filled with the delight and charm of the delicate little +convolvulus that twined among the barley stems, the pimpernel that +laced the ground below. + +Then that question returned. What was this place? How had I come +to be sleeping here? + +I could not remember. + +It perplexed me that somehow my body felt strange to me. It was +unfamiliar--I could not tell how--and the barley, and the beautiful +weeds, and the slowly developing glory of the dawn behind; all +those things partook of the same unfamiliarity. I felt as though +I was a thing in some very luminous painted window, as though this +dawn broke through me. I felt I was part of some exquisite picture +painted in light and joy. + +A faint breeze bent and rustled the barley-heads, and jogged my +mind forward. + +Who was I? That was a good way of beginning. + +I held up my left hand and arm before me, a grubby hand, a frayed +cuff; but with a quality of painted unreality, transfigured as a +beggar might have been by Botticelli. I looked for a time steadfastly +at a beautiful pearl sleeve-link. + +I remembered Willie Leadford, who had owned that arm and hand, as +though he had been some one else. + +Of course! My history--its rough outline rather than the immediate +past--began to shape itself in my memory, very small, very bright +and inaccessible, like a thing watched through a microscope. +Clayton and Swathinglea returned to my mind; the slums and darkness, +Dureresque, minute and in their rich dark colors pleasing, and through +them I went towards my destiny. I sat hands on knees recalling that +queer passionate career that had ended with my futile shot into +the growing darkness of the End. The thought of that shot awoke my +emotions again. + +There was something in it now, something absurd, that made me smile +pityingly. + +Poor little angry, miserable creature! Poor little angry, miserable +world! + +I sighed for pity, not only pity for myself, but for all the hot +hearts, the tormented brains, the straining, striving things of hope +and pain, who had found their peace at last beneath the pouring +mist and suffocation of the comet. Because certainly that world was +over and done. They were all so weak and unhappy, and I was now so +strong and so serene. For I felt sure I was dead; no one living +could have this perfect assurance of good, this strong and confident +peace. I had made an end of the fever called living. I was dead, +and it was all right, and these------? + +I felt an inconsistency. + +These, then, must be the barley fields of God!--the still and +silent barley fields of God, full of unfading poppy flowers whose +seeds bear peace. + + + +Section 2 + +It was queer to find barley fields in heaven, but no doubt there +were many surprises in store for me. + +How still everything was! Peace! The peace that passeth understanding. +After all it had come to me! But, indeed, everything was very still! +No bird sang. Surely I was alone in the world! No birds sang. Yes, +and all the distant sounds of life had ceased, the lowing +of cattle, the barking of dogs. . . . + +Something that was like fear beatified came into my heart. It was +all right, I knew; but to be alone! I stood up and met the hot +summons of the rising sun, hurrying towards me, as it were, +with glad tidings, over the spikes of the barley. . . . + +Blinded, I made a step. My foot struck something hard, and I looked +down to discover my revolver, a blue-black thing, like a dead snake +at my feet. + +For a moment that puzzled me. + +Then I clean forgot about it. The wonder of the quiet took possession +of my soul. Dawn, and no birds singing! + +How beautiful was the world! How beautiful, but how still! I walked +slowly through the barley towards a line of elder bushes, wayfaring +tree and bramble that made the hedge of the field. I noted as +I passed along a dead shrew mouse, as it seemed to me, among the +haums; then a still toad. I was surprised that this did not leap +aside from my footfalls, and I stooped and picked it up. Its body +was limp like life, but it made no struggle, the brightness of its +eye was veiled, it did not move in my hand. + +It seems to me now that I stood holding that lifeless little creature +for some time. Then very softly I stooped down and replaced it. I +was trembling--trembling with a nameless emotion. I looked with +quickened eyes closely among the barley stems, and behold, now +everywhere I saw beetles, flies, and little creatures that did not +move, lying as they fell when the vapors overcame them; they seemed +no more than painted things. Some were novel creatures to me. I +was very unfamiliar with natural things. "My God!" I cried; "but +is it only I------?" + +And then at my next movement something squealed sharply. I turned +about, but I could not see it, only I saw a little stir in a rut +and heard the diminishing rustle of the unseen creature's flight. +And at that I turned to my toad again, and its eye moved and it +stirred. And presently, with infirm and hesitating gestures, it +stretched its limbs and began to crawl away from me. + +But wonder, that gentle sister of fear, had me now. I saw a little +way ahead a brown and crimson butterfly perched upon a cornflower. +I thought at first it was the breeze that stirred it, and then I +saw its wings were quivering. And even as I watched it, it started +into life, and spread itself, and fluttered into the air. + +I watched it fly, a turn this way, a turn that, until suddenly it +seemed to vanish. And now, life was returning to this thing and +that on every side of me, with slow stretchings and bendings, +with twitterings, with a little start and stir. . . . + +I came slowly, stepping very carefully because of these drugged, +feebly awakening things, through the barley to the hedge. It was a +very glorious hedge, so that it held my eyes. It flowed along and +interlaced like splendid music. It was rich with lupin, honeysuckle, +campions, and ragged robin; bed straw, hops, and wild clematis +twined and hung among its branches, and all along its ditch border +the starry stitchwort lifted its childish faces, and chorused in +lines and masses. Never had I seen such a symphony of note-like +flowers and tendrils and leaves. And suddenly in its depths, I +heard a chirrup and the whirr of startled wings. + +Nothing was dead, but everything had changed to beauty! And I +stood for a time with clean and happy eyes looking at the intricate +delicacy before me and marveling how richly God has made +his worlds. . . . . + +"Tweedle-Tweezle," a lark had shot the stillness with his shining +thread of song; one lark, and then presently another, invisibly in +the air, making out of that blue quiet a woven cloth of gold. . . . + +The earth recreated--only by the reiteration of such phrases +may I hope to give the intense freshness of that dawn. For a time +I was altogether taken up with the beautiful details of being, as +regardless of my old life of jealous passion and impatient sorrow +as though I was Adam new made. I could tell you now with infinite +particularity of the shut flowers that opened as I looked, of tendrils +and grass blades, of a blue-tit I picked up very tenderly--never +before had I remarked the great delicacy of feathers --that presently +disclosed its bright black eye and judged me, and perched, swaying +fearlessly, upon my finger, and spread unhurried wings and flew +away, and of a great ebullition of tadpoles in the ditch; like all +the things that lived beneath the water, they had passed unaltered +through the Change. Amid such incidents, I lived those first great +moments, losing for a time in the wonder of each little part the +mighty wonder of the whole. + +A little path ran between hedge and barley, and along this, leisurely +and content and glad, looking at this beautiful thing and that, +moving a step and stopping, then moving on again, I came presently +to a stile, and deep below it, and overgrown, was a lane. + +And on the worn oak of the stile was a round label, and on the +label these words, "Swindells' G 90 Pills." + +I sat myself astraddle on the stile, not fully grasping all the +implications of these words. But they perplexed me even more than +the revolver and my dirty cuff. + +About me now the birds lifted up their little hearts and sang, ever +more birds and more. + +I read the label over and over again, and joined it to the fact +that I still wore my former clothes, and that my revolver had been +lying at my feet. One conclusion stared out at me. This was no new +planet, no glorious hereafter such as I had supposed. This beautiful +wonderland was the world, the same old world of my rage and death! +But at least it was like meeting a familiar house-slut, washed and +dignified, dressed in a queen's robes, worshipful and fine. . . . + +It might be the old world indeed, but something new lay upon all +things, a glowing certitude of health and happiness. It might be +the old world, but the dust and fury of the old life was certainly +done. At least I had no doubt of that. + +I recalled the last phases of my former life, that darkling climax +of pursuit and anger and universal darkness and the whirling green +vapors of extinction. The comet had struck the earth and made an +end to all things; of that too I was assured. + +But afterward? . . . + +And now? + +The imaginations of my boyhood came back as speculative possibilities. +In those days I had believed firmly in the necessary advent of a +last day, a great coming out of the sky, trumpetings and fear, the +Resurrection, and the Judgment. My roving fancy now suggested to +me that this Judgment must have come and passed. That it had passed +and in some manner missed me. I was left alone here, in a swept and +garnished world (except, of course, for this label of Swindells' +to begin again perhaps. . . . + +No doubt Swindells has got his deserts. + +My mind ran for a time on Swindells, on the imbecile pushfulness of +that extinct creature, dealing in rubbish, covering the country-side +with lies in order to get--what had he sought? --a silly, ugly, +great house, a temper-destroying motor-car, a number of disrespectful, +abject servants; thwarted intrigues for a party-fund baronetcy as +the crest of his life, perhaps. You cannot imagine the littleness +of those former times; their naive, queer absurdities! And for +the first time in my existence I thought of these things without +bitterness. In the former days I had seen wickedness, I had +seen tragedy, but now I saw only the extraordinary foolishness of +the old life. The ludicrous side of human wealth and importance +turned itself upon me, a shining novelty, poured down upon me like +the sunrise, and engulfed me in laughter. Swindells! Swindells, +damned! My vision of Judgment became a delightful burlesque. I saw +the chuckling Angel sayer with his face veiled, and the corporeal +presence of Swindells upheld amidst the laughter of the spheres. +"Here's a thing, and a very pretty thing, and what's to be done with +this very pretty thing?" I saw a soul being drawn from a rotund, +substantial-looking body like a whelk from its shell. . . . + +I laughed loudly and long. And behold! even as I laughed the keen +point of things accomplished stabbed my mirth, and I was weeping, +weeping aloud, convulsed with weeping, and the tears were pouring +down my face. + + + +Section 3 + +Everywhere the awakening came with the sunrise. We awakened to the +gladness of the morning; we walked dazzled in a light that was joy. +Everywhere that was so. It was always morning. It was morning +because, until the direct rays of the sun touched it, the changing +nitrogen of our atmosphere did not pass into its permanent phase, +and the sleepers lay as they had fallen. In its intermediate +state the air hung inert, incapable of producing either revival or +stupefaction, no longer green, but not yet changed to the +gas that now lives in us. . . . + +To every one, I think, came some parallel to the mental states I +have already sought to describe --a wonder, an impression of joyful +novelty. There was also very commonly a certain confusion of the +intelligence, a difficulty in self-recognition. I remember clearly +as I sat on my stile that presently I had the clearest doubts of +my own identity and fell into the oddest metaphysical questionings. +"If this be I," I said, "then how is it I am no longer madly seeking +Nettie? Nettie is now the remotest thing--and all my wrongs. Why +have I suddenly passed out of all that passion? Why does +not the thought of Verrall quicken my pulses?" . . . + +I was only one of many millions who that morning had the same doubts. I +suppose one knows one's self for one's self when one returns from +sleep or insensibility by the familiarity of one's bodily sensations, +and that morning all our most intimate bodily sensations were +changed. The intimate chemical processes of life were changed, its +nervous metaboly. For the fluctuating, uncertain, passion-darkened +thought and feeling of the old time came steady, full-bodied, +wholesome processes. Touch was different, sight was different, sound +and all the senses were subtler; had it not been that our thought +was steadier and fuller, I believe great multitudes of men would +have gone mad. But, as it was, we understood. The dominant impression +I would convey in this account of the Change is one of enormous +release, of a vast substantial exaltation. There was an effect, as +it were, of light-headedness that was also clear-headedness, and +the alteration in one's bodily sensations, instead of producing the +mental obfuscation, the loss of identity that was a common mental +trouble under former conditions, gave simply a new detachment from +the tumid passions and entanglements of the personal life. + +In this story of my bitter, restricted youth that I have been +telling you, I have sought constantly to convey the narrowness, the +intensity, the confusion, muddle, and dusty heat of the old world. +It was quite clear to me, within an hour of my awakening, that all +that was, in some mysterious way, over and done. That, too, was the +common experience. Men stood up; they took the new air into their +lungs--a deep long breath, and the past fell from them; they could +forgive, they could disregard, they could attempt. . . . And it +was no new thing, no miracle that sets aside the former order of +the world. It was a change in material conditions, a change in the +atmosphere, that at one bound had released them. Some of them it +had released to death. . . . Indeed, man himself had changed not +at all. We knew before the Change, the meanest knew, by glowing +moments in ourselves and others, by histories and music and beautiful +things, by heroic instances and splendid stories, how fine mankind +could be, how fine almost any human being could upon occasion be; +but the poison in the air, its poverty in all the nobler elements +which made such moments rare and remarkable--all that has changed. +The air was changed, and the Spirit of Man that had drowsed and +slumbered and dreamt dull and evil things, awakened, and stood with +wonder-clean eyes, refreshed, looking again on life. + + + +Section 4 + +The miracle of the awakening came to me in solitude, the laughter, +and then the tears. Only after some time did I come upon another +man. Until I heard his voice calling I did not seem to feel there +were any other people in the world. All that seemed past, with +all the stresses that were past. I had come out of the individual +pit in which my shy egotism had lurked, I had overflowed to all +humanity, I had seemed to be all humanity; I had laughed at Swindells +as I could have laughed at myself, and this shout that came to me +seemed like the coming of an unexpected thought in my own mind. +But when it was repeated I answered. + +"I am hurt," said the voice, and I descended into the lane forthwith, +and so came upon Melmount sitting near the ditch with his back to +me. + +Some of the incidental sensory impressions of that morning bit so +deeply into my mind that I verily believe, when at last I face the +greater mysteries that lie beyond this life, when the things of +this life fade from me as the mists of the morning fade before the +sun, these irrelevant petty details will be the last to leave me, +will be the last wisps visible of that attenuating veil. I believe, +for instance, I could match the fur upon the collar of his great +motoring coat now, could paint the dull red tinge of his big +cheek with his fair eyelashes just catching the light and showing +beyond. His hat was off, his dome-shaped head, with its smooth hair +between red and extreme fairness, was bent forward in scrutiny of +his twisted foot. His back seemed enormous. And there was something +about the mere massive sight of him that filled me with liking. + +"What's wrong?" said I. + +"I say," he said, in his full deliberate tones, straining round +to see me and showing a profile, a well-modeled nose, a sensitive, +clumsy, big lip, known to every caricaturist in the world, "I'm in +a fix. I fell and wrenched my ankle. Where are you?" + +I walked round him and stood looking at his face. I perceived he +had his gaiter and sock and boot off, the motor gauntlets had been +cast aside, and he was kneading the injured part in an exploratory +manner with his thick thumbs. + +"By Jove!" I said, "you're Melmount!" + +"Melmount!" He thought. "That's my name," he said, without looking +up. . . . "But it doesn't affect my ankle." + +We remained silent for few moments except for a grunt of pain from +him. + +"Do you know?" I asked, "what has happened to things?" + +He seemed to complete his diagnosis. "It's not broken," he said. + +"Do you know," I repeated, "what has happened to everything?" + +"No," he said, looking up at me incuriously for the first time. + +"There's some difference------" + +"There's a difference." He smiled, a smile of unexpected pleasantness, +and an interest was coming into his eyes. "I've been a little +preoccupied with my own internal sensations. I remark an extraordinary +brightness about things. Is that it?" + +"That's part of it. And a queer feeling, a clear-headedness------" + +He surveyed me and meditated gravely. "I woke up," he said, feeling +his way in his memory. + +"And I." + +"I lost my way--I forget quite how. There was a curious green fog." +He stared at his foot, remembering. "Something to do with a comet. +I was by a hedge in the darkness. Tried to run. . . . Then I +must have pitched into this lane. Look!" He pointed with his head. +"There's a wooden rail new broken there. I must have stumbled over +that out of the field above." He scrutinized this and concluded. "Yes. +. . ." + +"It was dark," I said, "and a sort of green gas came out of nothing +everywhere. That is the last I remember." + +"And then you woke up? So did I. . . . In a state of great bewilderment. +Certainly there's something odd in the air. I was--I was rushing +along a road in a motor-car, very much excited and preoccupied. I +got down----" He held out a triumphant finger. "Ironclads!" + +"NOW I've got it! We'd strung our fleet from here to Texel. We'd +got right across them and the Elbe mined. We'd lost the Lord Warden. +By Jove, yes. The Lord Warden! A battleship that cost two million +pounds--and that fool Rigby said it didn't matter! Eleven hundred +men went down. ... I remember now. We were sweeping up the North +Sea like a net, with the North Atlantic fleet waiting at the Faroes +for 'em--and not one of 'em had three days' coal! Now, was that a +dream? No! I told a lot of people as much--a meeting was it? --to +reassure them. They were warlike but extremely frightened. Queer +people--paunchy and bald like gnomes, most of them. Where? Of +course! We had it all over--a big dinner --oysters!--Colchester. +I'd been there, just to show all this raid scare was nonsense. And +I was coming back here. . . . But it doesn't seem as though that +was--recent. I suppose it was. Yes, of course!--it was. I got out +of my car at the bottom of the rise with the idea of walking along +the cliff path, because every one said one of their battleships was +being chased along the shore. That's clear! I heard their guns ___" + +He reflected. "Queer I should have forgotten! Did YOU hear any +guns?" + +I said I had heard them. + +"Was it last night?" + +"Late last night. One or two in the morning." + +He leant back on his hand and looked at me, smiling frankly. "Even +now," he said, "it's odd, but the whole of that seems like a silly +dream. Do you think there WAS a Lord Warden? Do you really believe +we sank all that machinery--for fun? It was a dream. And yet--it +happened." + +By all the standards of the former time it would have been remarkable +that I talked quite easily and freely with so great a man. "Yes," +I said; "that's it. One feels one has awakened --from something +more than that green gas. As though the other things also--weren't +quite real." + +He knitted his brows and felt the calf of his leg thoughtfully. "I +made a speech at Colchester," he said. + +I thought he was going to add something more about that, but there +lingered a habit of reticence in the man that held him for the +moment. "It is a very curious thing," he broke away; "that this +pain should be, on the whole, more interesting than disagreeable." + +"You are in pain?" + +"My ankle is! It's either broken or badly sprained--I think sprained; +it's very painful to move, but personally I'm not in pain. That +sort of general sickness that comes with local injury--not a trace +of it! ..." He mused and remarked, "I was speaking at Colchester, +and saying things about the war. I begin to see it better. The +reporters--scribble, scribble. Max Sutaine, 1885. Hubbub. Compliments +about the oysters. Mm--mm. . . . What was it? About the war? A war +that must needs be long and bloody, taking toll from castle and +cottage, taking toll! . . . Rhetorical gusto! Was I drunk last +night?" + +His eyebrows puckered. He had drawn up his right knee, his elbow +rested thereon and his chin on his fist. The deep-set gray eyes +beneath his thatch of eyebrow stared at unknown things. "My God!" +he murmured, "My God!" with a note of disgust. He made a big brooding +figure in the sunlight, he had an effect of more than physical +largeness; he made me feel that it became me to wait upon his thinking. +I had never met a man of this sort before; I did not know +such men existed. . . . + +It is a curious thing, that I cannot now recall any ideas whatever +that I had before the Change about the personalities of statesmen, +but I doubt if ever in those days I thought of them at all as +tangible individual human beings, conceivably of some intellectual +complexity. I believe that my impression was a straightforward blend +of caricature and newspaper leader. I certainly had no respect for +them. And now without servility or any insincerity whatever, as if +it were a first-fruit of the Change, I found myself in the presence +of a human being towards whom I perceived myself inferior and +subordinate, before whom I stood without servility or any insincerity +whatever, in an attitude of respect and attention. My inflamed, my +rancid egotism--or was it after all only the chances of life?