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diff --git a/old/3797.txt b/old/3797.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..14670c1 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/3797.txt @@ -0,0 +1,9744 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of In the Days of the Comet, by H. G. Wells + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net + + +Title: In the Days of the Comet + +Author: H. G. Wells + +Release Date: October 25, 2004 [EBook #3797] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IN THE DAYS OF THE COMET *** + + + + +This etext was produced by Judy Boss. + + + + + + + +IN THE DAYS OF THE COMET + +BY H. G. WELLS + + + + + "The World's Great Age begins anew, + The Golden Years return, + The Earth doth like a Snake renew + Her Winter Skin outworn: + Heaven smiles, and Faiths and Empires gleam + Like Wrecks of a Dissolving Dream." + + + + + +CONTENTS + +PROLOGUE + + PAGE + +THE MAN WHO WROTE IN THE TOWER . . . 3 + + +BOOK THE FIRST + +THE COMET + +CHAPTER + + I. DUST IN THE SHADOWS . . . . . . 9 + II. NETTIE . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 +III. THE REVOLVER . . . . . . . . . 89 + IV. WAR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152 + V. THE PURSUIT OF THE TWO LOVERS . . 184 + + +BOOK THE SECOND + +THE GREEN VAPORS + + I. THE CHANGE . . . . . . . . . 221 + II. THE AWAKENING . . . . . . . . . 252 +III. THE CABINET COUNCIL . . . . . . . 279 + + +BOOK THE THIRD + +THE NEW WORLD + +CHAPTER PAGE + + I. LOVE AFTER THE CHANGE . . . . . . 303 + II. MY MOTHER'S LAST DAYS . . . . . . 335 +III. BELTANE AND NEW YEAR'S EVE . . . 353 + + +EPILOGUE + +THE WINDOW OF THE TOWER . . . . . . . 375 + + + + + +IN THE DAYS OF THE COMET + +PROLOGUE + +THE MAN WHO WROTE IN THE TOWER + + +I SAW a gray-haired man, a figure of hale age, sitting at a desk +and writing. + +He seemed to be in a room in a tower, very high, so that through +the tall window on his left one perceived only distances, a remote +horizon of sea, a headland and that vague haze and glitter in the +sunset that many miles away marks a city. All the appointments of +this room were orderly and beautiful, and in some subtle quality, +in this small difference and that, new to me and strange. They were +in no fashion I could name, and the simple costume the man wore +suggested neither period nor country. It might, I thought, be the +Happy Future, or Utopia, or the Land of Simple Dreams; an errant +mote of memory, Henry James's phrase and story of "The Great Good +Place," twinkled across my mind, and passed and left no light. + +The man I saw wrote with a thing like a fountain pen, a modern touch +that prohibited any historical retrospection, and as he finished +each sheet, writing in an easy flowing hand, he added it to a growing +pile upon a graceful little table under the window. His last done +sheets lay loose, partly covering others that were clipped together +into fascicles. + +Clearly he was unaware of my presence, and I stood waiting until +his pen should come to a pause. Old as he certainly was +he wrote with a steady hand. . . . + +I discovered that a concave speculum hung slantingly high over his +head; a movement in this caught my attention sharply, and I looked +up to see, distorted and made fantastic but bright and beautifully +colored, the magnified, reflected, evasive rendering of a palace, +of a terrace, of the vista of a great roadway with many people, +people exaggerated, impossible-looking because of the curvature of +the mirror, going to and fro. I turned my head quickly that I might +see more clearly through the window behind me, but it was too high +for me to survey this nearer scene directly, and after a momentary +pause I came back to that distorting mirror again. + +But now the writer was leaning back in his chair. He put down his +pen and sighed the half resentful sigh--"ah! you, work, you! how +you gratify and tire me!"--of a man who has been writing to his +satisfaction. + +"What is this place," I asked, "and who are you?" + +He looked around with the quick movement of surprise. + +"What is this place?" I repeated, "and where am I?" + +He regarded me steadfastly for a moment under his wrinkled brows, +and then his expression softened to a smile. He pointed to a chair +beside the table. "I am writing," he said. + +"About this?" + +"About the change." + +I sat down. It was a very comfortable chair, and well placed under +the light. + +"If you would like to read--" he said. + +I indicated the manuscript. "This explains?" I asked. + +"That explains," he answered. + +He drew a fresh sheet of paper toward him as he looked at me. + +I glanced from him about his apartment and back to the little +table. A fascicle marked very distinctly "1" caught my attention, +and I took it up. I smiled in his friendly eyes. "Very well," said +I, suddenly at my ease, and he nodded and went on writing. And in +a mood between confidence and curiosity, I began to read. + +This is the story that happy, active-looking old man in that pleasant +place had written. + + + + + +BOOK THE FIRST + +THE COMET + + + + +CHAPTER THE FIRST + +DUST IN THE SHADOWS + + + +Section 1 + +I HAVE set myself to write the story of the Great Change, so far +as it has affected my own life and the lives of one or two people +closely connected with me, primarily to please myself. + +Long ago in my crude unhappy youth, I conceived the desire of +writing a book. To scribble secretly and dream of authorship was +one of my chief alleviations, and I read with a sympathetic envy +every scrap I could get about the world of literature and the +lives of literary people. It is something, even amidst this present +happiness, to find leisure and opportunity to take up and partially +realize these old and hopeless dreams. But that alone, in a world +where so much of vivid and increasing interest presents itself to +be done, even by an old man, would not, I think, suffice to set +me at this desk. I find some such recapitulation of my past as +this will involve, is becoming necessary to my own secure mental +continuity. The passage of years brings a man at last to retrospection; +at seventy-two one's youth is far more important than it was at +forty. And I am out of touch with my youth. The old life seems so +cut off from the new, so alien and so unreasonable, that at times +I find it bordering upon the incredible. The data have gone, the +buildings and places. I stopped dead the other afternoon in my walk +across the moor, where once the dismal outskirts of Swathinglea +straggled toward Leet, and asked, "Was it here indeed that I +crouched among the weeds and refuse and broken crockery and loaded +my revolver ready for murder? Did ever such a thing happen in my +life? Was such a mood and thought and intention ever possible to +me? Rather, has not some queer nightmare spirit out of dreamland +slipped a pseudo-memory into the records of my vanished life?" +There must be many alive still who have the same perplexities. And +I think too that those who are now growing up to take our places +in the great enterprise of mankind, will need many such narratives +as mine for even the most partial conception of the old world +of shadows that came before our day. It chances too that my case +is fairly typical of the Change; I was caught midway in a gust +of passion; and a curious accident put me for a time in the very +nucleus of the new order. + +My memory takes me back across the interval of fifty years to a +little ill-lit room with a sash window open to a starry sky, and +instantly there returns to me the characteristic smell of that +room, the penetrating odor of an ill-trimmed lamp, burning cheap +paraffin. Lighting by electricity had then been perfected for fifteen +years, but still the larger portion of the world used these lamps. +All this first scene will go, in my mind at least, to that olfactory +accompaniment. That was the evening smell of the room. By day +it had a more subtle aroma, a closeness, a peculiar sort of faint +pungency that I associate--I know not why--with dust. + +Let me describe this room to you in detail. It was perhaps eight +feet by seven in area and rather higher than either of these +dimensions; the ceiling was of plaster, cracked and bulging in +places, gray with the soot of the lamp, and in one place discolored +by a system of yellow and olive-green stains caused by the percolation +of damp from above. The walls were covered with dun-colored paper, +upon which had been printed in oblique reiteration a crimson shape, +something of the nature of a curly ostrich feather, or an acanthus +flower, that had in its less faded moments a sort of dingy gaiety. +There were several big plaster-rimmed wounds in this, caused by +Parload's ineffectual attempts to get nails into the wall, whereby +there might hang pictures. One nail had hit between two bricks and +got home, and from this depended, sustained a little insecurely +by frayed and knotted blind-cord, Parload's hanging bookshelves, +planks painted over with a treacly blue enamel and further decorated +by a fringe of pinked American cloth insecurely fixed by tacks. Below +this was a little table that behaved with a mulish vindictiveness +to any knee that was thrust beneath it suddenly; it was covered +with a cloth whose pattern of red and black had been rendered less +monotonous by the accidents of Parload's versatile ink bottle, and +on it, leit motif of the whole, stood and stank the lamp. This lamp, +you must understand, was of some whitish translucent substance that +was neither china nor glass, it had a shade of the same substance, +a shade that did not protect the eyes of a reader in any measure, +and it seemed admirably adapted to bring into pitiless prominence +the fact that, after the lamp's trimming, dust and paraffin had +been smeared over its exterior with a reckless generosity. + +The uneven floor boards of this apartment were covered with scratched +enamel of chocolate hue, on which a small island of frayed carpet +dimly blossomed in the dust and shadows. + +There was a very small grate, made of cast-iron in one piece and +painted buff, and a still smaller misfit of a cast-iron fender +that confessed the gray stone of the hearth. No fire was laid, only +a few scraps of torn paper and the bowl of a broken corn-cob pipe +were visible behind the bars, and in the corner and rather thrust +away was an angular japanned coal-box with a damaged hinge. It +was the custom in those days to warm every room separately from a +separate fireplace, more prolific of dirt than heat, and the rickety +sash window, the small chimney, and the loose-fitting door were +expected to organize the ventilation of the room among themselves +without any further direction. + +Parload's truckle bed hid its gray sheets beneath an old patchwork +counterpane on one side of the room, and veiled his boxes and +suchlike oddments, and invading the two corners of the window were +an old whatnot and the washhandstand, on which were distributed +the simple appliances of his toilet. + +This washhandstand had been made of deal by some one with an +excess of turnery appliances in a hurry, who had tried to distract +attention from the rough economies of his workmanship by an arresting +ornamentation of blobs and bulbs upon the joints and legs. Apparently +the piece had then been placed in the hands of some person of +infinite leisure equipped with a pot of ocherous paint, varnish, +and a set of flexible combs. This person had first painted the +article, then, I fancy, smeared it with varnish, and then sat down +to work with the combs to streak and comb the varnish into a weird +imitation of the grain of some nightmare timber. The washhandstand so +made had evidently had a prolonged career of violent use, had been +chipped, kicked, splintered, punched, stained, scorched, hammered, +dessicated, damped, and defiled, had met indeed with almost every +possible adventure except a conflagration or a scrubbing, until at +last it had come to this high refuge of Parload's attic to sustain +the simple requirements of Parload's personal cleanliness. There +were, in chief, a basin and a jug of water and a slop-pail of tin, +and, further, a piece of yellow soap in a tray, a tooth-brush, a +rat-tailed shaving brush, one huckaback towel, and one or two other +minor articles. In those days only very prosperous people had more +than such an equipage, and it is to be remarked that every drop +of water Parload used had to be carried by an unfortunate servant +girl,--the "slavey," Parload called her--up from the basement to +the top of the house and subsequently down again. Already we begin +to forget how modern an invention is personal cleanliness. It is a +fact that Parload had never stripped for a swim in his life; never +had a simultaneous bath all over his body since his childhood. Not +one in fifty of us did in the days of which I am telling you. + +A chest, also singularly grained and streaked, of two large and +two small drawers, held Parload's reserve of garments, and pegs +on the door carried his two hats and completed this inventory +of a "bed-sitting-room" as I knew it before the Change. But I had +forgotten--there was also a chair with a "squab" that apologized +inadequately for the defects of its cane seat. I forgot that for +the moment because I was sitting on the chair on the occasion that +best begins this story. + +I have described Parload's room with such particularity because it +will help you to understand the key in which my earlier chapters +are written, but you must not imagine that this singular equipment +or the smell of the lamp engaged my attention at that time to the +slightest degree. I took all this grimy unpleasantness as if it +were the most natural and proper setting for existence imaginable. +It was the world as I knew it. My mind was entirely occupied then +by graver and intenser matters, and it is only now in the distant +retrospect that I see these details of environment as being +remarkable, as significant, as indeed obviously the outward visible +manifestations of the old world disorder in our hearts. + + + +Section 2 + +Parload stood at the open window, opera-glass in hand, and sought +and found and was uncertain about and lost again, the new comet. + +I thought the comet no more than a nuisance then because I wanted +to talk of other matters. But Parload was full of it. My head was +hot, I was feverish with interlacing annoyances and bitterness, +I wanted to open my heart to him--at least I wanted to relieve my +heart by some romantic rendering of my troubles--and I gave but +little heed to the things he told me. It was the first time I had +heard of this new speck among the countless specks of heaven, and +I did not care if I never heard of the thing again. + +We were two youths much of an age together, Parload was two and +twenty, and eight months older than I. He was--I think his proper +definition was "engrossing clerk" to a little solicitor in Overcastle, +while I was third in the office staff of Rawdon's pot-bank in +Clayton. We had met first in the "Parliament" of the Young Men's +Christian Association of Swathinglea; we had found we attended +simultaneous classes in Overcastle, he in science and I in shorthand, +and had started a practice of walking home together, and so our +friendship came into being. (Swathinglea, Clayton, and Overcastle +were contiguous towns, I should mention, in the great industrial +area of the Midlands.) We had shared each other's secret of religious +doubt, we had confided to one another a common interest in Socialism, +he had come twice to supper at my mother's on a Sunday night, and +I was free of his apartment. He was then a tall, flaxen-haired, +gawky youth, with a disproportionate development of neck and wrist, +and capable of vast enthusiasm; he gave two evenings a week to +the evening classes of the organized science school in Overcastle, +physiography was his favorite "subject," and through this insidious +opening of his mind the wonder of outer space had come to take +possession of his soul. He had commandeered an old opera-glass +from his uncle who farmed at Leet over the moors, he had bought a +cheap paper planisphere and Whitaker's Almanac, and for a time day +and moonlight were mere blank interruptions to the one satisfactory +reality in his life--star-gazing. It was the deeps that had seized +him, the immensities, and the mysterious possibilities that might +float unlit in that unplumbed abyss. With infinite labor and the +help of a very precise article in The Heavens, a little monthly +magazine that catered for those who were under this obsession, he +had at last got his opera-glass upon the new visitor to our system +from outer space. He gazed in a sort of rapture upon that quivering +little smudge of light among the shining pin-points--and gazed. My +troubles had to wait for him. + +"Wonderful," he sighed, and then as though his first emphasis did +not satisfy him, "wonderful!" + +He turned to me. "Wouldn't you like to see?" + +I had to look, and then I had to listen, how that this scarce-visible +intruder was to be, was presently to be, one of the largest comets +this world has ever seen, how that its course must bring it within +at most--so many score of millions of miles from the earth, a mere +step, Parload seemed to think that; how that the spectroscope was +already sounding its chemical secrets, perplexed by the unprecedented +band in the green, how it was even now being photographed in the +very act of unwinding--in an unusual direction--a sunward tail +(which presently it wound up again), and all the while in a sort +of undertow I was thinking first of Nettie Stuart and the letter +she had just written me, and then of old Rawdon's detestable face +as I had seen it that afternoon. Now I planned answers to Nettie +and now belated repartees to my employer, and then again "Nettie" +was blazing all across the background of my thoughts. . . . + +Nettie Stuart was daughter of the head gardener of the rich Mr. +Verrall's widow, and she and I had kissed and become sweethearts +before we were eighteen years old. My mother and hers were second +cousins and old schoolfellows, and though my mother had been widowed +untimely by a train accident, and had been reduced to letting lodgings +(she was the Clayton curate's landlady), a position esteemed much +lower than that of Mrs. Stuart, a kindly custom of occasional +visits to the gardener's cottage at Checkshill Towers still kept +the friends in touch. Commonly I went with her. And I remember it +was in the dusk of one bright evening in July, one of those long +golden evenings that do not so much give way to night as admit at +last, upon courtesy, the moon and a choice retinue of stars, that +Nettie and I, at the pond of goldfish where the yew-bordered walks +converged, made our shy beginners' vow. I remember still--something +will always stir in me at that memory--the tremulous emotion of +that adventure. Nettie was dressed in white, her hair went off in +waves of soft darkness from above her dark shining eyes; there was +a little necklace of pearls about her sweetly modeled neck, and +a little coin of gold that nestled in her throat. I kissed her +half-reluctant lips, and for three years of my life thereafter--nay! +I almost think for all the rest of her life and mine--I could have +died for her sake. + +You must understand--and every year it becomes increasingly difficult +to understand--how entirely different the world was then from what +it is now. It was a dark world; it was full of preventable disorder, +preventable diseases, and preventable pain, of harshness and stupid +unpremeditated cruelties; but yet, it may be even by virtue of +the general darkness, there were moments of a rare and evanescent +beauty that seem no longer possible in my experience. The +great Change has come for ever more, happiness and beauty are our +atmosphere, there is peace on earth and good will to all men. None +would dare to dream of returning to the sorrows of the former time, +and yet that misery was pierced, ever and again its gray curtain was +stabbed through and through by joys of an intensity, by perceptions +of a keenness that it seems to me are now altogether gone out +of life. Is it the Change, I wonder, that has robbed life of its +extremes, or is it perhaps only this, that youth has left me--even +the strength of middle years leaves me now--and taken its despairs +and raptures, leaving me judgment, perhaps, sympathy, memories? + +I cannot tell. One would need to be young now and to have been +young then as well, to decide that impossible problem. + +Perhaps a cool observer even in the old days would have found little +beauty in our grouping. I have our two photographs at hand in this +bureau as I write, and they show me a gawky youth in ill-fitting +ready-made clothing, and Nettie--Indeed Nettie is badly dressed, +and her attitude is more than a little stiff; but I can see her +through the picture, and her living brightness and something of +that mystery of charm she had for me, comes back again to my mind. +Her face has triumphed over the photographer--or I would long ago +have cast this picture away. + +The reality of beauty yields itself to no words. I wish that I had +the sister art and could draw in my margin something that escapes +description. There was a sort of gravity in her eyes. There was +something, a matter of the minutest difference, about her upper +lip so that her mouth closed sweetly and broke very sweetly to a +smile. That grave, sweet smile! + +After we had kissed and decided not to tell our parents for awhile +of the irrevocable choice we had made, the time came for us to part, +shyly and before others, and I and my mother went off back across +the moonlit park--the bracken thickets rustling with startled deer--to +the railway station at Checkshill and so to our dingy basement in +Clayton, and I saw no more of Nettie--except that I saw her in my +thoughts--for nearly a year. But at our next meeting it was decided +that we must correspond, and this we did with much elaboration +of secrecy, for Nettie would have no one at home, not even her +only sister, know of her attachment. So I had to send my precious +documents sealed and under cover by way of a confidential schoolfellow +of hers who lived near London. . . . I could write that address +down now, though house and street and suburb have gone beyond any +man's tracing. + +Our correspondence began our estrangement, because for the first +time we came into more than sensuous contact and our minds sought +expression. + +Now you must understand that the world of thought in those days was +in the strangest condition, it was choked with obsolete inadequate +formulae, it was tortuous to a maze-like degree with secondary +contrivances and adaptations, suppressions, conventions, and +subterfuges. Base immediacies fouled the truth on every man's +lips. I was brought up by my mother in a quaint old-fashioned narrow +faith in certain religious formulae, certain rules of conduct, +certain conceptions of social and political order, that had no more +relevance to the realities and needs of everyday contemporary life +than if they were clean linen that had been put away with lavender +in a drawer. Indeed, her religion did actually smell of lavender; +on Sundays she put away all the things of reality, the garments and +even the furnishings of everyday, hid her hands, that were gnarled +and sometimes chapped with scrubbing, in black, carefully mended +gloves, assumed her old black silk dress and bonnet and took me, +unnaturally clean and sweet also, to church. There we sang and +bowed and heard sonorous prayers and joined in sonorous responses, +and rose with a congregational sigh refreshed and relieved when the +doxology, with its opening "Now to God the Father, God the Son," +bowed out the tame, brief sermon. There was a hell in that religion +of my mother's, a red-haired hell of curly flames that had once +been very terrible; there was a devil, who was also ex officio the +British King's enemy, and much denunciation of the wicked lusts +of the flesh; we were expected to believe that most of our poor +unhappy world was to atone for its muddle and trouble here by +suffering exquisite torments for ever after, world without end, +Amen. But indeed those curly flames looked rather jolly. The whole +thing had been mellowed and faded into a gentle unreality long +before my time; if it had much terror even in my childhood I have +forgotten it, it was not so terrible as the giant who was killed +by the Beanstalk, and I see it all now as a setting for my poor +old mother's worn and grimy face, and almost lovingly as a part +of her. And Mr. Gabbitas, our plump little lodger, strangely +transformed in his vestments and lifting his voice manfully to +the quality of those Elizabethan prayers, seemed, I think, to give +her a special and peculiar interest with God. She radiated her +own tremulous gentleness upon Him, and redeemed Him from all the +implications of vindictive theologians; she was in truth, had I +but perceived it, the effectual answer to all she would have taught +me. + +So I see it now, but there is something harsh in the earnest +intensity of youth, and having at first taken all these things quite +seriously, the fiery hell and God's vindictiveness at any neglect, +as though they were as much a matter of fact as Bladden's iron-works +and Rawdon's pot-bank, I presently with an equal seriousness flung +them out of my mind again. + +Mr. Gabbitas, you see, did sometimes, as the phrase went, "take +notice" of me, he had induced me to go on reading after I left +school, and with the best intentions in the world and to anticipate +the poison of the times, he had lent me Burble's "Scepticism +Answered," and drawn my attention to the library of the Institute +in Clayton. + +The excellent Burble was a great shock to me. It seemed clear from +his answers to the sceptic that the case for doctrinal orthodoxy +and all that faded and by no means awful hereafter, which I had +hitherto accepted as I accepted the sun, was an extremely poor +one, and to hammer home that idea the first book I got from the +Institute happened to be an American edition of the collected works +of Shelley, his gassy prose as well as his atmospheric verse. I was +soon ripe for blatant unbelief. And at the Young Men's Christian +Association I presently made the acquaintance of Parload, who told +me, under promises of the most sinister secrecy, that he was "a +Socialist out and out." He lent me several copies of a periodical +with the clamant title of The Clarion, which was just taking up a +crusade against the accepted religion. The adolescent years of any +fairly intelligent youth lie open, and will always lie healthily +open, to the contagion of philosophical doubts, of scorns and new +ideas, and I will confess I had the fever of that phase badly. Doubt, +I say, but it was not so much doubt--which is a complex thing--as +startled emphatic denial. "Have I believed THIS!" And I was also, +you must remember, just beginning love-letters to Nettie. + +We live now in these days, when the Great Change has been in most +things accomplished, in a time when every one is being educated to a +sort of intellectual gentleness, a gentleness that abates nothing +from our vigor, and it is hard to understand the stifled and +struggling manner in which my generation of common young men did +its thinking. To think at all about certain questions was an act +of rebellion that set one oscillating between the furtive and the +defiant. People begin to find Shelley--for all his melody--noisy +and ill conditioned now because his Anarchs have vanished, yet there +was a time when novel thought HAD to go to that tune of breaking +glass. It becomes a little difficult to imagine the yeasty state +of mind, the disposition to shout and say, "Yah!" at constituted +authority, to sustain a persistent note of provocation such as we +raw youngsters displayed. I began to read with avidity such writing +as Carlyle, Browning, and Heine have left for the perplexity +of posterity, and not only to read and admire but to imitate. My +letters to Nettie, after one or two genuinely intended displays of +perfervid tenderness, broke out toward theology, sociology, and the +cosmos in turgid and startling expressions. No doubt they puzzled +her extremely. + +I retain the keenest sympathy and something inexplicably near to +envy for my own departed youth, but I should find it difficult to +maintain my case against any one who would condemn me altogether as +having been a very silly, posturing, emotional hobbledehoy indeed +and quite like my faded photograph. And when I try to recall what +exactly must have been the quality and tenor of my more sustained +efforts to write memorably to my sweetheart, I confess I shiver. . . +Yet I wish they were not all destroyed. + +Her letters to me were simple enough, written in a roundish, +unformed hand and badly phrased. Her first two or three showed a +shy pleasure in the use of the word "dear," and I remember being +first puzzled and then, when I understood, delighted, because she +had written "Willie ASTHORE" under my name. "Asthore," I gathered, +meant "darling." But when the evidences of my fermentation began, +her answers were less happy. + +I will not weary you with the story of how we quarreled in our +silly youthful way, and how I went the next Sunday, all uninvited, +to Checkshill, and made it worse, and how afterward I wrote a letter +that she thought was "lovely," and mended the matter. Nor will I +tell of all our subsequent fluctuations of misunderstanding. Always +I was the offender and the final penitent until this last trouble +that was now beginning; and in between we had some tender near +moments, and I loved her very greatly. There was this misfortune +in the business, that in the darkness, and alone, I thought with +great intensity of her, of her eyes, of her touch, of her sweet +and delightful presence, but when I sat down to write I thought of +Shelley and Burns and myself, and other such irrelevant matters. +When one is in love, in this fermenting way, it is harder to make +love than it is when one does not love at all. And as for Nettie, +she loved, I know, not me but those gentle mysteries. It was not +my voice should rouse her dreams to passion. . . So our letters +continued to jar. Then suddenly she wrote me one doubting whether +she could ever care for any one who was a Socialist and did not +believe in Church, and then hard upon it came another note with +unexpected novelties of phrasing. She thought we were not suited +to each other, we differed so in tastes and ideas, she had long +thought of releasing me from our engagement. In fact, though I really +did not apprehend it fully at the first shock, I was dismissed. +Her letter had reached me when I came home after old Rawdon's none +too civil refusal to raise my wages. On this particular evening of +which I write, therefore, I was in a state of feverish adjustment +to two new and amazing, two nearly overwhelming facts, that I was +neither indispensable to Nettie nor at Rawdon's. And to talk of +comets! + +Where did I stand? + +I had grown so accustomed to think of Nettie as inseparably +mine--the whole tradition of "true love" pointed me to that--that +for her to face about with these precise small phrases toward +abandonment, after we had kissed and whispered and come so close +in the little adventurous familiarities of the young, shocked me +profoundly. I! I! And Rawdon didn't find me indispensable either. +I felt I was suddenly repudiated by the universe and threatened +with effacement, that in some positive and emphatic way I must at +once assert myself. There was no balm in the religion I had learnt, +or in the irreligion I had adopted, for wounded self-love. + +Should I fling up Rawdon's place at once and then in some extraordinary, +swift manner make the fortune of Frobisher's adjacent and closely +competitive pot-bank? + +The first part of that program, at any rate, would be easy of +accomplishment, to go to Rawdon and say, "You will hear from me +again," but for the rest, Frobisher might fail me. That, however, +was a secondary issue. The predominant affair was with Nettie. +I found my