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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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