--had +never once permitted that before the Change. + +He emerged from his thoughts, still with a faint perplexity in +his manner. "That speech I made last night," he said, "was damned +mischievous nonsense, you know. Nothing can alter that. Nothing. . +. . No! . . . Little fat gnomes in evening dress--gobbling oysters. +Gulp!" + +It was a most natural part of the wonder of that morning that he +should adopt this incredible note of frankness, and that it should +abate nothing from my respect for him. + +"Yes," he said, "you are right. It's all indisputable fact, and I +can't believe it was anything but a dream." + + + +Section 5 + +That memory stands out against the dark past of the world with +extraordinary clearness and brightness. The air, I remember, was full +of the calling and piping and singing of birds. I have a curious +persuasion too that there was a distant happy clamor of pealing +bells, but that I am half convinced is a mistake. Nevertheless, there +was something in the fresh bite of things, in the dewy newness of +sensation that set bells rejoicing in one's brain. And that big, +fair, pensive man sitting on the ground had beauty even in his +clumsy pose, as though indeed some Great Master of strength and +humor had made him. + +And--it is so hard now to convey these things --he spoke to me, +a stranger, without reservations, carelessly, as men now speak to +men. Before those days, not only did we think badly, but what we +thought, a thousand short-sighted considerations, dignity, objective +discipline, discretion, a hundred kindred aspects of shabbiness of +soul, made us muffle before we told it to our fellow-men. + +"It's all returning now," he said, and told me half soliloquizingly +what was in his mind. + +I wish I could give every word he said to me; he struck out image +after image to my nascent intelligence, with swift broken fragments +of speech. If I had a precise full memory of that morning I should +give it you, verbatim, minutely. But here, save for the little +sharp things that stand out, I find only blurred general impressions. +Throughout I have to make up again his half-forgotten sentences +and speeches, and be content with giving you the general effect. +But I can see and hear him now as he said, "The dream got worst at +the end. The war--a perfectly horrible business! Horrible! And it +was just like a nightmare, you couldn't do anything to escape from +it--every one was driven!" + +His sense of indiscretion was gone. + +He opened the war out to me--as every one sees it now. Only that +morning it was astonishing. He sat there on the ground, absurdly +forgetful of his bare and swollen foot, treating me as the humblest +accessory and as altogether an equal, talking out to himself the +great obsessions of his mind. "We could have prevented it! Any of +us who chose to speak out could have prevented it. A little decent +frankness. What was there to prevent us being frank with one another? +Their emperor--his position was a pile of ridiculous assumptions, +no doubt, but at bottom--he was a sane man." He touched off the +emperor in a few pithy words, the German press, the German people, +and our own. He put it as we should put it all now, but with a +certain heat as of a man half guilty and wholly resentful. "Their +damned little buttoned-up professors!" he cried, incidentally. +"Were there ever such men? And ours! Some of us might have taken +a firmer line. . . . If a lot of us had taken a firmer line and +squashed that nonsense early. . . ." + +He lapsed into inaudible whisperings, into silence. . . . + +I stood regarding him, understanding him, learning marvelously +from him. It is a fact that for the best part of the morning of +the Change I forgot Nettie and Verrall as completely as though they +were no more than characters in some novel that I had put aside to +finish at my leisure, in order that I might talk to this man. + +"Eh, well," he said, waking startingly from his thoughts. "Here we +are awakened! The thing can't go on now; all this must end. How it +ever began------! My dear boy, how did all those things ever begin? +I feel like a new Adam. . . . Do you think this has happened--generally? +Or shall we find all these gnomes and things? . . . Who cares?" + +He made as if to rise, and remembered his ankle. He suggested I should +help him as far as his bungalow. There seemed nothing strange to +either of us that he should requisition my services or that I should +cheerfully obey. I helped him bandage his ankle, and we set out, +I his crutch, the two of us making up a sort of limping quadruped, +along the winding lane toward the cliffs and the sea. + + + +Section 6 + +His bungalow beyond the golf links was, perhaps, a mile and a +quarter from the lane. We went down to the beach margin and along +the pallid wave-smoothed sands, and we got along by making a swaying, +hopping, tripod dance forward until I began to give under him, and +then, as soon as we could, sitting down. His ankle was, in fact, +broken, and he could not put it to the ground without exquisite +pain. So that it took us nearly two hours to get to the house, +and it would have taken longer if his butler-valet had not come +out to assist me. They had found motor-car and chauffeur smashed +and still at the bend of the road near the house, and had been on +that side looking for Melmount, or they would have seen us before. + +For most of that time we were sitting now on turf, now on a chalk +boulder, now on a timber groin, and talking one to the other, with +the frankness proper to the intercourse of men of good intent, +without reservations or aggressions, in the common, open fashion +of contemporary intercourse to-day, but which then, nevertheless, +was the rarest and strangest thing in the world. He for the most +part talked, but at some shape of a question I told him--as plainly +as I could tell of passions that had for a time become incomprehensible +to me--of my murderous pursuit of Nettie and her lover, and how the +green vapors overcame me. He watched me with grave eyes and nodded +understandingly, and afterwards he asked me brief penetrating +questions about my education, my upbringing, my work. There was a +deliberation in his manner, brief full pauses, that had in them no +element of delay. + +"Yes," he said, "yes--of course. What a fool I have been!" and said +no more until we had made another of our tripod struggles along +the beach. At first I did not see the connection of my story with +that self-accusation. + +"Suppose," he said, panting on the groin, "there had been such a +thing as a statesman! . . ." + +He turned to me. "If one had decided all this muddle shall end! If +one had taken it, as an artist takes his clay, as a man who builds +takes site and stone, and made------" He flung out his big broad hand +at the glories of sky and sea, and drew a deep breath, "something +to fit that setting." + +He added in explanation, "Then there wouldn't have been such stories +as yours at all, you know. . . ." + +"Tell me more about it," he said, "tell me all about yourself. I +feel all these things have passed away, all these things are to be +changed for ever. . . . You won't be what you have been from this +time forth. All the things you have done--don't matter now. To +us, at any rate, they don't matter at all. We have met, who were +separated in that darkness behind us. Tell me. + +"Yes," he said; and I told my story straight and as frankly as I +have told it to you. "And there, where those little skerries of weed +rock run out to the ebb, beyond the headland, is Bungalow village. +What did you do with your pistol?" + +"I left it lying there--among the barley." + +He glanced at me from under his light eyelashes. "If others feel +like you and I," he said, "there'll be a lot of pistols left among +the barley to-day. . . ." + +So we talked, I and that great, strong man, with the love of +brothers so plain between us it needed not a word. Our souls went +out to one another in stark good faith; never before had I had +anything but a guarded watchfulness for any fellow-man. Still I +see him, upon that wild desolate beach of the ebb tide, I see him +leaning against the shelly buttress of a groin, looking down at the +poor drowned sailor whose body we presently found. For we found a +newly drowned man who had just chanced to miss this great dawn in +which we rejoiced. We found him lying in a pool of water, among +brown weeds in the dark shadow of the timberings. You must not +overrate the horrors of the former days; in those days it was scarcely +more common to see death in England than it would be to-day. This +dead man was a sailor from the Rother Adler, the great German +battleship that--had we but known it--lay not four miles away along +the coast amidst ploughed-up mountains of chalk ooze, a torn and +battered mass of machinery, wholly submerged at high water, and +holding in its interstices nine hundred drowned brave men, all +strong and skilful, all once capable of doing fine things. . . . + +I remember that poor boy very vividly. He had been drowned during +the anaesthesia of the green gas, his fair young face was quiet +and calm, but the skin of his chest had been crinkled by scalding +water and his right arm was bent queerly back. Even to this needless +death and all its tale of cruelty, beauty and dignity had come. +Everything flowed together to significance as we stood there, I, +the ill-clad, cheaply equipped proletarian, and Melmount in his +great fur-trimmed coat--he was hot with walking but he had not +thought to remove it--leaning upon the clumsy groins and pitying +this poor victim of the war he had helped to make. "Poor lad!" he +said, "poor lad! A child we blunderers sent to death! Do look at +the quiet beauty of that face, that body--to be flung aside like +this!" + +(I remember that near this dead man's hand a stranded star-fish +writhed its slowly feeling limbs, struggling back toward the sea. +It left grooved traces in the sand.) + +"There must be no more of this," panted Melmount, leaning on my +shoulder, "no more of this. . . ." + +But most I recall Melmount as he talked a little later, sitting upon +a great chalk boulder with the sunlight on his big, perspiration-dewed +face. He made his resolves. "We must end war," he said, in that +full whisper of his; "it is stupidity. With so many people able +to read and think--even as it is--there is no need of anything of +the sort. Gods! What have we rulers been at? . . . Drowsing like +people in a stifling room, too dull and sleepy and too base toward +each other for any one to get up and open the window. What haven't +we been at?" + +A great powerful figure he sits there still in my memory, perplexed +and astonished at himself and all things. "We must change all this," +he repeated, and threw out his broad hands in a powerful gesture +against the sea and sky. "We have done so weakly--Heaven alone +knows why!" I can see him now, queer giant that he looked on that +dawnlit beach of splendor, the sea birds flying about us and that +crumpled death hard by, no bad symbol in his clumsiness and needless +heat of the unawakened powers of the former time. I remember it +as an integral part of that picture that far away across the sandy +stretches one of those white estate boards I have described, stuck +up a little askew amidst the yellow-green turf upon the crest of +the low cliffs. + +He talked with a sort of wonder of the former things. "Has it ever +dawned upon you to imagine the pettiness--the pettiness!--of every +soul concerned in a declaration of war?" he asked. He went on, +as though speech was necessary to make it credible, to describe +Laycock, who first gave the horror words at the cabinet council, +"an undersized Oxford prig with a tenoring voice and a garbage of +Greek--the sort of little fool who is brought up on the +admiration of his elder sisters. . . . + +"All the time almost," he said, "I was watching him--thinking what +an ass he was to be trusted with men's lives. ... I might have +done better to have thought that of myself. I was doing nothing +to prevent it all! The damned little imbecile was up to his neck +in the drama of the thing, he liked to trumpet it out, he goggled +round at us. 'Then it is war!' he said. Richover shrugged his +shoulders. I made some slight protest and gave in. . . . Afterward +I dreamt of him. + +"What a lot we were! All a little scared at ourselves--all, +as it were, instrumental. . . . + +"And it's fools like that lead to things like this!" He jerked his +head at that dead man near by us. + +"It will be interesting to know what has happened to the world. . +. . This green vapor--queer stuff. But I know what has happened to +me. It's Conversion. I've always known. . . . But this is being +a fool. Talk! I'm going to stop it." + +He motioned to rise with his clumsy outstretched hands. + +"Stop what?" said I, stepping forward instinctively to help him. + +"War," he said in his great whisper, putting his big hand on my +shoulder but making no further attempt to arise, "I'm going to put +an end to war--to any sort of war! And all these things that must +end. The world is beautiful, life is great and splendid, we had +only to lift up our eyes and see. Think of the glories through which +we have been driving, like a herd of swine in a garden place. The +color in life--the sounds--the shapes! We have had our jealousies, +our quarrels, our ticklish rights, our invincible prejudices, our +vulgar enterprise and sluggish timidities, we have chattered and +pecked one another and fouled the world--like daws in the temple, +like unclean birds in the holy place of God. All my life has been +foolishness and pettiness, gross pleasures and mean discretions--all. +I am a meagre dark thing in this morning's glow, a penitence, a +shame! And, but for God's mercy, I might have died this night--like +that poor lad there--amidst the squalor of my sins! No more of +this! No more of this!--whether the whole world has changed or no, +matters nothing. WE TWO HAVE SEEN THIS DAWN! . . ." + +He paused. + +"I will arise and go unto my Father," he began presently, "and will +say unto Him------" + +His voice died away in an inaudible whisper. His hand +tightened painfully on my shoulder and he rose. . . . + + + + +CHAPTER THE SECOND + +THE AWAKENING + + + +Section 1 + +So the great Day came to me. + +And even as I had awakened so in that same dawn the whole world +awoke. + +For the whole world of living things had been overtaken by the +same tide of insensibility; in an hour, at the touch of this new +gas in the comet, the shiver of catalytic change had passed about +the globe. They say it was the nitrogen of the air, the old AZOTE, +that in the twinkling of an eye was changed out of itself, and in an +hour or so became a respirable gas, differing indeed from oxygen, +but helping and sustaining its action, a bath of strength and +healing for nerve and brain. I do not know the precise changes +that occurred, nor the names our chemists give them, my work has +carried me away from such things, only this I know--I and all men +were renewed. + +I picture to myself this thing happening in space, a planetary +moment, the faint smudge, the slender whirl of meteor, drawing +nearer to this planet,--this planet like a ball, like a shaded +rounded ball, floating in the void, with its little, nearly impalpable +coat of cloud and air, with its dark pools of ocean, its gleaming +ridges of land. And as that midge from the void touches it, the +transparent gaseous outer shell clouds in an instant green +and then slowly clears again. . . . + +Thereafter, for three hours or more,--we know the minimum time for +the Change was almost exactly three hours because all the clocks +and watches kept going--everywhere, no man nor beast nor bird nor +any living thing that breathes the air stirred at all but lay still. . . . + +Everywhere on earth that day, in the ears of every one who breathed, +there had been the same humming in the air, the same rush of green +vapors, the crepitation, the streaming down of shooting stars. +The Hindoo had stayed his morning's work in the fields to stare +and marvel and fall, the blue-clothed Chinaman fell head foremost +athwart his midday bowl of rice, the Japanese merchant came out +from some chaffering in his office amazed and presently lay there +before his door, the evening gazers by the Golden Gates were overtaken +as they waited for the rising of the great star. This had happened +in every city of the world, in every lonely valley, in every home +and house and shelter and every open place. On the high seas, the +crowding steamship passengers, eager for any wonder, gaped and +marveled, and were suddenly terror-stricken, and struggled for the +gangways and were overcome, the captain staggered on the bridge +and fell, the stoker fell headlong among his coals, the engines +throbbed upon their way untended, the fishing craft drove by +without a hail, with swaying rudder, heeling and dipping. . . . + +The great voice of material Fate cried Halt! And in the midst of +the play the actors staggered, dropped, and were still. The figure +runs from my pen. In New York that very thing occurred. Most of +the theatrical audiences dispersed, but in two crowded houses the +company, fearing a panic, went on playing amidst the gloom, and the +people, trained by many a previous disaster, stuck to their seats. +There they sat, the back rows only moving a little, and there, in +disciplined lines, they drooped and failed, nodded, and fell forward +or slid down upon the floor. I am told by Parload--though indeed I +know nothing of the reasoning on which his confidence rests---that +within an hour of the great moment of impact the first green +modification of nitrogen had dissolved and passed away, leaving the +air as translucent as ever. The rest of that wonderful interlude +was clear, had any had eyes to see its clearness. In London it +was night, but in New York, for example, people were in the full +bustle of the evening's enjoyment, in Chicago they were sitting +down to dinner, the whole world was abroad. The moonlight must have +illuminated streets and squares littered with crumpled figures, +through which such electric cars as had no automatic brakes had +ploughed on their way until they were stopped by the fallen bodies. +People lay in their dress clothes, in dining-rooms, restaurants, +on staircases, in halls, everywhere just as they had been overcome. +Men gambling, men drinking, thieves lurking in hidden places, sinful +couples, were caught, to arise with awakened mind and conscience +amidst the disorder of their sin. America the comet reached in the +full tide of evening life, but Britain lay asleep. But as I have +told, Britain did not slumber so deeply but that she was in the +full tide of what may have been battle and a great victory. Up and +down the North Sea her warships swept together like a net about +their foes. On land, too, that night was to have decided great +issues. The German camps were under arms from Redingen to Markirch, +their infantry columns were lying in swathes like mown hay, in +arrested night march on every track between Longnyon and Thiancourt, +and between Avricourt and Donen. The hills beyond Spincourt were +dusted thick with hidden French riflemen; the thin lash of the French +skirmishers sprawled out amidst spades and unfinished rifle-pits +in coils that wrapped about the heads of the German columns, +thence along the Vosges watershed and out across the frontier +near Belfort nearly to the Rhine. . . . + +The Hungarian, the Italian peasant, yawned and thought the morning +dark, and turned over to fall into a dreamless sleep; the Mahometan +world spread its carpet and was taken in prayer. And in Sydney, +in Melbourne, in New Zealand, the thing was a fog in the afternoon, +that scattered the crowd on race-courses and cricket-fields, +and stopped the unloading of shipping and brought men out from +their afternoon rest to stagger and litter the streets. . . . + + + +Section 2 + +My thoughts go into the woods and wildernesses and jungles of the +world, to the wild life that shared man's suspension, and I think +of a thousand feral acts interrupted and truncated--as it were +frozen, like the frozen words Pantagruel met at sea. Not only men +it was that were quieted, all living creatures that breathe the air +became insensible, impassive things. Motionless brutes and birds +lay amidst the drooping trees and herbage in the universal twilight, +the tiger sprawled beside his fresh-struck victim, who bled to +death in a dreamless sleep. The very flies came sailing down the +air with wings outspread; the spider hung crumpled in his loaded +net; like some gaily painted snowflake the butterfly drifted +to earth and grounded, and was still. And as a queer contrast +one gathers that the fishes in the sea suffered not at all. . . . + +Speaking of the fishes reminds me of a queer little inset upon that +great world-dreaming. The odd fate of the crew of the submarine +vessel B 94 has always seemed memorable to me. So far as I know, +they were the only men alive who never saw that veil of green drawn +across the world. All the while that the stillness held above, they +were working into the mouth of the Elbe, past the booms and the +mines, very slowly and carefully, a sinister crustacean of steel, +explosive crammed, along the muddy bottom. They trailed a long +clue that was to guide their fellows from the mother ship floating +awash outside. Then in the long channel beyond the forts they came +up at last to mark down their victims and get air. That must have +been before the twilight of dawn, for they tell of the brightness +of the stars. They were amazed to find themselves not three hundred +yards from an ironclad that had run ashore in the mud, and heeled +over with the falling tide. It was afire amidships, but no one heeded +that--no one in all that strange clear silence heeded that--and +not only this wrecked vessel, but all the dark ships lying about +them, it seemed to their perplexed and startled minds must be full +of dead men! + +Theirs I think must have been one of the strangest of all experiences; +they were never insensible; at once, and, I am told, with a sudden +catch of laughter, they began to breathe the new air. None of +them has proved a writer; we have no picture of their wonder, no +description of what was said. But we know these men were active and +awake for an hour and a half at least before the general awakening +came, and when at last the Germans stirred and sat up they found +these strangers in possession of their battleship, the submarine +carelessly adrift, and the Englishmen, begrimed and weary, but +with a sort of furious exultation, still busy, in the bright dawn, +rescuing insensible enemies from the sinking conflagration. . . . + +But the thought of certain stokers the sailors of the submarine +failed altogether to save brings me back to the thread of grotesque +horror that runs through all this event, the thread I cannot overlook +for all the splendors of human well-being that have come from it. +I cannot forget the unguided ships that drove ashore, that went +down in disaster with all their sleeping hands, nor how, inland, +motor-cars rushed to destruction upon the roads, and trains upon +the railways kept on in spite of signals, to be found at last by +their amazed, reviving drivers standing on unfamiliar lines, their +fires exhausted, or, less lucky, to be discovered by astonished +peasants or awakening porters smashed and crumpled up into heaps +of smoking, crackling ruin. The foundry fires of the Four Towns +still blazed, the smoke of our burning still denied the sky. +Fires burnt indeed the brighter for the Change--and spread. . . . + + + +Section 3 + +Picture to yourself what happened between the printing and composing +of the copy of the New Paper that lies before me now. It was the +first newspaper that was printed upon earth after the Great Change. +It was pocket-worn and browned, made of a paper no man ever intended +for preservation. I found it on the arbor table in the inn garden +while I was waiting for Nettie and Verrall, before that last +conversation of which I have presently to tell. As I look at it all +that scene comes back to me, and Nettie stands in her white raiment +against a blue-green background of sunlit garden, scrutinizing +my face as I read. . . . + +It is so frayed that the sheet cracks along the folds and comes to +pieces in my hands. It lies upon my desk, a dead souvenir of the +dead ages of the world, of the ancient passions of my heart. I know +we discussed its news, but for the life of me I cannot recall what +we said, only I remember that Nettie said very little, and that +Verrall for a time read it over my shoulder. And I did +not like him to read over my shoulder. . . . + +The document before me must have helped us through the first +awkwardness of that meeting. + +But of all that we said and did then I must tell in a later chapter. . . . + +It is easy to see the New