mind thick-shot with flying fragments of rhetoric that +might be of service in the letter I would write her. Scorn, irony, +tenderness--what was it to be? + +"Brother!" said Parload, suddenly. + +"What?" said I. + +"They're firing up at Bladden's iron-works, and the smoke comes +right across my bit of sky." + +The interruption came just as I was ripe to discharge my thoughts +upon him. + +"Parload," said I, "very likely I shall have to leave all this. Old +Rawdon won't give me a rise in my wages, and after having asked I +don't think I can stand going on upon the old terms anymore. See? +So I may have to clear out of Clayton for good and all." + + + +Section 3 + +That made Parload put down the opera-glass and look at me. + +"It's a bad time to change just now," he said after a little pause. + +Rawdon had said as much, in a less agreeable tone. + +But with Parload I felt always a disposition to the heroic note. +"I'm tired," I said, "of humdrum drudgery for other men. One may +as well starve one's body out of a place as to starve one's soul +in one." + +"I don't know about that altogether," began Parload, slowly. . . . + +And with that we began one of our interminable conversations, one +of those long, wandering, intensely generalizing, diffusely personal +talks that will be dear to the hearts of intelligent youths until +the world comes to an end. The Change has not abolished that, +anyhow. + +It would be an incredible feat of memory for me now to recall all +that meandering haze of words, indeed I recall scarcely any of it, +though its circumstances and atmosphere stand out, a sharp, clear +picture in my mind. I posed after my manner and behaved very foolishly +no doubt, a wounded, smarting egotist, and Parload played his part +of the philosopher preoccupied with the deeps. + +We were presently abroad, walking through the warm summer's night +and talking all the more freely for that. But one thing that I +said I can remember. "I wish at times," said I, with a gesture at +the heavens, "that comet of yours or some such thing would indeed +strike this world--and wipe us all away, strikes, wars, tumults, +loves, jealousies, and all the wretchedness of life!" + +"Ah!" said Parload, and the thought seemed to hang about him. + +"It could only add to the miseries of life," he said irrelevantly, +when presently I was discoursing of other things. + +"What would?" + +"Collision with a comet. It would only throw things back. It would +only make what was left of life more savage than it is at present." + +"But why should ANYTHING be left of life?" said I. . . . + +That was our style, you know, and meanwhile we walked together up +the narrow street outside his lodging, up the stepway and the lanes +toward Clayton Crest and the high road. + +But my memories carry me back so effectually to those days before +the Change that I forget that now all these places have been altered +beyond recognition, that the narrow street and the stepway and the +view from Clayton Crest, and indeed all the world in which I was +born and bred and made, has vanished clean away, out of space and +out of time, and wellnigh out of the imagination of all those who +are younger by a generation than I. You cannot see, as I can see, +the dark empty way between the mean houses, the dark empty way +lit by a bleary gas-lamp at the corner, you cannot feel the hard +checkered pavement under your boots, you cannot mark the dimly lit +windows here and there, and the shadows upon the ugly and often +patched and crooked blinds of the people cooped within. Nor can you +presently pass the beerhouse with its brighter gas and its queer, +screening windows, nor get a whiff of foul air and foul language +from its door, nor see the crumpled furtive figure--some rascal +child--that slinks past us down the steps. + +We crossed the longer street, up which a clumsy steam tram, vomiting +smoke and sparks, made its clangorous way, and adown which one +saw the greasy brilliance of shop fronts and the naphtha flares of +hawkers' barrows dripping fire into the night. A hazy movement of +people swayed along that road, and we heard the voice of an itinerant +preacher from a waste place between the houses. You cannot see these +things as I can see them, nor can you figure--unless you know the +pictures that great artist Hyde has left the world--the effect of +the great hoarding by which we passed, lit below by a gas-lamp and +towering up to a sudden sharp black edge against the pallid sky. + +Those hoardings! They were the brightest colored things in all +that vanished world. Upon them, in successive layers of paste and +paper, all the rough enterprises of that time joined in chromatic +discord; pill vendors and preachers, theaters and charities, +marvelous soaps and astonishing pickles, typewriting machines and +sewing machines, mingled in a sort of visualized clamor. And passing +that there was a muddy lane of cinders, a lane without a light, +that used its many puddles to borrow a star or so from the sky. We +splashed along unheeding as we talked. + +Then across the allotments, a wilderness of cabbages and evil-looking +sheds, past a gaunt abandoned factory, and so to the high road. +The high road ascended in a curve past a few houses and a beerhouse +or so, and round until all the valley in which four industrial +towns lay crowded and confluent was overlooked. + +I will admit that with the twilight there came a spell of weird +magnificence over all that land and brooded on it until dawn. The +horrible meanness of its details was veiled, the hutches that were +homes, the bristling multitudes of chimneys, the ugly patches of +unwilling vegetation amidst the makeshift fences of barrel-stave +and wire. The rusty scars that framed the opposite ridges where +the iron ore was taken and the barren mountains of slag from the +blast furnaces were veiled; the reek and boiling smoke and dust +from foundry, pot-bank, and furnace, transfigured and assimilated +by the night. The dust-laden atmosphere that was gray oppression +through the day became at sundown a mystery of deep translucent +colors, of blues and purples, of somber and vivid reds, of strange +bright clearnesses of green and yellow athwart the darkling sky. +Each upstart furnace, when its monarch sun had gone, crowned itself +with flames, the dark cinder heaps began to glow with quivering +fires, and each pot-bank squatted rebellious in a volcanic coronet of +light. The empire of the day broke into a thousand feudal baronies +of burning coal. The minor streets across the valley picked themselves +out with gas-lamps of faint yellow, that brightened and mingled at +all the principal squares and crossings with the greenish pallor of +incandescent mantles and the high cold glare of the electric arc. +The interlacing railways lifted bright signal-boxes over their +intersections, and signal stars of red and green in rectangular +constellations. The trains became articulated black serpents +breathing fire. + +Moreover, high overhead, like a thing put out of reach and near +forgotten, Parload had rediscovered a realm that was ruled by +neither sun nor furnace, the universe of stars. + +This was the scene of many a talk we two had held together. And +if in the daytime we went right over the crest and looked westward +there was farmland, there were parks and great mansions, the spire +of a distant cathedral, and sometimes when the weather was near +raining, the crests of remote mountains hung clearly in the sky. +Beyond the range of sight indeed, out beyond, there was Checkshill; +I felt it there always, and in the darkness more than I did by day. +Checkshill, and Nettie! + +And to us two youngsters as we walked along the cinder path beside +the rutted road and argued out our perplexities, it seemed that +this ridge gave us compendiously a view of our whole world. + +There on the one hand in a crowded darkness, about the ugly factories +and work-places, the workers herded together, ill clothed, ill +nourished, ill taught, badly and expensively served at every occasion +in life, uncertain even of their insufficient livelihood from day +to day, the chapels and churches and public-houses swelling up amidst +their wretched homes like saprophytes amidst a general corruption, +and on the other, in space, freedom, and dignity, scarce heeding +the few cottages, as overcrowded as they were picturesque, in which +the laborers festered, lived the landlords and masters who owned +pot-banks and forge and farm and mine. Far away, distant, beautiful, +irrelevant, from out of a little cluster of secondhand bookshops, +ecclesiastical residences, and the inns and incidentals of a decaying +market town, the cathedral of Lowchester pointed a beautiful, +unemphatic spire to vague incredible skies. So it seemed to us that +the whole world was planned in those youthful first impressions. + +We saw everything simple, as young men will. We had our angry, confident +solutions, and whosoever would criticize them was a friend of the +robbers. It was a clear case of robbery, we held, visibly so; there +in those great houses lurked the Landlord and the Capitalist, with +his scoundrel the Lawyer, with his cheat the Priest, and we others +were all the victims of their deliberate villainies. No doubt they +winked and chuckled over their rare wines, amidst their dazzling, +wickedly dressed women, and plotted further grinding for the faces +of the poor. And amidst all the squalor on the other hand, amidst +brutalities, ignorance, and drunkenness, suffered multitudinously +their blameless victim, the Working Man. And we, almost at the +first glance, had found all this out, it had merely to be asserted +now with sufficient rhetoric and vehemence to change the face +of the whole world. The Working Man would arise--in the form of a +Labor Party, and with young men like Parload and myself to represent +him--and come to his own, and then------? + +Then the robbers would get it hot, and everything would be extremely +satisfactory. + +Unless my memory plays me strange tricks that does no injustice +to the creed of thought and action that Parload and I held as the +final result of human wisdom. We believed it with heat, and rejected +with heat the most obvious qualification of its harshness. At +times in our great talks we were full of heady hopes for the near +triumph of our doctrine, more often our mood was hot resentment +at the wickedness and stupidity that delayed so plain and simple a +reconstruction of the order of the world. Then we grew malignant, +and thought of barricades and significant violence. I was very +bitter, I know, upon this night of which I am now particularly +telling, and the only face upon the hydra of Capitalism and Monopoly +that I could see at all clearly, smiled exactly as old Rawdon had +smiled when he refused to give me more than a paltry twenty shillings +a week. + +I wanted intensely to salve my self-respect by some revenge upon +him, and I felt that if that could be done by slaying the hydra, I +might drag its carcass to the feet of Nettie, and settle my other +trouble as well. "What do you think of me NOW, Nettie?" + +That at any rate comes near enough to the quality of my thinking, +then, for you to imagine how I gesticulated and spouted to Parload +that night. You figure us as little black figures, unprepossessing in +the outline, set in the midst of that desolating night of flaming +industrialism, and my little voice with a rhetorical twang +protesting, denouncing. . . . + +You will consider those notions of my youth poor silly violent +stuff; particularly if you are of the younger generation born since +the Change you will be of that opinion. Nowadays the whole world +thinks clearly, thinks with deliberation, pellucid certainties, you +find it impossible to imagine how any other thinking could have +been possible. Let me tell you then how you can bring yourself +to something like the condition of our former state. In the first +place you must get yourself out of health by unwise drinking and +eating, and out of condition by neglecting your exercise, then you +must contrive to be worried very much and made very anxious and +uncomfortable, and then you must work very hard for four or five +days and for long hours every day at something too petty to be +interesting, too complex to be mechanical, and without any personal +significance to you whatever. This done, get straightway into +a room that is not ventilated at all, and that is already full of +foul air, and there set yourself to think out some very complicated +problem. In a very little while you will find yourself in a state +of intellectual muddle, annoyed, impatient, snatching at the obvious +presently in choosing and rejecting conclusions haphazard. Try +to play chess under such conditions and you will play stupidly and +lose your temper. Try to do anything that taxes the brain or temper +and you will fail. + +Now, the whole world before the Change was as sick and feverish as +that, it was worried and overworked and perplexed by problems that +would not get stated simply, that changed and evaded solution, it +was in an atmosphere that had corrupted and thickened past breathing; +there was no thorough cool thinking in the world at all. There +was nothing in the mind of the world anywhere but half-truths, +hasty assumptions, hallucinations, and emotions. Nothing. . . . + +I know it seems incredible, that already some of the younger men +are beginning to doubt the greatness of the Change our world has +undergone, but read--read the newspapers of that time. Every age +becomes mitigated and a little ennobled in our minds as it recedes +into the past. It is the part of those who like myself have stories +of that time to tell, to supply, by a scrupulous spiritual realism, +some antidote to that glamour. + + + +Section 4 + +Always with Parload I was chief talker. + +I can look back upon myself with, I believe, an almost perfect +detachment, things have so changed that indeed now I am another +being, with scarce anything in common with that boastful foolish +youngster whose troubles I recall. I see him vulgarly theatrical, +egotistical, insincere, indeed I do not like him save with +that instinctive material sympathy that is the fruit of incessant +intimacy. Because he was myself I may be able to feel and write +understandingly about motives that will put him out of sympathy +with nearly every reader, but why should I palliate or defend his +quality? + +Always, I say, I did the talking, and it would have amazed me +beyond measure if any one had told me that mine was not the greater +intelligence in these wordy encounters. Parload was a quiet youth, +and stiff and restrained in all things, while I had that supreme +gift for young men and democracies, the gift of copious expression. +Parload I diagnosed in my secret heart as a trifle dull; he posed +as pregnant quiet, I thought, and was obsessed by the congenial +notion of "scientific caution." I did not remark that while my hands +were chiefly useful for gesticulation or holding a pen Parload's +hands could do all sorts of things, and I did not think therefore +that fibers must run from those fingers to something in his brain. +Nor, though I bragged perpetually of my shorthand, of my literature, +of my indispensable share in Rawdon's business, did Parload lay +stress on the conics and calculus he "mugged" in the organized +science school. Parload is a famous man now, a great figure in +a great time, his work upon intersecting radiations has broadened +the intellectual horizon of mankind for ever, and I, who am at best +a hewer of intellectual wood, a drawer of living water, can smile, +and he can smile, to think how I patronized and posed and jabbered +over him in the darkness of those early days. + +That night I was shrill and eloquent beyond measure. Rawdon was, of +course, the hub upon which I went round--Rawdon and the Rawdonesque +employer and the injustice of "wages slavery" and all the immediate +conditions of that industrial blind alley up which it seemed our +lives were thrust. But ever and again I glanced at other things. +Nettie was always there in the background of my mind, regarding +me enigmatically. It was part of my pose to Parload that I had +a romantic love-affair somewhere away beyond the sphere of our +intercourse, and that note gave a Byronic resonance to many of the +nonsensical things I produced for his astonishment. + +I will not weary you with too detailed an account of the talk of a +foolish youth who was also distressed and unhappy, and whose voice +was balm for the humiliations that smarted in his eyes. Indeed, +now in many particulars I cannot disentangle this harangue of which +I tell from many of the things I may have said in other talks to +Parload. For example, I forget if it was then or before or afterwards +that, as it were by accident, I let out what might be taken as an +admission that I was addicted to drugs. + +"You shouldn't do that," said Parload, suddenly. "It won't do to +poison your brains with that." + +My brains, my eloquence, were to be very important assets +to our party in the coming revolution. . . . + +But one thing does clearly belong to this particular conversation +I am recalling. When I started out it was quite settled in the back +of my mind that I must not leave Rawdon's. I simply wanted to abuse +my employer to Parload. But I talked myself quite out of touch +with all the cogent reasons there were for sticking to my place, +and I got home that night irrevocably committed to a spirited--not +to say a defiant--policy with my employer. + +"I can't stand Rawdon's much longer," I said to Parload by way of +a flourish. + +"There's hard times coming," said Parload. + +"Next winter." + +"Sooner. The Americans have been overproducing, and they mean to +dump. The iron trade is going to have convulsions." + +"I don't care. Pot-banks are steady." + +"With a corner in borax? No. I've heard--" + +"What have you heard?" + +"Office secrets. But it's no secret there's trouble coming to +potters. There's been borrowing and speculation. The masters don't +stick to one business as they used to do. I can tell that much. +Half the valley may be 'playing' before two months are out." Parload +delivered himself of this unusually long speech in his most pithy +and weighty manner. + +"Playing" was our local euphemism for a time when there was no work +and no money for a man, a time of stagnation and dreary hungry +loafing day after day. Such interludes seemed in those days a +necessary consequence of industrial organization. + +"You'd better stick to Rawdon's," said Parload. + +"Ugh," said I, affecting a noble disgust. + +"There'll be trouble," said Parload. + +"Who cares?" said I. "Let there be trouble--the more the better. +This system has got to end, sooner or later. These capitalists with +their speculation and corners and trusts make things go from bad to +worse. Why should I cower in Rawdon's office, like a frightened dog, +while hunger walks the streets? Hunger is the master revolutionary. +When he comes we ought to turn out and salute him. Anyway, I'M +going to do so now." + +"That's all very well," began Parload. + +"I'm tired of it," I said. "I want to come to grips with all these +Rawdons. I think perhaps if I was hungry and savage I could talk +to hungry men--" + +"There's your mother," said Parload, in his slow judicial way. + +That WAS a difficulty. + +I got over it by a rhetorical turn. "Why should one sacrifice +the future of the world--why should one even sacrifice one's own +future--because one's mother is totally destitute of imagination?" + + + +Section 5 + +It was late when I parted from Parload and came back to my own +home. + +Our house stood in a highly respectable little square near +the Clayton parish church. Mr. Gabbitas, the curate of all work, +lodged on our ground floor, and upstairs there was an old lady, +Miss Holroyd, who painted flowers on china and maintained her blind +sister in an adjacent room; my mother and I lived in the basement +and slept in the attics. The front of the house was veiled by +a Virginian creeper that defied the Clayton air and clustered in +untidy dependent masses over the wooden porch. + +As I came up the steps I had a glimpse of Mr. Gabbitas printing +photographs by candle light in his room. It was the chief delight +of his little life to spend his holiday abroad in the company of a +queer little snap-shot camera, and to return with a great multitude +of foggy and sinister negatives that he had made in beautiful and +interesting places. These the camera company would develop for him +on advantageous terms, and he would spend his evenings the year +through in printing from them in order to inflict copies upon his +undeserving friends. There was a long frameful of his work in the +Clayton National School, for example, inscribed in old English +lettering, "Italian Travel Pictures, by the Rev. E. B. Gabbitas." +For this it seemed he lived and traveled and had his being. It was +his only real joy. By his shaded light I could see his sharp little +nose, his little pale eyes behind his glasses, his mouth pursed up +with the endeavor of his employment. + +"Hireling Liar," I muttered, for was not he also part of the system, +part of the scheme of robbery that made wages serfs of Parload and +me?--though his share in the proceedings was certainly small. + +"Hireling Liar," said I, standing in the darkness, outside +even his faint glow of traveled culture. . . + +My mother let me in. + +She looked at me, mutely, because she knew there was something +wrong and that it was no use for her to ask what. + +"Good night, mummy," said I, and kissed her a little roughly, and +lit and took my candle and went off at once up the staircase to +bed, not looking back at her. + +"I've kept some supper for you, dear." + +"Don't want any supper." + +"But, dearie------" + +"Good night, mother," and I went up and slammed my door upon her, +blew out my candle, and lay down at once upon my bed, lay there a +long time before I got up to undress. + +There were times when that dumb beseeching of my mother's face +irritated me unspeakably. It did so that night. I felt I had to +struggle against it, that I could not exist if I gave way to its +pleadings, and it hurt me and divided me to resist it, almost beyond +endurance. It was clear to me that I had to think out for myself +religious problems, social problems, questions of conduct, questions +of expediency, that her poor dear simple beliefs could not help me +at all--and she did not understand! Hers was the accepted religion, +her only social ideas were blind submissions to the accepted +order--to laws, to doctors, to clergymen, lawyers, masters, and all +respectable persons in authority over us, and with her to believe +was to fear. She knew from a thousand little signs--though still at +times I went to church with her--that I was passing out of touch of +all these things that ruled her life, into some terrible unknown. +From things I said she could infer such clumsy concealments as I +made. She felt my socialism, felt my spirit in revolt against the +accepted order, felt the impotent resentments that filled me with +bitterness against all she held sacred. Yet, you know, it was not +her dear gods she sought to defend so much as me! She seemed always +to be wanting to say to me, "Dear, I know it's hard--but revolt +is harder. Don't make war on it, dear--don't! Don't do anything to +offend it. I'm sure it will hurt you if you do--it will hurt you +if you do." + +She had been cowed into submission, as so many women of that time +had been, by the sheer brutality of the accepted thing. The existing +order dominated her into a worship of abject observances. It had +bent her, aged her, robbed her of eyesight so that at fifty-five +she peered through cheap spectacles at my face, and saw it only +dimly, filled her with a habit of anxiety, made her hands------ +Her poor dear hands! Not in the whole world now could you find a +woman with hands so grimy, so needle-worn, so misshapen by toil, +so chapped and coarsened, so evilly entreated. . . . At any rate, +there is this I can say for myself, that my bitterness against the +world and fortune was for her sake as well as for my own. + +Yet that night I pushed by her harshly. I answered her curtly, +left her concerned and perplexed in the passage, and slammed my +door upon her. + +And for a long time I lay raging at the hardship and evil of life, +at the contempt of Rawdon, and the loveless coolness of Nettie's +letter, at my weakness and insignificance, at the things I found +intolerable, and the things I could not mend. Over and over went +my poor little brain, tired out and unable to stop on my treadmill +of troubles. Nettie. Rawdon. My mother. Gabbitas. Nettie. . . + +Suddenly I came upon emotional exhaustion. Some clock was striking +midnight. After all, I was young; I had these quick transitions. +I remember quite distinctly, I stood up abruptly, undressed very +quickly in the dark, and had hardly touched my pillow again before +I was asleep. + +But how my mother slept that night I do not know. + +Oddly enough, I do not blame myself for behaving like this to my +mother, though my conscience blames me acutely for my arrogance to +Parload. I regret my behavior to my mother before the days of the +Change, it is a scar among my memories that will always be a little +painful to the end of my days, but I do not see how something of +the sort was to be escaped under those former conditions. In that +time of muddle and obscurity people were overtaken by needs and +toil and hot passions before they had the chance of even a year or +so of clear thinking; they settled down to an intense and strenuous +application to some partial but immediate duty, and the growth of +thought ceased in them. They set and hardened into narrow ways. +Few women remained capable of a new idea after five and twenty, +few men after thirty-one or two. Discontent with the thing that +existed was regarded as immoral, it was certainly an annoyance, and +the only protest against it, the only effort against that universal +tendency in all human institutions to thicken and clog, to work +loosely and badly, to rust and weaken towards catastrophes, came +from the young--the crude unmerciful young. It seemed in those +days to thoughtful men the harsh law of being--that either we must +submit to our elders and be stifled, or disregard them, disobey them, +thrust them aside, and make our little step of progress before we +too ossified and became obstructive in our turn. + +My pushing past my mother, my irresponsive departure to my own +silent meditations, was, I now perceive, a figure of the whole hard +relationship between parents and son in those days. There appeared +no other way; that perpetually recurring tragedy was, it seemed, +part of the very nature of the progress of the world. We did not +think then that minds might grow ripe without growing rigid, or +children honor their parents and still think for themselves. We were +angry and hasty because we stifled in the darkness, in a poisoned +and vitiated air. That deliberate animation of the intelligence +which is now the universal quality, that vigor with consideration, +that judgment with confident enterprise which shine through all +our world, were things disintegrated and unknown in the corrupting +atmosphere of our former state. + + +(So the first fascicle ended. I put it aside and looked for the +second. + +"Well?" said the man who wrote. + +"This is fiction?" + +"It's my story." + +"But you-- Amidst this beauty-- You are not this ill-conditioned, +squalidly bred lad of whom I have been reading?" + +He smiled. "There intervenes a certain Change," he said. "Have I +not hinted at that?" + +I hesitated upon a question, then saw the second fascicle at hand, +and picked it up.) + + + + +CHAPTER THE SECOND + +NETTIE + + + +Section 1 + +I CANNOT now remember (the story resumed), what interval separated +that evening on which Parload first showed me the comet--I think +I only pretended to see it then--and the Sunday afternoon I spent +at Checkshill. + +Between the two there was time enough for me to give notice and +leave Rawdon's, to seek for some other situation very strenuously +in vain, to think and say many hard and violent things to my mother +and to Parload, and to pass through some phases of very profound +wretchedness. There must have been a passionate correspondence +with Nettie, but all the froth and fury of that has faded now out +of my memory. All I have clear now is that I wrote one magnificent +farewell to her, casting her off forever, and that I got in reply +a prim little note to say, that even if there was to be an end to +everything, that was no excuse for writing such things as I had done, +and then I think I wrote again in a vein I considered satirical. +To that she did not reply. That interval was at least three weeks, +and probably four, because the comet which had been on the first +occasion only a dubious speck in the sky, certainly visible only +when it was magnified, was now a great white presence, brighter +than Jupiter, and casting a shadow on its own account. It was +now actively present in the world of human thought, every one was +talking about it, every one was looking for its waxing splendor +as the sun went down--the papers, the music-halls, the hoardings, +echoed it. + +Yes; the comet was already dominant before I went over to make +everything clear to Nettie. And Parload had spent two hoarded pounds +in buying himself a spectroscope, so that he could see for himself, +night after night, that mysterious, that stimulating line--the +unknown line in the green. How many times I wonder did I look at +the smudgy, quivering symbol of the unknown things that were rushing +upon us out of the inhuman void, before I rebelled? But at last I +could stand it no longer, and I reproached Parload very bitterly +for wasting his time in "astronomical dilettantism." + +"Here," said I. "We're on the verge of the biggest lock-out in the +history of this countryside; here's distress and hunger coming, +here's all the capitalistic competitive system like a wound inflamed, +and you spend your time gaping at that damned silly streak of +nothing in the sky!" + +Parload stared at me. "Yes, I do," he said slowly, as though it +was a new idea. "Don't I? . . . I wonder why." + +"_I_ want to start meetings of an evening on Howden's Waste." + +"You think they'd listen?" + +"They'd listen fast enough now." + +"They didn't before," said Parload, looking at his pet instrument. + +"There was a demonstration of unemployed at Swathinglea on Sunday. +They got to stone throwing." + +Parload said nothing for a little while and I said several things. +He seemed to be considering something. + +"But, after all," he said at last, with an awkward movement towards +his spectroscope, "that does signify something." + +"The comet?" + +"Yes." + +"What can it signify? You don't want me to believe in astrology. +What does it matter what flames in the heavens--when men are starving +on earth?" + +"It's--it's science." + +"Science! What we want now is socialism--not science." + +He still seemed reluctant to give up his comet. + +"Socialism's all right," he said, "but if that thing up there WAS +to hit the earth it might matter." + +"Nothing matters but human beings." + +"Suppose it killed them all." + +"Oh," said I, "that's Rot," + +"I wonder," said Parload, dreadfully divided in his allegiance. + +He looked at the comet. He seemed on the verge of repeating his +growing information about the nearness of the paths of the earth +and comet, and all that might ensue from that. So I cut in with +something I had got out of a now forgotten writer called Ruskin, +a volcano of beautiful language and nonsensical suggestions, who +prevailed very greatly with eloquent excitable young men in those +days. Something it was about the insignificance of science and the +supreme importance of Life. Parload stood listening, half turned +towards the sky with the tips of his fingers on his spectroscope. +He seemed to come to a sudden decision. + +"No. I don't agree with you, Leadford," he said. "You don't understand +about science." + +Parload rarely argued with that bluntness of opposition. I was so +used to entire possession