Paper had been set up overnight, and then +large pieces of the stereo plates replaced subsequently. I do not +know enough of the old methods of printing to know precisely what +happened. The thing gives one an impression of large pieces of +type having been cut away and replaced by fresh blocks. There is +something very rough and ready about it all, and the new portions +print darker and more smudgily than the old, except toward the +left, where they have missed ink and indented. A friend of mine, +who knows something of the old typography, has suggested to me that +the machinery actually in use for the New Paper was damaged that +night, and that on the morning of the Change Banghurst borrowed a +neighboring office--perhaps in financial dependence upon him--to +print in. + +The outer pages belong entirely to the old period, the only parts +of the paper that had undergone alteration are the two middle +leaves. Here we found set forth in a curious little four-column +oblong of print, WHAT HAS HAPPENED. This cut across a column with +scare headings beginning, "Great Naval Battle Now in Progress. The +Fate of Two Empires in the Balance. Reported Loss of Two More------" + +These things, one gathered, were beneath notice now. Probably it +was guesswork, and fabricated news in the first instance. + +It is curious to piece together the worn and frayed fragments, and +reread this discolored first intelligence of the new epoch. + +The simple clear statements in the replaced portion of the paper +impressed me at the time, I remember, as bald and strange, in that +framework of shouting bad English. Now they seem like the voice of +a sane man amidst a vast faded violence. But they witness to the +prompt recovery of London from the gas; the new, swift energy of +rebound in that huge population. I am surprised now, as I reread, +to note how much research, experiment, and induction must have been +accomplished in the day that elapsed before the paper was printed. +. . . But that is by the way. As I sit and muse over this partly +carbonized sheet, that same curious remote vision comes again to me +that quickened in my mind that morning, a vision of those newspaper +offices I have already described to you going through the crisis. + +The catalytic wave must have caught the place in full swing, in +its nocturnal high fever, indeed in a quite exceptional state of +fever, what with the comet and the war, and more particularly with +the war. Very probably the Change crept into the office imperceptibly, +amidst the noise and shouting, and the glare of electric light that +made the night atmosphere in that place; even the green flashes +may have passed unobserved there, the preliminary descending trails +of green vapor seemed no more than unseasonable drifting wisps +of London fog. (In those days London even in summer was not safe +against dark fogs.) And then at the last the Change poured in and +overtook them. + +If there was any warning at all for them, it must have been a sudden +universal tumult in the street, and then a much more universal +quiet. They could have had no other intimation. + +There was no time to stop the presses before the main development +of green vapor had overwhelmed every one. It must have folded +about them, tumbled them to the earth, masked and stilled them. +My imagination is always curiously stirred by the thought of that, +because I suppose it is the first picture I succeeded in making for +myself of what had happened in the towns. It has never quite lost +its strangeness for me that when the Change came, machinery went +on working. I don't precisely know why that should have seemed so +strange to me, but it did, and still to a certain extent does. One +is so accustomed, I suppose, to regard machinery as an extension +of human personality that the extent of its autonomy the Change +displayed came as a shock to me. The electric lights, for example, +hazy green-haloed nebulas, must have gone on burning at least +for a time; amidst the thickening darkness the huge presses must +have roared on, printing, folding, throwing aside copy after copy +of that fabricated battle report with its quarter column of scare +headlines, and all the place must have still quivered and throbbed +with the familiar roar of the engines. And this though no men ruled +there at all any more! Here and there beneath that thickening fog +the crumpled or outstretched forms of men lay still. + +A wonderful thing that must have seemed, had any man had by chance +the power of resistance to the vapor, and could he have walked +amidst it. + +And soon the machines must have exhausted their feed of ink and +paper, and thumped and banged and rattled emptily amidst the general +quiet. Then I suppose the furnaces failed for want of stoking, the +steam pressure fell in the pistons, the machinery slackened, the +lights burnt dim, and came and went with the ebb of energy from the +power-station. Who can tell precisely the sequence of these things +now? + +And then, you know, amidst the weakening and terminating noises +of men, the green vapor cleared and vanished, in an hour indeed it +had gone, and it may be a breeze stirred and blew and went about +the earth. + +The noises of life were all dying away, but some there were that +abated nothing, that sounded triumphantly amidst the universal +ebb. To a heedless world the church towers tolled out two and then +three. Clocks ticked and chimed everywhere about the earth +to deafened ears. . . . + +And then came the first flush of morning, the first rustlings +of the revival. Perhaps in that office the filaments of the lamps +were still glowing, the machinery was still pulsing weakly, when +the crumpled, booted heaps of cloth became men again and began to +stir and stare. The chapel of the printers was, no doubt, shocked +to find itself asleep. Amidst that dazzling dawn the New Paper +woke to wonder, stood up and blinked at its amazing self. . . . + +The clocks of the city churches, one pursuing another, struck four. +The staffs, crumpled and disheveled, but with a strange refreshment +in their veins, stood about the damaged machinery, marveling and +questioning; the editor read his overnight headlines with incredulous +laughter. There was much involuntary laughter that morning. Outside, +the mail men patted the necks and rubbed the knees of their +awakening horses. . . . + +Then, you know, slowly and with much conversation and doubt, they +set about to produce the paper. + +Imagine those bemused, perplexed people, carried on by the inertia +of their old occupations and doing their best with an enterprise +that had suddenly become altogether extraordinary and irrational. +They worked amidst questionings, and yet light-heartedly. At every +stage there must have been interruptions for discussion. The paper +only got down to Menton five days late. + + + +Section 4 + +Then let me give you a vivid little impression I received of a +certain prosaic person, a grocer, named Wiggins, and how he passed +through the Change. I heard this man's story in the post-office at +Menton, when, in the afternoon of the First Day, I bethought me to +telegraph to my mother. The place was also a grocer's shop, and I +found him and the proprietor talking as I went in. They were trade +competitors, and Wiggins had just come across the street to break +the hostile silence of a score of years. The sparkle of the Change +was in their eyes, their slightly flushed cheeks, their more elastic +gestures, spoke of new physical influences that had invaded their +beings. + +"It did us no good, all our hatred," Mr. Wiggins said to me, +explaining the emotion of their encounter; "it did our customers +no good. I've come to tell him that. You bear that in mind, young +man, if ever you come to have a shop of your own. It was a sort +of stupid bitterness possessed us, and I can't make out we didn't +see it before in that light. Not so much downright wickedness it +wasn't as stupidity. A stupid jealousy! Think of it!--two human +beings within a stone's throw, who have not spoken for twenty years, +hardening our hearts against each other!" + +"I can't think how we came to such a state, Mr. Wiggins," said +the other, packing tea into pound packets out of mere habit as he +spoke. "It was wicked pride and obstinacy. We KNEW it was foolish +all the time." + +I stood affixing the adhesive stamp to my telegram. + +"Only the other morning," he went on to me, "I was cutting French +eggs. Selling at a loss to do it. He'd marked down with a great +staring ticket to ninepence a dozen--I saw it as I went past. Here's +my answer!" He indicated a ticket. "'Eightpence a dozen--same as +sold elsewhere for ninepence.' A whole penny down, bang off! Just +a touch above cost--if that--and even then------" He leant over +the counter to say impressively, "NOT THE SAME EGGS!" + +"Now, what people in their senses would do things like that?" said +Mr. Wiggins. + +I sent my telegram--the proprietor dispatched it for me, and while +he did so I fell exchanging experiences with Mr. Wiggins. He knew +no more than I did then the nature of the change that had come over +things. He had been alarmed by the green flashes, he said, so much +so that after watching for a time from behind his bedroom window +blind, he had got up and hastily dressed and made his family get +up also, so that they might be ready for the end. He made them put +on their Sunday clothes. They all went out into the garden together, +their minds divided between admiration at the gloriousness of the +spectacle and a great and growing awe. They were Dissenters, and +very religious people out of business hours, and it seemed to them +in those last magnificent moments that, after all, science must be +wrong and the fanatics right. With the green vapors came +conviction, and they prepared to meet their God. . . . + +This man, you must understand, was a common-looking man, in his +shirt-sleeves and with an apron about his paunch, and he told his +story in an Anglian accent that sounded mean and clipped to my +Staffordshire ears; he told his story without a thought of pride, +and as it were incidentally, and yet he gave me a vision of something +heroic. + +These people did not run hither and thither as many people did. These +four simple, common people stood beyond their back door in their +garden pathway between the gooseberry bushes, with the terrors +of their God and His Judgments closing in upon them, swiftly +and wonderfully--and there they began to sing. There they stood, +father and mother and two daughters, chanting out stoutly, but no +doubt a little flatly after the manner of their kind-- + +"In Zion's Hope abiding, My soul in Triumph sings---" + +until one by one they fell, and lay still. + +The postmaster had heard them in the gathering darkness, +"In Zion's Hope abiding." . . . + +It was the most extraordinary thing in the world to hear this flushed +and happy-eyed man telling that story of his recent death. It did +not seem at all possible to have happened in the last twelve hours. +It was minute and remote, these people who went singing through +the darkling to their God. It was like a scene shown to me, very +small and very distinctly painted, in a locket. + +But that effect was not confined to this particular thing. A vast +number of things that had happened before the coming of the comet +had undergone the same transfiguring reduction. Other people, too, +I have learnt since, had the same illusion, a sense of enlargement. +It seems to me even now that the little dark creature who had +stormed across England in pursuit of Nettie and her lover must +have been about an inch high, that all that previous life of ours +had been an ill-lit marionette show, acted in the twilight. . . . + + + +Section 5 + +The figure of my mother comes always into my conception of the +Change. + +I remember how one day she confessed herself. + +She had been very sleepless that night, she said, and took the +reports of the falling stars for shooting; there had been rioting +in Clayton and all through Swathinglea all day, and so she got out +of bed to look. She had a dim sense that I was in all such troubles. + +But she was not looking when the Change came. + +"When I saw the stars a-raining down, dear," she said, "and thought +of you out in it, I thought there'd be no harm in saying a prayer +for you, dear? I thought you wouldn't mind that." + +And so I got another of my pictures--the green vapors come and go, +and there by her patched coverlet that dear old woman kneels and +droops, still clasping her poor gnarled hands in the attitude of +prayer--prayer to IT --for me! + +Through the meagre curtains and blinds of the flawed refracting +window I see the stars above the chimneys fade, the pale light of +dawn creeps into the sky, and her candle flares and dies. . . . + +That also went with me through the stillness --that silent +kneeling figure, that frozen prayer to God to shield me, silent +in a silent world, rushing through the emptiness of space. . . . + + + +Section 6 + +With the dawn that awakening went about the earth. I have told how +it came to me, and how I walked in wonder through the transfigured +cornfields of Shaphambury. It came to every one. Near me, and for +the time, clear forgotten by me, Verrall and Nettie woke--woke near +one another, each heard before all other sounds the other's voice +amidst the stillness, and the light. And the scattered people who +had run to and fro, and fallen on the beach of Bungalow village, +awoke; the sleeping villagers of Menton started, and sat up in +that unwonted freshness and newness; the contorted figures in the +garden, with the hymn still upon their lips, stirred amidst the +flowers, and touched each other timidly, and thought of Paradise. +My mother found herself crouched against the bed, and rose--rose +with a glad invincible conviction of accepted prayer. . . . + +Already, when it came to us, the soldiers, crowded between the +lines of dusty poplars along the road to Allarmont, were chatting +and sharing coffee with the French riflemen, who had hailed them +from their carefully hidden pits among the vineyards up the slopes +of Beauville. A certain perplexity had come to these marksmen, who +had dropped asleep tensely ready for the rocket that should wake +the whirr and rattle of their magazines. At the sight and sound of +the stir and human confusion in the roadway below, it had come to +each man individually that he could not shoot. One conscript, at +least, has told his story of his awakening, and how curious he thought +the rifle there beside him in his pit, how he took it on his knees +to examine. Then, as his memory of its purpose grew clearer, he +dropped the thing, and stood up with a kind of joyful horror at +the crime escaped, to look more closely at the men he was to have +assassinated. "Braves types," he thought, they looked for such +a fate. The summoning rocket never flew. Below, the men did not +fall into ranks again, but sat by the roadside, or stood in groups +talking, discussing with a novel incredulity the ostensible causes +of the war. "The Emperor!" said they; and "Oh, nonsense! We're +civilized men. Get some one else for this job! . . . Where's the +coffee?" + +The officers held their own horses, and talked to the men frankly, +regardless of discipline. Some Frenchmen out of the rifle-pits came +sauntering down the hill. Others stood doubtfully, rifles still in +hand. Curious faces scanned these latter. Little arguments sprang +as: "Shoot at us! Nonsense! They're respectable French citizens." +There is a picture of it all, very bright and detailed in the +morning light, in the battle gallery amidst the ruins at old Nancy, +and one sees the old-world uniform of the "soldier," the odd caps +and belts and boots, the ammunition-belt, the water-bottle, the +sort of tourist's pack the men carried, a queer elaborate equipment. +The soldiers had awakened one by one, first one and then another. +I wonder sometimes whether, perhaps, if the two armies had come +awake in an instant, the battle, by mere habit and inertia, might +not have begun. But the men who waked first, sat up, looked +about them in astonishment, had time to think a little. . . . + + + +Section 7 + +Everywhere there was laughter, everywhere tears. + +Men and women in the common life, finding themselves suddenly lit +and exalted, capable of doing what had hitherto been impossible, +incapable of doing what had hitherto been irresistible, happy, +hopeful, unselfishly energetic, rejected altogether the supposition +that this was merely a change in the blood and material texture of +life. They denied the bodies God had given them, as once the Upper +Nile savages struck out their canine teeth, because these made +them like the beasts. They declared that this was the coming of a +spirit, and nothing else would satisfy their need for explanations. +And in a sense the Spirit came. The Great Revival sprang directly +from the Change--the last, the deepest, widest, and most enduring +of all the vast inundations of religious emotion that go by that +name. + +But indeed it differed essentially from its innumerable predecessors. +The former revivals were a phase of fever, this was the first +movement of health, it was altogether quieter, more intellectual, +more private, more religious than any of those others. In the old +time, and more especially in the Protestant countries where the +things of religion were outspoken, and the absence of confession +and well-trained priests made religious states of emotion explosive +and contagious, revivalism upon various scales was a normal phase +in the religious life, revivals were always going on--now a little +disturbance of consciences in a village, now an evening of emotion +in a Mission Room, now a great storm that swept a continent, and +now an organized effort that came to town with bands and banners +and handbills and motor-cars for the saving of souls. Never at +any time did I take part in nor was I attracted by any of these +movements. My nature, although passionate, was too critical (or +sceptical if you like, for it amounts to the same thing) and shy +to be drawn into these whirls; but on several occasions Parload and +I sat, scoffing, but nevertheless disturbed, in the back seats of +revivalist meetings. + +I saw enough of them to understand their nature, and I am not +surprised to learn now that before the comet came, all about the +world, even among savages, even among cannibals, these same, or +at any rate closely similar, periodic upheavals went on. The world +was stifling; it was in a fever, and these phenomena were neither +more nor less than the instinctive struggle of the organism against +the ebb of its powers, the clogging of its veins, the limitation +of its life. Invariably these revivals followed periods of sordid +and restricted living. Men obeyed their base immediate motives +until the world grew unendurably bitter. Some disappointment, some +thwarting, lit up for them--darkly indeed, but yet enough for +indistinct vision--the crowded squalor, the dark inclosure of life. +A sudden disgust with the insensate smallness of the old-world way +of living, a realization of sin, a sense of the unworthiness of all +individual things, a desire for something comprehensive, sustaining, +something greater, for wider communions and less habitual things, +filled them. Their souls, which were shaped for wider issues, cried +out suddenly amidst the petty interests, the narrow prohibitions, +of life, "Not this! not this!" A great passion to escape from the +jealous prison of themselves, an inarticulate, stammering, weeping +passion shook them. . . . I have seen------ I remember how once +in Clayton Calvinistic Methodist chapel I saw--his spotty fat face +strangely distorted under the flickering gas-flares--old Pallet +the ironmonger repent. He went to the form of repentance, a bench +reserved for such exhibitions, and slobbered out his sorrow and +disgust for some sexual indelicacy--he was a widower--and I can see +now how his loose fat body quivered and swayed with his grief. He +poured it out to five hundred people, from whom in common times +he hid his every thought and purpose. And it is a fact, it shows +where reality lay, that we two youngsters laughed not at all at that +blubbering grotesque, we did not even think the distant shadow of +a smile. We two sat grave and intent--perhaps wondering. + +Only afterward and with an effort did we scoff. . . . + +Those old-time revivals were, I say, the convulsive movements of +a body that suffocates. They are the clearest manifestations from +before the Change of a sense in all men that things were not right. +But they were too often but momentary illuminations. Their force +spent itself in inco-ordinated shouting, gesticulations, tears. +They were but flashes of outlook. Disgust of the narrow life, of +all baseness, took shape in narrowness and baseness. The quickened +soul ended the night a hypocrite; prophets disputed for precedence; +seductions, it is altogether indisputable, were frequent among +penitents! and Ananias went home converted and returned with +a falsified gift. And it was almost universal that the converted +should be impatient and immoderate, scornful of reason and +a choice of expedients, opposed to balance, skill, and knowledge. +Incontinently full of grace, like thin old wine-skins overfilled, +they felt they must burst if once they came into contact with hard +fact and sane direction. + +So the former revivals spent themselves, but the Great Revival did +not spend itself, but grew to be, for the majority of Christendom +at least, the permanent expression of the Change. For many it has +taken the shape of an outright declaration that this was the Second +Advent--it is not for me to discuss the validity of that suggestion, +for nearly all it has amounted to an enduring broadening +of all the issues of life. . . . + + + +Section 8 + +One irrelevant memory comes back to me, irrelevant, and yet by some +subtle trick of quality it summarizes the Change for me. It is the +memory of a woman's very beautiful face, a woman with a flushed +face and tear-bright eyes who went by me without speaking, rapt +in some secret purpose. I passed her when in the afternoon of the +first day, struck by a sudden remorse, I went down to Menton to send +a telegram to my mother telling her all was well with me. Whither +this woman went I do not know, nor whence she came; I never saw her +again, and only her face, glowing with that new and luminous +resolve, stands out for me. . . . + +But that expression was the world's. + + + + +CHAPTER THE THIRD + +THE CABINET COUNCIL + + + +Section 1 + +AND what a strange unprecedented thing was that cabinet council at +which I was present, the council that was held two days later in +Melmount's bungalow, and which convened the conference to frame the +constitution of the World State. I was there because it was convenient +for me to stay with Melmount. I had nowhere to go particularly, +and there was no one at his bungalow, to which his broken ankle +confined him, but a secretary and a valet to help him to begin his +share of the enormous labors that evidently lay before the rulers +of the world. I wrote shorthand, and as there was not even a phonograph +available, I went in so soon as his ankle had been dressed, and +sat at his desk to write at his dictation. It is characteristic +of the odd slackness that went with the spasmodic violence of the +old epoch, that the secretary could not use shorthand and that +there was no telephone whatever in the place. Every message had +to be taken to the village post-office in that grocer's shop at +Menton, half a mile away. . . . So I sat in the back of Melmount's +room, his desk had been thrust aside, and made such memoranda as +were needed. At that time his room seemed to me the most beautifully +furnished in the world, and I could identify now the vivid cheerfulness +of the chintz of the sofa on which the great statesman lay just in +front of me, the fine rich paper, the red sealing-wax, the silver +equipage of the desk I used. I know now that my presence in that +room was a strange and remarkable thing, the open door, even the +coming and going of Parker the secretary, innovations. In the old +days a cabinet council was a secret conclave, secrecy and furtiveness +were in the texture of all public life. In the old days everybody +was always keeping something back from somebody, being wary and +cunning, prevaricating, misleading--for the most part for no reason +at all. Almost unnoticed, that secrecy had dropped out of life. + +I close my eyes and see those men again, hear their deliberating +voices. First I see them a little diffusely in the cold explicitness +of daylight, and then concentrated and drawn together amidst the +shadow and mystery about shaded lamps. Integral to this and very +clear is the memory of biscuit crumbs and a drop of spilt water, +that at first stood shining upon and then sank into the +green table-cloth. . . . + +I remember particularly the figure of Lord Adisham. He came to the +bungalow a day before the others, because he was Melmount's personal +friend. Let me describe this statesman to you, this one of the +fifteen men who made the last war. He was the youngest member of +the Government, and an altogether pleasant and sunny man of forty. +He had a clear profile to his clean gray face, a smiling eye, a +friendly, careful voice upon his thin, clean-shaven lips, an easy +disabusing manner. He had the perfect quality of a man who had +fallen easily into a place prepared for him. He had the temperament +of what we used to call a philosopher--an indifferent, that is to say. +The Change had caught him at his week-end recreation, fly-fishing; +and, indeed, he said, I remember, that he recovered to find himself +with his head within a yard of the water's brim. In times of crisis +Lord Adisham invariably went fly-fishing at the week-end to keep his +mind in tone, and when there was no crisis then there was nothing +he liked so much to do as fly-fishing, and so, of course, as there +was nothing to prevent it, he fished. He came resolved, among other +things, to give up fly-fishing altogether. I was present when he +came to Melmount, and heard him say as much; and by a more naive +route it was evident that he had arrived at the same scheme of +intention as my master. I left them to talk, but afterward I came +back to take down their long telegrams to their coming colleagues. +He was, no doubt, as profoundly affected as Melmount by the +Change, but his tricks of civility and irony and acceptable humor +had survived the Change, and he expressed his altered attitude, +his expanded emotions, in a quaint modification of the old-time +man-of-the-world style, with excessive moderation, with a trained +horror of the enthusiasm that swayed him. + +These fifteen men who ruled the British Empire were curiously unlike +anything I had expected, and I watched them intently whenever my +services were not in request. They made a peculiar class at that +time, these English politicians and statesmen, a class that has +now completely passed away. In some respects they were unlike the +statesmen of any other region of the world, and I do not find that +any really adequate account remains of them. . . . Perhaps you are +a reader of the old books. If so, you will find them rendered with +a note of hostile exaggeration by Dickens in "Bleak House," with +a mingling of gross flattery and keen ridicule by Disraeli, who +ruled among them accidentally by misunderstanding them and pleasing +the court, and all their assumptions are set forth, portentously, +perhaps, but truthfully, so far as people of the "permanent +official" class saw them, in the novels of Mrs. Humphry Ward. All +these books are still in this world and at the disposal of the +curious, and in addition the philosopher Bagehot and the picturesque +historian Macaulay give something of their method of thinking, the +novelist Thackeray skirts the seamy side of their social life, and +there are some good passages of irony, personal descriptions, and +reminiscence to be found in the "Twentieth Century Garner" from the +pens of such writers, for example, as Sidney Low. But a picture of +them as a whole is wanting. Then they were too near and too great; +now, very rapidly, they have become incomprehensible. + +We common people of the old time based our conception of our +statesmen almost entirely on the caricatures that formed the most +powerful weapon in political controversy. Like almost every main +feature of the old condition of things these caricatures were an +unanticipated development, they were a sort of parasitic outgrowth +from, which had finally altogether replaced, the thin and vague +aspirations of the original democratic ideals. They presented +not only the personalities who led our public life, but the most +sacred structural conceptions of that life, in ludicrous, vulgar, +and dishonorable aspects that in the end came near to destroying +entirely all grave and honorable emotion or motive toward the State. +The state of Britain was represented nearly always by a red-faced, +purse-proud farmer with an enormous belly, that fine dream +of freedom, the United States, by a cunning, lean-faced rascal +in striped trousers and a blue coat. The chief ministers of state +were pickpockets, washerwomen, clowns, whales, asses, elephants, +and what not, and issues that affected the welfare of millions of +men were dressed and judged like a rally in some idiotic pantomime. +A tragic war in South Africa, that wrecked many thousand homes, +impoverished two whole lands, and brought death and disablement +to fifty thousand men, was presented as a quite comical quarrel +between a violent queer being named Chamberlain, with an eyeglass, +an orchid, and a short temper, and "old Kroojer," an obstinate +and very cunning old man in a shocking bad hat. The conflict was +carried through in a mood sometimes of brutish irritability and +sometimes of lax slovenliness, the merry peculator plied his trade +congenially in that asinine squabble, and behind these fooleries +and masked by them, marched Fate--until at last the clowning of +the booth opened and revealed--hunger and suffering, brands burning +and swords and shame. . . . These men had come to fame and power in +that atmosphere, and to me that day there was the oddest suggestion +in them of actors who have suddenly laid aside grotesque and foolish +parts; the paint was washed from their faces, the posing put aside. + +Even when the presentation was not frankly grotesque and degrading +it was entirely misleading. When I read of Laycock, for example, +there arises a picture of a large, active, if a little wrong-headed, +intelligence in a compact heroic body, emitting that "Goliath" speech +of his that did so much to precipitate hostilities, it tallies not +at all with the stammering, high-pitched, slightly bald, and very +conscience-stricken personage I saw, nor with Melmount's contemptuous +first description of him. I doubt if the world at large will ever +get a proper vision of those men as they were before the Change. +Each year they pass more and more incredibly beyond our intellectual +sympathy. Our estrangement cannot, indeed, rob them of their +portion in the past, but it will rob them of any effect of reality. +The whole of their history becomes more and more foreign, more and +more like some queer barbaric drama played in a forgotten tongue. +There they strut through their weird metamorphoses of caricature, +those premiers and presidents, their height preposterously exaggerated by +political buskins, their faces covered by great resonant inhuman +masks, their voices couched in the foolish idiom of public +utterance, disguised beyond any semblance to sane humanity, roaring +and squeaking through the public press. There it stands, this +incomprehensible faded show, a thing left on one side, and now still +and deserted by any interest, its many emptinesses as inexplicable +now as the cruelties of medieval Venice, the theology of old Byzantium. +And they ruled and influenced the lives of nearly a quarter of +mankind, these politicians, their clownish conflicts swayed the +world, made mirth perhaps, made excitement, and permitted--infinite +misery. + +I saw these men quickened indeed by the Change, but still wearing +the queer clothing of the old time, the manners and conventions of +the old time; if they had disengaged themselves from the outlook +of the old time they still had to refer back to it constantly as a +common starting-point. My refreshed intelligence was equal to that, +so that I think I did indeed see them. There was Gorrell-Browning, +the Chancellor of the Duchy; I remember him as a big round-faced +man, the essential vanity and foolishness of whose expression, whose +habit of voluminous platitudinous speech, triumphed absurdly once +or twice over the roused spirit within. He struggled with it, he +burlesqued himself, and laughed. Suddenly he said simply, intensely--it +was a moment for every one of clean, clear pain, "I have been a +vain and self-indulgent and presumptuous old man. I am of little +use here. I have given myself to politics and intrigues, and life +is gone from me." Then for a long time he sat still. There was +Carton, the Lord Chancellor, a white-faced man with understanding, +he had a heavy, shaven face that might have stood among the busts +of the Caesars, a slow, elaborating voice, with self-indulgent, +slightly oblique, and triumphant lips, and a momentary, voluntary, +humorous twinkle. "We have to forgive," he said. "We have to forgive +--even ourselves." + +These two were at the top corner of the table, so that I saw their +faces well. Madgett, the Home Secretary, a smaller man with wrinkled +eyebrows and a frozen smile on his thin wry mouth, came next to +Carton; he contributed little to the discussion save intelligent +comments, and when the electric lights above glowed out, the shadows +deepened queerly in his eye-sockets and gave him the quizzical +expression of an ironical goblin. Next him was that great peer, +the Earl of Richover, whose self-indulgent indolence had accepted +the role of a twentieth-century British Roman patrician of culture, +who had divided his time almost equally between his jockeys, +politics, and the composition of literary studies in the key of +his role. "We have done nothing worth doing," he said. "As for me, +I have cut a figure!" He reflected--no doubt on his ample patrician +years, on the fine great houses that had been his setting, the +teeming race-courses that had roared his name, the enthusiastic +meetings he had fed with fine hopes, the futile Olympian beginnings. +. . . "I have been a fool," he said compactly. They heard him in +a sympathetic and respectful silence. Gurker, the Chancellor of +the Exchequer, was partially occulted, so far as I was concerned, +by the back of Lord Adisham. Ever and again Gurker protruded into +the discussion, swaying forward, a deep throaty voice, a big nose, +a coarse mouth with a drooping everted lower lip, eyes peering +amidst folds and wrinkles. He made his confession for his race. +"We Jews," he said, "have gone through the system of this world, +creating nothing, consolidating many things, destroying much. Our +racial self-conceit has been monstrous. We seem to have used our +ample coarse intellectuality for no other purpose than to develop +and master and maintain the convention of property, to turn life +into a sort of mercantile chess and spend our winnings grossly. +. . . We have had no sense of service to mankind. Beauty which is +godhead--we made it a possession." + +These men and these sayings particularly remain in my memory. +Perhaps, indeed, I wrote them down at the time, but that I do not +now remember. How Sir Digby Privet, Revel, Markheimer, and the others +sat I do not now recall; they came in as voices, interruptions, +imperfectly assigned comments. . . . + +One got a queer impression that except perhaps for Gurker or Revel +these men had not particularly wanted the power they held; had +desired to do nothing very much in the positions they had secured. +They had found themselves in the cabinet, and until this moment +of illumination they had not been ashamed; but they had made no +ungentlemanly fuss about the matter. Eight of that fifteen came from +the same school, had gone through an entirely parallel education; +some Greek linguistics, some elementary mathematics, some emasculated +"science," a little history, a little reading in the silent or +timidly orthodox English literature of the seventeenth, eighteenth, +and nineteenth centuries, all eight had imbibed the same dull gentlemanly +tradition of behavior; essentially boyish, unimaginative--with +neither keen swords nor art in it, a tradition apt to slobber into +sentiment at a crisis and make a great virtue of a simple duty rather +clumsily done. None of these eight had made any real experiments +with life, they had lived in blinkers, they had been passed from +nurse to governess, from governess to preparatory school, from Eton +to Oxford, from Oxford to the politico-social routine. Even their +vices and lapses had been according to certain conceptions of good +form. They had all gone to the races surreptitiously from Eton, had +all cut up to town from Oxford to see life--music-hall life--had +all come to heel again. Now suddenly they discovered their +limitations. . . . + +"What are we to do?" asked Melmount. "We have awakened; this empire +in our hands. . . ." I know this will seem the most fabulous of all +the things I have to tell of the old order, but, indeed, I saw it +with my eyes, I heard it with my ears. It is a fact that this group +of men who constituted the Government of one-fifth of the habitable +land of the earth, who ruled over a million of armed men, who +had such navies as mankind had never seen before, whose empire of +nations, tongues, peoples still dazzles in these greater days, had +no common idea whatever of what they meant to do with the world. +They had been a Government for three long years, and before the +Change came to them it had never even occurred to them that it was +necessary to have no common idea. There was no common idea at all. +That great empire was no more than a thing adrift, an aimless thing +that ate and drank and slept and bore arms, and was inordinately +proud of itself because it had chanced to happen. It had no plan, +no intention; it meant nothing at all. And the other great empires +adrift, perilously adrift like marine mines, were in the self-same +case. Absurd as a British cabinet council must seem to you now, it +was no whit more absurd than the controlling ganglion, autocratic +council, president's committee, or what not, of each of +its blind rivals. . . . + + + +Section 2 + +I remember as one thing that struck me very forcibly at the time, +the absence of any discussion, any difference of opinion, about the +broad principles of our present state. These men had lived hitherto +in a system of conventions and acquired motives, loyalty to a party, +loyalty to various secret agreements and understandings, loyalty +to the Crown; they had all been capable of the keenest attention +to precedence, all capable of the most complete suppression of +subversive doubts and inquiries, all had their religious emotions +under perfect control. They had seemed protected by invisible but +impenetrable barriers from all the heady and destructive speculations, +the socialistic, republican, and communistic theories that one may +still trace through the literature of the last days of the comet. +But now it was as if the very moment of the awakening those barriers +and defences had vanished, as if the green vapors had washed +through their minds and dissolved and swept away a hundred once +rigid boundaries and obstacles. They had admitted and assimilated +at once all that was good in the ill-dressed propagandas that had +clamored so vehemently and vainly at the doors of their minds in +the former days. It was exactly like the awakening from an absurd +and limiting dream. They had come out together naturally and +inevitably upon the broad daylight platform of obvious and reasonable +agreement upon which we and all the order of our world now stand. + +Let me try to give the chief things that had vanished from their +minds. There was, first, the ancient system of "ownership" that +made such an extraordinary tangle of our administration of the +land upon which we lived. In the old time no one believed in that +as either just or ideally convenient, but every one accepted it. +The community which lived upon the land was supposed to have waived +its necessary connection with the land, except in certain limited +instances of highway and common. All the rest of the land was +cut up in the maddest way into patches and oblongs and triangles +of various sizes between a hundred square miles and a few acres, +and placed under the nearly absolute government of a series of +administrators called landowners. They owned the land almost as +a man now owns his hat; they bought it and sold it, and cut it up +like cheese or ham; they were free to ruin it, or leave it waste, +or erect upon it horrible and devastating eyesores. If the community +needed a road or a tramway, if it wanted a town or a village in any +position, nay, even if it wanted to go to and fro, it had to do so +by exorbitant treaties with each of the monarchs whose territory +was involved. No man could find foothold on the face of the earth +until he had paid toll and homage to one of them. They had practically +no relations and no duties to the nominal, municipal, or national +Government amidst whose larger areas their own dominions lay. . . +. This sounds, I know, like a lunatic's dream, but mankind was that +lunatic; and not only in the old countries of Europe and Asia, +where this system had arisen out of the rational delegation of local +control to territorial magnates, who had in the universal baseness +of those times at last altogether evaded and escaped their duties, +did it obtain, but the "new countries," as we called them then--the +United States of America, the Cape Colony, Australia, and New +Zealand--spent much of the nineteenth century in the frantic giving +away of land for ever to any casual person who would take it. Was +there coal, was there petroleum or gold, was there rich soil or +harborage, or the site for a fine city, these obsessed and witless +Governments cried out for scramblers, and a stream of shabby, +tricky, and violent adventurers set out to found a new section of +the landed aristocracy of the world. After a brief century of hope +and pride, the great republic of the United States of America, +the hope as it was deemed of mankind, became for the most part a +drifting crowd of landless men; landlords and railway lords, food +lords (for the land is food) and mineral lords ruled its life, +gave it Universities as one gave coins to a mendicant, and spent +its resources upon such vain, tawdry, and foolish luxuries as the +world had never seen before. Here was a thing none of these statesmen +before the Change would have regarded as anything but the natural +order of the world, which not one of them now regarded as anything +but the mad and vanished illusion of a period of dementia. + +And as it was with the question of the land, so was it also +with a hundred other systems and institutions and complicated and +disingenuous factors in the life of man. They spoke of trade, and +I realized for the first time there could be buying and selling +that was no loss to any man; they spoke of industrial organization, +and one saw it under captains who sought no base advantages. The +haze of old associations, of personal entanglements and habitual +recognitions had been dispelled from every stage and process of +the social training of men. Things long hidden appeared discovered +with an amazing clearness and nakedness. These men who had +awakened, laughed dissolvent laughs, and the old muddle of schools +and colleges, books and traditions, the old fumbling, half-figurative, +half-formal teaching of the Churches, the complex of weakening and +confusing suggestions and hints, amidst which the pride and honor +of adolescence doubted and stumbled and fell, became nothing but +a curious and pleasantly faded memory. "There must be a common +training of the young," said Richover; "a frank initiation. We have +not so much educated them as hidden things from them, and set traps. +And it might have been so easy --it can all be done so easily." + +That hangs in my memory as the refrain of that council, "It can +all be done so easily," but when they said it then, it came to my +ears with a quality of enormous refreshment and power. It can all +be done so easily, given frankness, given courage. Time was when +these platitudes had the freshness and wonder of a gospel. + +In this enlarged outlook the war with the Germans--that mythical, +heroic, armed female, Germany, had vanished from men's imaginations +--was a mere exhausted episode. A truce had already been arranged +by Melmount, and these ministers, after some marveling reminiscences, +set aside the matter of peace as a mere question of particular +arrangements. . . . The whole scheme of the world's government had +become fluid and provisional in their minds, in small details as +in great, the unanalyzable tangle of wards and vestries, districts +and municipalities, counties, states, boards, and nations, the +interlacing, overlapping, and conflicting authorities, the felt of +little interests and claims, in which an innumerable and insatiable +multitude of lawyers, agents, managers, bosses, organizers lived +like fleas in a dirty old coat, the web of the conflicts, jealousies, +heated patchings up and jobbings apart, of the old order--they +flung it all on one side. + +"What are the new needs?" said Melmount. "This muddle is too rotten +to handle. We're beginning again. Well, let us begin afresh." + + + +Section 3 + +"Let us begin afresh!" This piece of obvious common sense seemed +then to me instinct with courage, the noblest of words. My heart +went out to him as he spoke. It was, indeed, that day as vague as +it was valiant; we did not at all see the forms of what we were +thus beginning. All that we saw was the clear inevitableness +that the old order should end. . . . + +And then in a little space of time mankind in halting but effectual +brotherhood was moving out to make its world anew. Those early +years, those first and second decades of the new epoch, were in +their daily detail a time of rejoicing toil; one saw chiefly one's +own share in that, and little of the whole. It is only now that I +look back at it all from these ripe years, from this high tower, +that I see the dramatic sequence of its changes, see the cruel old +confusions of the ancient time become clarified, simplified, and +dissolve and vanish away. Where is that old world now? Where is +London, that somber city of smoke and drifting darkness, full of the +deep roar and haunting music of disorder, with its oily, shining, +mud-rimmed, barge-crowded river, its black pinnacles and blackened +dome, its sad wildernesses of smut-grayed houses, its myriads of +draggled prostitutes, its millions of hurrying clerks? The very +leaves upon its trees were foul with greasy black defilements. +Where is lime-white Paris, with its green and disciplined foliage, +its hard unflinching tastefulness, its smartly organized viciousness, +and the myriads of workers, noisily shod, streaming over the bridges +in the gray cold light of dawn. Where is New York, the high city +of clangor and infuriated energy, wind swept and competition swept, +its huge buildings jostling one another and straining ever upward +for a place in the sky, the fallen pitilessly overshadowed. Where +are its lurking corners of heavy and costly luxury, the shameful +bludgeoning bribing vice of its ill ruled underways, and all the +gaunt extravagant ugliness of its strenuous life? And where now is +Philadelphia, with its innumerable small and isolated homes, and +Chicago with its interminable blood-stained stockyards, its polyglot +underworld of furious discontent. + +All these vast cities have given way and gone, even as my native +Potteries and the Black Country have gone, and the lives that were +caught, crippled, starved, and maimed amidst their labyrinths, their +forgotten and neglected maladjustments, and their vast, inhuman, +ill-conceived industrial machinery have escaped--to life. Those +cities of growth and accident are altogether gone, never a chimney +smokes about our world to-day, and the sound of the weeping of +children who toiled and hungered, the dull despair of overburdened +women, the noise of brute quarrels in alleys, all shameful pleasures +and all the ugly grossness of wealthy pride have gone with them, +with the utter change in our lives. As I look back into the past +I see a vast exultant dust of house-breaking and removal rise +up into the clear air that followed the hour of the green vapors, +I live again the Year of Tents, the Year of Scaffolding, and like +the triumph of a new theme in a piece of music--the great cities +of our new days arise. Come Caerlyon and Armedon, the twin cities +of lower England, with the winding summer city of the Thames between, +and I see the gaunt dirt of old Edinburgh die to rise again white +and tall beneath the shadow of her ancient hill; and Dublin too, +reshaped, returning enriched, fair, spacious, the city of rich +laughter and warm hearts, gleaming gaily in a shaft of sunlight +through the soft warm rain. I see the great cities America has +planned and made; the Golden City, with ever-ripening fruit along +its broad warm ways, and the bell-glad City of a Thousand Spires. +I see again as I have seen, the city of theaters and meeting-places, +the City of the Sunlight Bight, and the new city that is still +called Utah; and dominated by its observatory dome and the plain and +dignified lines of the university facade upon the cliff, Martenabar +the great white winter city of the upland snows. And the lesser +places, too, the townships, the quiet resting-places, villages half +forest with a brawl of streams down their streets, villages laced +with avenues of cedar, villages of garden, of roses and wonderful +flowers and the perpetual humming of bees. And through all the +world go our children, our sons the old world would have made into +servile clerks and shopmen, plough drudges and servants; our daughters +who were erst anaemic drudges, prostitutes, sluts, anxiety-racked +mothers or sere, repining failures; they go about this world glad +and brave, learning, living, doing, happy and rejoicing, brave and +free. I think of them wandering in the clear quiet of the ruins of +Rome, among the tombs of Egypt or the temples of Athens, of their +coming to Mainington and its strange happiness, to Orba and the +wonder of its white and slender tower. . . . But who can tell of +the fullness and pleasure of life, who can number all our new cities +in the world?