of our talk that his brief contradiction +struck me like a blow. "Don't agree with me!" I repeated. + +"No," said Parload + +"But how?" + +"I believe science is of more importance than socialism," he said. +"Socialism's a theory. Science--science is something more." + +And that was really all he seemed to be able to say. + +We embarked upon one of those queer arguments illiterate young men +used always to find so heating. Science or Socialism? It was, of +course, like arguing which is right, left handedness or a taste for +onions, it was altogether impossible opposition. But the range of +my rhetoric enabled me at last to exasperate Parload, and his mere +repudiation of my conclusions sufficed to exasperate me, and we +ended in the key of a positive quarrel. "Oh, very well!" said I. +"So long as I know where we are!" + +I slammed his door as though I dynamited his house, and went raging +down the street, but I felt that he was already back at the window +worshiping his blessed line in the green, before I got round the +corner. + +I had to walk for an hour or so, before I was cool enough to go +home. + +And it was Parload who had first introduced me to socialism! + +Recreant! + +The most extraordinary things used to run through my head in those +days. I will confess that my mind ran persistently that evening upon +revolutions after the best French pattern, and I sat on a Committee +of Safety and tried backsliders. Parload was there, among the +prisoners, backsliderissimus, aware too late of the error of his +ways. His hands were tied behind his back ready for the shambles; +through the open door one heard the voice of justice, the rude +justice of the people. I was sorry, but I had to do my duty. + +"If we punish those who would betray us to Kings," said I, with +a sorrowful deliberation, "how much the more must we punish those +who would give over the State to the pursuit of useless knowledge"; +and so with a gloomy satisfaction sent him off to the guillotine. + +"Ah, Parload! Parload! If only you'd listened to me earlier, +Parload. . . ." + +None the less that quarrel made me extremely unhappy. Parload was +my only gossip, and it cost me much to keep away from him and think +evil of him with no one to listen to me, evening after evening. + +That was a very miserable time for me, even before my last visit +to Checkshill. My long unemployed hours hung heavily on my hands. +I kept away from home all day, partly to support a fiction that +I was sedulously seeking another situation, and partly to escape +the persistent question in my mother's eyes. "Why did you quarrel +with Mr. Rawdon? Why DID you? Why do you keep on going about with +a sullen face and risk offending IT more?" I spent most of the +morning in the newspaper-room of the public library, writing +impossible applications for impossible posts--I remember that among +other things of the sort I offered my services to a firm of private +detectives, a sinister breed of traders upon base jealousies now +happily vanished from the world, and wrote apropos of an advertisement +for "stevedores" that I did not know what the duties of a stevedore +might be, but that I was apt and willing to learn--and in the +afternoons and evenings I wandered through the strange lights and +shadows of my native valley and hated all created things. Until my +wanderings were checked by the discovery that I was wearing out my +boots. + +The stagnant inconclusive malaria of that time! + +I perceive that I was an evil-tempered, ill-disposed youth with a +great capacity for hatred, BUT-- + +There was an excuse for hate. + +It was wrong of me to hate individuals, to be rude, harsh, +and vindictive to this person or that, but indeed it would have +been equally wrong to have taken the manifest offer life made me, +without resentment. I see now clearly and calmly, what I then felt +obscurely and with an unbalanced intensity, that my conditions were +intolerable. My work was tedious and laborious and it took up an +unreasonable proportion of my time, I was ill clothed, ill fed, +ill housed, ill educated and ill trained, my will was suppressed +and cramped to the pitch of torture, I had no reasonable pride in +myself and no reasonable chance of putting anything right. It was +a life hardly worth living. That a large proportion of the people +about me had no better a lot, that many had a worse, does not +affect these facts. It was a life in which contentment would have +been disgraceful. If some of them were contented or resigned, so +much the worse for every one. No doubt it was hasty and foolish +of me to throw up my situation, but everything was so obviously +aimless and foolish in our social organization that I do not feel +disposed to blame myself even for that, except in so far as it +pained my mother and caused her anxiety. + +Think of the one comprehensive fact of the lock-out! + +That year was a bad year, a year of world-wide economic disorganization. +Through their want of intelligent direction the great "Trust" of +American ironmasters, a gang of energetic, narrow-minded furnace +owners, had smelted far more iron than the whole world had any demand +for. (In those days there existed no means of estimating any need +of that sort beforehand.) They had done this without even consulting +the ironmasters of any other country. During their period of activity +they had drawn into their employment a great number of workers, +and had erected a huge productive plant. It is manifestly just that +people who do headlong stupid things of this sort should suffer, +but in the old days it was quite possible, it was customary for +the real blunderers in such disasters, to shift nearly all the +consequences of their incapacity. No one thought it wrong for a +light-witted "captain of industry" who had led his workpeople into +overproduction, into the disproportionate manufacture, that is to +say, of some particular article, to abandon and dismiss them, nor +was there anything to prevent the sudden frantic underselling of +some trade rival in order to surprise and destroy his trade, secure +his customers for one's own destined needs, and shift a portion of +one's punishment upon him. This operation of spasmodic underselling +was known as "dumping." The American ironmasters were now dumping on +the British market. The British employers were, of course, taking +their loss out of their workpeople as much as possible, but in addition +they were agitating for some legislation that would prevent--not +stupid relative excess in production, but "dumping"--not the disease, +but the consequences of the disease. The necessary knowledge to +prevent either dumping or its causes, the uncorrelated production +of commodities, did not exist, but this hardly weighed with them +at all, and in answer to their demands there had arisen a curious +party of retaliatory-protectionists who combined vague proposals +for spasmodic responses to these convulsive attacks from foreign +manufacturers, with the very evident intention of achieving +financial adventures. The dishonest and reckless elements were +indeed so evident in this movement as to add very greatly to the +general atmosphere of distrust and insecurity, and in the recoil +from the prospect of fiscal power in the hands of the class of men +known as the "New Financiers," one heard frightened old-fashioned +statesmen asserting with passion that "dumping" didn't occur, or +that it was a very charming sort of thing to happen. Nobody would +face and handle the rather intricate truth of the business. The +whole effect upon the mind of a cool observer was of a covey of +unsubstantial jabbering minds drifting over a series of irrational +economic cataclysms, prices and employment tumbled about like towers +in an earthquake, and amidst the shifting masses were the common +work-people going on with their lives as well as they could, +suffering, perplexed, unorganized, and for anything but violent, +fruitless protests, impotent. You cannot hope now to understand +the infinite want of adjustment in the old order of things. At one +time there were people dying of actual starvation in India, while +men were burning unsalable wheat in America. It sounds like the +account of a particularly mad dream, does it not? It was a dream, +a dream from which no one on earth expected an awakening. + +To us youngsters with the positiveness, the rationalism of youth, +it seemed that the strikes and lockouts, the overproduction and +misery could not possibly result simply from ignorance and want +of thought and feeling. We needed more dramatic factors than these +mental fogs, these mere atmospheric devils. We fled therefore to +that common refuge of the unhappy ignorant, a belief in callous +insensate plots--we called them "plots"--against the poor. + +You can still see how we figured it in any museum by looking up +the caricatures of capital and labor that adorned the German and +American socialistic papers of the old time. + + + +Section 2 + +I had cast Nettie off in an eloquent epistle, had really imagined +the affair was over forever--"I've done with women," I said to +Parload--and then there was silence for more than a week. + +Before that week was over I was wondering with a growing emotion +what next would happen between us. + +I found myself thinking constantly of Nettie, picturing her--sometimes +with stern satisfaction, sometimes with sympathetic remorse--mourning, +regretting, realizing the absolute end that had come between us. +At the bottom of my heart I no more believed that there was an end +between us, than that an end would come to the world. Had we not +kissed one another, had we not achieved an atmosphere of whispering +nearness, breached our virgin shyness with one another? Of course +she was mine, of course I was hers, and separations and final +quarrels and harshness and distance were no more than flourishes +upon that eternal fact. So at least I felt the thing, however I +shaped my thoughts. + +Whenever my imagination got to work as that week drew to its close, +she came in as a matter of course, I thought of her recurrently +all day and dreamt of her at night. On Saturday night I dreamt of +her very vividly. Her face was flushed and wet with tears, her +hair a little disordered, and when I spoke to her she turned away. +In some manner this dream left in my mind a feeling of distress +and anxiety. In the morning I had a raging thirst to see her. + +That Sunday my mother wanted me to go to church very particularly. +She had a double reason for that; she thought that it would certainly +exercise a favorable influence upon my search for a situation +throughout the next week, and in addition Mr. Gabbitas, with +a certain mystery behind his glasses, had promised to see what he +could do for me, and she wanted to keep him up to that promise. I +half consented, and then my desire for Nettie took hold of me. I +told my mother I wasn't going to church, and set off about eleven +to walk the seventeen miles to Checkshill. + +It greatly intensified the fatigue of that long tramp that the +sole of my boot presently split at the toe, and after I had cut the +flapping portion off, a nail worked through and began to torment +me. However, the boot looked all right after that operation and +gave no audible hint of my discomfort. I got some bread and cheese +at a little inn on the way, and was in Checkshill park about four. +I did not go by the road past the house and so round to the gardens, +but cut over the crest beyond the second keeper's cottage, along +a path Nettie used to call her own. It was a mere deer track. It +led up a miniature valley and through a pretty dell in which we +had been accustomed to meet, and so through the hollies and along +a narrow path close by the wall of the shrubbery to the gardens. + +In my memory that walk through the park before I came upon Nettie +stands out very vividly. The long tramp before it is foreshortened +to a mere effect of dusty road and painful boot, but the bracken +valley and sudden tumult of doubts and unwonted expectations that +came to me, stands out now as something significant, as something +unforgettable, something essential to the meaning of all that +followed. Where should I meet her? What would she say? I had asked +these questions before and found an answer. Now they came again +with a trail of fresh implications and I had no answer for them at +all. As I approached Nettie she ceased to be the mere butt of my +egotistical self-projection, the custodian of my sexual pride, and +drew together and became over and above this a personality of her +own, a personality and a mystery, a sphinx I had evaded only to +meet again. + +I find a little difficulty in describing the quality of the old-world +love-making so that it may be understandable now. + +We young people had practically no preparation at all for the stir +and emotions of adolescence. Towards the young the world maintained +a conspiracy of stimulating silences. There came no initiation. +There were books, stories of a curiously conventional kind that +insisted on certain qualities in every love affair and greatly +intensified one's natural desire for them, perfect trust, perfect +loyalty, lifelong devotion. Much of the complex essentials of +love were altogether hidden. One read these things, got accidental +glimpses of this and that, wondered and forgot, and so one grew. +Then strange emotions, novel alarming desires, dreams strangely +charged with feeling; an inexplicable impulse of self-abandonment +began to tickle queerly amongst the familiar purely egotistical +and materialistic things of boyhood and girlhood. We were like +misguided travelers who had camped in the dry bed of a tropical +river. Presently we were knee deep and neck deep in the flood. +Our beings were suddenly going out from ourselves seeking other +beings--we knew not why. This novel craving for abandonment to +some one of the other sex, bore us away. We were ashamed and full +of desire. We kept the thing a guilty secret, and were resolved to +satisfy it against all the world. In this state it was we drifted +in the most accidental way against some other blindly seeking +creature, and linked like nascent atoms. + +We were obsessed by the books we read, by all the talk about us +that once we had linked ourselves we were linked for life. Then +afterwards we discovered that other was also an egotism, a thing +of ideas and impulses, that failed to correspond with ours. + +So it was, I say, with the young of my class and most of the young +people in our world. So it came about that I sought Nettie on the +Sunday afternoon and suddenly came upon her, light bodied, slenderly +feminine, hazel eyed, with her soft sweet young face under the shady +brim of her hat of straw, the pretty Venus I had resolved should +be wholly and exclusively mine. + +There, all unaware of me still, she stood, my essential feminine, +the embodiment of the inner thing in life for me--and moreover an +unknown other, a person like myself. + +She held a little book in her hand, open as if she were walking +along and reading it. That chanced to be her pose, but indeed she was +standing quite still, looking away towards the gray and lichenous +shrubbery wall and, as I think now, listening. Her lips were a +little apart, curved to that faint, sweet shadow of a smile. + + + +Section 3 + +I recall with a vivid precision her queer start when she heard the +rustle of my approaching feet, her surprise, her eyes almost of +dismay for me. I could recollect, I believe, every significant word +she spoke during our meeting, and most of what I said to her. At +least, it seems I could, though indeed I may deceive myself. But +I will not make the attempt. We were both too ill-educated to +speak our full meanings, we stamped out our feelings with clumsy +stereotyped phrases; you who are better taught would fail to catch +our intention. The effect would be inanity. But our first words +I may give you, because though they conveyed nothing to me at the +time, afterwards they meant much. + +"YOU, Willie!" she said. + +"I have come," I said--forgetting in the instant all the elaborate +things I had intended to say. "I thought I would surprise you--" + +"Surprise me?" + +"Yes." + +She stared at me for a moment. I can see her pretty face now as +it looked at me--her impenetrable dear face. She laughed a queer +little laugh and her color went for a moment, and then so soon as +she had spoken, came back again. + +"Surprise me at what?" she said with a rising note. + +I was too intent to explain myself to think of what might lie in +that. + +"I wanted to tell you," I said, "that I didn't mean quite . . . +the things I put in my letter." + + + +Section 4 + +When I and Nettie had been sixteen we had been just of an age and +contemporaries altogether. Now we were a year and three-quarters +older, and she--her metamorphosis was almost complete, and I was +still only at the beginning of a man's long adolescence. + +In an instant she grasped the situation. The hidden motives of her +quick ripened little mind flashed out their intuitive scheme of +action. She treated me with that neat perfection of understanding +a young woman has for a boy. + +"But how did you come?" she asked. + +I told her I had walked. + +"Walked!" In an instant she was leading me towards the gardens. +I MUST be tired. I must come home with her at once and sit down. +Indeed it was near tea-time (the Stuarts had tea at the old-fashioned +hour of five). Every one would be SO surprised to see me. Fancy +walking! Fancy! But she supposed a man thought nothing of seventeen +miles. When COULD I have started! + +All the while, keeping me at a distance, without even the touch of +her hand. + +"But, Nettie! I came over to talk to you?" + +"My dear boy! Tea first, if you please! And besides--aren't we +talking?" + +The "dear boy" was a new note, that sounded oddly to me. + +She quickened her pace a little. + +"I wanted to explain--" I began. + +Whatever I wanted to explain I had no chance to do so. I said a few +discrepant things that she answered rather by her intonation than +her words. + +When we were well past the shrubbery, she slackened a little in +her urgency, and so we came along the slope under the beeches to +the garden. She kept her bright, straightforward-looking girlish +eyes on me as we went; it seemed she did so all the time, but now +I know, better than I did then, that every now and then she glanced +over me and behind me towards the shrubbery. And all the while, +behind her quick breathless inconsecutive talk she was thinking. + +Her dress marked the end of her transition. + +Can I recall it? + +Not, I am afraid, in the terms a woman would use. But her bright +brown hair, which had once flowed down her back in a jolly pig-tail +tied with a bit of scarlet ribbon, was now caught up into an +intricacy of pretty curves above her little ear and cheek, and the +soft long lines of her neck; her white dress had descended to her +feet; her slender waist, which had once been a mere geographical +expression, an imaginary line like the equator, was now a thing +of flexible beauty. A year ago she had been a pretty girl's face +sticking out from a little unimportant frock that was carried upon +an extremely active and efficient pair of brown-stockinged legs. +Now there was coming a strange new body that flowed beneath her +clothes with a sinuous insistence. Every movement, and particularly +the novel droop of her hand and arm to the unaccustomed skirts she +gathered about her, and a graceful forward inclination that had come +to her, called softly to my eyes. A very fine scarf--I suppose you +would call it a scarf--of green gossamer, that some new wakened +instinct had told her to fling about her shoulders, clung now closely +to the young undulations of her body, and now streamed fluttering +out for a moment in a breath of wind, and like some shy independent +tentacle with a secret to impart, came into momentary contact with +my arm. + +She caught it back and reproved it. + +We went through the green gate in the high garden wall. I held it +open for her to pass through, for this was one of my restricted +stock of stiff politenesses, and then for a second she was near +touching me. So we came to the trim array of flower-beds near the +head gardener's cottage and the vistas of "glass" on our left. We +walked between the box edgings and beds of begonias and into the +shadow of a yew hedge within twenty yards of that very pond with +the gold-fish, at whose brim we had plighted our vows, and so we +came to the wistaria-smothered porch. + +The door was wide open, and she walked in before me. "Guess who +has come to see us!" she cried. + +Her father answered indistinctly from the parlor, and a chair +creaked. I judged he was disturbed in his nap. + +"Mother!" she called in her clear young voice. "Puss!" + +Puss was her sister. + +She told them in a marveling key that I had walked all the way from +Clayton, and they gathered about me and echoed her notes of surprise. + +"You'd better sit down, Willie," said her father; "now you have got +here. How's your mother?" + +He looked at me curiously as he spoke. + +He was dressed in his Sunday clothes, a sort of brownish tweeds, but +the waistcoat was unbuttoned for greater comfort in his slumbers. +He was a brown-eyed ruddy man, and I still have now in my mind the +bright effect of the red-golden hairs that started out from his +cheek to flow down into his beard. He was short but strongly built, +and his beard and mustache were the biggest things about him. She +had taken all the possibility of beauty he possessed, his clear +skin, his bright hazel-brown eyes, and wedded them to a certain +quickness she got from her mother. Her mother I remember as +a sharp-eyed woman of great activity; she seems to me now to have +been perpetually bringing in or taking out meals or doing some +such service, and to me--for my mother's sake and my own--she was +always welcoming and kind. Puss was a youngster of fourteen perhaps, +of whom a hard bright stare, and a pale skin like her mother's, are +the chief traces on my memory. All these people were very kind to +me, and among them there was a common recognition, sometimes very +agreeably finding expression, that I was--"clever." They all stood +about me as if they were a little at a loss. + +"Sit down!" said her father. "Give him a chair, Puss." + +We talked a little stiffly--they were evidently surprised by my +sudden apparition, dusty, fatigued, and white faced; but Nettie +did not remain to keep the conversation going. + +"There!" she cried suddenly, as if she were vexed. "I declare!" +and she darted out of the room. + +"Lord! what a girl it is!" said Mrs. Stuart. "I don't know what's +come to her." + +It was half an hour before Nettie came back. It seemed a long time +to me, and yet she had been running, for when she came in again +she was out of breath. In the meantime, I had thrown out casually +that I had given up my place at Rawdon's. "I can do better than +that," I said. + +"I left my book in the dell," she said, panting. "Is tea +ready?" and that was her apology. . . + +We didn't shake down into comfort even with the coming of the +tea-things. Tea at the gardener's cottage was a serious meal, with +a big cake and little cakes, and preserves and fruit, a fine spread +upon a table. You must imagine me, sullen, awkward, and preoccupied, +perplexed by the something that was inexplicably unexpected in +Nettie, saying little, and glowering across the cake at her, and all +the eloquence I had been concentrating for the previous twenty-four +hours, miserably lost somewhere in the back of my mind. Nettie's +father tried to set me talking; he had a liking for my gift of ready +speech, for his own ideas came with difficulty, and it pleased and +astonished him to hear me pouring out my views. Indeed, over there +I was, I think, even more talkative than with Parload, though to +the world at large I was a shy young lout. "You ought to write it +out for the newspapers," he used to say. "That's what you ought to +do. I never heard such nonsense." + +Or, "You've got the gift of the gab, young man. We ought to ha' +made a lawyer of you." + +But that afternoon, even in his eyes, I didn't shine. Failing any +other stimulus, he reverted to my search for a situation, but even +that did not engage me. + + + +Section 5 + +For a long time I feared I should have to go back to Clayton without +another word to Nettie, she seemed insensible to the need I felt +for a talk with her, and I was thinking even of a sudden demand +for that before them all. It was a transparent manoeuver of her +mother's who had been watching my face, that sent us out at last +together to do something--I forget now what--in one of the greenhouses. +Whatever that little mission may have been it was the merest, most +barefaced excuse, a door to shut, or a window to close, and I don't +think it got done. + +Nettie hesitated and obeyed. She led the way through one of +the hot-houses. It was a low, steamy, brick-floored alley between +staging that bore a close crowd of pots and ferns, and behind big +branching plants that were spread and nailed overhead so as to make +an impervious cover of leaves, and in that close green privacy she +stopped and turned on me suddenly like a creature at bay. + +"Isn't the maidenhair fern lovely?" she said, and looked at me with +eyes that said, "NOW." + +"Nettie," I began, "I was a fool to write to you as I did." + +She startled me by the assent that flashed out upon her face. But +she said nothing, and stood waiting. + +"Nettie," I plunged, "I can't do without you. I--I love you." + +"If you loved me," she said trimly, watching the white fingers +she plunged among the green branches of a selaginella, "could you +write the things you do to me?" + +"I don't mean them," I said. "At least not always." + +I thought really they were very good letters, and that Nettie was +stupid to think otherwise, but I was for the moment clearly aware +of the impossibility of conveying that to her. + +"You wrote them." + +"But then I tramp seventeen miles to say I don't mean them." + +"Yes. But perhaps you do." + +I think I was at a loss; then I said, not very clearly, "I don't." + +"You think you--you love me, Willie. But you don't." + +"I do. Nettie! You know I do." + +For answer she shook her head. + +I made what I thought was a most heroic plunge. "Nettie," I said, +"I'd rather have you than--than my own opinions." + +The selaginella still engaged her. "You think so now," she said. + +I broke out into protestations. + +"No," she said shortly. "It's different now." + +"But why should two letters make so much difference?" I said. + +"It isn't only the letters. But it is different. It's different +for good." + +She halted a little with that sentence, seeking her expression. +She looked up abruptly into my eyes and moved, indeed slightly, +but with the intimation that she thought our talk might end. + +But I did not mean it to end like that. + +"For good?" said I. "No! . . Nettie! Nettie! You don't mean that!" + +"I do," she said deliberately, still looking at me, and with all +her pose conveying her finality. She seemed to brace herself for +the outbreak that must follow. + +Of course I became wordy. But I did not submerge her. She stood +entrenched, firing her contradictions like guns into my scattered +discursive attack. I remember that our talk took the absurd form +of disputing whether I could be in love with her or not. And there +was I, present in evidence, in a deepening and widening distress +of soul because she could stand there, defensive, brighter and +prettier than ever, and in some inexplicable way cut off from me +and inaccessible. + +You know, we had never been together before without little enterprises +of endearment, without a faintly guilty, quite delightful excitement. + +I pleaded, I argued. I tried to show that even my harsh and difficult +letters came from my desire to come wholly into contact with her. +I made exaggerated fine statements of the longing I felt for her +when I was away, of the shock and misery of finding her estranged +and cool. She looked at me, feeling the emotion of my speech and +impervious to its ideas. I had no doubt--whatever poverty in my +words, coolly written down now--that I was eloquent then. I meant +most intensely what I said, indeed I was wholly concentrated upon +it. I was set upon conveying to her with absolute sincerity my +sense of distance, and the greatness of my desire. I toiled toward +her painfully and obstinately through a jungle of words. + +Her face changed very slowly--by such imperceptible degrees as when +at dawn light comes into a clear sky. I could feel that I touched +her, that her hardness was in some manner melting, her determination +softening toward hesitations. The habit of an old familiarity lurked +somewhere within her. But she would not let me reach her. + +"No," she cried abruptly, starting into motion. + +She laid a hand on my arm. A wonderful new friendliness came into +her voice. "It's impossible, Willie. Everything is different +now--everything. We made a mistake. We two young sillies made a +mistake and everything is different for ever. Yes, yes." + +She turned about. + +"Nettie!" cried I, and still protesting, pursued her along the narrow +alley between the staging toward the hot-house door. I pursued her +like an accusation, and she went before me like one who is guilty +and ashamed. So I recall it now. + +She would not let me talk to her again. + +Yet I could see that my talk to her had altogether abolished +the clear-cut distance of our meeting in the park. Ever and again +I found her hazel eyes upon me. They expressed something novel--a +surprise, as though she realized an unwonted relationship, and a +sympathetic pity. And still--something defensive. + +When we got back to the cottage, I fell talking rather more freely +with her father about the nationalization of railways, and my spirits +and temper had so far mended at the realization that I could still +produce an effect upon Nettie, that I was even playful with Puss. +Mrs. Stuart judged from that that things were better with me than +they were, and began to beam mightily. + +But Nettie remained thoughtful and said very little. She was lost +in perplexities I could not fathom, and presently she slipped away +from us and went upstairs. + + + +Section 6 + +I was, of course, too footsore to walk back to Clayton, but I had +a shilling and a penny in my pocket for the train between Checkshill +and Two-Mile Stone, and that much of the distance I proposed to +do in the train. And when I got ready to go, Nettie amazed me by +waking up to the most remarkable solicitude for me. I must, she +said, go by the road. It was altogether too dark for the short way +to the lodge gates. + +I pointed out that it was moonlight. "With the comet thrown in," +said old Stuart. + +"No," she insisted, "you MUST go by the road." + +I still disputed. + +She was standing near me. "To please ME," she urged, in a quick +undertone, and with a persuasive look that puzzled me. Even in the +moment I asked myself why should this please her? + +I might have agreed had she not followed that up with, "The hollies +by the shrubbery are as dark as pitch. And there's the deer-hounds." + +"I'm not afraid of the dark," said I. "Nor of the deer-hounds, +either." + +"But those dogs! Supposing one was loose!" + +That was a girl's argument, a girl who still had to understand that +fear is an overt argument only for her own sex. I thought too of +those grisly lank brutes straining at their chains and the chorus +they could make of a night when they heard belated footsteps along +the edge of the Killing Wood, and the thought banished my wish to +please her. Like most imaginative natures I was acutely capable of +dreads and retreats, and constantly occupied with their suppression +and concealment, and to refuse the short cut when it might appear +that I did it on account of half a dozen almost certainly chained +dogs was impossible. + +So I set off in spite of her, feeling valiant and glad to be +so easily brave, but a little sorry that she should think herself +crossed by me. + +A thin cloud veiled the moon, and the way under the beeches was +dark and indistinct. I was not so preoccupied