--cities made by the loving hands of men for living +men, cities men weep to enter, so fair they are, so gracious +and so kind. . . . + +Some vision surely of these things must have been vouchsafed me +as I sat there behind Melmount's couch, but now my knowledge of +accomplished things has mingled with and effaced my expectations. +Something indeed I must have foreseen--or else why was my heart so +glad? + + + + + +BOOK THE THIRD + +THE NEW WORLD + + + + +CHAPTER THE FIRST + +LOVE AFTER THE CHANGE + + + +Section 1 + +So far I have said nothing of Nettie. I have departed widely from +my individual story. I have tried to give you the effect of the +change in relation to the general framework of human life, its +effect of swift, magnificent dawn, of an overpowering letting in +and inundation of light, and the spirit of living. In my memory all +my life before the Change has the quality of a dark passage, with +the dimmest side gleams of beauty that come and go. The rest is dull +pain and darkness. Then suddenly the walls, the bitter confines, +are smitten and vanish, and I walk, blinded, perplexed, and yet +rejoicing, in this sweet, beautiful world, in its fair incessant +variety, its satisfaction, its opportunities, exultant in this glorious +gift of life. Had I the power of music I would make a world-wide +motif swell and amplify, gather to itself this theme and that, and +rise at last to sheer ecstasy of triumph and rejoicing. It should +be all sound, all pride, all the hope of outsetting in the morning +brightness, all the glee of unexpected happenings, all the gladness +of painful effort suddenly come to its reward; it should be like +blossoms new opened and the happy play of children, like tearful, +happy mothers holding their first-born, like cities building to +the sound of music, and great ships, all hung with flags and wine +bespattered, gliding down through cheering multitudes to their first +meeting with the sea. Through it all should march Hope, confident +Hope, radiant and invincible, until at last it would be the triumph +march of Hope the conqueror, coming with trumpetings and banners +through the wide-flung gates of the world. + +And then out of that luminous haze of gladness comes Nettie, +transfigured. + +So she came again to me--amazing, a thing incredibly forgotten. + +She comes back, and Verrall is in her company. She comes back +into my memories now, just as she came back then, rather quaintly +at first--at first not seen very clearly, a little distorted by +intervening things, seen with a doubt, as I saw her through the +slightly discolored panes of crinkled glass in the window of the +Menton post-office and grocer's shop. It was on the second day +after the Change, and I had been sending telegrams for Melmount, +who was making arrangements for his departure for Downing Street. +I saw the two of them at first as small, flawed figures. The glass +made them seem curved, and it enhanced and altered their gestures +and paces. I felt it became me to say "Peace" to them, and I went +out, to the jangling of the door-bell. At the sight of me they +stopped short, and Verrall cried with the note of one who has +sought, "Here he is!" And Nettie cried, "Willie!" + +I went toward them, and all the perspectives of my reconstructed +universe altered as I did so + +I seemed to see these two for the first time; how fine they were, +how graceful and human. It was as though I had never really looked +at them before, and, indeed, always before I had beheld them through +a mist of selfish passion. They had shared the universal darkness +and dwarfing of the former time; they shared the universal exaltation +of the new. Now suddenly Nettie, and the love of Nettie, a great +passion for Nettie, lived again in me. This change which had enlarged +men's hearts had made no end to love. Indeed, it had enormously +enlarged and glorified love. She stepped into the center of that +dream of world reconstruction that filled my mind and took possession +of it all. A little wisp of hair had blown across her cheek, her +lips fell apart in that sweet smile of hers; her eyes were full +of wonder, of a welcoming scrutiny, of an infinitely courageous +friendliness. + +I took her outstretched hand, and wonder overwhelmed me. "I wanted +to kill you," I said simply, trying to grasp that idea. It seemed +now like stabbing the stars, or murdering the sunlight. + +"Afterward we looked for you," said Verrall; "and we could not find +you. . . . We heard another shot." + +I turned my eyes to him, and Nettie's hand fell from me. It was +then I thought of how they had fallen together, and what it must +have been to have awakened in that dawn with Nettie by one's side. +I had a vision of them as I had glimpsed them last amidst the +thickening vapors, close together, hand in hand. The green hawks of +the Change spread their darkling wings above their last stumbling +paces. So they fell. And awoke--lovers together in a morning +of Paradise. Who can tell how bright the sunshine was to them, +how fair the flowers, how sweet the singing of the birds? . . . + +This was the thought of my heart. But my lips were saying, "When +I awoke I threw my pistol away." Sheer blankness kept my thoughts +silent for a little while; I said empty things. "I am very glad +I did not kill you--that you are here, so fair and well. . . ." + +"I am going away back to Clayton on the day after to-morrow," I +said, breaking away to explanations. "I have been writing shorthand +here for Melmount, but that is almost over now. . . ." + +Neither of them said a word, and though all facts had suddenly ceased +to matter anything, I went on informatively, "He is to be taken to +Downing Street where there is a proper staff, so that there will +be no need of me. . . . Of course, you're a little perplexed at +my being with Melmount. You see I met him--by accident --directly +I recovered. I found him with a broken ankle--in that lane. . . . +I am to go now to the Four Towns to help prepare a report. So that +I am glad to see you both again" --I found a catch in my voice--"to +say good-bye to you, and wish you well." + +This was after the quality of what had come into my mind when first +I saw them through the grocer's window, but it was not what I felt +and thought as I said it. I went on saying it because otherwise +there would have been a gap. It had come to me that it was going +to be hard to part from Nettie. My words sounded with an effect of +unreality. I stopped, and we stood for a moment in silence looking +at one another. + +It was I, I think, who was discovering most. I was realizing for +the first time how little the Change had altered in my essential +nature. I had forgotten this business of love for a time in +a world of wonder. That was all. Nothing was lost from my nature, +nothing had gone, only the power of thought and restraint had been +wonderfully increased and new interests had been forced upon me. +The Green Vapors had passed, our minds were swept and garnished, but +we were ourselves still, though living in a new and finer air. My +affinities were unchanged; Nettie's personal charm for me was only +quickened by the enhancement of my perceptions. In her presence, +meeting her eyes, instantly my desire, no longer frantic but sane, +was awake again. + +It was just like going to Checkshill in the old time, after +writing about socialism. . . . + +I relinquished her hand. It was absurd to part in these terms. + +So we all felt it. We hung awkwardly over our sense of that. It +was Verrall, I think, who shaped the thought for me, and said that +to-morrow then we must meet and say good-bye, and so turned our +encounter into a transitory making of arrangements. We settled we +would come to the inn at Menton, all three of us, and take +our midday meal together. . . . + +Yes, it was clear that was all we had to say now. . . . + +We parted a little awkwardly. I went on down the village street, +not looking back, surprised at myself, and infinitely perplexed. +It was as if I had discovered something overlooked that disarranged +all my plans, something entirely disconcerting. For the first time +I went back preoccupied and without eagerness to Melmount's work. +I wanted to go on thinking about Nettie; my mind had suddenly become +voluminously productive concerning her and Verrall. + + + +Section 2 + +The talk we three had together in the dawn of the new time is very +strongly impressed upon my memory. There was something fresh and +simple about it, something young and flushed and exalted. We took +up, we handled with a certain naive timidity, the most difficult +questions the Change had raised for men to solve. I recall we +made little of them. All the old scheme of human life had dissolved +and passed away, the narrow competitiveness, the greed and base +aggression, the jealous aloofness of soul from soul. Where had +it left us? That was what we and a thousand million others +were discussing. . . . + +It chances that this last meeting with Nettie is inseparably +associated--I don't know why--with the landlady of the Menton inn. + +The Menton inn was one of the rare pleasant corners of the old +order; it was an inn of an unusual prosperity, much frequented by +visitors from Shaphambury, and given to the serving of lunches and +teas. It had a broad mossy bowling-green, and round about it were +creeper-covered arbors amidst beds of snap-dragon, and hollyhock, +and blue delphinium, and many such tall familiar summer flowers. +These stood out against a background of laurels and holly, and +above these again rose the gables of the inn and its signpost--a +white horsed George slaying the dragon--against copper beeches under +the sky. While I waited for Nettie and Verrall in this agreeable +trysting place, I talked to the landlady --a broad-shouldered, +smiling, freckled woman--about the morning of the Change. That +motherly, abundant, red-haired figure of health was buoyantly sure +that everything in the world was now to be changed for the better. +That confidence, and something in her voice, made me love her as +I talked to her. "Now we're awake," she said, "all sorts of things +will be put right that hadn't any sense in them. Why? Oh! I'm sure +of it." + +Her kind blue eyes met mine in an infinitude of friendliness. Her +lips in her pauses shaped in a pretty faint smile. + +Old tradition was strong in us; all English inns in those days +charged the unexpected, and I asked what our lunch was to cost. + +"Pay or not," she said, "and what you like. It's holiday these days. +I suppose we'll still have paying and charging, however we manage +it, but it won't be the worry it has been--that I feel sure. It's +the part I never had no fancy for. Many a time I peeped through the +bushes worrying to think what was just and right to me and mine, +and what would send 'em away satisfied. It isn't the money I care +for. There'll be mighty changes, be sure of that; but here I'll +stay, and make people happy--them that go by on the roads. It's a +pleasant place here when people are merry; it's only when they're +jealous, or mean, or tired, or eat up beyond any stomach's digesting, or +when they got the drink in 'em that Satan comes into this garden. +Many's the happy face I've seen here, and many that come again +like friends, but nothing to equal what's going to be, now things +are being set right." + +She smiled, that bounteous woman, with the joy of life and hope. +"You shall have an omelet," she said, "you and your friends; such +an omelet--like they'll have 'em in heaven! I feel there's cooking +in me these days like I've never cooked before. I'm rejoiced +to have it to do. . . . " + +It was just then that Nettie and Verrall appeared under a rustic +archway of crimson roses that led out from the inn. Nettie wore +white and a sun-hat, and Verrall was a figure of gray. "Here +are my friends," I said; but for all the magic of the Change, +something passed athwart the sunlight in my soul like the passing +of the shadow of a cloud. "A pretty couple," said the landlady, +as they crossed the velvet green toward us. . . . + +They were indeed a pretty couple, but that did not greatly gladden +me. No--I winced a little at that. + + + +Section 3 + +This old newspaper, this first reissue of the New Paper, +dessicated last relic of a vanished age, is like the little piece +of identification the superstitious of the old days--those queer +religionists who brought a certain black-clad Mrs. Piper to the +help of Christ--used to put into the hand of a clairvoyant. At +the crisp touch of it I look across a gulf of fifty years and see +again the three of us sitting about that table in the arbor, and I +smell again the smell of the sweet-briar that filled the air about +us, and hear in our long pauses the abundant murmuring of bees +among the heliotrope of the borders. + +It is the dawn of the new time, but we bear, all three of us, the +marks and liveries of the old. + +I see myself, a dark, ill-dressed youth, with the bruise Lord Redcar +gave me still blue and yellow beneath my jaw; and young Verrall +sits cornerwise to me, better grown, better dressed, fair and quiet, +two years my senior indeed, but looking no older than I because of +his light complexion; and opposite me is Nettie, with dark eyes upon +my face, graver and more beautiful than I had ever seen her in the +former time. Her dress is still that white one she had worn when +I came upon her in the park, and still about her dainty neck she +wears her string of pearls and that little coin of gold. She is so +much the same, she is so changed; a girl then and now a woman--and +all my agony and all the marvel of the Change between! Over the end +of the green table about which we sit, a spotless cloth is spread, +it bears a pleasant lunch spread out with a simple equipage. Behind +me is the liberal sunshine of the green and various garden. I see +it all. Again I sit there, eating awkwardly, this paper lies upon +the table and Verrall talks of the Change. + +"You can't imagine," he says in his sure, fine accents, "how much +the Change has destroyed of me. I still don't feel awake. Men of +my sort are so tremendously MADE; I never suspected it before." + +He leans over the table toward me with an evident desire to make +himself perfectly understood. "I find myself like some creature +that is taken out of its shell--soft and new. I was trained to +dress in a certain way, to behave in a certain way, to think in a +certain way; I see now it's all wrong and narrow--most of it anyhow +--a system of class shibboleths. We were decent to each other in +order to be a gang to the rest of the world. Gentlemen indeed! But +it's perplexing------" + +I can hear his voice saying that now, and see the lift of his +eyebrows and his pleasant smile. + +He paused. He had wanted to say that, but it was not the thing we +had to say. + +I leant forward a little and took hold of my glass very tightly. +"You two," I said, "will marry?" + +They looked at one another. + +Nettie spoke very softly. "I did not mean to marry when I came +away," she said. + +"I know," I answered. I looked up with a sense of effort and met +Verrall's eyes. + +He answered me. "I think we two have joined our lives. . . . But +the thing that took us was a sort of madness." + +I nodded. "All passion," I said, "is madness." Then I fell into a +doubting of those words. + +"Why did we do these things?" he said, turning to her suddenly. + +Her hands were clasped under her chin, her eyes downcast. + +"We HAD to," she said, with her old trick of inadequate expression. + +Then she seemed to open out suddenly. + +"Willie," she cried with a sudden directness, with her eyes appealing +to me, "I didn't mean to treat you badly--indeed I didn't. I kept +thinking of you--and of father and mother, all the time. Only it +didn't seem to move me. It didn't move me not one bit from the way +I had chosen." + +"Chosen!" I said. + +"Something seemed to have hold of me," she admitted. "It's all so +unaccountable. . . ." + +She gave a little gesture of despair. + +Verrall's fingers played on the cloth for a space. Then he turned +his face to me again. + +"Something said 'Take her.' Everything. It was a raging desire--for +her. I don't know. Everything contributed to that--or counted for +nothing. You------" + +"Go on," said I. + +"When I knew of you------" + +I looked at Nettie. "You never told him about me?" I said, feeling, +as it were, a sting out of the old time. + +Verrall answered for her. "No. But things dropped; I saw you that +night, my instincts were all awake. I knew it was you." + +"You triumphed over me? . . . If I could I would have triumphed +over you," I said. "But go on!" + +"Everything conspired to make it the finest thing in life. It had +an air of generous recklessness. It meant mischief, it might mean +failure in that life of politics and affairs, for which I was +trained, which it was my honor to follow. That made it all the +finer. It meant ruin or misery for Nettie. That made it all the +finer. No sane or decent man would have approved of what we did. +That made it more splendid than ever. I had all the advantages of +position and used them basely. That mattered not at all." + +"Yes," I said; "it is true. And the same dark wave that lifted you, +swept me on to follow. With that revolver--and blubbering with +hate. And the word to you, Nettie, what was it? 'Give?' Hurl yourself +down the steep?" + +Nettie's hands fell upon the table. "I can't tell what it was," she +said, speaking bare-hearted straight to me. "Girls aren't trained +as men are trained to look into their minds. I can't see it yet. +All sorts of mean little motives were there--over and above the +'must.' Mean motives. I kept thinking of his clothes." She smiled--a +flash of brightness at Verrall. "I kept thinking of being like a +lady and sitting in an hotel--with men like butlers waiting. It's +the dreadful truth, Willie. Things as mean as that! Things meaner +than that!" + +I can see her now pleading with me, speaking with a frankness as +bright and amazing as the dawn of the first great morning. + +"It wasn't all mean," I said slowly, after a pause. + +"No!" They spoke together. + +"But a woman chooses more than a man does," Nettie added. "I saw +it all in little bright pictures. Do you know--that jacket--there's +something------ You won't mind my telling you? But you won't now!" + +I nodded, "No." + +She spoke as if she spoke to my soul, very quietly and very +earnestly, seeking to give the truth. "Something cottony in that +cloth of yours," she said. "I know there's something horrible in +being swung round by things like that, but they did swing me round. +In the old time--to have confessed that! And I hated Clayton--and +the grime of it. That kitchen! Your mother's dreadful kitchen! +And besides, Willie, I was afraid of you. I didn't understand you +and I did him. It's different now--but then I knew what he meant. +And there was his voice." + +"Yes," I said to Verrall, making these discoveries quietly, "yes, +Verrall, you have a good voice. Queer I never thought of that +before!" + +We sat silently for a time before our vivisected passions. + +"Gods!" I cried, "and there was our poor little top-hamper of +intelligence on all these waves of instinct and wordless desire, +these foaming things of touch and sight and feeling, like --like +a coop of hens washed overboard and clucking amidst the seas." + +Verrall laughed approval of the image I had struck out. "A week +ago," he said, trying it further, "we were clinging to our chicken +coops and going with the heave and pour. That was true enough a +week ago. But to-day------?" + +"To-day," I said, "the wind has fallen. The world storm is over. +And each chicken coop has changed by a miracle to a vessel that +makes head against the sea." + + + +Section 4 + +"What are we to do?" asked Verrall. + +Nettie drew a deep crimson carnation from the bowl before us, and +began very neatly and deliberately to turn down the sepals of its +calyx and remove, one by one, its petals. I remember that went +on through all our talk. She put those ragged crimson shreds in a +long row and adjusted them and readjusted them. When at last I was +alone with these vestiges the pattern was still incomplete. + +"Well," said I, "the matter seems fairly simple. You two"--I +swallowed it--"love one another." + +I paused. They answered me by silence, by a thoughtful silence. + +"You belong to each other. I have thought it over and looked at it +from many points of view. I happened to want--impossible things. +. . . I behaved badly. I had no right to pursue you." I turned to +Verrall. "You hold yourself bound to her?" + +He nodded assent. + +"No social influence, no fading out of all this generous clearness +in the air--for that might happen--will change you back . . . ?" + +He answered me with honest eyes meeting mine, "No, Leadford, no!" + +"I did not know you," I said. "I thought of you as something very +different from this." + +"I was," he interpolated. + +"Now," I said, "it is all changed." + +Then I halted--for my thread had slipped away from me. + +"As for me," I went on, and glanced at Nettie's downcast face, and +then sat forward with my eyes upon the flowers between us, "since +I am swayed and shall be swayed by an affection for Nettie, since +that affection is rich with the seeds of desire, since to see her +yours and wholly yours is not to be endured by me--I must turn +about and go from you; you must avoid me and I you. . . . We must +divide the world like Jacob and Esau. ... I must direct myself +with all the will I have to other things. After all--this passion +is not life! It is perhaps for brutes and savages, but for men. +No! We must part and I must forget. What else is there but that?" + +I did not look up, I sat very tense with the red petals printing +an indelible memory in my brain, but I felt the assent of Verrall's +pose. There were some moments of silence. Then Nettie spoke. +"But------" she said, and ceased. + +I waited for a little while. I sighed and leant back in my chair. +"It is perfectly simple," I smiled, "now that we have cool heads." + +"But IS it simple?" asked Nettie, and slashed my discourse out of +being. + +I looked up and found her with her eyes on Verrall. "You see," +she said, "I like Willie. It's hard to say what one feels--but I +don't want him to go away like that." + +"But then," objected Verrall, "how------?" + +"No," said Nettie, and swept her half-arranged carnation petals back +into a heap of confusion. She began to arrange them very quickly +into one long straight line. + +"It's so difficult------ I've never before in all my life tried +to get to the bottom of my mind. For one thing, I've not treated +Willie properly. He--he counted on me. I know he did. I was +his hope. I was a promised delight--something, something to crown +life--better than anything he had ever had. And a secret pride. . +. . He lived upon me. I knew--when we two began to meet together, +you and I------ It was a sort of treachery to him------" + +"Treachery!" I said. "You were only feeling your way through all +these perplexities." + +"You thought it treachery." + +"I don't now." + +"I did. In a sense I think so still. For you had need of me." + +I made a slight protest at this doctrine and fell thinking. + +"And even when he was trying to kill us," she said to her lover, +"I felt for him down in the bottom of my mind. I can understand +all the horrible things, the humiliation--the humiliation! he went +through." + +"Yes," I said, "but I don't see------" + +"I don't see. I'm only trying to see. But you know, Willie, you +are a part of my life. I have known you longer than I have known +Edward. I know you better. Indeed I know you with all my heart. +You think all your talk was thrown away upon me, that I never +understood that side of you, or your ambitions or anything. I did. +More than I thought at the time. Now --now it is all clear to me. +What I had to understand in you was something deeper than Edward +brought me. I have it now. . . . You are a part of my life, and I +don't want to cut all that off from me now I have comprehended it, +and throw it away." + +"But you love Verrall." + +"Love is such a queer thing! . . . Is there one love? I mean, only +one love?" She turned to Verrall. "I know I love you. I can speak +out about that now. Before this morning I couldn't have done. It's +just as though my mind had got out of a scented prison. But what +is it, this love for you? It's a mass of fancies--things about +you--ways you look, ways you have. It's the senses--and the senses +of certain beauties. Flattery too, things you said, hopes and +deceptions for myself. And all that had rolled up together and taken +to itself the wild help of those deep emotions that slumbered in my +body; it seemed everything. But it wasn't. How can I describe it? +It was like having a very bright lamp with a thick shade--everything +else in the room was hidden. But you take the shade off and there +they are--it is the same light--still there! Only it lights every +one!" + +Her voice ceased. For awhile no one spoke, and Nettie, with a quick +movement, swept the petals into the shape of a pyramid. + +Figures of speech always distract me, and it ran through my mind +like some puzzling refrain, "It is still the same light. . . ." + +"No woman believes these things," she asserted abruptly. + +"What things?" + +"No woman ever has believed them." + +"You have to choose a man," said Verrall, apprehending her before +I did. + +"We're brought up to that. We're told--it's in books, in stories, +in the way people look, in the way they behave--one day there will +come a man. He will be everything, no one else will be anything. +Leave everything else; live in him." + +"And a man, too, is taught that of some woman," said Verrall. + +"Only men don't believe it! They have more obstinate minds. . . +. Men have never behaved as though they believed it. One need not +be old to know that. By nature they don't believe it. But a woman +believes nothing by nature. She goes into a mold hiding her secret +thoughts almost from herself." + +"She used to," I said. + +"You haven't," said Verrall, "anyhow." + +"I've come out. It's this comet. And Willie. And because I never +really believed in the mold at all--even if I thought I did. It's +stupid to send Willie off--shamed, cast out, never to see him +again--when I like him as much as I do. It is cruel, it is wicked +and ugly, to prance over him as if he was a defeated enemy, and +pretend I'm going to be happy just the same. There's no sense in +a rule of life that prescribes that. It's selfish. It's brutish. +It's like something that has no sense. I------" there was a sob in +her voice: "Willie! I WON'T." + +I sat lowering, I mused with my eyes upon her quick fingers. + +"It is brutish," I said at last, with a careful unemotional +deliberation. "Nevertheless--it is in the nature of things. . . +. No! . . . You see, after all, we are still half brutes, Nettie. +And men, as you say, are more obstinate than women. The comet +hasn't altered that; it's only made it clearer. We have come into +being through a tumult of blind forces. . . . I come back to what +I said just now; we have found our poor reasonable minds, our wills +to live well, ourselves, adrift on a wash of instincts, passions, +instinctive prejudices, half animal stupidities. . . . Here we +are like people clinging to something--like people awakening--upon +a raft." + +"We come back at last to my question," said Verrall, softly; "what +are we to do?" + +"Part," I said. "You see, Nettie, these bodies of ours are not +the bodies of angels. They are the same bodies------ I have read +somewhere that in our bodies you can find evidence of the lowliest +ancestry; that about our inward ears--I think it is--and about our +teeth, there remains still something of the fish, that there are +bones that recall little--what is it?--marsupial forebears--and +a hundred traces of the ape. Even your beautiful body, Nettie, +carries this taint. No! Hear me out." I leant forward earnestly. +"Our emotions, our passions, our desires, the substance of them, +like the substance of our bodies, is an animal, a competing thing, as +well as a desiring thing. You speak to us now a mind to minds--one +can do that when one has had exercise and when one has eaten, when +one is not doing anything--but when one turns to live, one turns +again to matter." + +"Yes," said Nettie, slowly following me, "but you control it." + +"Only through a measure of obedience. There is no magic in the +business--to conquer matter, we must divide the enemy, and take +matter as an ally. Nowadays it is indeed true, by faith a man can +remove mountains; he can say to a mountain, Be thou removed and be +thou cast into the sea; but he does it because he helps and trusts +his brother men, because he has the wit and patience and courage +to win over to his side iron, steel, obedience, dynamite, cranes, +trucks, the money of other people. . . . To conquer my desire for +you, I must not perpetually thwart it by your presence; I must go +away so that I may not see you, I must take up other interests, +thrust myself into struggles and discussions------" + +"And forget?" said Nettie. + +"Not forget," I said; "but anyhow--cease to brood upon you." + +She hung on that for some moments. + +"No," she said, demolished her last pattern and looked up at Verrall +as he stirred. + +Verrall leant forward on the table, elbows upon it, and the fingers +of his two hands intertwined. + +"You know," he said, "I haven't thought much of these things. At +school and the university, one doesn't. . . . It was part of the +system to prevent it. They'll alter all that, no doubt. We seem"--he +thought--"to be skating about over questions that one came to at +last in Greek--with variorum readings--in Plato, but which it never +occurred to any one to translate out of a dead language into living +realities. . . ." He halted and answered some unspoken question +from his own mind with, "No. I think with Leadford, Nettie, that, +as he put it, it is in the nature of things for men to be exclusive. +. . . Minds are free things and go about the world, but only one +man can possess a woman. You must dismiss rivals. We are made for +the struggle for existence--we ARE the struggle for existence; the +things that live are the struggle for existence incarnate--and that +works out that the men struggle for their mates; for each woman +one prevails. The others go away." + +"Like animals," said Nettie. + +"Yes. . . ." + +"There are many things in life," I said, "but that is the rough +universal truth." + +"But," said Nettie, "you don't struggle. That has been altered +because men have minds." + +"You choose," I said. + +"If I don't choose to choose?" + +"You have chosen." + +She gave a little impatient "Oh! Why are women always the slaves of +sex? Is this great age of Reason and Light that has come to alter +nothing of that? And men too! I think it is all--stupid. I do not +believe this is the right solution of the thing, or anything but +the bad habits of the time that was. . . Instinct! You don't let +your instincts rule you in a lot of other things. Here am I between +you. Here is Edward. I--love him because he is gay and pleasant, +and because--because I LIKE him! Here is Willie--a part of me--my +first secret, my oldest friend! Why must I not have both? Am I not +a mind that you must think of me as nothing but a woman? imagine +me always as a thing to struggle for?" She paused; then she made +her distressful proposition to me. "Let us three keep together," +she said. "Let us not part. To part is hate, Willie. Why should we +not anyhow keep friends? Meet and talk?" + +"Talk?" I said. "About this sort of thing?" + +I looked across at Verrall and met his eyes, and we studied one +another. It was the clean, straight scrutiny of honest antagonism. +"No," I decided. "Between us, nothing of that sort can be." + +"Ever?" said Nettie. + +"Never," I said, convinced. + +I made an effort within myself. "We cannot tamper with the law and +customs of these things," I said; "these passions are too close +to one's essential self. Better surgery than a lingering disease! +From Nettie my love--asks all. A man's love is not devotion--it is +a demand, a challenge. And besides"--and here I forced my theme--"I +have given myself now to a new mistress--and it is I, Nettie, who +am unfaithful. Behind you and above you rises the coming City +of the World, and I am in that building. Dear heart! you are only +happiness--and that------Indeed that calls! If it is only that my +life blood shall christen the foundation stones--I could almost +hope that should be my part, Nettie --I will join myself in that." +I threw all the conviction I could into these words. . . . "No +conflict of passion." I added a little lamely, "must distract me." + +There was a pause. + +"Then we must part," said Nettie, with the eyes of a woman one +strikes in the face + +I nodded assent. . . . + +There was a little pause, and then I stood up. We stood up, all +three. We parted almost sullenly, with no more memorable words, +and I was left presently in the arbor alone. + +I do not think I watched them go. I only remember myself left there +somehow--horribly empty and alone. I sat down again and fell into +a deep shapeless musing. + + + +Section 5 + +Suddenly I looked up. Nettie had come back and stood looking down +at me. + +"Since we talked I have been thinking," she said. "Edward has let +me come to you alone. And I feel perhaps I can talk better to you +alone." + +I said nothing and that embarrassed her. + +"I don't think we ought to part," she said. + +"No--I don't think we ought to part," she repeated. + +"One lives," she said, "in different ways. I wonder if you will +understand what I am saying, Willie. It is hard to say what I feel. +But I want it said. If we are to part for ever I want it said--very +plainly. Always before I have had the woman's instinct and the +woman's training which makes one hide. But------ Edward is not all +of me. Think of what I am saying--Edward is not all of me. . . . I +wish I could tell you better how I see it. I am not all of myself. +You, at any rate, are a part of me and I cannot bear to leave you. +And I cannot see why I should leave you. There is a sort of blood +link between us, Willie. We grew together. We are in one another's +bones. I understand you. Now indeed I understand. In some way +I have come to an understanding at a stride. Indeed I understand +you and your dream. I want to help you. Edward--Edward has no dreams. +. . . It is dreadful to me, Willie, to think we two are to part." + +"But we have settled that--part we must." + +"But WHY?" + +"I love you." + +"Well, and why should I hide it Willie?--I love you. . . ." Our +eyes met. She flushed, she went on resolutely: "You are stupid. +The whole thing is stupid. I love you both." + +I said, "You do not understand what you say. No!" + +"You mean that I must go." + +"Yes, yes. Go!" + +For a moment we looked at one another, mute, as though deep down +in the unfathomable darkness below the surface and present reality +of things dumb meanings strove to be. She made to speak and desisted. + +"But MUST I go?" she said at last, with quivering lips, and the +tears in her eyes were stars. Then she began, "Willie------" + +"Go!" I interrupted her. . . . "Yes." + +Then again we were still. + +She stood there, a tearful figure of pity, longing for me, pitying +me. Something of that wider love, that will carry our descendants +at last out of all the limits, the hard, clear obligations of our +personal life, moved us, like the first breath of a coming wind +out of heaven that stirs and passes away. I had an impulse to take +her hand and kiss it, and then a trembling came to me, and I knew +that if I touched her, my strength would all pass from me. . . . + +And so, standing at a distance one from the other, we parted, and +Nettie went, reluctant and looking back, with the man she had chosen, +to the lot she had chosen, out of my life--like the sunlight +out of my life. . . . + +Then, you know, I suppose I folded up this newspaper and put it +in my pocket. But my memory of that meeting ends with the face of +Nettie turning to go. + + + +Section 6 + +I remember all that very distinctly to this day. I could almost +vouch for the words I have put into our several mouths. Then comes +a blank. I have a dim memory of being back in the house near the +Links and the bustle of Melmount's departure, of finding Parker's +energy distasteful, and of going away down the road with a strong +desire to say good-bye to Melmount alone. + +Perhaps I was already doubting my decision to part for ever from +Nettie, for I think I had it in mind to tell him all that +had been said and done. . . . + +I don't think I had a word with him or anything but a hurried hand +clasp. I am not sure. It has gone out of my mind. But I have a +very clear and certain memory of my phase of bleak desolation as +I watched his car recede and climb and vanish over Mapleborough +Hill, and that I got there my first full and definite intimation +that, after all, this great Change and my new wide aims in life, +were not to mean indiscriminate happiness for me. I had a sense of +protest, as against extreme unfairness, as I saw him go. "It is +too soon," I said to myself, "to leave me alone." + +I felt I had sacrificed too much, that after I had said good-bye to +the hot immediate life of passion, to Nettie and desire, to physical +and personal rivalry, to all that was most intensely myself, it was +wrong to leave me alone and sore hearted, to go on at once with +these steely cold duties of the wider life. I felt new born, and +naked, and at a loss. + +"Work!" I said with an effort at the heroic, and turned about with +a sigh, and I was glad that the way I had to go would at +least take me to my mother. . . . + +But, curiously enough, I remember myself as being fairly cheerful +in the town of Birmingham that night, I recall an active and +interested mood. I spent the night in Birmingham because the train +service on was disarranged, and I could not get on. I went to listen +to a band that was playing its brassy old-world music in the public +park, and I fell into conversation with a man who said he had been +a reporter upon one of their minor local papers. He was full and +keen upon all the plans of reconstruction that were now shaping +over the lives of humanity, and I know that something of that +noble dream came back to me with his words and phrases. We walked +up to a place called Bourneville by moonlight, and talked of the +new social groupings that must replace the old isolated homes, and +how the people would be housed. + +This Bourneville was germane to that matter. It had been an +attempt on the part of a private firm of manufacturers to improve +the housing of their workers. To our ideas to-day it would seem the +feeblest of benevolent efforts, but at the time it was extraordinary +and famous, and people came long journeys to see its trim cottages +with baths sunk under the kitchen floors (of all conceivable +places), and other brilliant inventions. No one seemed to see the +danger to liberty in that aggressive age, that might arise through +making workpeople tenants and debtors of their employer, though an +Act called the Truck Act had long ago intervened to prevent minor +developments in the same direction. . . . But I and my chance +acquaintance seemed that night always to have been aware of that +possibility, and we had no doubt in our minds of the public nature +of the housing duty. Our interest lay rather in the possibility of +common nurseries and kitchens and public rooms that should economize +toil and give people space and freedom. + +It was very interesting, but still a little cheerless, and when I +lay in bed that night I thought of Nettie and the queer modifications +of preference she had made, and among other things and in a way, I +prayed. I prayed that night, let me confess it, to an image I had +set up in my heart, an image that still serves with me as a symbol +for things inconceivable, to a Master Artificer, the unseen captain +of all who go about the building of the world, the making of mankind. + +But before and after I prayed I imagined I was talking and reasoning +and meeting again with Nettie. . . . She never came into the temple +of that worshiping with me. + + + + +CHAPTER THE SECOND + +MY MOTHER'S LAST DAYS + + + +Section 1 + +NEXT day I came home to Clayton. + +The new strange brightness of the world was all the brighter there, +for the host of dark distressful memories, of darkened childhood, +toilsome youth, embittered adolescence that wove about the place +for me. It seemed to me that I saw morning there for the first time. +No chimneys smoked that day, no furnaces were burning, the people +were busy with other things. The clear strong sun, the sparkle in +the dustless air, made a strange gaiety in the narrow streets. I +passed a number of smiling people coming home from the public +breakfasts that were given in the Town Hall until better things +could be arranged, and happened on Parload among them. "You were +right about that comet," I sang out at the sight of him; and he +came toward me and clasped my hand. + +"What are people doing here?" said I. + +"They're sending us food from outside," he said, "and we're going +to level all these slums--and shift into tents on to the moors;" +and he began to tell me of many things that were being arranged, +the Midland land committees had got to work with remarkable celerity +and directness of purpose, and the redistribution of population +was already in its broad outlines planned. He was working at +an improvised college of engineering. Until schemes of work were +made out, almost every one was going to school again to get as much +technical training as they could against the demands of the huge +enterprise of reconstruction that was now beginning. + +He walked with me to my door, and there I met old Pettigrew coming +down the steps. He looked dusty and tired, but his eye was brighter +than it used to be, and he carried in a rather unaccustomed manner, +a workman's tool basket. + +"How's the rheumatism, Mr. Pettigrew?" I asked. + +"Dietary," said old Pettigrew, "can work wonders. . . ." He looked +me in the eye. "These houses," he said, "will have to come down, +I suppose, and our notions of property must undergo very considerable +revision--in the light of reason; but meanwhile I've been doing +something to patch that disgraceful roof of mine! To think that +I could have dodged and evaded------" + +He raised a deprecatory hand, drew down the loose corners of his +ample mouth, and shook his old head. + +"The past is past, Mr. Pettigrew." + +"Your poor dear mother! So good and honest a woman! So simple and +kind and forgiving! To think of it! My dear young man!"--he said +it manfully--"I'm ashamed." + +"The whole world blushed at dawn the other day, Mr. Pettigrew," I +said, "and did it very prettily. That's over now. God knows, who +is NOT ashamed of all that came before last Tuesday." + +I held out a forgiving hand, naively forgetful that in this place +I was a thief, and he took it and went his way, shaking his head +and repeating he was ashamed, but I think a little comforted. + +The door opened and my poor old mother's face, marvelously cleaned, +appeared. "Ah, Willie, boy! YOU. You!" + +I ran up the steps to her, for I feared she might fall. + +How she clung to me in the passage, the dear woman!. . . + +But first she shut the front door. The old habit of respect for my +unaccountable temper still swayed her. "Ah deary!" she said, "ah +deary! But you were sorely tried," and kept her face close to my +shoulder, lest she should offend me by the sight of the tears that +welled within her. + +She made a sort of gulping noise and was quiet for a while, holding +me very tightly to her heart with her worn, long hands . . . + +She thanked me presently for my telegram, and I put my arm about +her and drew her into the living room. + +"It's all well with me, mother dear," I said, "and the dark times +are over--are done with for ever, mother." + +Whereupon she had courage and gave way and sobbed aloud, none +chiding her. + +She had not let me know she could still weep for five grimy years. . . . + + + +Section 2 + +Dear heart! There remained for her but a very brief while in this +world that had been renewed. I did not know how short that time +would be, but the little I could do--perhaps after all it was not +little to her--to atone for the harshness of my days of wrath and +rebellion, I did. I took care to be constantly with her, for I +perceived now her curious need of me. It was not that we had ideas +to exchange or pleasures to share, but she liked to see me at table, +to watch me working, to have me go to and fro. There was no toil +for her any more in the world, but only such light services as +are easy and pleasant for a worn and weary old woman to do, and I +think she was happy even at her end. + +She kept to her queer old eighteenth century version of religion, +too, without a change. She had worn this particular amulet so +long it was a part of her. Yet the Change was evident even in that +persistence. I said to her one day, "But do you still believe in +that hell of flame, dear mother? You--with your tender heart!" + +She vowed she did. + +Some theological intricacy made it necessary to her, but still------ + +She looked thoughtfully at a bank of primulas before her for a time, +and then laid her tremulous hand impressively on my arm. "You know, +Willie, dear," she said, as though she was clearing up a childish +misunderstanding of mine, "I don't think any one will GO there. I +never DID think that. . . ." + + + +Section 3 + +That talk stands out in my memory because of that agreeable theological +decision of hers, but it was only one of a great number of talks. +It used to be pleasant in the afternoon, after the day's work was +done and before one went on with the evening's study--how odd it +would have seemed in the old time for a young man of the industrial +class to be doing post-graduate work in sociology, and how much +a matter of course it seems now!