with my love-affairs +as to neglect what I will confess was always my custom at night +across that wild and lonely park. I made myself a club by fastening +a big flint to one end of my twisted handkerchief and tying the +other about my wrist, and with this in my pocket, went on comforted. + +And it chanced that as I emerged from the hollies by the corner +of the shrubbery I was startled to come unexpectedly upon a young +man in evening dress smoking a cigar. + +I was walking on turf, so that the sound I made was slight. He +stood clear in the moonlight, his cigar glowed like a blood-red +star, and it did not occur to me at the time that I advanced towards +him almost invisibly in an impenetrable shadow. + +"Hullo," he cried, with a sort of amiable challenge. "I'm here +first!" + +I came out into the light. "Who cares if you are?" said I. + +I had jumped at once to an interpretation of his words. I knew that +there was an intermittent dispute between the House people and the +villager public about the use of this track, and it is needless to +say where my sympathies fell in that dispute. + +"Eh?" he cried in surprise. + +"Thought I would run away, I suppose," said I, and came close up +to him. + +All my enormous hatred of his class had flared up at the sight of +his costume, at the fancied challenge of his words. I knew him. He +was Edward Verrall, son of the man who owned not only this great +estate but more than half of Rawdon's pot-bank, and who had interests +and possessions, collieries and rents, all over the district of +the Four Towns. He was a gallant youngster, people said, and very +clever. Young as he was there was talk of parliament for him; he had +been a great success at the university, and he was being sedulously +popularized among us. He took with a light confidence, as a matter +of course, advantages that I would have faced the rack to get, and +I firmly believed myself a better man than he. He was, as he stood +there, a concentrated figure of all that filled me with bitterness. +One day he had stopped in a motor outside our house, and I remember +the thrill of rage with which I had noted the dutiful admiration +in my mother's eyes as she peered through her blind at him. "That's +young Mr. Verrall," she said. "They say he's very clever." + +"They would," I answered. "Damn them and him!" + +But that is by the way. + +He was clearly astonished to find himself face to face with a man. +His note changed. + +"Who the devil are YOU?" he asked. + +My retort was the cheap expedient of re-echoing, "Who the devil +are you?" + +"WELL," he said. + +"I'm coming along this path if I like," I said. "See? It's a public +path--just as this used to be public land. You've stolen the land--you +and yours, and now you want to steal the right of way. You'll +ask us to get off the face of the earth next. I sha'n't oblige. +See?" + +I was shorter and I suppose a couple of years younger than he, but +I had the improvised club in my pocket gripped ready, and I would +have fought with him very cheerfully. But he fell a step backward +as I came toward him. + +"Socialist, I presume?" he said, alert and quiet and with the +faintest note of badinage. + +"One of many." + +"We're all socialists nowadays," he remarked philosophically, "and +I haven't the faintest intention of disputing your right of way." + +"You'd better not," I said. + +"No!" + +"No." + +He replaced his cigar, and there was a brief pause. "Catching a +train?" he threw out. + +It seemed absurd not to answer. "Yes," I said shortly. + +He said it was a pleasant evening for a walk. + +I hovered for a moment and there was my path before me, and he +stood aside. There seemed nothing to do but go on. "Good night," +said he, as that intention took effect. + +I growled a surly good-night. + +I felt like a bombshell of swearing that must presently burst with +some violence as I went on my silent way. He had so completely got +the best of our encounter. + + + +Section 7 + +There comes a memory, an odd intermixture of two entirely divergent +things, that stands out with the intensest vividness. + +As I went across the last open meadow, following the short cut to +Checkshill station, I perceived I had two shadows. + +The thing jumped into my mind and stopped its tumid flow for a +moment. I remember the intelligent detachment of my sudden interest. +I turned sharply, and stood looking at the moon and the great white +comet, that the drift of the clouds had now rather suddenly unveiled. + +The comet was perhaps twenty degrees from the moon. What a wonderful +thing it looked floating there, a greenish-white apparition in +the dark blue deeps! It looked brighter than the moon because it +was smaller, but the shadow it cast, though clearer cut, was much +fainter than the moon's shadow. . . I went on noting these facts, +watching my two shadows precede me. + +I am totally unable to account for the sequence of my thoughts +on this occasion. But suddenly, as if I had come on this new fact +round a corner, the comet was out of my mind again, and I was face +to face with an absolutely new idea. I wonder sometimes if the two +shadows I cast, one with a sort of feminine faintness with regard +to the other and not quite so tall, may not have suggested the +word or the thought of an assignation to my mind. All that I have +clear is that with the certitude of intuition I knew what it was +that had brought the youth in evening dress outside the shrubbery. +Of course! He had come to meet Nettie! + +Once the mental process was started it took no time at all. The +day which had been full of perplexities for me, the mysterious +invisible thing that had held Nettie and myself apart, the unaccountable +strange something in her manner, was revealed and explained. + +I knew now why she had looked guilty at my appearance, what had +brought her out that afternoon, why she had hurried me in, the +nature of the "book" she had run back to fetch, the reason why she +had wanted me to go back by the high-road, and why she had pitied +me. It was all in the instant clear to me. + +You must imagine me a black little creature, suddenly stricken +still--for a moment standing rigid--and then again suddenly +becoming active with an impotent gesture, becoming audible with an +inarticulate cry, with two little shadows mocking my dismay, and +about this figure you must conceive a great wide space of moonlit +grass, rimmed by the looming suggestion of distant trees--trees +very low and faint and dim, and over it all the domed serenity of +that wonderful luminous night. + +For a little while this realization stunned my mind. My thoughts +came to a pause, staring at my discovery. Meanwhile my feet and my +previous direction carried me through the warm darkness to Checkshill +station with its little lights, to the ticket-office window, and +so to the train. + +I remember myself as it were waking up to the thing--I was alone +in one of the dingy "third-class" compartments of that time--and +the sudden nearly frantic insurgence of my rage. I stood up with the +cry of an angry animal, and smote my fist with all my strength +against the panel of wood before me. . . . + +Curiously enough I have completely forgotten my mood after that +for a little while, but I know that later, for a minute perhaps, I +hung for a time out of the carriage with the door open, contemplating +a leap from the train. It was to be a dramatic leap, and then I +would go storming back to her, denounce her, overwhelm her; and I +hung, urging myself to do it. I don't remember how it was I decided +not to do this, at last, but in the end I didn't. + +When the train stopped at the next station I had given up all +thoughts of going back. I was sitting in the corner of the carriage +with my bruised and wounded hand pressed under my arm, and still +insensible to its pain, trying to think out clearly a scheme of +action--action that should express the monstrous indignation that +possessed me. + + + + +CHAPTER THE THIRD + +THE REVOLVER + + + +Section 1 + +"THAT comet is going to hit the earth!" + +So said one of the two men who got into the train and settled down. + +"Ah!" said the other man. + +"They do say that it is made of gas, that comet. We sha'n't +blow up, shall us?". . . + +What did it matter to me? + +I was thinking of revenge--revenge against the primary conditions +of my being. I was thinking of Nettie and her lover. I was firmly +resolved he should not have her--though I had to kill them both to +prevent it. I did not care what else might happen, if only that end +was ensured. All my thwarted passions had turned to rage. I would +have accepted eternal torment that night without a second thought, +to be certain of revenge. A hundred possibilities of action, a +hundred stormy situations, a whirl of violent schemes, chased one +another through my shamed, exasperated mind. The sole prospect I +could endure was of some gigantic, inexorably cruel vindication of +my humiliated self. + +And Nettie? I loved Nettie still, but now with the intensest +jealousy, with the keen, unmeasuring hatred of wounded pride, and +baffled, passionate desire. + + + +Section 2 + +As I came down the hill from Clayton Crest--for my shilling and +a penny only permitted my traveling by train as far as Two-Mile +Stone, and thence I had to walk over the hill--I remember very +vividly a little man with a shrill voice who was preaching under +a gas-lamp against a hoarding to a thin crowd of Sunday evening +loafers. He was a short man, bald, with a little fair curly beard +and hair and watery blue eyes, and he was preaching that the end +of the world drew near. + +I think that is the first time I heard any one link the comet with +the end of the world. He had got that jumbled up with international +politics and prophecies from the Book of Daniel. + +I stopped to hear him only for a moment or so. I do not think I +should have halted at all but his crowd blocked my path, and the +sight of his queer wild expression, the gesture of his upward-pointing +finger, held me. + +"There is the end of all your Sins and Follies," he bawled. "There! +There is the Star of Judgments, the Judgments of the most High +God! It is appointed unto all men to die--unto all men to die"--his +voice changed to a curious flat chant--"and after death, the +Judgment! The Judgment!" + +I pushed and threaded my way through the bystanders and went on, +and his curious harsh flat voice pursued me. I went on with the +thoughts that had occupied me before--where I could buy a revolver, +and how I might master its use--and probably I should have forgotten +all about him had he not taken a part in the hideous dream that +ended the little sleep I had that night. For the most part I lay +awake thinking of Nettie and her lover. + +Then came three strange days--three days that seem now to have been +wholly concentrated upon one business. + +This dominant business was the purchase of my revolver. I held +myself resolutely to the idea that I must either restore myself by +some extraordinary act of vigor and violence in Nettie's eyes or I +must kill her. I would not let myself fall away from that. I felt +that if I let this matter pass, my last shred of pride and honor +would pass with it, that for the rest of my life I should never +deserve the slightest respect or any woman's love. Pride kept me +to my purpose between my gusts of passion. + +Yet it was not easy to buy that revolver. + +I had a kind of shyness of the moment when I should have to face +the shopman, and I was particularly anxious to have a story ready +if he should see fit to ask questions why I bought such a thing. +I determined to say I was going to Texas, and I thought it might +prove useful there. Texas in those days had the reputation of a +wild lawless land. As I knew nothing of caliber or impact, I wanted +also to be able to ask with a steady face at what distance a man +or woman could be killed by the weapon that might be offered me. +I was pretty cool-headed in relation to such practical aspects of +my affair. I had some little difficulty in finding a gunsmith. In +Clayton there were some rook-rifles and so forth in a cycle shop, +but the only revolvers these people had impressed me as being too +small and toylike for my purpose. It was in a pawnshop window in +the narrow High Street of Swathinglea that I found my choice, a +reasonably clumsy and serious-looking implement ticketed "As used +in the American army." + +I had drawn out my balance from the savings bank, matter of two +pounds and more, to make this purchase, and I found it at last +a very easy transaction. The pawnbroker told me where I could get +ammunition, and I went home that night with bulging pockets, an +armed man. + +The purchase of my revolver was, I say, the chief business of +those days, but you must not think I was so intent upon it as to +be insensible to the stirring things that were happening in the +streets through which I went seeking the means to effect my purpose. +They were full of murmurings: the whole region of the Four Towns +scowled lowering from its narrow doors. The ordinary healthy flow +of people going to work, people going about their business, was +chilled and checked. Numbers of men stood about the streets in knots +and groups, as corpuscles gather and catch in the blood-vessels in +the opening stages of inflammation. The woman looked haggard and +worried. The ironworkers had refused the proposed reduction of +their wages, and the lockout had begun. They were already at "play." +The Conciliation Board was doing its best to keep the coal-miners +and masters from a breach, but young Lord Redcar, the greatest of +our coal owners and landlord of all Swathinglea and half Clayton, was +taking a fine upstanding attitude that made the breach inevitable. +He was a handsome young man, a gallant young man; his pride revolted +at the idea of being dictated to by a "lot of bally miners," and +he meant, he said, to make a fight for it. The world had treated +him sumptuously from his earliest years; the shares in the common +stock of five thousand people had gone to pay for his handsome +upbringing, and large, romantic, expensive ambitions filled +his generously nurtured mind. He had early distinguished himself +at Oxford by his scornful attitude towards democracy. There was +something that appealed to the imagination in his fine antagonism +to the crowd--on the one hand, was the brilliant young nobleman, +picturesquely alone; on the other, the ugly, inexpressive multitude, +dressed inelegantly in shop-clothes, under-educated, under-fed, +envious, base, and with a wicked disinclination for work and a wicked +appetite for the good things it could so rarely get. For common +imaginative purposes one left out the policeman from the design, +the stalwart policeman protecting his lordship, and ignored the +fact that while Lord Redcar had his hands immediately and legally +on the workman's shelter and bread, they could touch him to the +skin only by some violent breach of the law. + +He lived at Lowchester House, five miles or so beyond Checkshill; +but partly to show how little he cared for his antagonists, and +partly no doubt to keep himself in touch with the negotiations that +were still going on, he was visible almost every day in and about +the Four Towns, driving that big motor car of his that could take +him sixty miles an hour. The English passion for fair play one +might have thought sufficient to rob this bold procedure of any +dangerous possibilities, but he did not go altogether free from +insult, and on one occasion at least an intoxicated Irish +woman shook her fist at him. . . . + +A dark, quiet crowd, that was greater each day, a crowd more than +half women, brooded as a cloud will sometimes brood permanently upon +a mountain crest, in the market-place outside the Clayton +Town Hall, where the conference was held. . . . + +I consider myself justified in regarding Lord Redcar's passing +automobile with a special animosity because of the leaks in our +roof. + +We held our little house on lease; the owner was a mean, saving +old man named Pettigrew, who lived in a villa adorned with plaster +images of dogs and goats, at Overcastle, and in spite of our specific +agreement, he would do no repairs for us at all. He rested secure +in my mother's timidity. Once, long ago, she had been behind-hand +with her rent, with half of her quarter's rent, and he had extended +the days of grace a month; her sense that some day she might need +the same mercy again made her his abject slave. She was afraid even +to ask that he should cause the roof to be mended for fear he might +take offence. But one night the rain poured in on her bed and gave +her a cold, and stained and soaked her poor old patchwork counterpane. +Then she got me to compose an excessively polite letter to old +Pettigrew, begging him as a favor to perform his legal obligations. +It is part of the general imbecility of those days that such one-sided +law as existed was a profound mystery to the common people, its +provisions impossible to ascertain, its machinery impossible to set +in motion. Instead of the clearly written code, the lucid statements +of rules and principles that are now at the service of every one, +the law was the muddle secret of the legal profession. Poor people, +overworked people, had constantly to submit to petty wrongs because +of the intolerable uncertainty not only of law but of cost, and of +the demands upon time and energy, proceedings might make. There +was indeed no justice for any one too poor to command a good +solicitor's deference and loyalty; there was nothing but rough +police protection and the magistrate's grudging or eccentric advice +for the mass of the population. The civil law, in particular, was +a mysterious upper-class weapon, and I can imagine no injustice that +would have been sufficient to induce my poor old mother to appeal +to it. + +All this begins to sound incredible. I can only assure you that it +was so. + +But I, when I learned that old Pettigrew had been down to tell my +mother all about his rheumatism, to inspect the roof, and to allege +that nothing was needed, gave way to my most frequent emotion in +those days, a burning indignation, and took the matter into my own +hands. I wrote and asked him, with a withering air of technicality, +to have the roof repaired "as per agreement," and added, "if not +done in one week from now we shall be obliged to take proceedings." +I had not mentioned this high line of conduct to my mother at first, +and so when old Pettigrew came down in a state of great agitation +with my letter in his hand, she was almost equally agitated. + +"How could you write to old Mr. Pettigrew like that?" she asked +me. + +I said that old Pettigrew was a shameful old rascal, or words to +that effect, and I am afraid I behaved in a very undutiful way to +her when she said that she had settled everything with him--she +wouldn't say how, but I could guess well enough--and that I was +to promise her, promise her faithfully, to do nothing more in the +matter. I wouldn't promise her. + +And--having nothing better to employ me then--I presently went +raging to old Pettigrew in order to put the whole thing before him +in what I considered the proper light. Old Pettigrew evaded my +illumination; he saw me coming up his front steps--I can still see +his queer old nose and the crinkled brow over his eye and the little +wisp of gray hair that showed over the corner of his window-blind--and +he instructed his servant to put up the chain when she answered +the door, and to tell me that he would not see me. So I had to fall +back upon my pen. + +Then it was, as I had no idea what were the proper "proceedings" +to take, the brilliant idea occurred to me of appealing to Lord +Redcar as the ground landlord, and, as it were, our feudal chief, +and pointing out to him that his security for his rent was depreciating +in old Pettigrew's hands. I added some general observations on +leaseholds, the taxation of ground rents, and the private ownership +of the soil. And Lord Redcar, whose spirit revolted at democracy, +and who cultivated a pert humiliating manner with his inferiors to +show as much, earned my distinguished hatred for ever by causing +his secretary to present his compliments to me, and his request +that I would mind my own business and leave him to manage his. At +which I was so greatly enraged that I first tore this note into +minute innumerable pieces, and then dashed it dramatically all over +the floor of my room--from which, to keep my mother from the job, +I afterward had to pick it up laboriously on all-fours. + +I was still meditating a tremendous retort, an indictment of all +Lord Redcar's class, their manners, morals, economic and political +crimes, when my trouble with Nettie arose to swamp all minor +troubles. Yet, not so completely but that I snarled aloud when his +lordship's motor-car whizzed by me, as I went about upon my long +meandering quest for a weapon. And I discovered after a time that +my mother had bruised her knee and was lame. Fearing to irritate +me by bringing the thing before me again, she had set herself to +move her bed out of the way of the drip without my help, and she +had knocked her knee. All her poor furnishings, I discovered, were +cowering now close to the peeling bedroom walls; there had come a +vast discoloration of the ceiling, and a washing-tub was +in occupation of the middle of her chamber. . . . + +It is necessary that I should set these things before you, should +give the key of inconvenience and uneasiness in which all things +were arranged, should suggest the breath of trouble that stirred +along the hot summer streets, the anxiety about the strike, the +rumors and indignations, the gatherings and meetings, the increasing +gravity of the policemen's faces, the combative headlines of the +local papers, the knots of picketers who scrutinized any one who +passed near the silent, smokeless forges, but in my mind, you must +understand, such impressions came and went irregularly; they made +a moving background, changing undertones, to my preoccupation by +that darkly shaping purpose to which a revolver was so imperative +an essential. + +Along the darkling streets, amidst the sullen crowds, the thought +of Nettie, my Nettie, and her gentleman lover made ever a vivid +inflammatory spot of purpose in my brain. + + + +Section 3 + +It was three days after this--on Wednesday, that is to say--that +the first of those sinister outbreaks occurred that ended in the +bloody affair of Peacock Grove and the flooding out of the entire +line of the Swathinglea collieries. It was the only one of these +disturbances I was destined to see, and at most a mere trivial +preliminary of that struggle. + +The accounts that have been written of this affair vary very widely. +To read them is to realize the extraordinary carelessness of truth +that dishonored the press of those latter days. In my bureau I +have several files of the daily papers of the old time--I collected +them, as a matter of fact--and three or four of about that date I +have just this moment taken out and looked through to refresh my +impression of what I saw. They lie before me--queer, shriveled, +incredible things; the cheap paper has already become brittle and +brown and split along the creases, the ink faded or smeared, and I +have to handle them with the utmost care when I glance among their +raging headlines. As I sit here in this serene place, their quality +throughout, their arrangement, their tone, their arguments and +exhortations, read as though they came from drugged and drunken men. +They give one the effect of faded bawling, of screams and shouts +heard faintly in a little gramophone. . . . It is only on Monday +I find, and buried deep below the war news, that these publications +contain any intimation that unusual happenings were forward in +Clayton and Swathinglea. + +What I saw was towards evening. I had been learning to shoot with +my new possession. I had walked out with it four or five miles +across a patch of moorland and down to a secluded little coppice +full of blue-bells, halfway along the high-road between Leet and +Stafford. Here I had spent the afternoon, experimenting and practising +with careful deliberation and grim persistence. I had brought an +old kite-frame of cane with me, that folded and unfolded, and each +shot-hole I made I marked and numbered to compare with my other +endeavors. At last I was satisfied that I could hit a playing-card +at thirty paces nine times out of ten; the light was getting too +bad for me to see my penciled bull's-eye, and in that state of +quiet moodiness that sometimes comes with hunger to passionate men, +I returned by the way of Swathinglea towards my home. + +The road I followed came down between banks of wretched-looking +working-men's houses, in close-packed rows on either side, and took +upon itself the role of Swathinglea High Street, where, at a lamp +and a pillar-box, the steam-trams began. So far that dirty hot way +had been unusually quiet and empty, but beyond the corner, where +the first group of beershops clustered, it became populous. It was +very quiet still, even the children were a little inactive, but +there were a lot of people standing dispersedly in little groups, +and with a general direction towards the gates of the Bantock Burden +coalpit. + +The place was being picketed, although at that time the miners +were still nominally at work, and the conferences between masters +and men still in session at Clayton Town Hall. But one of the men +employed at the Bantock Burden pit, Jack Briscoe, was a socialist, +and he had distinguished himself by a violent letter upon the crisis +to the leading socialistic paper in England, The Clarion, in which +he had adventured among the motives of Lord Redcar. The publication +of this had been followed by instant dismissal. As Lord Redcar wrote +a day or so later to the Times--I have that Times, I have all the +London papers of the last month before the Change-- + +"The man was paid off and kicked out. Any self-respecting employer +would do the same." The thing had happened overnight, and the men +did not at once take a clear line upon what was, after all, a very +intricate and debatable occasion. But they came out in a sort of +semiofficial strike from all Lord Redcar's collieries beyond the +canal that besets Swathinglea. They did so without formal notice, +committing a breach of contract by this sudden cessation. But in +the long labor struggles of the old days the workers were constantly +putting themselves in the wrong and committing illegalities +through that overpowering craving for dramatic promptness natural +to uneducated minds. + +All the men had not come out of the Bantock Burden pit. Something +was wrong there, an indecision if nothing else; the mine was still +working, and there was a rumor that men from Durham had been held +in readiness by Lord Redcar, and were already in the mine. Now, it +is absolutely impossible to ascertain certainly how things stood at +that time. The newspapers say this and that, but nothing trustworthy +remains. + +I believe I should have gone striding athwart the dark stage of +that stagnant industrial drama without asking a question, if Lord +Redcar had not chanced to come upon the scene about the same time +as myself and incontinently end its stagnation. + +He had promised that if the men wanted a struggle he would put +up the best fight they had ever had, and he had been active all +that afternoon in meeting the quarrel half way, and preparing as +conspicuously as possible for the scratch force of "blacklegs"--as +we called them--who were, he said and we believed, to replace the +strikers in his pits. + +I was an eye-witness of the whole of the affair outside the Bantock +Burden pit, and--I do not know what happened. + +Picture to yourself how the thing came to me. + +I was descending a steep, cobbled, excavated road between banked-up +footways, perhaps six feet high, upon which, in a monotonous +series, opened the living room doors of rows of dark, low cottages. +The perspective of squat blue slate roofs and clustering chimneys +drifted downward towards the irregular open space before the +colliery--a space covered with coaly, wheel-scarred mud, with a +patch of weedy dump to the left and the colliery gates to the right. +Beyond, the High Street with shops resumed again in good earnest +and went on, and the lines of the steam-tramway that started out +from before my feet, and were here shining and acutely visible +with reflected skylight and here lost in a shadow, took up for one +acute moment the greasy yellow irradiation of a newly lit gaslamp +as they vanished round the bend. Beyond, spread a darkling marsh +of homes, an infinitude of little smoking hovels, and emergent, +meager churches, public-houses, board schools, and other buildings +amidst the prevailing chimneys of Swathinglea. To the right, very +clear and relatively high, the Bantock Burden pit-mouth was marked +by a gaunt lattice bearing a great black wheel, very sharp and +distinct in the twilight, and beyond, in an irregular perspective, +were others following the lie of the seams. The general effect, +as one came down the hill, was of a dark compressed life beneath +a very high and wide and luminous evening sky, against which these +pit-wheels rose. And ruling the calm spaciousness of that heaven +was the great comet, now green-white, and wonderful for all who +had eyes to see. + +The fading afterglow of the sunset threw up all the contours and +skyline to the west, and the comet rose eastward out of the pouring +tumult of smoke from Bladden's forges. The moon had still to rise. + +By this time the comet had begun to assume the cloudlike form still +familiar through the medium of a thousand photographs and sketches. +At first it had been an almost telescopic speck; it had brightened +to the dimensions of the greatest star in the heavens; it had +still grown, hour by hour, in its incredibly swift, its noiseless +and inevitable rush upon our earth, until it had equaled and surpassed +the moon. Now it was the most splendid thing this sky of earth has +ever held. I have never seen a photograph that gave a proper idea +of it. Never at any time did it assume the conventional tailed +outline, comets are supposed to have. Astronomers talked of its +double tail, one preceding it and one trailing behind it, but these +were foreshortened to nothing, so that it had rather the form of a +bellying puff of luminous smoke with an intenser, brighter heart. +It rose a hot yellow color, and only began to show its distinctive +greenness when it was clear of the mists of the evening. + +It compelled attention for a space. For all my earthly concentration of +mind, I could but stare at it for a moment with a vague anticipation +that, after all, in some way so strange and glorious an object +must have significance, could not possibly be a matter of absolute +indifference to the scheme and values of my life. + +But how? + +I thought of Parload. I thought of the panic and uneasiness that +was spreading in this very matter, and the assurances of scientific +men that the thing weighed so little--at the utmost a few hundred +tons of thinly diffused gas and dust--that even were it to smite +this earth fully, nothing could possibly ensue. And, after all, +said I, what earthly significance has any one found in the stars? + +Then, as one still descended, the houses and buildings rose up, +the presence of those watching groups of people, the tension of +the situation; and one forgot the sky. + +Preoccupied with myself and with my dark dream about Nettie and my +honor, I threaded my course through the stagnating threat of this +gathering, and was caught unawares, when suddenly the whole +scene flashed into drama. . . . + +The attention of every one swung round with an irresistible magnetism +towards the High Street, and caught me as a rush of waters might +catch a wisp of hay. Abruptly the whole crowd was sounding one note. +It was not a word, it was a sound that mingled threat and protest, +something between a prolonged "Ah!" and "Ugh!" Then with a hoarse +intensity of anger came a low heavy booing, "Boo! boo--oo!" a note +stupidly expressive of animal savagery. "Toot, toot!" said