--to walk out into the gardens +of Lowchester House, and smoke a cigarette or so and let her talk +ramblingly of the things that interested her. . . . Physically +the Great Change did not do so very much to reinvigorate her--she +had lived in that dismal underground kitchen in Clayton too long +for any material rejuvenescence--she glowed out indeed as a dying +spark among the ashes might glow under a draught of fresh air--and +assuredly it hastened her end. But those closing days were very +tranquil, full of an effortless contentment. With her, life was like +a rainy, windy day that clears only to show the sunset afterglow. +The light has passed. She acquired no new habits amid the comforts +of the new life, did no new things, but only found a happier light +upon the old. + +She lived with a number of other old ladies belonging to our commune +in the upper rooms of Lowchester House. Those upper apartments +were simple and ample, fine and well done in the Georgian style, +and they had been organized to give the maximum of comfort and +conveniences and to economize the need of skilled attendance. We +had taken over the various "great houses," as they used to be +called, to make communal dining-rooms and so forth--their kitchens +were conveniently large--and pleasant places for the old people +of over sixty whose time of ease had come, and for suchlike public +uses. We had done this not only with Lord Redcar's house, but also +with Checkshill House--where old Mrs. Verrall made a dignified +and capable hostess,--and indeed with most of the fine residences +in the beautiful wide country between the Four Towns district and +the Welsh mountains. About these great houses there had usually +been good outbuildings, laundries, married servants' quarters, +stabling, dairies, and the like, suitably masked by trees, we +turned these into homes, and to them we added first tents and wood +chalets and afterward quadrangular residential buildings. In order +to be near my mother I had two small rooms in the new collegiate +buildings which our commune was almost the first to possess, and they +were very convenient for the station of the high-speed electric +railway that took me down to our daily conferences and my secretarial +and statistical work in Clayton. + +Ours had been one of the first modern communes to get in order; we +were greatly helped by the energy of Lord Redcar, who had a fine +feeling for the picturesque associations of his ancestral home--the +detour that took our line through the beeches and bracken and +bluebells of the West Wood and saved the pleasant open wildness +of the park was one of his suggestions; and we had many reasons to +be proud of our surroundings. Nearly all the other communes that +sprang up all over the pleasant parkland round the industrial +valley of the Four Towns, as the workers moved out, came to us to +study the architecture of the residential squares and quadrangles +with which we had replaced the back streets between the great +houses and the ecclesiastical residences about the cathedral, and +the way in which we had adapted all these buildings to our new +social needs. Some claimed to have improved on us. But they could +not emulate the rhododendron garden out beyond our shrubberies; that +was a thing altogether our own in our part of England, because of +its ripeness and of the rarity of good peat free from lime. + +These gardens had been planned under the third Lord Redcar, fifty +years ago and more; they abounded in rhododendra and azaleas, and +were in places so well sheltered and sunny that great magnolias +flourished and flowered. There were tall trees smothered in crimson +and yellow climbing roses, and an endless variety of flowering +shrubs and fine conifers, and such pampas grass as no other garden +can show. And barred by the broad shadows of these, were glades and +broad spaces of emerald turf, and here and there banks of pegged +roses, and flower-beds, and banks given over some to spring bulbs, +and some to primroses and primulas and polyanthuses. My mother +loved these latter banks and the little round staring eyes of their +innumerable yellow, ruddy brown, and purple corollas, more than +anything else the gardens could show, and in the spring of the Year +of Scaffolding she would go with me day after day to the seat that +showed them in the greatest multitude. + +It gave her, I think, among other agreeable impressions, a sense +of gentle opulence. In the old time she had never known what it was +to have more than enough of anything agreeable in the world at all. + +We would sit and think, or talk--there was a curious effect of +complete understanding between us whether we talked or were still. + +"Heaven," she said to me one day, "Heaven is a garden." + +I was moved to tease her a little. "There's jewels, you know, walls +and gates of jewels--and singing." + +"For such as like them," said my mother firmly, and thought for +a while. "There'll be things for all of us, o' course. But for me +it couldn't be Heaven, dear, unless it was a garden --a nice sunny +garden. . . . And feeling such as we're fond of, are close and +handy by" + +You of your happier generation cannot realize the wonderfulness +of those early days in the new epoch, the sense of security, the +extraordinary effects of contrast. In the morning, except in high +summer, I was up before dawn, and breakfasted upon the swift, smooth +train, and perhaps saw the sunrise as I rushed out of the little +tunnel that pierced Clayton Crest, and so to work like a man. Now +that we had got all the homes and schools and all the softness of +life away from our coal and iron ore and clay, now that a thousand +obstructive "rights" and timidities had been swept aside, we could +let ourselves go, we merged this enterprise with that, cut across +this or that anciently obstructive piece of private land, joined and +separated, effected gigantic consolidations and gigantic economies, +and the valley, no longer a pit of squalid human tragedies and +meanly conflicting industries, grew into a sort of beauty of its +own, a savage inhuman beauty of force and machinery and flames. +One was a Titan in that Etna. Then back one came at midday to bath +and change in the train, and so to the leisurely gossiping lunch +in the club dining-room in Lowchester House, and the refreshment +of these green and sunlit afternoon tranquillities. + +Sometimes in her profounder moments my mother doubted whether all +this last phase of her life was not a dream. + +"A dream," I used to say, "a dream indeed--but a dream that is one +step nearer awakening than that nightmare of the former days." + +She found great comfort and assurance in my altered clothes--she +liked the new fashions of dress, she alleged. It was not simply +altered clothes. I did grow two inches, broaden some inches +round my chest, and increase in weight three stones before I was +twenty-three. I wore a soft brown cloth and she would caress my +sleeve and admire it greatly--she had the woman's sense of texture +very strong in her. + +Sometimes she would muse upon the past, rubbing together her poor +rough hands--they never got softened--one over the other. She told +me much I had not heard before about my father, and her own early +life. It was like finding flat and faded flowers in a book still +faintly sweet, to realize that once my mother had been loved with +passion; that my remote father had once shed hot tears of tenderness in +her arms. And she would sometimes even speak tentatively in those +narrow, old-world phrases that her lips could rob of all their +bitter narrowness, of Nettie. + +"She wasn't worthy of you, dear," she would say abruptly, leaving +me to guess the person she intended. + +"No man is worthy of a woman's love," I answered. "No woman is +worthy of a man's. I love her, dear mother, and that you cannot +alter." + +"There's others," she would muse. + +"Not for me," I said. "No! I didn't fire a shot that time; I burnt +my magazine. I can't begin again, mother, not from the beginning." + +She sighed and said no more then. + +At another time she said--I think her words were: "You'll be lonely +when I'm gone dear." + +"You'll not think of going, then," I said. + +"Eh, dear! but man and maid should come together." + +I said nothing to that. + +"You brood overmuch on Nettie, dear. If I could see you married to +some sweet girl of a woman, some good, KIND girl------" + +"Dear mother, I'm married enough. Perhaps some day------ Who knows? +I can wait." + +"But to have nothing to do with women!" + +"I have my friends. Don't you trouble, mother. There's plentiful +work for a man in this world though the heart of love is cast out +from him. Nettie was life and beauty for me--is--will be. Don't +think I've lost too much, mother." + +(Because in my heart I told myself the end had still to come.) + +And once she sprang a question on me suddenly that surprised me. + +"Where are they now?" she asked. + +"Who?" + +"Nettie and--him." + +She had pierced to the marrow of my thoughts. "I don't know," I +said shortly. + +Her shriveled hand just fluttered into touch of mine. + +"It's better so," she said, as if pleading. "Indeed , , , it is +better so." + +There was something in her quivering old voice that for a moment +took me back across an epoch, to the protests of the former time, +to those counsels of submission, those appeals not to offend It, +that had always stirred an angry spirit of rebellion within me. + +"That is the thing I doubt," I said, and abruptly I felt I could +talk no more to her of Nettie. I got up and walked away from her, +and came back after a while, to speak of other things, with a bunch +of daffodils for her in my hand. + +But I did not always spend my afternoons with her. There were days +when my crushed hunger for Nettie rose again, and then I had to be +alone; I walked, or bicycled, and presently I found a new interest +and relief in learning to ride. For the horse was already very +swiftly reaping the benefit to the Change. Hardly anywhere was the +inhumanity of horse traction to be found after the first year of +the new epoch, everywhere lugging and dragging and straining was +done by machines, and the horse had become a beautiful instrument +for the pleasure and carriage of youth. I rode both in the saddle +and, what is finer, naked and barebacked. I found violent exercises +were good for the states of enormous melancholy that came upon me, +and when at last horse riding palled, I went and joined the aviators +who practised soaring upon aeroplanes beyond Horsemarden Hill. . +. . But at least every alternate day I spent with my mother, and +altogether I think I gave her two-thirds of my afternoons. + + + +Section 4 + +When presently that illness, that fading weakness that made an euthanasia +for so many of the older people in the beginning of the new time, +took hold upon my mother, there came Anna Reeves to daughter +her--after our new custom. She chose to come. She was already +known to us a little from chance meetings and chance services she +had done my mother in the garden; she sought to give her help. She +seemed then just one of those plainly good girls the world at its +worst has never failed to produce, who were indeed in the dark old +times the hidden antiseptic of all our hustling, hating, faithless +lives. They made their secret voiceless worship, they did their +steadfast, uninspired, unthanked, unselfish work as helpful daughters, +as nurses, as faithful servants, as the humble providences of homes. +She was almost exactly three years older than I. At first I found +no beauty in her, she was short but rather sturdy and ruddy, with +red-tinged hair, and fair hairy brows and red-brown eyes. But her +freckled hands I found, were full of apt help, her voice +carried good cheer. . . . + +At first she was no more than a blue-clad, white-aproned benevolence, +that moved in the shadows behind the bed on which my old mother lay +and sank restfully to death. She would come forward to anticipate +some little need, to proffer some simple comfort, and always then +my mother smiled on her. In a little while I discovered the beauty +of that helpful poise of her woman's body, I discovered the grace +of untiring goodness, the sweetness of a tender pity, and the +great riches of her voice, of her few reassuring words and phrases. +I noted and remembered very clearly how once my mother's lean old +hand patted the firm gold-flecked strength of hers, as it went by +upon its duties with the coverlet. + +"She is a good girl to me," said my mother one day. "A good girl. +Like a daughter should be. . . . I never had a daughter--really." +She mused peacefully for a space. "Your little sister died," she +said. + +I had never heard of that little sister. + +"November the tenth," said my mother. "Twenty-nine months and three +days. . . . I cried. I cried. That was before you came, dear. So +long ago--and I can see it now. I was a young wife then, and your +father was very kind. But I can see its hands, its dear little +quiet hands. . . . Dear, they say that now--now they will not let +the little children die." + +"No, dear mother," I said. "We shall do better now." + +"The club doctor could not come. Your father went twice. There +was some one else, some one who paid. So your father went on into +Swathinglea, and that man wouldn't come unless he had his fee. And +your father had changed his clothes to look more respectful and he +hadn't any money, not even his tram fare home. It seemed cruel to +be waiting there with my baby thing in pain. . . . And I can't help +thinking perhaps we might have saved her. . . . But it was like +that with the poor always in the bad old times--always. When the +doctor came at last he was angry. 'Why wasn't I called before?' +he said, and he took no pains. He was angry because some one hadn't +explained. I begged him--but it was too late." + +She said these things very quietly with drooping eyelids, like one +who describes a dream. "We are going to manage all these things +better now," I said, feeling a strange resentment at this pitiful +little story her faded, matter-of-fact voice was telling me. + +"She talked," my mother went on. "She talked for her age wonderfully. +. . . Hippopotamus." + +"Eh?" I said. + +"Hippopotamus, dear--quite plainly one day, when her father was +showing her pictures. . . And her little prayers. 'Now I lay me. +. . . down to sleep.' . . . I made her little socks. Knitted they +was, dear, and the heel most difficult." + +Her eyes were closed now. She spoke no longer to me but to herself. +She whispered other vague things, little sentences, ghosts of long +dead moments. . . . Her words grew less distinct. + +Presently she was asleep and I got up and went out of the room, +but my mind was queerly obsessed by the thought of that little life +that had been glad and hopeful only to pass so inexplicably out of +hope again into nonentity, this sister of whom I had never +heard before. . . . + +And presently I was in a black rage at all the irrecoverable sorrows +of the past, of that great ocean of avoidable suffering of which +this was but one luminous and quivering red drop. I walked in the +garden and the garden was too small for me; I went out to wander +on the moors. "The past is past," I cried, and all the while across +the gulf of five and twenty years I could hear my poor mother's +heart-wrung weeping for that daughter baby who had suffered and +died. Indeed that old spirit of rebellion has not altogether died +in me, for all the transformation of the new time. . . . I quieted +down at last to a thin and austere comfort in thinking that the +whole is not told to us, that it cannot perhaps be told to such +minds as ours; and anyhow, and what was far more sustaining, that +now we have strength and courage and this new gift of wise love, +whatever cruel and sad things marred the past, none of these sorrowful +things that made the very warp and woof of the old life, need now +go on happening. We could foresee, we could prevent and save. "The +past is past," I said, between sighing and resolve, as I came into +view again on my homeward way of the hundred sunset-lit windows of +old Lowchester House. "Those sorrows are sorrows no more." + +But I could not altogether cheat that common sadness of the new +time, that memory, and insoluble riddle of the countless lives that +had stumbled and failed in pain and darkness before our air grew +clear. + + + + +CHAPTER THE THIRD + +BELTANE AND NEW YEAR'S EVE + + + +Section 1 + +IN the end my mother died rather suddenly, and her death came as +a shock to me. Diagnosis was still very inadequate at that time. +The doctors were, of course, fully alive to the incredible defects +of their common training and were doing all they could to supply +its deficiencies, but they were still extraordinarily ignorant. +Some unintelligently observed factor of her illness came into play +with her, and she became feverish and sank and died very quickly. +I do not know what remedial measures were attempted. I hardly knew +what was happening until the whole thing was over. + +At that time my attention was much engaged by the stir of the great +Beltane festival that was held on May-day in the Year of Scaffolding. +It was the first of the ten great rubbish burnings that opened the +new age. Young people nowadays can scarcely hope to imagine the +enormous quantities of pure litter and useless accumulation with +which we had to deal; had we not set aside a special day and season, +the whole world would have been an incessant reek of small fires; +and it was, I think, a happy idea to revive this ancient festival of +the May and November burnings. It was inevitable that the old idea +of purification should revive with the name, it was felt to be a +burning of other than material encumbrances, innumerable quasi-spiritual +things, deeds, documents, debts, vindictive records, went up on +those great flares. People passed praying between the fires, and +it was a fine symbol of the new and wiser tolerance that had come +to men, that those who still found their comfort in the orthodox +faiths came hither unpersuaded, to pray that all hate might be burnt +out of their professions. For even in the fires of Baal, now that +men have done with base hatred, one may find the living God. + +Endless were the things we had to destroy in those great purgings. +First, there were nearly all the houses and buildings of the old +time. In the end we did not save in England one building in five +thousand that was standing when the comet came. Year by year, as +we made our homes afresh in accordance with the saner needs of our +new social families, we swept away more and more of those horrible +structures, the ancient residential houses, hastily built, without +imagination, without beauty, without common honesty, without even +comfort or convenience, in which the early twentieth century had +sheltered until scarcely one remained; we saved nothing but what +was beautiful or interesting out of all their gaunt and melancholy +abundance. The actual houses, of course, we could not drag to +our fires, but we brought all their ill-fitting deal doors, their +dreadful window sashes, their servant-tormenting staircases, their +dank, dark cupboards, the verminous papers from their scaly walls, +their dust and dirt-sodden carpets, their ill-designed and yet +pretentious tables and chairs, sideboards and chests of drawers, +the old dirt-saturated books, their ornaments--their dirty, decayed, +and altogether painful ornaments--amidst which I remember there +were sometimes even STUFFED DEAD BIRDS!