Lord +Redcar's automobile in ridiculous repartee. "Toot, toot!" One heard +it whizzing and throbbing as the crowd obliged it to slow down. + +Everybody seemed in motion towards the colliery gates, I, too, with +the others. + +I heard a shout. Through the dark figures about me I saw the motor-car +stop and move forward again, and had a glimpse of something writhing +on the ground. + +It was alleged afterwards that Lord Redcar was driving, and that +he quite deliberately knocked down a little boy who would not get +out of his way. It is asserted with equal confidence that the boy +was a man who tried to pass across the front of the motor-car as it +came slowly through the crowd, who escaped by a hair's breadth, and +then slipped on the tram-rail and fell down. I have both accounts +set forth, under screaming headlines, in two of these sere newspapers +upon my desk. No one could ever ascertain the truth. Indeed, in +such a blind tumult of passion, could there be any truth? + +There was a rush forward, the horn of the car sounded, everything +swayed violently to the right for perhaps ten yards or so, and +there was a report like a pistol-shot. + +For a moment every one seemed running away. A woman, carrying a +shawl-wrapped child, blundered into me, and sent me reeling back. +Every one thought of firearms, but, as a matter of fact, something +had gone wrong with the motor, what in those old-fashioned contrivances +was called a backfire. A thin puff of bluish smoke hung in the air +behind the thing. The majority of the people scattered back in a +disorderly fashion, and left a clear space about the struggle that +centered upon the motor-car. + +The man or boy who had fallen was lying on the ground with no one +near him, a black lump, an extended arm and two sprawling feet. +The motor-car had stopped, and its three occupants were standing +up. Six or seven black figures surrounded the car, and appeared +to be holding on to it as if to prevent it from starting again; +one--it was Mitchell, a well-known labor leader--argued in fierce +low tones with Lord Redcar. I could not hear anything they said, +I was not near enough. Behind me the colliery gates were open, +and there was a sense of help coming to the motor-car from that +direction. There was an unoccupied muddy space for fifty yards, +perhaps, between car and gate, and then the wheels and head of the +pit rose black against the sky. I was one of a rude semicircle of +people that hung as yet indeterminate in action about this dispute. + +It was natural, I suppose, that my fingers should close upon the +revolver in my pocket. + +I advanced with the vaguest intentions in the world, and not so +quickly but that several men hurried past me to join the little +knot holding up the car. + +Lord Redcar, in his big furry overcoat, towered up over the group +about him; his gestures were free and threatening, and his voice +loud. He made a fine figure there, I must admit; he was a big, +fair, handsome young man with a fine tenor voice and an instinct +for gallant effect. My eyes were drawn to him at first wholly. He +seemed a symbol, a triumphant symbol, of all that the theory of +aristocracy claims, of all that filled my soul with resentment. +His chauffeur sat crouched together, peering at the crowd under +his lordship's arm. But Mitchell showed as a sturdy figure also, +and his voice was firm and loud. + +"You've hurt that lad," said Mitchell, over and over again. "You'll +wait here till you see if he's hurt." + +"I'll wait here or not as I please," said Redcar; and to the +chauffeur, "Here! get down and look at it!" + +"You'd better not get down," said Mitchell; and the chauffeur stood +bent and hesitating on the step. + +The man on the back seat stood up, leant forward, and spoke to Lord +Redcar, and for the first time my attention was drawn to him. It +was young Verrall! His handsome face shone clear and fine in the +green pallor of the comet. + +I ceased to hear the quarrel that was raising the voice of Mitchell +and Lord Redcar. This new fact sent them spinning into the background. +Young Verrall! + +It was my own purpose coming to meet me half way. + +There was to be a fight here, it seemed certain to come to a scuffle, +and here we were-- + +What was I to do? I thought very swiftly. Unless my memory cheats +me, I acted with swift decision. My hand tightened on my revolver, +and then I remembered it was unloaded. I had thought my course out +in an instant. I turned round and pushed my way out of the angry +crowd that was now surging back towards the motor-car. + +It would be quiet and out of sight, I thought, among the dump +heaps across the road, and there I might load unobserved. . . + +A big young man striding forward with his fists clenched, halted +for one second at the sight of me. + +"What!" said he. "Ain't afraid of them, are you?" + +I glanced over my shoulder and back at him, was near showing him my +pistol, and the expression changed in his eyes. He hung perplexed +at me. Then with a grunt he went on. + +I heard the voices growing loud and sharp behind me. + +I hesitated, half turned towards the dispute, then set off running +towards the heaps. Some instinct told me not to be detected loading. +I was cool enough therefore to think of the aftermath of the thing +I meant to do. + +I looked back once again towards the swaying discussion--or was +it a fight now? and then I dropped into the hollow, knelt among +the weeds, and loaded with eager trembling fingers. I loaded one +chamber, got up and went back a dozen paces, thought of possibilities, +vacillated, returned and loaded all the others. I did it slowly +because I felt a little clumsy, and at the end came a moment of +inspection--had I forgotten any thing? And then for a few seconds +I crouched before I rose, resisting the first gust of reaction +against my impulse. I took thought, and for a moment that great +green-white meteor overhead swam back into my conscious mind. For +the first time then I linked it clearly with all the fierce violence +that had crept into human life. I joined up that with what I meant +to do. I was going to shoot young Verrall as it were under the +benediction of that green glare. + +But about Nettie? + +I found it impossible to think out that obvious complication. + +I came up over the heap again, and walked slowly back towards the +wrangle. + +Of course I had to kill him. . . . + +Now I would have you believe I did not want to murder young Verrall +at all at that particular time. I had not pictured such circumstances +as these, I had never thought of him in connection with Lord Redcar +and our black industrial world. He was in that distant other world +of Checkshill, the world of parks and gardens, the world of sunlit +emotions and Nettie. His appearance here was disconcerting. I was +taken by surprise. I was too tired and hungry to think clearly, and +the hard implication of our antagonism prevailed with me. In the +tumult of my passed emotions I had thought constantly of conflicts, +confrontations, deeds of violence, and now the memory of these things +took possession of me as though they were irrevocable resolutions. + +There was a sharp exclamation, the shriek of a woman, and the crowd +came surging back. The fight had begun. + +Lord Redcar, I believe, had jumped down from his car and felled +Mitchell, and men were already running out to his assistance from +the colliery gates. + +I had some difficulty in shoving through the crowd; I can still +remember very vividly being jammed at one time between two big men +so that my arms were pinned to my sides, but all the other details +are gone out of my mind until I found myself almost violently +projected forward into the "scrap." + +I blundered against the corner of the motor-car, and came round it +face to face with young Verrall, who was descending from the back +compartment. His face was touched with orange from the automobile's +big lamps, which conflicted with the shadows of the comet light, +and distorted him oddly. That effect lasted but an instant, but it +put me out. Then he came a step forward, and the ruddy lights and +queerness vanished. + +I don't think he recognized me, but he perceived immediately I +meant attacking. He struck out at once at me a haphazard blow, and +touched me on the cheek. + +Instinctively I let go of the pistol, snatched my right hand out +of my pocket and brought it up in a belated parry, and then let +out with my left full in his chest. + +It sent him staggering, and as he went back I saw recognition mingle +with astonishment in his face. + +"You know me, you swine," I cried and hit again. + +Then I was spinning sideways, half-stunned, with a huge lump of a +fist under my jaw. I had an impression of Lord Redcar as a great +furry bulk, towering like some Homeric hero above the fray. I went +down before him--it made him seem to rush up--and he ignored me +further. His big flat voice counseled young Verrall-- + +"Cut, Teddy! It won't do. The picketa's got i'on bahs. . . ." + +Feet swayed about me, and some hobnailed miner kicked my ankle and +went stumbling. There were shouts and curses, and then everything +had swept past me. I rolled over on my face and beheld the chauffeur, +young Verrall, and Lord Redcar--the latter holding up his long +skirts of fur, and making a grotesque figure--one behind the other, +in full bolt across a coldly comet-lit interval, towards the open +gates of the colliery. + +I raised myself up on my hands. + +Young Verrall! + +I had not even drawn my revolver--I had forgotten it. I was covered +with coaly mud--knees, elbows, shoulders, back. I had not +even drawn my revolver! . . . + +A feeling of ridiculous impotence overwhelmed me. I struggled +painfully to my feet. + +I hesitated for a moment towards the gates of the colliery, and then +went limping homeward, thwarted, painful, confused, and ashamed. +I had not the heart nor desire to help in the wrecking and burning +of Lord Redcar's motor. + + + +Section 4 + +In the night, fever, pain, fatigue--it may be the indigestion of +my supper of bread and cheese--roused me at last out of a hag-rid +sleep to face despair. I was a soul lost amidst desolations and +shame, dishonored, evilly treated, hopeless. I raged against the +God I denied, and cursed him as I lay. + +And it was in the nature of my fever, which was indeed only half +fatigue and illness, and the rest the disorder of passionate youth, +that Nettie, a strangely distorted Nettie, should come through the +brief dreams that marked the exhaustions of that vigil, to dominate +my misery. I was sensible, with an exaggerated distinctness, of +the intensity of her physical charm for me, of her every grace and +beauty; she took to herself the whole gamut of desire in me and +the whole gamut of pride. She, bodily, was my lost honor. It was +not only loss but disgrace to lose her. She stood for life and all +that was denied; she mocked me as a creature of failure and defeat. +My spirit raised itself towards her, and then the bruise upon my +jaw glowed with a dull heat, and I rolled in the mud again before +my rivals. + +There were times when something near madness took me, and I gnashed +my teeth and dug my nails into my hands and ceased to curse and cry +out only by reason of the insufficiency of words. And once towards +dawn I got out of bed, and sat by my looking-glass with my revolver +loaded in my hand. I stood up at last and put it carefully in my +drawer and locked it--out of reach of any gusty impulse. After +that I slept for a little while. + +Such nights were nothing rare and strange in that old order of the +world. Never a city, never a night the whole year round, but amidst +those who slept were those who waked, plumbing the deeps of wrath +and misery. Countless thousands there were so ill, so troubled, +they agonize near to the very border-line of madness, each +one the center of a universe darkened and lost. . . + +The next day I spent in gloomy lethargy. + +I had intended to go to Checkshill that day, but my bruised ankle +was too swollen for that to be possible. I sat indoors in the +ill-lit downstairs kitchen, with my foot bandaged, and mused darkly +and read. My dear old mother waited on me, and her brown eyes watched +me and wondered at my black silences, my frowning preoccupations. +I had not told her how it was my ankle came to be bruised and my +clothes muddy. She had brushed my clothes in the morning before I +got up. + +Ah well! Mothers are not treated in that way now. That I suppose +must console me. I wonder how far you will be able to picture that +dark, grimy, untidy room, with its bare deal table, its tattered +wall paper, the saucepans and kettle on the narrow, cheap, but +by no means economical range, the ashes under the fireplace, the +rust-spotted steel fender on which my bandaged feet rested; I wonder +how near you can come to seeing the scowling pale-faced hobbledehoy +I was, unshaven and collarless, in the Windsor chair, and the little +timid, dirty, devoted old woman who hovered about me with +love peering out from her puckered eyelids. . . + +When she went out to buy some vegetables in the middle of the +morning she got me a half-penny journal. It was just such a one as +these upon my desk, only that the copy I read was damp from the +press, and these are so dry and brittle, they crack if I touch +them. I have a copy of the actual issue I read that morning; it +was a paper called emphatically the New Paper, but everybody bought +it and everybody called it the "yell." It was full that morning of +stupendous news and still more stupendous headlines, so stupendous +that for a little while I was roused from my egotistical broodings +to wider interests. For it seemed that Germany and England were on +the brink of war. + +Of all the monstrous irrational phenomena of the former time, war +was certainly the most strikingly insane. In reality it was probably +far less mischievous than such quieter evil as, for example, the +general acquiescence in the private ownership of land, but its evil +consequences showed so plainly that even in those days of stifling +confusion one marveled at it. On no conceivable grounds was there +any sense in modern war. Save for the slaughter and mangling of a +multitude of people, the destruction of vast quantities of material, +and the waste of innumerable units of energy, it effected nothing. +The old war of savage and barbaric nations did at least change +humanity, you assumed yourselves to be a superior tribe in physique +and discipline, you demonstrated this upon your neighbors, and +if successful you took their land and their women and perpetuated +and enlarged your superiority. The new war changed nothing but the +color of maps, the design of postage stamps, and the relationship +of a few accidentally conspicuous individuals. In one of the last +of these international epileptic fits, for example, the English, +with much dysentery and bad poetry, and a few hundred deaths in +battle, conquered the South African Boers at a gross cost of about +three thousand pounds per head--they could have bought the whole +of that preposterous imitation of a nation for a tenth of that +sum--and except for a few substitutions of personalities, this +group of partially corrupt officials in the place of that, and so +forth, the permanent change was altogether insignificant. (But +an excitable young man in Austria committed suicide when at length +the Transvaal ceased to be a "nation.") Men went through the seat +of that war after it was all over, and found humanity unchanged, +except for a general impoverishment, and the convenience of an +unlimited supply of empty ration tins and barbed wire and cartridge +cases--unchanged and resuming with a slight perplexity all its old +habits and misunderstandings, the nigger still in his slum-like +kraal, the white in his ugly ill-managed shanty. . . + +But we in England saw all these things, or did not see them, +through the mirage of the New Paper, in a light of mania. All my +adolescence from fourteen to seventeen went to the music of that +monstrous resonating futility, the cheering, the anxieties, the +songs and the waving of flags, the wrongs of generous Buller and +the glorious heroism of De Wet--who ALWAYS got away; that was the +great point about the heroic De Wet--and it never occurred to us +that the total population we fought against was less than half the +number of those who lived cramped ignoble lives within the compass +of the Four Towns. + +But before and after that stupid conflict of stupidities, a greater +antagonism was coming into being, was slowly and quietly defining +itself as a thing inevitable, sinking now a little out of attention +only to resume more emphatically, now flashing into some acute +definitive expression and now percolating and pervading some new +region of thought, and that was the antagonism of Germany and Great +Britain. + +When I think of that growing proportion of readers who belong +entirely to the new order, who are growing up with only the vaguest +early memories of the old world, I find the greatest difficulty +in writing down the unintelligible confusions that were matter of +fact to their fathers. + +Here were we British, forty-one millions of people, in a state of +almost indescribably aimless, economic, and moral muddle that we had +neither the courage, the energy, nor the intelligence to improve, +that most of us had hardly the courage to think about, and with our +affairs hopelessly entangled with the entirely different confusions +of three hundred and fifty million other persons scattered about +the globe, and here were the Germans over against us, fifty-six +millions, in a state of confusion no whit better than our own, +and the noisy little creatures who directed papers and wrote books +and gave lectures, and generally in that time of world-dementia +pretended to be the national mind, were busy in both countries, +with a sort of infernal unanimity, exhorting--and not only exhorting +but successfully persuading--the two peoples to divert such small +common store of material, moral and intellectual energy as either +possessed, into the purely destructive and wasteful business of war. +And--I have to tell you these things even if you do not believe +them, because they are vital to my story--there was not a man alive +who could have told you of any real permanent benefit, of anything +whatever to counterbalance the obvious waste and evil, that would +result from a war between England and Germany, whether England +shattered Germany or was smashed and overwhelmed, or whatever the +end might be. + +The thing was, in fact, an enormous irrational obsession, it was, +in the microcosm of our nation, curiously parallel to the egotistical +wrath and jealousy that swayed my individual microcosm. It measured +the excess of common emotion over the common intelligence, the +legacy of inordinate passion we have received from the brute from +which we came. Just as I had become the slave of my own surprise and +anger and went hither and thither with a loaded revolver, seeking +and intending vague fluctuating crimes, so these two nations went +about the earth, hot eared and muddle headed, with loaded navies +and armies terribly ready at hand. Only there was not even a Nettie +to justify their stupidity. There was nothing but quiet imaginary +thwarting on either side. + +And the press was the chief instrument that kept these two huge +multitudes of people directed against one another. + +The press--those newspapers that are now so strange to us--like +the "Empires," the "Nations," the Trusts, and all the other great +monstrous shapes of that extraordinary time--was in the nature +of an unanticipated accident. It had happened, as weeds happen in +abandoned gardens, just as all our world has happened,--because +there was no clear Will in the world to bring about anything better. +Towards the end this "press" was almost entirely under the direction +of youngish men of that eager, rather unintelligent type, that +is never able to detect itself aimless, that pursues nothing with +incredible pride and zeal, and if you would really understand this +mad era the comet brought to an end, you must keep in mind that every +phase in the production of these queer old things was pervaded by +a strong aimless energy and happened in a concentrated rush. + +Let me describe to you, very briefly, a newspaper day. + +Figure first, then, a hastily erected and still more hastily +designed building in a dirty, paper-littered back street of old +London, and a number of shabbily dressed men coming and going in +this with projectile swiftness, and within this factory companies +of printers, tensely active with nimble fingers--they were always +speeding up the printers--ply their type-setting machines, and cast +and arrange masses of metal in a sort of kitchen inferno, above +which, in a beehive of little brightly lit rooms, disheveled men +sit and scribble. There is a throbbing of telephones and a clicking +of telegraph needles, a rushing of messengers, a running to and fro +of heated men, clutching proofs and copy. Then begins a clatter +roar of machinery catching the infection, going faster and faster, +and whizzing and banging,--engineers, who have never had time to +wash since their birth, flying about with oil-cans, while paper +runs off its rolls with a shudder of haste. The proprietor you +must suppose arriving explosively on a swift motor-car, leaping +out before the thing is at a standstill, with letters and documents +clutched in his hand, rushing in, resolute to "hustle," getting +wonderfully in everybody's way. At the sight of him even the messenger +boys who are waiting, get up and scamper to and fro. Sprinkle your +vision with collisions, curses, incoherencies. You imagine all the +parts of this complex lunatic machine working hysterically toward +a crescendo of haste and excitement as the night wears on. At last +the only things that seem to travel slowly in all those tearing +vibrating premises are the hands of the clock. + +Slowly things draw on toward publication, the consummation of all +those stresses. Then in the small hours, into the now dark and +deserted streets comes a wild whirl of carts and men, the place +spurts paper at every door, bales, heaps, torrents of papers, +that are snatched and flung about in what looks like a free fight, +and off with a rush and clatter east, west, north, and south. The +interest passes outwardly; the men from the little rooms are going +homeward, the printers disperse yawning, the roaring presses slacken. +The paper exists. Distribution follows manufacture, and we follow +the bundles. + +Our vision becomes a vision of dispersal. You see those bundles +hurling into stations, catching trains by a hair's breadth, speeding +on their way, breaking up, smaller bundles of them hurled with +a fierce accuracy out upon the platforms that rush by, and then +everywhere a division of these smaller bundles into still smaller +bundles, into dispersing parcels, into separate papers, and the +dawn happens unnoticed amidst a great running and shouting of boys, +a shoving through letter slots, openings of windows, spreading out +upon book-stalls. For the space of a few hours you must figure the +whole country dotted white with rustling papers--placards everywhere +vociferating the hurried lie for the day; men and women in trains, +men and women eating and reading, men by study-fenders, people +sitting up in bed, mothers and sons and daughters waiting for father +to finish--a million scattered people reading--reading headlong--or +feverishly ready to read. It is just as if some vehement jet +had sprayed that white foam of papers over the surface of the land. . . + +And then you know, wonderfully gone--gone utterly, vanished as foam +might vanish upon the sand. + +Nonsense! The whole affair a noisy paroxysm of nonsense, unreasonable +excitement, witless mischief, and waste of strength--signifying +nothing. . . . + +And one of those white parcels was the paper I held in my hands, +as I sat with a bandaged foot on the steel fender in that dark +underground kitchen of my mother's, clean roused from my personal +troubles by the yelp of the headlines. She sat, sleeves tucked up +from her ropy arms, peeling potatoes as I read. + +It was like one of a flood of disease germs that have invaded a +body, that paper. There I was, one corpuscle in the big amorphous +body of the English community, one of forty-one million such +corpuscles and, for all my preoccupations, these potent headlines, +this paper ferment, caught me and swung me about. And all over the +country that day, millions read as I read, and came round into line +with me, under the same magnetic spell, came round--how did we say +it?--Ah!--"to face the foe." + +The comet had been driven into obscurity overleaf. The column +headed "Distinguished Scientist says Comet will Strike our Earth. +Does it Matter?" went unread. "Germany"--I usually figured this +mythical malignant creature as a corseted stiff-mustached Emperor +enhanced by heraldic black wings and a large sword--had insulted +our flag. That was the message of the New Paper, and the monster +towered over me, threatening fresh outrages, visibly spitting +upon my faultless country's colors. Somebody had hoisted a British +flag on the right bank of some tropical river I had never heard of +before, and a drunken German officer under ambiguous instructions +had torn it down. Then one of the convenient abundant natives +of the country, a British subject indisputably, had been shot in +the leg. But the facts were by no means clear. Nothing was clear +except that we were not going to stand any nonsense from Germany. +Whatever had or had not happened we meant to have an apology for, +and apparently they did not mean apologizing. + +"HAS WAR COME AT LAST?" + +That was the headline. One's heart leapt to assent. . . . + +There were hours that day when I clean forgot Nettie, in dreaming +of battles and victories by land and sea, of shell fire, and +entrenchments, and the heaped slaughter of many thousands of men. + +But the next morning I started for Checkshill, started, I remember, +in a curiously hopeful state of mind, oblivious of comets, strikes, +and wars. + + + +Section 5 + +You must understand that I had no set plan of murder when I walked +over to Checkshill. I had no set plan of any sort. There was a +great confusion of dramatically conceived intentions in my head, +scenes of threatening and denunciation and terror, but I did not mean +to kill. The revolver was to turn upon my rival my disadvantage +in age and physique. . . . + +But that was not it really! The revolver!--I took the revolver +because I had the revolver and was a foolish young lout. It was a +dramatic sort of thing to take. I had, I say, no plan at all. + +Ever and again during that second trudge to Checkshill I was +irradiated with a novel unreasonable hope. I had awakened in the +morning with the hope, it may have been the last unfaded trail of +some obliterated dream, that after all Nettie might relent toward me, +that her heart was kind toward me in spite of all that I imagined +had happened. I even thought it possible that I might have misinterpreted +what I had seen. Perhaps she would explain everything. My revolver +was in my pocket for all that. + +I limped at the outset, but after the second mile my ankle warmed +to forgetfulness, and the rest of the way I walked well. Suppose, +after all, I was wrong? + +I was still debating that, as I came through the park. By the corner +of the paddock near the keeper's cottage, I was reminded by some +belated blue hyacinths of a time when I and Nettie had gathered +them together. It seemed impossible that we could really have parted +ourselves for good and all. A wave of tenderness flowed over me, +and still flooded me as I came through the little dell and drew +towards the hollies. But there the sweet Nettie of my boy's love +faded, and I thought of the new Nettie of desire and the man I had +come upon in the moonlight, I thought of the narrow, hot purpose +that had grown so strongly out of my springtime freshness, and my +mood darkened to night. + +I crossed the beech wood and came towards the gardens with a resolute +and sorrowful heart. When I reached the green door in the garden +wall I was seized for a space with so violent a trembling that I +could not grip the latch to lift it, for I no longer had any doubt +how this would end. That trembling was succeeded by a feeling +of cold, and whiteness, and self-pity. I was astonished to find +myself grimacing, to feel my cheeks wet, and thereupon I gave way +completely to a wild passion of weeping. I must take just a little +time before the thing was done. . . . I turned away from the door +and stumbled for a little distance, sobbing loudly, and lay down +out of sight among the bracken, and so presently became calm again. +I lay there some time. I had half a mind to desist, and then my +emotion passed like the shadow of a cloud, and I walked very coolly +into the gardens. + +Through the open door of one of the glass houses I saw old Stuart. +He was leaning against the staging, his hands in his pockets, and +so deep in thought he gave no heed to me. + +I hesitated and went on towards the cottage, slowly. + +Something struck me as unusual about the place, but I could not +tell at first what it was. One of the bedroom windows was open, +and the customary short blind, with its brass upper rail partly +unfastened, drooped obliquely across the vacant space. It looked +negligent and odd, for usually everything about the cottage was +conspicuously trim. + +The door was standing wide open, and everything was still. But giving +that usually orderly hall an odd look--it was about half-past two +in the afternoon--was a pile of three dirty plates, with used knives +and forks upon them, on one of the hall chairs. + +I went into the hall, looked into either room, and hesitated. + +Then I fell to upon the door-knocker and gave a loud rat-tat-too, +and followed this up with an amiable "Hel-lo!" + +For a time no one answered me, and I stood listening and expectant, +with my fingers about my weapon. Some one moved about upstairs +presently, and was still again. The tension of waiting seemed to +brace my nerves. + +I had my hand on the knocker for the second time, when Puss appeared +in the doorway. + +For a moment we remained staring at one another without speaking. +Her hair was disheveled, her face dirty, tear-stained, and irregularly +red. Her expression at the sight of me was pure astonishment. +I thought she was about to say something, and then she had darted +away out of the house again. + +"I say, Puss!" I said. "Puss!" + +I followed her out of the door. "Puss! What's the matter? Where's +Nettie?" + +She vanished round the corner of the house. + +I hesitated, perplexed whether I should pursue her. What did it +all mean? Then I heard some one upstairs. + +"Willie!" cried the voice of Mrs. Stuart. "Is that you?" + +"Yes," I answered. "Where's every one? Where's Nettie? I want to +have a talk with her." + +She did not answer, but I heard her dress rustle as she moved. I +Judged she was upon the landing overhead. + +I paused at the foot of the stairs, expecting her to appear and +come down. + +Suddenly came a strange sound, a rush of sounds, words jumbled +and hurrying, confused and shapeless, borne along upon a note of +throaty distress that at last submerged the words altogether and +ended in a wail. Except that it came from a woman's throat it was +exactly the babbling sound of a weeping child with a grievance. "I +can't," she said, "I can't," and that was all I could distinguish. +It was to my young ears the strangest sound conceivable from a +kindly motherly little woman, whom I had always thought of chiefly +as an unparalleled maker of cakes. It frightened me. I went upstairs +at once in a state of infinite alarm, and there she was upon the +landing, leaning forward over the top of the chest of drawers beside +her open bedroom door, and weeping. I never saw such weeping. One +thick strand of black hair had escaped, and hung with a spiral +twist down her back; never before had I noticed that she had gray +hairs. + +As I came up upon the landing her voice rose again. "Oh that I should +have to tell you, Willie! Oh that I should have to tell you!" She +dropped her head again, and a fresh gust of tears swept all further +words away. + +I said nothing, I was too astonished; but I drew nearer +to her, and waited. . . . + +I never saw such weeping; the extraordinary wetness of her dripping +handkerchief abides with me to this day. + +"That I should have lived to see this day!" she wailed. "I had +rather a thousand times she was struck dead at my feet." + +I began to understand. + +"Mrs. Stuart," I said, clearing my throat; "what has become of +Nettie?" + +"That I should have lived to see this day!" she said by way of +reply. + +I waited till her passion abated. + +There came a lull. I forgot the weapon in my pocket. I said nothing, +and suddenly she stood erect before me, wiping her swollen eyes. +"Willie," she gulped, "she's gone!" + +"Nettie?" + +"Gone! . . . Run away. . . . Run away from her home. Oh, Willie, +Willie! The shame of it! The sin and shame of it!" + +She flung herself upon my shoulder, and clung to me, and began +again to wish her daughter lying dead at our feet. + +"There, there," said I, and all my being was a-tremble. "Where has +she gone?" I said as softly as I could. + +But for the time she was preoccupied with her own sorrow, and I had +to hold her there, and comfort her with the blackness of finality +spreading over my soul. + +"Where has she gone?" I asked for the fourth time. + +"I don't know--we don't know. And oh, Willie, she went out yesterday +morning! I said to her, 'Nettie,' I said to her, 'you're mighty +fine for a morning call.' 