--we burnt them all. The +paint-plastered woodwork, with coat above coat of nasty paint, that +in particular blazed finely. I have already tried to give you an +impression of old-world furniture, of Parload's bedroom, my mother's +room, Mr. Gabbitas's sitting-room, but, thank Heaven! there is +nothing in life now to convey the peculiar dinginess of it all. For +one thing, there is no more imperfect combustion of coal going on +everywhere, and no roadways like grassless open scars along the +earth from which dust pours out perpetually. We burnt and destroyed +most of our private buildings and all the woodwork, all our furniture, +except a few score thousand pieces of distinct and intentional +beauty, from which our present forms have developed, nearly all +our hangings and carpets, and also we destroyed almost every scrap +of old-world clothing. Only a few carefully disinfected types and +vestiges of that remain now in our museums. + +One writes now with a peculiar horror of the dress of the old world. +The men's clothes were worn without any cleansing process at all, +except an occasional superficial brushing, for periods of a year +or so; they were made of dark obscurely mixed patterns to conceal +the stage of defilement they had reached, and they were of a felted +and porous texture admirably calculated to accumulate drifting +matter. Many women wore skirts of similar substances, and of so +long and inconvenient a form that they inevitably trailed among +all the abomination of our horse-frequented roads. It was our boast +in England that the whole of our population was booted--their feet +were for the most part ugly enough to need it,--but it becomes +now inconceivable how they could have imprisoned their feet in the +amazing cases of leather and imitations of leather they used. I +have heard it said that a large part of the physical decline that +was apparent in our people during the closing years of the nineteenth +century, though no doubt due in part to the miscellaneous badness +of the food they ate, was in the main attributable to the vileness +of the common footwear. They shirked open-air exercise altogether +because their boots wore out ruinously and pinched and hurt them +if they took it. I have mentioned, I think, the part my own boots +played in the squalid drama of my adolescence. I had a sense +of unholy triumph over a fallen enemy when at last I found myself +steering truck after truck of cheap boots and shoes (unsold stock +from Swathinglea) to the run-off by the top of the Glanville blast +furnaces. + +"Plup!" they would drop into the cone when Beltane came, and the +roar of their burning would fill the air. Never a cold would come +from the saturation of their brown paper soles, never a corn from +their foolish shapes, never a nail in them get home at +last in suffering flesh. . . . + +Most of our public buildings we destroyed and burnt as we reshaped +our plan of habitation, our theater sheds, our banks, and inconvenient +business warrens, our factories (these in the first year of all), +and all the "unmeaning repetition" of silly little sham Gothic +churches and meeting-houses, mean looking shells of stone and +mortar without love, invention, or any beauty at all in them, that +men had thrust into the face of their sweated God, even as they +thrust cheap food into the mouths of their sweated workers; all +these we also swept away in the course of that first decade. Then +we had the whole of the superseded steam-railway system to scrap +and get rid of, stations, signals, fences, rolling stock; a plant +of ill-planned, smoke-distributing nuisance apparatus, that would, +under former conditions, have maintained an offensive dwindling +obstructive life for perhaps half a century. Then also there was a +great harvest of fences, notice boards, hoardings, ugly sheds, all +the corrugated iron in the world, and everything that was smeared +with tar, all our gas works and petroleum stores, all our horse +vehicles and vans and lorries had to be erased. . . . But I have +said enough now perhaps to give some idea of the bulk and quality +of our great bonfires, our burnings up, our meltings down, our +toil of sheer wreckage, over and above the constructive effort, in +those early years. + +But these were the coarse material bases of the Phoenix fires +of the world. These were but the outward and visible signs of the +innumerable claims, rights, adhesions, debts, bills, deeds, and +charters that were cast upon the fires; a vast accumulation of +insignia and uniforms neither curious enough nor beautiful enough +to preserve, went to swell the blaze, and all (saving a few truly +glorious trophies and memories) of our symbols, our apparatus and +material of war. Then innumerable triumphs of our old, bastard, +half-commercial, fine-art were presently condemned, great oil +paintings, done to please the half-educated middle-class, glared +for a moment and were gone, Academy marbles crumbled to useful lime, +a gross multitude of silly statuettes and decorative crockery, and +hangings, and embroideries, and bad music, and musical instruments +shared this fate. And books, countless books, too, and bales +of newspapers went also to these pyres. From the private houses +in Swathinglea alone--which I had deemed, perhaps not unjustly, +altogether illiterate--we gathered a whole dust-cart full of cheap +ill-printed editions of the minor English classics--for the most +part very dull stuff indeed and still clean--and about a truckload +of thumbed and dog-eared penny fiction, watery base stuff, the +dropsy of our nation's mind. . . . And it seemed to me that when +we gathered those books and papers together, we gathered together +something more than print and paper, we gathered warped and +crippled ideas and contagious base suggestions, the formulae of dull +tolerances and stupid impatiences, the mean defensive ingenuities +of sluggish habits of thinking and timid and indolent evasions. +There was more than a touch of malignant satisfaction for me in +helping gather it all together. + +I was so busy, I say, with my share in this dustman's work that +I did not notice, as I should otherwise have done, the little +indications of change in my mother's state. Indeed, I thought her +a little stronger; she was slightly flushed, slightly more talkative. . . . + +On Beltane Eve, and our Lowchester rummage being finished, I went +along the valley to the far end of Swathinglea to help sort the +stock of the detached group of potbanks there--their chief output +had been mantel ornaments in imitation of marble, and there was +very little sorting, I found, to be done--and there it was nurse +Anna found me at last by telephone, and told me my mother had died +in the morning suddenly and very shortly after my departure. + +For a while I did not seem to believe it; this obviously imminent +event stunned me when it came, as though I had never had an +anticipatory moment. For a while I went on working, and then almost +apathetically, in a mood of half-reluctant curiosity, I started +for Lowchester. + +When I got there the last offices were over, and I was shown my +old mother's peaceful white face, very still, but a little cold +and stern to me, a little unfamiliar, lying among white flowers. + +I went in alone to her, into that quiet room, and stood for +a long time by her bedside. I sat down then and thought. . . . + +Then at last, strangely hushed, and with the deeps of my loneliness +opening beneath me, I came out of that room and down into the world +again, a bright-eyed, active world, very noisy, happy, and busy +with its last preparations for the mighty cremation of past and +superseded things. + + + +Section 2 + +I remember that first Beltane festival as the most terribly lonely +night in my life. It stands in my mind in fragments, fragments of +intense feeling with forgotten gaps between. + +I recall very distinctly being upon the great staircase of Lowchester +House (though I don't remember getting there from the room in which +my mother lay), and how upon the landing I met Anna ascending as I +came down. She had but just heard of my return, and she was hurrying +upstairs to me. She stopped and so did I, and we stood and clasped +hands, and she scrutinized my face in the way women sometimes do. +So we remained for a second or so. I could say nothing to her at +all, but I could feel the wave of her emotion. I halted, answered +the earnest pressure of her hand, relinquished it, and after +a queer second of hesitation went on down, returning to my own +preoccupations. It did not occur to me at all then to ask myself +what she might be thinking or feeling. + +I remember the corridor full of mellow evening light, and how I +went mechanically some paces toward the dining-room. Then at the +sight of the little tables, and a gusty outburst of talking voices +as some one in front of me swung the door open and to, I remembered +that I did not want to eat. . . . After that comes an impression +of myself walking across the open grass in front of the house, and +the purpose I had of getting alone upon the moors, and how somebody +passing me said something about a hat. I had come out without my +hat. + +A fragment of thought has linked itself with an effect of long +shadows upon turf golden with the light of the sinking sun. The +world was singularly empty, I thought, without either Nettie or my +mother. There wasn't any sense in it any more. Nettie was +already back in my mind then. . . . + +Then I am out on the moors. I avoided the crests where the +bonfires were being piled, and sought the lonely places. . . . + +I remember very clearly sitting on a gate beyond the park, in a +fold just below the crest, that hid the Beacon Hill bonfire and its +crowd, and I was looking at and admiring the sunset. The golden +earth and sky seemed like a little bubble that floated in the globe +of human futility. . . . Then in the twilight I walked along an +unknown, bat-haunted road between high hedges. + +I did not sleep under a roof that night. But I hungered and ate. +I ate near midnight at a little inn over toward Birmingham, and +miles away from my home. Instinctively I had avoided the crests +where the bonfire crowds gathered, but here there were many people, +and I had to share a table with a man who had some useless mortgage +deeds to burn. I talked to him about them--but my soul +stood at a great distance behind my lips. . . . + +Soon each hilltop bore a little tulip-shaped flame flower. Little +black figures clustered round and dotted the base of its petals, +and as for the rest of the multitude abroad, the kindly night +swallowed them up. By leaving the roads and clear paths and wandering +in the fields I contrived to keep alone, though the confused noise +of voices and the roaring and crackling of great fires was always +near me. + +I wandered into a lonely meadow, and presently in a hollow of +deep shadows I lay down to stare at the stars. I lay hidden in the +darkness, and ever and again the sough and uproar of the Beltane +fires that were burning up the sere follies of a vanished age, and +the shouting of the people passing through the fires and praying to +be delivered from the prison of themselves, reached my ears. . . . + +And I thought of my mother, and then of my new loneliness and the +hunger of my heart for Nettie. + +I thought of many things that night, but chiefly of the overflowing +personal love and tenderness that had come to me in the wake of +the Change, of the greater need, the unsatisfied need in which I +stood, for this one person who could fulfil all my desires. So long +as my mother had lived, she had in a measure held my heart, given +me a food these emotions could live upon, and mitigated that emptiness +of spirit, but now suddenly that one possible comfort had left me. +There had been many at the season of the Change who had thought that +this great enlargement of mankind would abolish personal love; but +indeed it had only made it finer, fuller, more vitally necessary. +They had thought that, seeing men now were all full of the joyful +passion to make and do, and glad and loving and of willing service +to all their fellows, there would be no need of the one intimate +trusting communion that had been the finest thing of the former +life. And indeed, so far as this was a matter of advantage and +the struggle for existence, they were right. But so far as it was +a matter of the spirit and the fine perceptions of life, it was +altogether wrong. + +We had indeed not eliminated personal love, we had but stripped it +of its base wrappings, of its pride, its suspicions, its mercenary +and competitive elements, until at last it stood up in our minds +stark, shining and invincible. Through all the fine, divaricating +ways of the new life, it grew ever more evident, there were for +every one certain persons, mysteriously and indescribably in the +key of one's self, whose mere presence gave pleasure, whose mere +existence was interest, whose idiosyncrasy blended with accident +to make a completing and predominant harmony for their predestined +lovers. They were the essential thing in life. Without them the +fine brave show of the rejuvenated world was a caparisoned steed +without a rider, a bowl without a flower, a theater without a play. +. . . And to me that night of Beltane, it was as clear as white +flames that Nettie, and Nettie alone, roused those harmonies in +me. And she had gone! I had sent her from me; I knew not whither +she had gone. I had in my first virtuous foolishness cut her out +of my life for ever! + +So I saw it then, and I lay unseen in the darkness and called upon +Nettie, and wept for her, lay upon my face and wept for her, while +the glad people went to and fro, and the smoke streamed thick +across the distant stars, and the red reflections, the shadows and +the fluctuating glares, danced over the face of the world. + +No! the Change had freed us from our baser passions indeed, from +habitual and mechanical concupiscence and mean issues and coarse +imaginings, but from the passions of love it had not freed us. It +had but brought the lord of life, Eros, to his own. All through the +long sorrow of that night I, who had rejected him, confessed +his sway with tears and inappeasable regrets. . . . + +I cannot give the remotest guess of when I rose up, nor of +my tortuous wanderings in the valleys between the midnight fires, +nor how I evaded the laughing and rejoicing multitudes who went +streaming home between three and four, to resume their lives, swept +and garnished, stripped and clean. But at dawn, when the ashes of +the world's gladness were ceasing to glow--it was a bleak dawn that +made me shiver in my thin summer clothes--I came across a field +to a little copse full of dim blue hyacinths. A queer sense +of familiarity arrested my steps, and I stood puzzled. Then I was +moved to go a dozen paces from the path, and at once a singularly +misshapen tree hitched itself into a notch in my memory. This was +the place! Here I had stood, there I had placed my old kite, and +shot with my revolver, learning to use it, against the day when I +should encounter Verrall. + +Kite and revolver had gone now, and all my hot and narrow past, its +last vestiges had shriveled and vanished in the whirling gusts of +the Beltane fires. So I walked through a world of gray ashes at +last, back to the great house in which the dead, deserted image of +my dear lost mother lay. + + + +Section 3 + +I came back to Lowchester House very tired, very wretched; exhausted +by my fruitless longing for Nettie. I had no thought of what lay +before me. + +A miserable attraction drew me into the great house to look again +on the stillness that had been my mother's face, and as I came into +that room, Anna, who had been sitting by the open window, rose to +meet me. She had the air of one who waits. She, too, was pale with +watching; all night she had watched between the dead within and +the Beltane fires abroad, and longed for my coming. I stood +mute between her and the bedside. . . . + +"Willie," she whispered, and eyes and body seemed incarnate pity. + +An unseen presence drew us together. My mother's face became resolute, +commanding. I turned to Anna as a child may turn to its nurse. I +put my hands about her strong shoulders, she folded me to her, and +my heart gave way. I buried my face in her breast and clung +to her weakly, and burst into a passion of weeping. . . . + +She held me with hungry arms. She whispered to me, "There, there!" +as one whispers comfort to a child. . . . Suddenly she was kissing +me. She kissed me with a hungry intensity of passion, on my cheeks, +on my lips. She kissed me on my lips with lips that were +salt with tears. And I returned her kisses. . . . + +Then abruptly we desisted and stood apart--looking at one another. + + + +Section 4 + +It seems to me as if the intense memory of Nettie vanished utterly +out of my mind at the touch of Anna's lips. I loved Anna. + +We went to the council of our group--commune it was then called--and +she was given me in marriage, and within a year she had borne me +a son. We saw much of one another, and talked ourselves very close +together. My faithful friend she became and has been always, and +for a time we were passionate lovers. Always she has loved me and +kept my soul full of tender gratitude and love for her; always +when we met our hands and eyes clasped in friendly greeting, all +through our lives from that hour we have been each other's secure +help and refuge, each other's ungrudging fastness of help and sweetly +frank and open speech. . . . And after a little while my love and +desire for Nettie returned as though it had never faded away. + +No one will have a difficulty now in understanding how that could +be, but in the evil days of the world malaria, that would have been +held to be the most impossible thing. I should have had to crush +that second love out of my thoughts, to have kept it secret from +Anna, to have lied about it to all the world. The old-world theory +was there was only one love--we who float upon a sea of love find +that hard to understand. The whole nature of a man was supposed to +go out to the one girl or woman who possessed him, her whole nature +to go out to him. Nothing was left over--it was a discreditable +thing to have any overplus at all. They formed a secret secluded +system of two, two and such children as she bore him. All other +women he was held bound to find no beauty in, no sweetness, no +interest; and she likewise, in no other man. The old-time men and +women went apart in couples, into defensive little houses, like +beasts into little pits, and in these "homes" they sat down purposing +to love, but really coming very soon to jealous watching of this +extravagant mutual proprietorship. All freshness passed very +speedily out of their love, out of their conversation, all pride +out of their common life. To permit each other freedom was blank +dishonor. That I and Anna should love, and after our love-journey +together, go about our separate lives and dine at the public tables, +until the advent of her motherhood, would have seemed a terrible +strain upon our unmitigable loyalty. And that I should have it +in me to go on loving Nettie--who loved in different manner both +Verrall and me--would have outraged the very quintessence of the +old convention. + +In the old days love was a cruel proprietary thing. But now Anna +could let Nettie live in the world of my mind, as freely as a rose +will suffer the presence of white lilies. If I could hear notes that +were not in her compass, she was glad, because she loved me, that +I should listen to other music than hers. And she, too, could see +the beauty of Nettie. Life is so rich and generous now, giving +friendship, and a thousand tender interests and helps and comforts, that +no one stints another of the full realization of all possibilities +of beauty. For me from the beginning Nettie was the figure of beauty, +the shape and color of the divine principle that lights the world. +For every one there are certain types, certain faces and forms, +gestures, voices and intonations that have that inexplicable +unanalyzable quality. These come through the crowd of kindly friendly +fellow-men and women--one's own. These touch one mysteriously, stir +deeps that must otherwise slumber, pierce and interpret the world. +To refuse this interpretation is to refuse the sun, to darken and +deaden all life. . . . I loved Nettie, I loved all who were like +her, in the measure that they were like her, in voice, or eyes, or +form, or smile. And between my wife and me there was no bitterness +that the great goddess, the life-giver, Aphrodite, Queen of the +living Seas, came to my imagination so. It qualified our mutual +love not at all, since now in our changed world love is unstinted; +it is a golden net about our globe that nets all humanity together. + +I thought of Nettie much, and always movingly beautiful things +restored me to her, all fine music, all pure deep color, all +tender and solemn things. The stars were hers, and the mystery of +moonlight; the sun she wore in her hair, powdered finely, beaten +into gleams and threads of sunlight in the wisps and strands of her +hair. . . . Then suddenly one day a letter came to me from her, in +her unaltered clear handwriting, but in a new language of expression, +telling me many things. She had learnt of my mother's death, and +the thought of me had grown so strong as to pierce the silence I +had imposed on her. We wrote to one another --like common friends +with a certain restraint between us at first, and with a great +longing to see her once more arising in my heart. For a time I left +that hunger unexpressed, and then I was moved to tell it to her. And +so on New Year's Day in the Year Four, she came to Lowchester and +me. How I remember that coming, across the gulf of fifty years! I +went out across the park to meet her, so that we should meet alone. +The windless morning was clear and cold, the ground new carpeted +with snow, and all the trees motionless lace and glitter of frosty +crystals. The rising sun had touched the white with a spirit +of gold, and my heart beat and sang within me. I remember now the +snowy shoulder of the down, sunlit against the bright blue sky. And +presently I saw the woman I loved coming through the white +still trees. . . . + +I had made a goddess of Nettie, and behold she was a fellow-creature! +She came, warm-wrapped and tremulous, to me, with the tender promise +of tears in her eyes, with her hands outstretched and that dear +smile quivering upon her lips. She stepped out of the dream I had +made of her, a thing of needs and regrets and human kindliness. Her +hands as I took them were a little cold. The goddess shone through +her indeed, glowed in all her body, she was a worshipful temple of +love for me--yes. But I could feel, like a thing new discovered, +the texture and sinews of her living, her dear personal +and mortal hands. . . . + + + + +THE EPILOGUE + +THE WINDOW OF THE TOWER + + + +THE EPILOGUE + +THE WINDOW OF THE TOWER + +This was as much as this pleasant-looking, gray-haired man +had written. I had been lost in his story throughout the earlier +portions of it, forgetful of the writer and his gracious room, and +the high tower in which he was sitting. But gradually, as I drew +near the end, the sense of strangeness returned to me. It was more +and more evident to me that this was a different humanity from any +I had known, unreal, having different customs, different beliefs, +different interpretations, different emotions. It was no mere change +in conditions and institutions the comet had wrought. It had made +a change of heart and mind. In a manner it had dehumanized the +world, robbed it of its spites, its little intense jealousies, its +inconsistencies, its humor. At the end, and particularly after +the death of his mother, I felt his story had slipped away from my +sympathies altogether. Those Beltane fires had burnt something in +him that worked living still and unsubdued in me, that rebelled in +particular at that return of Nettie. I became a little inattentive. +I no longer felt with him, nor gathered a sense of complete +understanding from his phrases. His Lord Eros indeed! He and these +transfigured people--they were beautiful and noble people, like the +people one sees in great pictures, like the gods of noble sculpture, +but they had no nearer fellowship than these to men. As the change +was realized, with every stage of realization the gulf widened and +it was harder to follow his words. + +I put down the last fascicle of all, and met his friendly eyes. It +was hard to dislike him. + +I felt a subtle embarrassment in putting the question that perplexed +me. And yet it seemed so material to me I had to put it. "And did +you--?" I asked. "Were you--lovers?" + +His eyebrows rose. "Of course." + +"But your wife--?" + +It was manifest he did not understand me. + +I hesitated still more. I was perplexed by a conviction of baseness. +"But--" I began. "You remained lovers?" + +"Yes." I had grave doubts if I understood him. Or he me. + +I made a still more courageous attempt. "And had Nettie no other +lovers?" + +"A beautiful woman like that! I know not how many loved beauty in +her, nor what she found in others. But we four from that time were +very close, you understand, we were friends, helpers, personal +lovers in a world of lovers." + +"Four?" + +"There was Verrall." + +Then suddenly it came to me that the thoughts that stirred in my mind +were sinister and base, that the queer suspicions, the coarseness +and coarse jealousies of my old world were over and done for these +more finely living souls. "You made," I said, trying to be liberal +minded, "a home together." + +"A home!" He looked at me, and, I know not why, I glanced down at +my feet. What a clumsy, ill-made thing a boot is, and how hard and +colorless seemed my clothing! How harshly I stood out amidst these +fine, perfected things. I had a moment of rebellious detestation. +I wanted to get out of all this. After all, it wasn't my style. I +wanted intensely to say something that would bring him down a peg, +make sure, as it were, of my suspicions by launching an offensive +accusation. I looked up and he was standing. + +"I forgot," he said. "You are pretending the old world is still +going on. A home!" + +He put out his hand, and quite noiselessly the great window widened +down to us, and the splendid nearer prospect of that dreamland city +was before me. There for one clear moment I saw it; its galleries +and open spaces, its trees of golden fruit and crystal waters, +its music and rejoicing, love and beauty without ceasing flowing +through its varied and intricate streets. And the nearer people I +saw now directly and plainly, and no longer in the distorted mirror +that hung overhead. They really did not justify my suspicions, and +yet--! They were such people as one sees on earth--save that they +were changed. How can I express that change? As a woman is changed +in the eyes of her lover, as a woman is changed by the +love of a lover. They were exalted. . . . + +I stood up beside him and looked out. I was a little flushed, my +ears a little reddened, by the inconvenience of my curiosities, +and by my uneasy sense of profound moral differences. He +was taller than I. . . . + +"This is our home," he said smiling, and with thoughtful eyes on me. + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg etext of In the Days of the Comet by H. G. Wells + diff --git a/old/incom10.zip b/old/incom10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..01b2ef3 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/incom10.zip |