'Fine clo's for a fine day,' she said, +and that was her last words to me!--Willie!--the child I suckled +at my breast!" + +"Yes, yes. But where has she gone?" I said. + +She went on with sobs, and now telling her story with a sort of +fragmentary hurry: "She went out bright and shining, out of this +house for ever. She was smiling, Willie--as if she was glad to be +going. ("Glad to be going," I echoed with soundless lips.) 'You're +mighty fine for the morning,' I says; 'mighty fine.' 'Let the girl +be pretty,' says her father, 'while she's young!' And somewhere +she'd got a parcel of her things hidden to pick up, and she was +going off--out of this house for ever!" + +She became quiet. + +"Let the girl be pretty," she repeated; "let the girl be pretty +while she's young. . . . Oh! how can we go on LIVING, Willie? He +doesn't show it, but he's like a stricken beast. He's wounded to +the heart. She was always his favorite. He never seemed to care +for Puss like he did for her. And she's wounded him--" + +"Where has she gone?" I reverted at last to that. + +"We don't know. She leaves her own blood, she trusts herself-- Oh, +Willie, it'll kill me! I wish she and me together were lying in +our graves." + +"But"--I moistened my lips and spoke slowly--"she may have gone +to marry." + +"If that was so! I've prayed to God it might be so, Willie. I've +prayed that he'd take pity on her--him, I mean, she's with." + +I jerked out: "Who's that?" + +"In her letter, she said he was a gentleman. She did say he was +a gentleman." + +"In her letter. Has she written? Can I see her letter?" + +"Her father took it." + +"But if she writes-- When did she write?" + +"It came this morning." + +"But where did it come from? You can tell--" + +"She didn't say. She said she was happy. She said love took one +like a storm--" + +"Curse that! Where is her letter? Let me see it. And as for this +gentleman--" + +She stared at me. + +"You know who it is." + +"Willie!" she protested. + +"You know who it is, whether she said or not?" Her eyes made a mute +unconfident denial. + +"Young Verrall?" + +She made no answer. "All I could do for you, Willie," she began +presently. + +"Was it young Verrall?" I insisted. + +For a second, perhaps, we faced one another in stark understanding. +. . . Then she plumped back to the chest of drawers, and her wet +pocket-handkerchief, and I knew she sought refuge from my relentless +eyes. + +My pity for her vanished. She knew it was her mistress's son as +well as I! And for some time she had known, she had felt. + +I hovered over her for a moment, sick with amazed disgust. I suddenly +bethought me of old Stuart, out in the greenhouse, and turned and +went downstairs. As I did so, I looked up to see Mrs. Stuart moving +droopingly and lamely back into her own room. + + + +Section 6 + +Old Stuart was pitiful. + +I found him still inert in the greenhouse where I had first seen +him. He did not move as I drew near him; he glanced at me, and then +stared hard again at the flowerpots before him. + +"Eh, Willie," he said, "this is a black day for all of us." + +"What are you going to do?" I asked. + +"The missus takes on so," he said. "I came out here." + +"What do you mean to do?" + +"What IS a man to do in such a case?" + +"Do!" I cried, "why-- Do!" + +"He ought to marry her," he said. + +"By God, yes!" I cried. "He must do that anyhow." + +"He ought to. It's--it's cruel. But what am I to do? Suppose he +won't? Likely he won't. What then?" + +He drooped with an intensified despair. + +"Here's this cottage," he said, pursuing some contracted argument. +"We've lived here all our lives, you might say. . . . Clear out. +At my age. . . . One can't die in a slum." + +I stood before him for a space, speculating what thoughts might +fill the gaps between these broken words. I found his lethargy, and +the dimly shaped mental attitudes his words indicated, abominable. +I said abruptly, "You have her letter?" + +He dived into his breast-pocket, became motionless for ten seconds, +then woke up again and produced her letter. He drew it clumsily +from its envelope, and handed it to me silently. + +"Why!" he cried, looking at me for the first time, "What's come to +your chin, Willie?" + +"It's nothing," I said. "It's a bruise;" and I opened the letter. + +It was written on greenish tinted fancy note-paper, and with all +and more than Nettie's usual triteness and inadequacy of expression. +Her handwriting bore no traces of emotion; it was round and upright +and clear as though it had been done in a writing lesson. Always +her letters were like masks upon her image; they fell like curtains +before the changing charm of her face; one altogether forgot the +sound of her light clear voice, confronted by a perplexing stereotyped +thing that had mysteriously got a hold upon one's heart and pride. +How did that letter run?-- + + +"MY DEAR MOTHER, + +"Do not be distressed at my going away. I have gone somewhere safe, +and with some one who cares for me very much. I am sorry for your +sakes, but it seems that it had to be. Love is a very difficult +thing, and takes hold of one in ways one does not expect. Do not +think I am ashamed about this, I glory in my love, and you must not +trouble too much about me. I am very, very happy (deeply underlined). + +"Fondest love to Father and Puss. + +"Your loving + +"Nettie." + +That queer little document! I can see it now for the childish simple +thing it was, but at the time I read it in a suppressed anguish of +rage. It plunged me into a pit of hopeless shame; there seemed to +remain no pride for me in life until I had revenge. I stood staring +at those rounded upstanding letters, not trusting myself to speak +or move. At last I stole a glance at Stuart. + +He held the envelope in his hand, and stared down at the postmark +between his horny thumbnails. + +"You can't even tell where she is," he said, turning the thing +round in a hopeless manner, and then desisting. "It's hard on us, +Willie. Here she is; she hadn't anything to complain of; a sort of +pet for all of us. Not even made to do her share of the 'ousework. +And she goes off and leaves us like a bird that's learnt to fly. +Can't TRUST us, that's what takes me. Puts 'erself-- But there! +What's to happen to her?" + +"What's to happen to him?" + +He shook his head to show that problem was beyond him. + +"You'll go after her," I said in an even voice; "you'll make him +marry her?" + +"Where am I to go?" he asked helplessly, and held out the envelope +with a gesture; "and what could I do? Even if I knew-- How could +I leave the gardens?" + +"Great God!" I cried, "not leave these gardens! It's your Honor, +man! If she was my daughter--if she was my daughter--I'd tear the +world to pieces!" . . I choked. "You mean to stand it?" + +"What can I do?" + +"Make him marry her! Horsewhip him! Horsewhip him, I say!--I'd +strangle him!" + +He scratched slowly at his hairy cheek, opened his mouth, and +shook his head. Then, with an intolerable note of sluggish gentle +wisdom, he said, "People of our sort, Willie, can't do things like +that." + +I came near to raving. I had a wild impulse to strike him in the +face. Once in my boyhood I happened upon a bird terribly mangled +by some cat, and killed it in a frenzy of horror and pity. I had +a gust of that same emotion now, as this shameful mutilated soul +fluttered in the dust, before me. Then, you know, I dismissed him +from the case. + +"May I look?" I asked. + +He held out the envelope reluctantly. + +"There it is," he said, and pointing with his garden-rough forefinger. +"I.A.P.A.M.P. What can you make of that?" + +I took the thing in my hands. The adhesive stamp customary in those +days was defaced by a circular postmark, which bore the name of +the office of departure and the date. The impact in this particular +case had been light or made without sufficient ink, and half the +letters of the name had left no impression. I could distinguish-- + + I A P A M P + +and very faintly below D.S.O. + +I guessed the name in an instant flash of intuition. It was +Shaphambury. The very gaps shaped that to my mind. Perhaps in a +sort of semi-visibility other letters were there, at least hinting +themselves. It was a place somewhere on the east coast, I knew, +either in Norfolk or Suffolk. + +"Why!" cried I--and stopped. + +What was the good of telling him? + +Old Stuart had glanced up sharply, I am inclined to think almost +fearfully, into my face. "You--you haven't got it?" he said. + +Shaphambury--I should remember that. + +"You don't think you got it?" he said. + +I handed the envelope back to him. + +"For a moment I thought it might be Hampton," I said. + +"Hampton," he repeated. "Hampton. How could you make Hampton?" He +turned the envelope about. "H.A.M.--why, Willie, you're a worse +hand at the job than me!" + +He replaced the letter in the envelope and stood erect to put this +back in his breast pocket. + +I did not mean to take any risks in this affair. I drew a stump +of pencil from my waistcoat pocket, turned a little away from him +and wrote "Shaphambury" very quickly on my frayed and rather grimy +shirt cuff. + +"Well," said I, with an air of having done nothing remarkable. + +I turned to him with some unimportant observation--I have forgotten +what. + +I never finished whatever vague remark I commenced. + +I looked up to see a third person waiting at the greenhouse door. + + + +Section 7 + +It was old Mrs. Verrall. + +I wonder if I can convey the effect of her to you. She was a little +old lady with extraordinarily flaxen hair, her weak aquiline features +were pursed up into an assumption of dignity, and she was richly +dressed. I would like to underline that "richly dressed," or have +the words printed in florid old English or Gothic lettering. No +one on earth is now quite so richly dressed as she was, no one old +or young indulges in so quiet and yet so profound a sumptuosity. +But you must not imagine any extravagance of outline or any beauty +or richness of color. The predominant colors were black and fur +browns, and the effect of richness was due entirely to the extreme +costliness of the materials employed. She affected silk brocades +with rich and elaborate patterns, priceless black lace over creamy +or purple satin, intricate trimmings through which threads and +bands of velvet wriggled, and in the winter rare furs. Her gloves +fitted exquisitely, and ostentatiously simple chains of fine gold +and pearls, and a great number of bracelets, laced about her little +person. One was forced to feel that the slightest article she wore +cost more than all the wardrobe of a dozen girls like Nettie; her +bonnet affected the simplicity that is beyond rubies. Richness, +that is the first quality about this old lady that I would like to +convey to you, and the second was cleanliness. You felt that old +Mrs. Verrall was exquisitely clean. If you had boiled my poor dear +old mother in soda for a month you couldn't have got her so clean +as Mrs. Verrall constantly and manifestly was. And pervading all +her presence shone her third great quality, her manifest confidence +in the respectful subordination of the world. + +She was pale and a little out of breath that day, but without any +loss of her ultimate confidence, and it was clear to me that she +had come to interview Stuart upon the outbreak of passion that had +bridged the gulf between their families. + +And here again I find myself writing in an unknown language, so far +as my younger readers are concerned. You who know only the world +that followed the Great Change will find much that I am telling +inconceivable. Upon these points I cannot appeal, as I have appealed +for other confirmations, to the old newspapers; these were the things +that no one wrote about because every one understood and every one +had taken up an attitude. There were in England and America, and +indeed throughout the world, two great informal divisions of human +beings--the Secure and the Insecure. There was not and never had +been in either country a nobility--it was and remains a common +error that the British peers were noble--neither in law nor custom +were there noble families, and we altogether lacked the edification +one found in Russia, for example, of a poor nobility. A peerage +was an hereditary possession that, like the family land, concerned +only the eldest sons of the house; it radiated no luster of noblesse +oblige. The rest of the world were in law and practice common--and +all America was common. But through the private ownership of land +that had resulted from the neglect of feudal obligations in Britain +and the utter want of political foresight in the Americas, large +masses of property had become artificially stable in the hands +of a small minority, to whom it was necessary to mortgage all new +public and private enterprises, and who were held together not by +any tradition of service and nobility but by the natural sympathy +of common interests and a common large scale of living. It was a class +without any very definite boundaries; vigorous individualities, by +methods for the most part violent and questionable, were constantly +thrusting themselves from insecurity to security, and the sons +and daughters of secure people, by marrying insecurity or by wild +extravagance or flagrant vice, would sink into the life of anxiety +and insufficiency which was the ordinary life of man. The rest +of the population was landless and, except by working directly or +indirectly for the Secure, had no legal right to exist. And such +was the shallowness and insufficiency of our thought, such the +stifled egotism of all our feelings before the Last Days, that very +few indeed of the Secure could be found to doubt that this was the +natural and only conceivable order of the world. + +It is the life of the Insecure under the old order that I am +displaying, and I hope that I am conveying something of its hopeless +bitterness to you, but you must not imagine that the Secure lived +lives of paradisiacal happiness. The pit of insecurity below them +made itself felt, even though it was not comprehended. Life about +them was ugly; the sight of ugly and mean houses, of ill-dressed +people, the vulgar appeals of the dealers in popular commodities, +were not to be escaped. There was below the threshold of their minds +an uneasiness; they not only did not think clearly about social +economy but they displayed an instinctive disinclination to think. +Their security was not so perfect that they had not a dread of +falling towards the pit, they were always lashing themselves by +new ropes, their cultivation of "connexions," of interests, their +desire to confirm and improve their positions, was a constant +ignoble preoccupation. You must read Thackeray to get the full +flavor of their lives. Then the bacterium was apt to disregard class +distinctions, and they were never really happy in their servants. +Read their surviving books. Each generation bewails the decay +of that "fidelity" of servants, no generation ever saw. A world +that is squalid in one corner is squalid altogether, but that they +never understood. They believed there was not enough of anything +to go round, they believed that this was the intention of God and +an incurable condition of life, and they held passionately and with +a sense of right to their disproportionate share. They maintained +a common intercourse as "Society" of all who were practically +secure, and their choice of that word is exhaustively eloquent +of the quality of their philosophy. But, if you can master these +alien ideas upon which the old system rested, just in the same +measure will you understand the horror these people had for marriages +with the Insecure. In the case of their girls and women it was +extraordinarily rare, and in the case of either sex it was regarded +as a disastrous social crime. Anything was better than that. + +You are probably aware of the hideous fate that was only too probably +the lot, during those last dark days, of every girl of the insecure +classes who loved and gave way to the impulse of self-abandonment +without marriage, and so you will understand the peculiar situation +of Nettie with young Verrall. One or other had to suffer. And as +they were both in a state of great emotional exaltation and capable +of strange generosities toward each other, it was an open question +and naturally a source of great anxiety to a mother in Mrs. Verrall's +position, whether the sufferer might not be her son--whether as +the outcome of that glowing irresponsible commerce Nettie might +not return prospective mistress of Checkshill Towers. The chances +were greatly against that conclusion, but such things did occur. + +These laws and customs sound, I know, like a record of some +nasty-minded lunatic's inventions. They were invincible facts in +that vanished world into which, by some accident, I had been born, +and it was the dream of any better state of things that was scouted +as lunacy. Just think of it! This girl I loved with all my soul, +for whom I was ready to sacrifice my life, was not good enough to +marry young Verrall. And I had only to look at his even, handsome, +characterless face to perceive a creature weaker and no better +than myself. She was to be his pleasure until he chose to cast her +aside, and the poison of our social system had so saturated her +nature--his evening dress, his freedom and his money had seemed +so fine to her and I so clothed in squalor--that to that prospect +she had consented. And to resent the social conventions that +created their situation, was called "class envy," and gently born +preachers reproached us for the mildest resentment against an injustice +no living man would now either endure or consent to profit by. + +What was the sense of saying "peace" when there was no peace? If +there was one hope in the disorders of that old world it lay in +revolt and conflict to the death. + +But if you can really grasp the shameful grotesqueness of the old +life, you will begin to appreciate the interpretation of old Mrs. +Verrall's appearance that leapt up at once in my mind. + +She had come to compromise the disaster! + +And the Stuarts WOULD compromise! I saw that only too well. + +An enormous disgust at the prospect of the imminent encounter between +Stuart and his mistress made me behave in a violent and irrational +way. I wanted to escape seeing that, seeing even Stuart's first +gesture in that, at any cost. + +"I'm off," said I, and turned my back on him without any further +farewell. + +My line of retreat lay by the old lady, and so I advanced toward +her. + +I saw her expression change, her mouth fell a little way open, her +forehead wrinkled, and her eyes grew round. She found me a queer +customer even at the first sight, and there was something in the +manner of my advance that took away her breath. + +She stood at the top of the three or four steps that descended to +the level of the hothouse floor. She receded a pace or two, with +a certain offended dignity at the determination of my rush. + +I gave her no sort of salutation. + +Well, as a matter of fact, I did give her a sort of salutation. +There is no occasion for me to begin apologizing now for the thing +I said to her--I strip these things before you--if only I can get +them stark enough you will understand and forgive. I was filled +with a brutal and overpowering desire to insult her. + +And so I addressed this poor little expensive old woman in +the following terms, converting her by a violent metonymy into a +comprehensive plural. "You infernal land thieves!" I said point-blank +into her face. "HAVE YOU COME TO OFFER THEM MONEY?" + +And without waiting to test her powers of repartee I passed rudely +beyond her and vanished, striding with my fists clenched, +out of her world again. . . + +I have tried since to imagine how the thing must have looked to +her. So far as her particular universe went I had not existed at +all, or I had existed only as a dim black thing, an insignificant +speck, far away across her park in irrelevant, unimportant transit, +until this moment when she came, sedately troubled, into her own +secure gardens and sought for Stuart among the greenhouses. Then +abruptly I flashed into being down that green-walled, brick-floored +vista as a black-avised, ill-clad young man, who first stared and +then advanced scowling toward her. Once in existence I developed +rapidly. I grew larger in perspective and became more and more +important and sinister every moment. I came up the steps with +inconceivable hostility and disrespect in my bearing, towered +over her, becoming for an instant at least a sort of second French +Revolution, and delivered myself with the intensest concentration +of those wicked and incomprehensible words. Just for a second I +threatened annihilation. Happily that was my climax. + +And then I had gone by, and the Universe was very much as it had +always been except for the wild swirl in it, and the faint sense +of insecurity my episode left in its wake. + +The thing that never entered my head in those days was that a large +proportion of the rich were rich in absolute good faith. I thought +they saw things exactly as I saw them, and wickedly denied. But indeed +old Mrs. Verrall was no more capable of doubting the perfection +of her family's right to dominate a wide country side, than she was +of examining the Thirty-nine Articles or dealing with any other of +the adamantine pillars upon which her universe rested in security. + +No doubt I startled and frightened her tremendously. But she could +not understand. + +None of her sort of people ever did seem to understand such livid +flashes of hate, as ever and again lit the crowded darkness below +their feet. The thing leapt out of the black for a moment and +vanished, like a threatening figure by a desolate roadside lit for +a moment by one's belated carriage-lamp and then swallowed up by +the night. They counted it with nightmares, and did their best to +forget what was evidently as insignificant as it was disturbing. + + + + +CHAPTER THE FOURTH + +WAR + + + +Section 1 + +FROM that moment when I insulted old Mrs. Verrall I became +representative, I was a man who stood for all the disinherited of +the world. I had no hope of pride or pleasure left in me, I was +raging rebellion against God and mankind. There were no more vague +intentions swaying me this way and that; I was perfectly clear now +upon what I meant to do. I would make my protest and die. + +I would make my protest and die. I was going to kill Nettie--Nettie +who had smiled and promised and given herself to another, and who +stood now for all the conceivable delightfulnesses, the lost imaginations +of the youthful heart, the unattainable joys in life; and Verrall +who stood for all who profited by the incurable injustice of our +social order. I would kill them both. And that being done I would +blow my brains out and see what vengeance followed my blank refusal +to live. + +So indeed I was resolved. I raged monstrously. And above me, +abolishing the stars, triumphant over the yellow waning moon that +followed it below, the giant meteor towered up towards the zenith. + +"Let me only kill!" I cried. "Let me only kill!" + +So I shouted in my frenzy. I was in a fever that defied hunger +and fatigue; for a long time I had prowled over the heath towards +Lowchester talking to myself, and now that night had fully come I +was tramping homeward, walking the long seventeen miles without a +thought of rest. And I had eaten nothing since the morning. + +I suppose I must count myself mad, but I can recall my ravings. + +There were times when I walked weeping through that brightness that +was neither night nor day. There were times when I reasoned in a +topsy-turvy fashion with what I called the Spirit of All Things. +But always I spoke to that white glory in the sky. + +"Why am I here only to suffer ignominies?" I asked. "Why have you +made me with pride that cannot be satisfied, with desires that +turn and rend me? Is it a jest, this world--a joke you play on your +guests? I--even I--have a better humor than that!" + +"Why not learn from me a certain decency of mercy? Why not undo? +Have I ever tormented--day by day, some wretched worm--making +filth for it to trail through, filth that disgusts it, starving it, +bruising it, mocking it? Why should you? Your jokes are clumsy. +Try--try some milder fun up there; do you hear? Something that +doesn't hurt so infernally." + +"You say this is your purpose--your purpose with me. You are making +something with me--birth pangs of a soul. Ah! How can I believe +you? You forget I have eyes for other things. Let my own case go, +but what of that frog beneath the cart-wheel, God?--and the bird +the cat had torn?" + +And after such blasphemies I would fling out a ridiculous little +debating society hand. "Answer me that!" + +A week ago it had been moonlight, white and black and hard across +the spaces of the park, but now the light was livid and full of +the quality of haze. An extraordinarily low white mist, not three +feet above the ground, drifted broodingly across the grass, and +the trees rose ghostly out of that phantom sea. Great and shadowy +and strange was the world that night, no one seemed abroad; I and my +little cracked voice drifted solitary through the silent mysteries. +Sometimes I argued as I have told, sometimes I tumbled along in +moody vacuity, sometimes my torment was vivid and acute. + +Abruptly out of apathy would come a boiling paroxysm of fury, when +I thought of Nettie mocking me and laughing, and of her and Verrall +clasped in one another's arms. + +"I will not have it so!" I screamed. "I will not have it so!" + +And in one of these raving fits I drew my revolver from my pocket +and fired into the quiet night. Three times I fired it. + +The bullets tore through the air, the startled trees told one another +in diminishing echoes the thing I had done, and then, with a slow +finality, the vast and patient night healed again to calm. My shots, +my curses and blasphemies, my prayers--for anon I prayed--that +Silence took them all. + +It was--how can I express it?--a stifled outcry tranquilized, +lost, amid the serene assumptions, the overwhelming empire of that +brightness. The noise of my shots, the impact upon things, had +for the instant been enormous, then it had passed away. I found +myself standing with the revolver held up, astonished, my emotions +penetrated by something I could not understand. Then I looked up +over my shoulder at the great star, and remained staring at it. + +"Who are YOU?" I said at last. + +I was like a man in a solitary desert who has suddenly heard a voice. . . . + +That, too, passed. + +As I came over Clayton Crest I recalled that I missed the multitude +that now night after night walked out to stare at the comet, and +the little preacher in the waste beyond the hoardings, who warned +sinners to repent before the Judgment, was not in his usual place. + +It was long past midnight, and every one had gone home. But I did +not think of this at first, and the solitude perplexed me and left +a memory behind. The gas-lamps were all extinguished because of the +brightness of the comet, and that too was unfamiliar. The little +newsagent in the still High Street had shut up and gone to bed, +but one belated board had been put out late and forgotten, and it +still bore its placard. + +The word upon it--there was but one word upon it in staring +letters--was: "WAR." + +You figure that empty mean street, emptily echoing to my footsteps--no +soul awake and audible but me. Then my halt at the placard. And +amidst that sleeping stillness, smeared hastily upon the board, +a little askew and crumpled, but quite distinct beneath that cool +meteoric glare, preposterous and appalling, the measureless evil +of that word-- + +"WAR!" + + + +Section 2 + +I awoke in that state of equanimity that so often follows an +emotional drenching. + +It was late, and my mother was beside my bed. She had some breakfast +for me on a battered tray. + +"Don't get up yet, dear," she said. "You've been sleeping. It was +three o'clock when you got home last night. You must have been +tired out." + +"Your poor face," she went on, "was as white as a sheet and your +eyes shining. . . . It frightened me to let you in. And you stumbled +on the stairs." + +My eyes went quietly to my coat pocket, where something still bulged. +She probably had not noticed. "I went to Checkshill," I said. "You +know--perhaps--?" + +"I got a letter last evening, dear," and as she bent near me to put +the tray upon my knees, she kissed my hair softly. For a moment we +both remained still, resting on that, her cheek just touching my +head. + +I took the tray from her to end the pause. + +"Don't touch my clothes, mummy," I said sharply, as she moved +towards them. "I'm still equal to a clothes-brush." + +And then, as she turned away, I astonished her by saying, "You dear +mother, you! A little--I understand. Only--now--dear mother; oh! +let me be! Let me be!" + +And, with the docility of a good servant, she went from me. Dear +heart of submission that the world and I had used so ill! + +It seemed to me that morning that I could never give way to a gust +of passion again. A sorrowful firmness of the mind possessed me. +My purpose seemed now as inflexible as iron; there was neither love +nor hate nor fear left in me--only I pitied my mother greatly for +all that was still to come. I ate my breakfast slowly, and thought +where I could find out about Shaphambury, and how I might hope to +get there. I had not five shillings in the world. + +I dressed methodically, choosing the least frayed of my collars, +and shaving much more carefully than was my wont; then I went down +to the Public Library to consult a map. + +Shaphambury was on the coast of Essex, a long and complicated +journey from Clayton. I went to the railway-station and made some +memoranda from the time-tables. The porters I asked were not very +clear about Shaphambury, but the booking-office clerk was helpful, +and we puzzled out all I wanted to know. Then I came out into the +coaly street again. At the least I ought to have two pounds. + +I went back to the Public Library and into the newspaper room to +think over this problem. + +A fact intruded itself upon me. People seemed in an altogether +exceptional stir about the morning journals, there was something +unusual in the air of the room, more people and more talking than +usual, and for a moment I was puzzled. Then I bethought me: "This +war with Germany, of course!" A naval battle was supposed to be in +progress in the North Sea. Let them! I returned to the consideration +of my own affairs. + +Parload? + +Could I go and make it up with him, and then borrow? I weighed the +chances of that. Then I thought of selling or pawning something, +but that seemed difficult. My winter overcoat had not cost a pound +when it was new, my watch was not likely to fetch many shillings. +Still, both these things might be factors. I thought with a certain +repugnance of the little store my mother was probably making for +the rent. She was very secretive about that, and it was locked in +an old tea-caddy in her bedroom. I knew it would be almost impossible +to get any of that money from her willingly, and though I told +myself that in this issue of passion and death no detail mattered, +I could not get rid of tormenting scruples whenever I thought of +that tea-caddy. Was there no other course? Perhaps after every +other source had been tapped I might supplement with a few shillings +frankly begged from her. "These others," I said to myself, thinking +without passion for once of the sons of the Secure, "would find it +difficult to run their romances on a pawnshop basis. However, we +must manage it." + +I felt the day was passing on, but I did not get excited about +that. "Slow is swiftest," Parload used to say, and I meant to get +everything thought out completely, to take a long aim and then to +act as a bullet flies. + +I hesitated at a pawnshop on my way home to my midday meal, but I +determined not to pledge my watch until I could bring my overcoat +also. + +I ate silently, revolving plans. + + + +Section 3 + +After our midday dinner--it was a potato-pie, mostly potato with +some scraps of cabbage and bacon--I put on my overcoat and got it +out of the house while my mother was in the scullery at the back. + +A scullery in the old world was, in the case of such houses as +ours, a damp, unsavory, mainly subterranean region behind the dark +living-room kitchen, that was rendered more than typically dirty +in our case by the fact that into it the coal-cellar, a yawning +pit of black uncleanness, opened, and diffused small crunchable +particles about the uneven brick floor. It was the region of +"washing-up," that greasy, damp function that followed every meal; +its atmosphere had ever a cooling steaminess and the memory of +boiled cabbage, and the sooty black stains where saucepan or kettle +had been put down for a minute, scraps of potato-peel caught by +the strainer of the escape-pipe, and rags of a quite indescribable +horribleness of acquisition, called "dish-clouts," rise in my +memory at the name. The altar of this place was the "sink," a tank +of stone, revolting to a refined touch, grease-filmed and unpleasant +to see, and above this was a tap for cold water, so arranged that +when the water descended it splashed and wetted whoever had turned +it on. This tap was our water supply. And in such a place you +must fancy a little old woman, rather incompetent and very gentle, +a soul of unselfishness and sacrifice, in dirty clothes, all come +from their original colors to a common dusty dark gray, in worn, +ill-fitting boots, with hands distorted by ill use, and untidy +graying hair--my mother. In the winter her hands would be "chapped," +and she would have a cough. And while she washes up I go out, to +sell my overcoat and watch in order that I may desert her. + +I gave way to queer hesitations in pawning my two negotiable articles. +A weakly indisposition to pawn in Clayton, where the pawnbroker +knew me, carried me to the door of the place in Lynch Street, +Swathinglea, where I had bought my revolver. Then came an idea that +I was giving too many facts about myself to one man, and I came +back to Clayton after all. I forget how much money I got, but I +remember that it was rather less than the sum I had made out to be +the single fare to Shaphambury. Still deliberate, I went back to +the Public Library to find out whether it was possible, by walking +for ten or twelve miles anywhere, to shorten the journey. My boots +were in a dreadful state, the sole of the left one also was now +peeling off, and I could not help perceiving that all my plans +might be wrecked if at this crisis I went on shoe leather in which +I could only shuffle. So long as I went softly they would serve, +but not for hard walking. I went to the shoemaker in Hacker Street, +but he would not promise any repairs for me under forty-eight hours. + +I got back home about five minutes to three, resolved to start by +the five train for Birmingham in any case, but still dissatisfied +about my money. I thought of pawning a book or something of that +sort, but I could think of nothing of obvious value in the house. +My mother's silver--two gravy-spoons and a salt-cellar--had been +pawned for some weeks, since, in fact, the June quarter day. But +my mind was full of hypothetical opportunities. + +As I came up the steps to our door, I remarked that Mr. Gabbitas +looked at me suddenly round his dull red curtains with a sort of +alarmed resolution in his eye and vanished, and as I walked along +the passage he opened his door upon me suddenly and intercepted +me. + +You are figuring me, I hope, as a dark and sullen lout in shabby, +cheap, old-world clothes that are shiny at all the wearing surfaces, +and with a discolored red tie and frayed linen. My left hand keeps +in my pocket as though there is something it prefers to keep a grip +upon there. Mr. Gabbitas was shorter than I, and the first note +he struck in the impression he made upon any one was of something +bright and birdlike. I think he wanted to be birdlike, he possessed +the possibility of an avian charm, but, as a matter of fact, there +was nothing of the glowing vitality of the bird in his being. And +a bird is never out of breath and with an open mouth. He was in +the clerical dress of that time, that costume that seems now almost +the strangest of all our old-world clothing, and he presented it in +its cheapest form--black of a poor texture, ill-fitting, strangely +cut. Its long skirts accentuated the tubbiness of his body, the +shortness of his legs. The white tie below his all-round collar, +beneath his innocent large-spectacled face, was a little grubby, +and between his not very clean teeth he held a briar pipe. His +complexion was whitish, and although he was only thirty-three or +four perhaps, his sandy hair was already thinning from the top of +his head. + +To your eye, now, he would seem the strangest figure, in the utter +disregard of all physical beauty or dignity about him. You would +find him extraordinarily odd, but in the old days he met not only +with acceptance but respect. He was alive until within a year or so +ago, but his later appearance changed. As I saw him that afternoon +he was a very slovenly, ungainly little human being indeed, not only +was his clothing altogether ugly and queer, but had you stripped +the man stark, you would certainly have seen in the bulging paunch +that comes from flabby muscles and flabbily controlled appetites, +and in the rounded shoulders and flawed and yellowish skin, the same +failure of any effort toward clean beauty. You had an instinctive +sense that so he had been from the beginning. You felt he was not +only drifting through life, eating what came in his way, believing +what came in his way, doing without any vigor what came in his way, +but that into life also he had drifted. You could not believe him +the child of pride and high resolve, or of any splendid passion of +love. He had just HAPPENED. . . But we all happened then. Why am +I taking this tone over this poor little curate in particular? + +"Hello!" he said, with an assumption of friendly ease. "Haven't +seen you for weeks! Come in and have a gossip." + +An invitation from the drawing-room lodger was in the nature of a +command. I would have liked very greatly to have refused it, never +was invitation more inopportune, but I had not the wit to think +of an excuse. "All right," I said awkwardly, and he held the door +open for me. + +"I'd be very glad if you would," he amplified. "One doesn't get +much opportunity of intelligent talk in this parish." + +What the devil was he up to, was my secret preoccupation. He fussed +about me with a nervous hospitality, talking in jumpy fragments, +rubbing his hands together, and taking peeps at me over and round +his glasses. As I sat down in his leather-covered armchair, I had +an odd memory of the one in the Clayton dentist's operating-room--I +know not why. + +"They're going to give us trouble in the North Sea, it seems," he +remarked with a sort of innocent zest. "I'm glad they mean fighting." + +There was an air of culture about his room that always cowed me, +and that made me constrained even on this occasion. The table under +the window was littered with photographic material and the later +albums of his continental souvenirs, and on the American cloth +trimmed shelves that filled the recesses on either side of the +fireplace were what I used to think in those days a quite incredible +number of books--perhaps eight hundred altogether, including +the reverend gentleman's photograph albums and college and school +text-books. This suggestion of learning was enforced by the +little wooden shield bearing a college coat-of-arms that hung over +the looking-glass, and by a photograph of Mr. Gabbitas in cap and +gown in an Oxford frame that adorned the opposite wall. And in the +middle of that wall stood his writing-desk, which I knew to have +pigeon-holes when it was open, and which made him seem not merely +cultured but literary. At that he wrote sermons, composing them +himself! + +"Yes," he said, taking possession of the hearthrug, "the war had +to come sooner or later. If we smash their fleet for them now; +well, there's an end to the matter!" + +He stood on his toes and then bumped down on his heels, and looked +blandly through his spectacles at a water-color by his sister--the +subject was a bunch of violets--above the sideboard which was his +pantry and tea-chest and cellar. "Yes," he said as he did so. + +I coughed, and wondered how I might presently get away. + +He invited me to smoke--that queer old practice!--and then when +I declined, began talking in a confidential tone of this "dreadful +business" of the strikes. "The war won't improve THAT outlook," he +said, and was very grave for a moment. + +He spoke of the want of thought for their wives and children shown +by the colliers in striking merely for the sake of the union, and +this stirred me to controversy, and distracted me a little from my +resolution to escape. + +"I don't quite agree with that," I said, clearing my throat. "If +the men didn't strike for the union now, if they let that be broken +up, where would they be when the pinch of reductions did come?" + +To which he replied that they couldn't expect to get top-price +wages when the masters were selling bottom-price coal. I replied, +"That isn't it. The masters don't treat them fairly. They have to +protect themselves." + +To which Mr. Gabbitas answered, "Well, I don't know. I've been in +the Four Towns some time, and I must say I don't think the balance +of injustice falls on the masters' side." + +"It falls on the men," I agreed, wilfully misunderstanding him. + +And so we worked our way toward an argument. "Confound this +argument!" I thought; but I had no skill in self-extraction, and +my irritation crept into my voice. Three little spots of color came +into the cheeks and nose of Mr. Gabbitas, but his voice showed +nothing of his ruffled temper. + +"You see," I said, "I'm a socialist. I don't think this world was +made for a small minority to dance on the faces of every one else." + +"My dear fellow," said the Rev. Gabbitas, "I'M a socialist too. +Who isn't. But that doesn't lead me to class hatred." + +"You haven't felt the heel of this confounded system. I have." + +"Ah!" said he; and catching him on that note came a rap at the front +door, and, as he hung suspended, the sound of my mother letting +some one in and a timid rap. + +"NOW," thought I, and stood up, resolutely, but he would not let +me. "No, no, no!" said he. "It's only for the Dorcas money." + +He put his hand against my chest with an effect of physical +compulsion, and cried, "Come in!" + +"Our talk's just getting interesting," he protested; and there +entered Miss Ramell, an elderly little young lady who was mighty +in Church help in Clayton. + +He greeted her--she took no notice of me--and went to his bureau, +and I remained standing by my chair but unable to get out of the +room. "I'm not interrupting?" asked Miss Ramell. + +"Not in the least," he said; drew out the carriers and opened his +desk. I could not help seeing what he did. + +I was so fretted by my impotence to leave him that at the moment +it did not connect at all with the research of the morning that +he was taking out money. I listened sullenly to his talk with Miss +Ramell, and saw only, as they say in Wales, with the front of my +eyes, the small flat drawer that had, it seemed, quite a number +of sovereigns scattered over its floor. "They're so unreasonable," +complained Miss Ramell. Who could be otherwise in a social +organization that bordered on insanity? + +I turned away from them, put my foot on the fender, stuck my elbow +on the plush-fringed mantelboard, and studied the photographs, +pipes, and ash-trays that adorned it. What was it I had to think +out before I went to the station? + +Of course! My mind made a queer little reluctant leap--it felt like +being forced to leap over a bottomless chasm--and alighted upon the +sovereigns that were just disappearing again as Mr. Gabbitas shut +his drawer. + +"I won't interrupt your talk further," said Miss Ramell, receding +doorward. + +Mr. Gabbitas played round her politely, and opened the door for her +and conducted her into the passage, and for a moment or so I had +the fullest sense of proximity to those--it seemed to me +there must be ten or twelve--sovereigns. . . . + +The front door closed and he returned. My chance of escape had +gone. + + + +Section 4 + +"I MUST be going," I said, with a curiously reinforced desire to +get away out of that room. + +"My dear chap!" he insisted, "I can't think of it. Surely--there's +nothing to call you away." Then with an evident desire to shift the +venue of our talk, he asked, "You never told me what you thought +of Burble's little book." + +I was now, beneath my dull display of submission, furiously angry +with him. It occurred to me to ask myself why I should defer +and qualify my opinions to him. Why should I pretend a feeling +of intellectual and social inferiority toward him. He asked what +I thought of Burble. I resolved to tell him--if necessary with +arrogance. Then perhaps he would release me. I did not sit down +again, but stood by the corner of the fireplace. + +"That was the little book you lent me last summer?" I said. + +"He reasons closely, eh?" he said, and indicated the armchair with +a flat hand, and beamed persuasively. + +I remained standing. "I didn't think much of his reasoning powers," +I said. + +"He was one of the cleverest bishops London ever had." + +"That may be. But he was dodging about in a jolly feeble case," +said I. + +"You mean?" + +"That he's wrong. I don't think he proves his case. I don't think +Christianity is true. He knows himself for the pretender he is. +His reasoning's--Rot." + +Mr. Gabbitas went, I think, a shade paler than his wont, and propitiation +vanished from his manner. His eyes and mouth were round, his face +seemed to get round, his eyebrows curved at my remarks. + +"I'm sorry you think that," he said at last, with a catch in his +breath. + +He did not repeat his suggestion that I should sit. He made a step +or two toward the window and turned. "I suppose you will admit--" he +began, with a faintly irritating note of intellectual condescension. +. . . . + +I will not tell you of his arguments or mine. You will find if +you care to look for them, in out-of-the-way corners of our book +museums, the shriveled cheap publications--the publications of the +Rationalist Press Association, for example--on which my arguments +were based. Lying in that curious limbo with them, mixed up with +them and indistinguishable, are the endless "Replies" of orthodoxy, +like the mixed dead in some hard-fought trench. All those disputes +of our fathers, and they were sometimes furious disputes, have +gone now beyond the range of comprehension. You younger people, I +know, read them with impatient perplexity. You cannot understand +how sane creatures could imagine they had joined issue at all +in most of these controversies. All the old methods of systematic +thinking, the queer absurdities of the Aristotelian logic, have +followed magic numbers and mystical numbers, and the Rumpelstiltskin +magic of names now into the blackness of the unthinkable. You can +no more understand our theological passions than you can understand +the fancies that made all ancient peoples speak of their gods only +by circumlocutions, that made savages pine away and die because +they had been photographed, or an Elizabethan farmer turn back from +a day's expedition because he had met three crows. Even I, who have +been through it all, recall our controversies now with something +near incredulity. + +Faith we can understand to-day, all men live by faith, but in the +old time every one confused quite hopelessly Faith and a forced, +incredible Belief in certain pseudo-concrete statements. I am +inclined to say that neither believers nor unbelievers had faith as +we understand it--they had insufficient intellectual power. They +could not trust unless they had something to see and touch and +say, like their barbarous ancestors who could not make a bargain +without exchange of tokens. If they no longer worshipped stocks and +stones, or eked out their needs with pilgrimages and images, they +still held fiercely to audible images, to printed words and formulae. + +But why revive the echoes of the ancient logomachies? + +Suffice it that we lost our tempers very readily in pursuit of +God and Truth, and said exquisitely foolish things on either side. +And on the whole--from the impartial perspective of my three and +seventy years--I adjudicate that if my dialectic was bad, that of +the Rev. Gabbitas was altogether worse. + +Little pink spots came into his cheeks, a squealing note into his +voice. We interrupted each other more and more rudely. We invented +facts and appealed to authorities whose names I mispronounced; +and, finding Gabbitas shy of the higher criticism and the Germans, +I used the names of Karl Marx and Engels as Bible exegetes with no +little effect. A silly wrangle! a preposterous wrangle!--you must +imagine our talk becoming louder, with a developing quarrelsome +note--my mother no doubt hovering on the staircase and listening +in alarm as who should say, "My dear, don't offend it! Oh, don't +offend it! Mr. Gabbitas enjoys its friendship. Try to think whatever +Mr. Gabbitas says"--though we still kept in touch with a pretence +of mutual deference. The ethical superiority of Christianity to +all other religions came to the fore--I know not how. We dealt with +the matter in bold, imaginative generalizations, because of the +insufficiency of our historical knowledge. I was moved to denounce +Christianity as the ethic of slaves, and declare myself a disciple +of a German writer of no little vogue in those days, named Nietzsche. + +For a disciple I must confess I was particularly ill acquainted +with the works of the master. Indeed, all I knew of him had come +to me through a two-column article in The Clarion for the previous +week. . . . But the Rev. Gabbitas did not read The Clarion. + +I am, I know, putting a strain upon your credulity when I tell you +that I now have little doubt that the Rev. Gabbitas was absolutely +ignorant even of the name of Nietzsche, although that writer presented +a separate and distinct attitude of attack upon the faith that was +in the reverend gentleman's keeping. + +"I'm a disciple of Nietzsche," said I, with an air of extensive +explanation. + +He shied away so awkwardly at the name that I repeated it at once. + +"But do you know what Nietzsche says?" I pressed him viciously. + +"He has certainly been adequately answered," said he, still trying +to carry it off. + +"Who by?" I rapped out hotly. "Tell me that!" and became mercilessly +expectant. + + + +Section 5 + +A happy accident relieved Mr. Gabbitas from the embarrassment +of that challenge, and carried me another step along my course of +personal disaster. + +It came on the heels of my question in the form of a clatter of +horses without, and the gride and cessation of wheels. I glimpsed +a straw-hatted coachman and a pair of grays. It seemed an incredibly +magnificent carriage for Clayton. + +"Eh!" said the Rev. Gabbitas, going to the window. "Why, it's old +Mrs. Verrall! It's old Mrs. Verrall. Really! What CAN she want with +me?" + +He turned to me, and the flush of controversy had passed and his +face shone like the sun. It was not every day, I perceived, that +Mrs. Verrall came to see him. + +"I get so many interruptions," he said, almost grinning. "You must +excuse me a minute! Then--then I'll tell you about that fellow. +But don't go. I pray you don't go. I can assure you. . . . MOST +interesting." + +He went out of the room waving vague prohibitory gestures. + +"I MUST go," I cried after him. + +"No, no, no!" in the passage. "I've got your answer," I think it +was he added, and "quite mistaken;" and I saw him running down the +steps to talk to the old lady. + +I swore. I made three steps to the window, and this brought me +within a yard of that accursed drawer. + +I glanced at it, and then at that old woman who was so absolutely +powerful, and instantly her son and Nettie's face were flaming in +my brain. The Stuarts had, no doubt, already accepted accomplished +facts. And I too-- + +What was I doing here? + +What was I doing here while judgment escaped me? + +I woke up. I was injected with energy. I took one reassuring look +at the curate's obsequious back, at the old lady's projected nose +and quivering hand, and then with swift, clean movements I had the +little drawer open, four sovereigns in my pocket, and the drawer +shut again. Then again at the window--they were still talking. + +That was all right. He might not look in that drawer for hours. I +glanced at his clock. Twenty minutes still before the Birmingham +train. Time to buy a pair of boots and get away. But how I was to +get to the station? + +I went out boldly into the passage, and took my hat and stick. . . . +Walk past him? + +Yes. That was all right! He could not argue with me while so +important a person engaged him. . . . I came boldly down the steps. + +"I want a list made, Mr. Gabbitas, of all the really DESERVING +cases," old Mrs. Verrall was saying. + +It is curious, but it did not occur to me that here was a mother +whose son I was going to kill. I did not see her in that aspect +at all. Instead, I was possessed by a realization of the blazing +imbecility of a social system that gave this palsied old woman +the power to give or withhold the urgent necessities of life from +hundreds of her fellow-creatures just according to her poor, foolish +old fancies of desert. + +"We could make a PROVISIONAL list of that sort," he was saying, +and glanced round with a preoccupied expression at me. + +"I MUST go," I said at his flash of inquiry, and added, "I'll be +back in twenty minutes," and went on my way. He turned again to +his patroness as though he forgot me on the instant. Perhaps after +all he was not sorry. + +I felt extraordinarily cool and capable, exhilarated, if anything, +by this prompt, effectual theft. After all, my great determination +would achieve itself. I was no longer oppressed by a sense +of obstacles, I felt I could grasp accidents and turn them to +my advantage. I would go now down Hacker Street to the little +shoemaker's--get a sound, good pair of boots--ten minutes--and then to +the railway-station--five minutes more--and off! I felt as efficient +and non-moral as if I was Nietzsche's Over-man already come. It did +not occur to me that the curate's clock might have a considerable +margin of error. + + + +Section 6 + +I missed the train. + +Partly that was because the curate's clock was slow, and partly +it was due to the commercial obstinacy of the shoemaker, who would +try on another pair after I had declared my time was up. I bought +the final pair however, gave him a wrong address for the return of +the old ones, and only ceased to feel like the Nietzschean Over-man, +when I saw the train running out of the station. + +Even then I did not lose my head. It occurred to me almost at once +that, in the event of a prompt pursuit, there would be a great +advantage in not taking a train from Clayton; that, indeed, to have +done so would have been an error from which only luck had saved +me. As it was, I had already been very indiscreet in my inquiries +about Shaphambury; for once on the scent the clerk could not fail +to remember me. Now the chances were against his coming into the +case. I did not go into the station therefore at all, I made no +demonstration of having missed the train, but walked quietly past, +down the road, crossed the iron footbridge, and took the way back +circuitously by White's brickfields and the allotments to the way +over Clayton Crest to Two-Mile Stone, where I calculated I should +have an ample margin for the 6.13 train. + +I was not very greatly excited or alarmed then. Suppose, I reasoned, +that by some accident the curate goes to that drawer at once: will +he be certain to miss four out of ten or eleven sovereigns? If he +does, will he at once think I have taken them? If he does, will +he act at once or wait for my return? If he acts at once, will he +talk to my mother or call in the police? Then there are a dozen +roads and even railways out of the Clayton region, how is he to +know which I have taken? Suppose he goes straight at once to the +right station, they will not remember my departure for the simple +reason that I didn't depart. But they may remember about Shaphambury? +It was unlikely. + +I resolved not to go directly to Shaphambury from Birmingham, but +to go thence to Monkshampton, thence to Wyvern, and then come down +on Shaphambury from the north. That might involve a night at some +intermediate stopping-place but it would effectually conceal me +from any but the most persistent pursuit. And this was not a case +of murder yet, but only the theft of four sovereigns. + +I had argued away all anxiety before I reached Clayton Crest. + +At the Crest I looked back. What a world it was! And suddenly it +came to me that I was looking at this world for the last time. If +I overtook the fugitives and succeeded, I should die with them--or +hang. I stopped and looked back more attentively at that wide ugly +valley. + +It was my native valley, and I was going out of it, I thought never +to return, and yet in that last prospect, the group of towns that +had borne me and dwarfed and crippled and made me, seemed, in some +indefinable manner, strange. I was, perhaps, more used to seeing it +from this comprehensive view-point when it was veiled and softened +by night; now it came out in all its weekday reek, under a clear +afternoon sun. That may account a little for its unfamiliarity. +And perhaps, too, there was something in the emotions through which +I had been passing for a week and more, to intensify my insight, +to enable me to pierce the unusual, to question the accepted. But +it came to me then, I am sure, for the first time, how promiscuous, +how higgledy-piggledy was the whole of that jumble of mines and +homes, collieries and potbanks, railway yards, canals, schools, +forges and blast furnaces, churches, chapels, allotment hovels, +a vast irregular agglomeration of ugly smoking accidents in which +men lived as happy as frogs in a dustbin. Each thing jostled and +damaged the other things about it, each thing ignored the other +things about it; the smoke of the furnace defiled the potbank clay, +the clatter of the railway deafened the worshipers in church, the +public-house thrust corruption at the school doors, the dismal +homes squeezed miserably amidst the monstrosities of industrialism, +with an effect of groping imbecility. Humanity choked amidst its +products, and all its energy went in increasing its disorder, like +a blind stricken thing that struggles and sinks in a morass. + +I did not think these things clearly that afternoon. Much less did +I ask how I, with my murderous purpose, stood to them all. I write +down that realization of disorder and suffocation here and now as +though I had thought it, but indeed then I only felt it, felt it +transitorily as I looked back, and then stood with the thing escaping +from my mind. + +I should never see that country-side again. + +I came back to that. At any rate I wasn't sorry. The chances were +I should die in sweet air, under a clean sky. + +From distant Swathinglea came a little sound, the minute undulation +of a remote crowd, and then rapidly three shots. + +That held me perplexed for a space. . . . Well, anyhow I was +leaving it all! Thank God I was leaving it all! Then, as I turned +to go on, I thought of my mother. + +It seemed an evil world in which to leave one's mother. My thoughts +focused upon her very vividly for a moment. Down there, under that +afternoon light, she was going to and fro, unaware as yet that +she had lost me, bent and poking about in the darkling underground +kitchen, perhaps carrying a lamp into the scullery to trim, or +sitting patiently, staring into the fire, waiting tea for me. A +great pity for her, a great remorse at the blacker troubles that +lowered over her innocent head, came to me. Why, after all, was +I doing this thing? + +Why? + +I stopped again dead, with the hill crest rising between me and +home. I had more than half a mind to return to her. + +Then I thought of the curate's sovereigns. If he has missed them +already, what should I return to? And, even if I returned, how +could I put them back? + +And what of the night after I renounced my revenge? What of the +time when young Verrall came back? And Nettie? + +No! The thing had to be done. + +But at least I might have kissed my mother before I came away, left +her some message, reassured her at least for a little while. +All night she would listen and wait for me. . . . . + +Should I send her a telegram from Two-Mile Stone? + +It was no good now; too late, too late. To do that would be to tell +the course I had taken, to bring pursuit upon me, swift and sure, +if pursuit there was to be. No. My mother must suffer! + +I went on grimly toward Two-Mile Stone, but now as if some greater +will than mine directed my footsteps thither. + +I reached Birmingham before darkness came, and just caught the last +train for Monkshampton, where I had planned to pass the night. + + + + +CHAPTER THE FIFTH + +THE PURSUIT OF THE TWO LOVERS + + + +Section 1 + +As the train carried me on from Birmingham to Monkshampton, it +carried me not only into a country where I had never been before, +but out of the commonplace daylight and the touch and quality +of ordinary things, into the strange unprecedented night that was +ruled by the giant meteor of the last days. + +There was at that time a curious accentuation of the common alternation +of night and day. They became separated with a widening difference +of value in regard to all mundane affairs. During the day, the +comet was an item in the newspapers, it was jostled by a thousand +more living interests, it was as nothing in the skirts of the war +storm that was now upon us. It was an astronomical phenomenon, +somewhere away over China, millions of miles away in the deeps. +We forgot it. But directly the sun sank one turned ever and again +toward the east, and the meteor resumed its sway over us. + +One waited for its rising, and yet each night it came as a surprise. +Always it rose brighter than one had dared to think, always larger and +with some wonderful change in its outline, and now with a strange, +less luminous, greener disk upon it that grew with its growth, the +umbra of the earth. It shone also with its own light, so that this +shadow was not hard or black, but it shone phosphorescently and with +a diminishing intensity where the stimulus of the sun's rays was +withdrawn. As it ascended toward the zenith, as the last trailing +daylight went after the abdicating sun, its greenish white illumination +banished the realities of day, diffused a bright ghostliness over +all things. It changed the starless sky about it to an extraordinary +deep blue, the profoundest color in the world, such as I have never +seen before or since. I remember, too, that as I peered from the +train that was rattling me along to Monkshampton, I perceived and +was puzzled by a coppery red light that mingled with all the shadows +that were cast by it. + +It turned our ugly English industrial towns to phantom cities. +Everywhere the local authorities discontinued street lighting--one +could read small print in the glare,--and so at Monkshampton I +went about through pale, white, unfamiliar streets, whose electric +globes had shadows on the path. Lit windows here and there burnt +ruddy orange, like holes cut in some dream curtain that hung before +a furnace. A policeman with noiseless feet showed me an inn woven +of moonshine, a green-faced man opened to us, and there I abode +the night. And the next morning it opened with a mighty clatter, +and was a dirty little beerhouse that stank of beer, and there was +a fat and grimy landlord with red spots upon his neck, and much +noisy traffic going by on the cobbles outside. + +I came out, after I had paid my bill, into a street that echoed +to the bawlings of two newsvendors and to the noisy yappings of a +dog they had raised to emulation. They were shouting: "Great British +disaster in the North Sea. A battleship lost with all hands!" + +I bought a paper, went on to the railway station reading such +details as were given of this triumph of the old civilization, of +the blowing up of this great iron ship, full of guns and explosives +and the most costly and beautiful machinery of which that time was +capable, together with nine hundred able-bodied men, all of them +above the average, by a contact mine towed by a German submarine. +I read myself into a fever of warlike emotions. Not only did I +forget the meteor, but for a time I forgot even the purpose that +took me on to the railway station, bought my ticket, and was now +carrying me onward to Shaphambury. + +So the hot day came to its own again, and people forgot the night. + +Each night, there shone upon us more and more insistently, beauty, +wonder, the promise of the deeps, and we were hushed, and marveled +for a space. And at the first gray sounds of dawn again, at the +shooting of bolts and the noise of milk-carts, we forgot, and the +dusty habitual day came yawning and stretching back again. The +stains of coal smoke crept across the heavens, and we rose to the +soiled disorderly routine of life. + +"Thus life has always been," we said; "thus it will always be." + +The glory of those nights was almost universally regarded as +spectacular merely. It signified nothing to us. So far as western +Europe went, it was only a small and ignorant section of the lower +classes who regarded the comet as a portent of the end of the +world. Abroad, where there were peasantries, it was different, but +in England the peasantry had already disappeared. Every one read. +The newspaper, in the quiet days before our swift quarrel with Germany +rushed to its climax, had absolutely dispelled all possibilities +of a panic in this matter. The very tramps upon the high-roads, the +children in the nursery, had learnt that at the utmost the whole +of that shining cloud could weigh but a few score tons. This fact +had been shown quite conclusively by the enormous deflections that +had at last swung it round squarely at our world. It had passed +near three of the smallest asteroids without producing the minutest +perceptible deflection in their course; while, on its own part, it +had described a course through nearly three degrees. When it struck +our earth there was to be a magnificent spectacle, no doubt, for +those who were on the right side of our planet to see, but beyond +that nothing. It was doubtful whether we were on the right side. +The meteor would loom larger and larger in the sky, but with the +umbra of our earth eating its heart of brightness out, and at last +it would be the whole sky, a sky of luminous green clouds, with +a white brightness about the horizon, west and east. Then a pause--a +pause of not very exactly definite duration--and then, no doubt, +a great blaze of shooting stars. They might be of some unwonted +color because of the unknown element that line in the green revealed. +For a little while the zenith would spout shooting stars. Some, +it was hoped, would reach the earth and be available for analysis. + +That, science said, would be all. The green clouds would whirl and +vanish, and there might be thunderstorms. But through the attenuated +wisps of comet shine, the old sky, the old stars, would reappear, +and all would be as it had been before. And since this was to happen +between one and eleven in the morning of the approaching Tuesday--I +slept at Monkshampton on Saturday night,--it would be only partially +visible, if visible at all, on our side of the earth. Perhaps, if +it came late, one would see no more than a shooting star low down +in the sky. All this we had with the utmost assurances of science. +Still it did not prevent the last nights being the most beautiful +and memorable of human experiences. + +The nights had become very warm, and when next day I had ranged +Shaphambury in vain, I was greatly tormented, as that unparalleled +glory of the night returned, to think that under its splendid +benediction young Verrall and Nettie made love to one another. + +I walked backward and forward, backward and forward, along the sea +front, peering into the faces of the young couples who promenaded, +with my hand in my pocket ready, and a curious ache in my heart +that had no kindred with rage. Until at last all the promenaders +had gone home to bed, and I was alone with the star. + +My train from Wyvern to Shaphambury that morning was a whole hour +late; they said it was on account of the movement of troops to meet +a possible raid from the Elbe. + + + +Section 2 + +Shaphambury seemed an odd place to me even then. But something was +quickening in me at that time to feel the oddness of many accepted +things. Now in the retrospect I see it as intensely queer. The whole +place was strange to my untraveled eyes; the sea even was strange. +Only twice in my life had I been at the seaside before, and then +I had gone by excursion to places on the Welsh coast whose great +cliffs of rock and mountain backgrounds made the effect of the horizon +very different from what it is upon the East Anglian seaboard. Here +what they call a cliff was a crumbling bank of whitey-brown earth +not fifty feet high. + +So soon as I arrived I made a systematic exploration of Shaphambury. +To this day I retain the clearest memories of the plan I shaped +out then, and how my inquiries were incommoded by the overpowering +desire of every one to talk of the chances of a German raid, before +the Channel Fleet got round to us. I slept at a small public-house +in a Shaphambury back street on Sunday night. I did not get on to +Shaphambury from Wyvern until two in the afternoon, because of the +infrequency of Sunday trains, and I got no clue whatever until late +in the afternoon of Monday. As the little local train bumped into +sight of the place round the curve of a swelling hill, one saw +a series of undulating grassy spaces, amidst which a number of +conspicuous notice-boards appealed to the eye and cut up the distant +sea horizon. Most of these referred to comestibles or to remedies +to follow the comestibles; and they were colored with a view to be +memorable rather than beautiful, to "stand out" amidst the gentle +grayish tones of the east coast scenery. The greater number, I may +remark, of the advertisements that were so conspicuous a factor +in the life of those days, and which rendered our vast tree-pulp +newspapers possible, referred to foods, drinks, tobacco, and the +drugs that promised a restoration of the equanimity these other +articles had destroyed. Wherever one went one was reminded in glaring +letters that, after all, man was little better than a worm, that +eyeless, earless thing that burrows and lives uncomplainingly +amidst nutritious dirt, "an alimentary canal with the subservient +appendages thereto." But in addition to such boards there were also +the big black and white boards of various grandiloquently named +"estates." The individualistic enterprise of that time had led to +the plotting out of nearly all the country round the seaside towns +into roads and building-plots--all but a small portion of the south +and east coast was in this condition, and had the promises of those +schemes been realized the entire population of the island might +have been accommodated upon the sea frontiers. Nothing of the sort +happened, of course; the whole of this uglification of the coast-line +was done to stimulate a little foolish gambling in plots, and +one saw everywhere agents' boards in every state of freshness and +decay, ill-made exploitation roads overgrown with grass, and here +and there, at a corner, a label, "Trafalgar Avenue," or "Sea View +Road." Here and there, too, some small investor, some shopman with +"savings," had delivered his soul to the local builders and built +himself a house, and there it stood, ill-designed, mean-looking, +isolated, ill-placed on a cheaply fenced plot, athwart which his +domestic washing fluttered in the breeze amidst a bleak desolation +of enterprise. Then presently our railway crossed a high road, +and a row of mean yellow brick houses--workmen's cottages, and +the filthy black sheds that made the "allotments" of that time a +universal eyesore, marked our approach to the more central areas +of--I quote the local guidebook--"one of the most delightful resorts +in the East Anglian poppy-land." Then more mean houses, the gaunt +ungainliness of the electric force station--it had a huge chimney, +because no one understood how to make combustion of coal complete--and +then we were in the railway station, and barely three-quarters of +a mile from the center of this haunt of health and pleasure. + +I inspected the town thoroughly before I made my inquiries. The +road began badly with a row of cheap, pretentious, insolvent-looking +shops, a public-house, and a cab-stand, but, after an interval of +little red villas that were partly hidden amidst shrubbery gardens, +broke into a confusedly bright but not unpleasing High Street, +shuttered that afternoon and sabbatically still. Somewhere in the +background a church bell jangled, and children in bright, new-looking +clothes were going to Sunday-school. Thence through a square of +stuccoed lodging-houses, that seemed a finer and cleaner version of +my native square, I came to a garden of asphalt and euonymus--the +Sea Front. I sat down on a cast-iron seat, and surveyed first of all +the broad stretches of muddy, sandy beach, with its queer wheeled +bathing machines, painted with the advertisements of somebody's +pills--and then at the house fronts that stared out upon these visceral +counsels. Boarding-houses, private hotels, and lodging-houses in +terraces clustered closely right and left of me, and then came to +an end; in one direction scaffolding marked a building enterprise +in progress, in the other, after a waste interval, rose a monstrous +bulging red shape, a huge hotel, that dwarfed all other things. +Northward were low pale cliffs with white denticulations of tents, +where the local volunteers, all under arms, lay encamped, and +southward, a spreading waste of sandy dunes, with occasional bushes +and clumps of stunted pine and an advertisement board or so. A +hard blue sky hung over all this prospect, the sunshine cast inky +shadows, and eastward was a whitish sea. It was Sunday, and the +midday meal still held people indoors. + +A queer world! thought I even then--to you now it must seem impossibly +queer,--and after an interval I forced myself back to my own affair. + +How was I to ask? What was I to ask for? I puzzled for a long time +over that--at first I was a little tired and indolent--and then +presently I had a flow of ideas. + +My solution was fairly ingenious. I invented the following story. +I happened to be taking a holiday in Shaphambury, and I was making +use of the opportunity to seek the owner of a valuable feather boa, +which had been left behind in the hotel of my uncle at Wyvern by a +young lady, traveling with a young gentleman--no doubt a youthful +married couple. They had reached Shaphambury somewhen on Thursday. +I went over the story many times, and gave my imaginary uncle and +his hotel plausible names. At any rate this yarn would serve as +a complete justification for all the questions I might wish to ask. + +I settled that, but I still sat for a time, wanting the energy to +begin. Then I turned toward the big hotel. Its gorgeous magnificence +seemed to my inexpert judgment to indicate the very place a rich +young man of good family would select. + +Huge draught-proof doors were swung round for me by an ironically +polite under-porter in a magnificent green uniform, who looked at +my clothes as he listened to my question and then with a German +accent referred me to a gorgeous head porter, who directed me to +a princely young man behind a counter of brass and polish, like a +bank--like several banks. This young man, while he answered me, kept +his eye on my collar and tie--and I knew that they were abominable. + +"I want to find a lady and gentleman who came to Shaphambury on +Tuesday," I said. + +"Friends of yours?" he asked with a terrible fineness of irony. + +I made out at last that here at any rate the young people had not +been. They might have lunched there, but they had had no room. But +I went out--door opened again for me obsequiously--in a state of +social discomfiture, and did not attack any other establishment +that afternoon. + +My resolution had come to a sort of ebb. More people were promenading, +and their Sunday smartness abashed me. I forgot my purpose in an +acute sense of myself. I felt that the bulge of my pocket caused +by the revolver was conspicuous, and I was ashamed. I went along +the sea front away from the town, and presently lay down among +pebbles and sea poppies. This mood of reaction prevailed with me +all that afternoon. In the evening, about sundown, I went to the +station and asked questions of the outporters there. But outporters, +I found, were a class of men who remembered luggage rather than +people, and I had no sort of idea what luggage young Verrall and +Nettie were likely to have with them. + +Then I fell into conversation with a salacious wooden-legged old +man with a silver ring, who swept the steps that went down to the +beach from the parade. He knew much about young couples, but only +in general terms, and nothing of the particular young couple I +sought. He reminded me in the most disagreeable way of the sensuous +aspects of life, and I was not sorry when presently a gunboat +appeared in the offing signalling the coastguard and the camp, and +cut short his observations upon holidays, beaches, and morals. + +I went, and now I was past my ebb, and sat in a seat upon the parade, +and watched the brightening of those rising clouds of chilly fire +that made the ruddy west seem tame. My midday lassitude was going, +my blood was running warmer again. And as the twilight and that filmy +brightness replaced the dusty sunlight and robbed this unfamiliar +place of all its matter-of-fact queerness, its sense of aimless +materialism, romance returned to me, and passion, and my thoughts +of honor and revenge. I remember that change of mood as occurring +very vividly on this occasion, but I fancy that less distinctly I +had felt this before many times. In the old times, night and the +starlight had an effect of intimate reality the daytime did not possess. +The daytime--as one saw it in towns and populous places--had hold +of one, no doubt, but only as an uproar might, it was distracting, +conflicting, insistent. Darkness veiled the more salient aspects of +those agglomerations of human absurdity, and one could exist--one +could imagine. + +I had a queer illusion that night, that Nettie and her lover were +close at hand, that suddenly I should come on them. I have already +told how I went through the dusk seeking them in every couple that +drew near. And I dropped asleep at last in an unfamiliar bedroom +hung with gaudily decorated texts, cursing myself for having wasted +a day. + + + +Section 3 + +I sought them in vain the next morning, but after midday I came in +quick succession on a perplexing multitude of clues. After failing +to find any young couple that corresponded to young Verrall +and Nettie, I presently discovered an unsatisfactory quartette of +couples. + +Any of these four couples might have been the one I sought; with +regard to none of them was there conviction. They had all arrived +either on Wednesday or Thursday. Two couples were still in occupation +of their rooms, but neither of these were at home. Late in the +afternoon I reduced my list by eliminating a young man in drab, with +side whiskers and long cuffs, accompanied by a lady, of thirty or +more, of consciously ladylike type. I was disgusted at the sight +of them; the other two young people had gone for a long walk, and +though I watched their boarding-house until the fiery cloud shone +out above, sharing and mingling in an unusually splendid sunset, +I missed them. Then I discovered them dining at a separate table +in the bow window, with red-shaded candles between them, peering +out ever and again at this splendor that was neither night nor day. +The girl in her pink evening dress looked very light and pretty +to me--pretty enough to enrage me,--she had well shaped arms and +white, well-modeled shoulders, and the turn of her cheek and the +fair hair about her ears was full of subtle delights; but she was +not Nettie, and the happy man with her was that odd degenerate type +our old aristocracy produced with such odd frequency, chinless, +large bony nose, small fair head, languid expression, and a neck +that had demanded and received a veritable sleeve of collar. I +stood outside in the meteor's livid light, hating them and cursing +them for having delayed me so long. I stood until it was evident +they remarked me, a black shape of envy, silhouetted against the +glare. + +That finished Shaphambury. The question I now had to debate was +which of the remaining couples I had to pursue. + +I walked back to the parade trying to reason my next step out, and +muttering to myself, because there was something in that luminous +wonderfulness that touched one's brain, and made one feel a little +light-headed. + +One couple had gone to London; the other had gone to the Bungalow +village at Bone Cliff. Where, I wondered, was Bone Cliff? + +I came upon my wooden-legged man at the top of his steps. + +"Hullo," said I. + +He pointed seaward with his pipe, his silver ring shone in the sky +light. + +"Rum," he said. + +"What is?" I asked. + +"Search-lights! Smoke! Ships going north! If it wasn't for this +blasted Milky Way gone green up there, we might see." + +He was too intent to heed my questions for a time. Then he vouchsafed +over his shoulder-- + +"Know Bungalow village?--rather. Artis' and such. Nice goings on! +Mixed bathing--something scandalous. Yes." + +"But where is it?" I said, suddenly exasperated. + +"There!" he said. "What's that flicker? A gunflash--or I'm a lost +soul!" + +"You'd hear," I said, "long before it was near enough to see a +flash." + +He didn't answer. Only by making it clear I would distract him until +he told me what I wanted to know could I get him to turn from his +absorbed contemplation of that phantom dance between the sea rim and +the shine. Indeed I gripped his arm and shook him. Then he turned +upon me cursing. + +"Seven miles," he said, "along this road. And now go to 'ell with +yer!" + +I answered with some foul insult by way of thanks, and so we parted, +and I set off towards the bungalow village. + +I found a policeman, standing star-gazing, a little way beyond the +end of the parade, and verified the wooden-legged man's directions. + +"It's a lonely road, you know," he called after me. . . . + +I had an odd intuition that now at last I was on the right track. +I left the dark masses of Shaphambury behind me, and pushed out +into the dim pallor of that night, with the quiet assurance of a +traveler who nears his end. + +The incidents of that long tramp I do not recall in any orderly +succession, the one progressive thing is my memory of a growing +fatigue. The sea was for the most part smooth and shining like a +mirror, a great expanse of reflecting silver, barred by slow broad +undulations, but at one time a little breeze breathed like a faint +sigh and ruffled their long bodies into faint scaly ripples that +never completely died out again. The way was sometimes sandy, thick +with silvery colorless sand, and sometimes chalky and lumpy, with +lumps that had shining facets; a black scrub was scattered, sometimes +in thickets, sometimes in single bunches, among the somnolent +hummocks of sand. At one place came grass, and ghostly great sheep +looming up among the gray. After a time black pinewoods intervened, +and made sustained darknesses along the road, woods that frayed +out at the edges to weirdly warped and stunted trees. Then isolated +pine witches would appear, and make their rigid gestures at me as +I passed. Grotesquely incongruous amidst these forms, I presently +came on estate boards, appealing, "Houses can be built to suit +purchaser," to the silence, to the shadows, and the glare. + +Once I remember the persistent barking of a dog from somewhere inland +of me, and several times I took out and examined my revolver very +carefully. I must, of course, have been full of my intention when +I did that, I must have been thinking of Nettie and revenge, but +I cannot now recall those emotions at all. Only I see again very +distinctly the greenish gleams that ran over lock and barrel as I +turned the weapon in my hand. + +Then there was the sky, the wonderful, luminous, starless, moonless +sky, and the empty blue deeps of the edge of it, between the meteor +and the sea. And once--strange phantoms!--I saw far out upon +the shine, and very small and distant, three long black warships, +without masts, or sails, or smoke, or any lights, dark, deadly, +furtive things, traveling very swiftly and keeping an equal distance. +And when I looked again they were very small, and then the shine +had swallowed them up. + +Then once a flash and what I thought was a gun, until I looked +up and saw a fading trail of greenish light still hanging in the +sky. And after that there was a shiver and whispering in the air, +a stronger throbbing in one's arteries, a sense of refreshment, +a renewal of purpose. . . . + +Somewhere upon my way the road forked, but I do not remember +whether that was near Shaphambury or near the end of my walk. The +hesitation between two rutted unmade roads alone remains clear in +my mind. + +At last I grew weary. I came to piled heaps of decaying seaweed +and cart tracks running this way and that, and then I had missed +the road and was stumbling among sand hummocks quite close to the +sea. I came out on the edge of the dimly glittering sandy beach, +and something phosphorescent drew me to the water's edge. I bent +down and peered at the little luminous specks that floated in the +ripples. + +Presently with a sigh I stood erect, and contemplated the lonely +peace of that last wonderful night. The meteor had now trailed its +shining nets across the whole space of the sky and was beginning +to set; in the east the blue was coming to its own again; the sea +was an intense edge of blackness, and now, escaped from that great +shine, and faint and still tremulously valiant, one weak elusive +star could just be seen, hovering on the verge of the invisible. + +How beautiful it was! how still and beautiful! Peace! peace!--the +peace that passeth understanding, robed in light descending! . . . + +My heart swelled, and suddenly I was weeping. + +There was something new and strange in my blood. It came to me that +indeed I did not want to kill. + +I did not want to kill. I did not want to be the servant of my +passions any more. A great desire had come to me to escape from +life, from the daylight which is heat and conflict and desire, into +that cool night of eternity--and rest. I had played--I had done. + +I stood upon the edge of the great ocean, and I was filled with an +inarticulate spirit of prayer, and I desired greatly--peace from +myself. + +And presently, there in the east, would come again the red discoloring +curtain over these mysteries, the finite world again, the gray and +growing harsh certainties of dawn. My resolve I knew would take up +with me again. This was a rest for me, an interlude, but to-morrow +I should be William Leadford once more, ill-nourished, ill-dressed, +ill-equipped and clumsy, a thief and shamed, a wound upon the face +of life, a source of trouble and sorrow even to the mother I loved; +no hope in life left for me now but revenge before my death. + +Why this paltry thing, revenge? It entered into my thoughts that +I might end the matter now and let these others go. + +To wade out into the sea, into this warm lapping that mingled the +natures of water and light, to stand there breast-high, to thrust +my revolver barrel into my mouth------? + +Why not? + +I swung about with an effort. I walked slowly up the beach thinking. . . . + +I turned and looked back at the sea. No! Something within me said, +"No!" + +I must think. + +It was troublesome to go further because the hummocks and +the tangled bushes began. I sat down amidst a black cluster of +shrubs, and rested, chin on hand. I drew my revolver from my pocket +and looked at it, and held it in my hand. Life? Or Death? . . . + +I seemed to be probing the very deeps of being, but indeed +imperceptibly I fell asleep, and sat dreaming. + + + +Section 4 + +Two people were bathing in the sea. + +I had awakened. It was still that white and wonderful night, and +the blue band of clear sky was no wider than before. These people +must have come into sight as I fell asleep, and awakened me almost +at once. They waded breast-deep in the water, emerging, coming +shoreward, a woman, with her hair coiled about her head, and in +pursuit of her a man, graceful figures of black and silver, with a +bright green surge flowing off from them, a pattering of flashing +wavelets about them. He smote the water and splashed it toward +her, she retaliated, and then they were knee-deep, and then for an +instant their feet broke the long silver margin of the sea. + +Each wore a tightly fitting bathing dress that hid nothing of the +shining, dripping beauty of their youthful forms. + +She glanced over her shoulder and found him nearer than she thought, +started, gesticulated, gave a little cry that pierced me to the +heart, and fled up the beach obliquely toward me, running like the +wind, and passed me, vanished amidst the black distorted bushes, +and was gone--she and her pursuer, in a moment, over the ridge of +sand. + +I heard him shout between exhaustion and laughter. . . . + +And suddenly I was a thing of bestial fury, standing up with hands +held up and clenched, rigid in gesture of impotent threatening, +against the sky. . . . + +For this striving, swift thing of light and beauty was Nettie--and +this was the man for whom I had been betrayed! + +And, it blazed upon me, I might have died there by the sheer ebbing +of my will--unavenged! + +In another moment I was running and stumbling, revolver in hand, in +quiet unsuspected pursuit of them, through the soft and noiseless +sand. + + + +Section 5 + +I came up over the little ridge and discovered the bungalow village +I had been seeking, nestling in a crescent lap of dunes. A door +slammed, the two runners had vanished, and I halted staring. + +There was a group of three bungalows nearer to me than the others. +Into one of these three they had gone, and I was too late to see +which. All had doors and windows carelessly open, and none showed +a light. + +This place, upon which I had at last happened, was a fruit of the +reaction of artistic-minded and carelessly living people against +the costly and uncomfortable social stiffness of the more formal +seaside resorts of that time. It was, you must understand, the custom +of the steam-railway companies to sell their carriages after they +had been obsolete for a sufficient length of years, and some genius +had hit upon the possibility of turning these into little habitable +cabins for the summer holiday. The thing had become a fashion with +a certain Bohemian-spirited class; they added cabin to cabin, and +these little improvised homes, gaily painted and with broad verandas +and supplementary leantos added to their accommodation, made the +brightest contrast conceivable to the dull rigidities of the decorous +resorts. Of course there were many discomforts in such camping that +had to be faced cheerfully, and so this broad sandy beach was sacred +to high spirits and the young. Art muslin and banjoes, Chinese +lanterns and frying, are leading "notes," I find, in the impression +of those who once knew such places well. But so far as I was +concerned this odd settlement of pleasure-squatters was a mystery +as well as a surprise, enhanced rather than mitigated by an +imaginative suggestion or so I had received from the wooden-legged +man at Shaphambury. I saw the thing as no gathering of light +hearts and gay idleness, but grimly--after the manner of poor men +poisoned by the suppression of all their cravings after joy. To the +poor man, to the grimy workers, beauty and cleanness were absolutely +denied; out of a life of greasy dirt, of muddied desires, they +watched their happier fellows with a bitter envy and foul, tormenting +suspicions. Fancy a world in which the common people held love +to be a sort of beastliness, own sister to being drunk! . . . + +There was in the old time always something cruel at the bottom of +this business of sexual love. At least that is the impression I +have brought with me across the gulf of the great Change. To succeed +in love seemed such triumph as no other success could give, +but to fail was as if one was tainted. . . . + +I felt no sense of singularity that this thread of savagery should +run through these emotions of mine and become now the whole strand +of these emotions. I believed, and I think I was right in believing, +that the love of all true lovers was a sort of defiance then, that +they closed a system in each other's arms and mocked the world +without. You loved against the world, and these two loved AT me. +They had their business with one another, under the threat of a +watchful fierceness. A sword, a sharp sword, the keenest edge in +life, lay among their roses. + +Whatever may be true of this for others, for me and my imagination, +at any rate, it was altogether true. I was never for dalliance, I was +never a jesting lover. I wanted fiercely; I made love impatiently. +Perhaps I had written irrelevant love-letters for that very reason; +because with this stark theme I could not play. . . + +The thought of Nettie's shining form, of her shrinking bold abandon +to her easy conqueror, gave me now a body of rage that was nearly +too strong for my heart and nerves and the tense powers of my merely +physical being. I came down among the pale sand-heaps slowly toward +that queer village of careless sensuality, and now within my puny +body I was coldly sharpset for pain and death, a darkly gleaming +hate, a sword of evil, drawn. + + + +Section 6 + +I halted, and stood planning what I had to do. + +Should I go to bungalow after bungalow until one of the two I sought +answered to my rap? But suppose some servant intervened! + +Should I wait where I was--perhaps until morning--watching? And +meanwhile------ + +All the nearer bungalows were very still now. If I walked softly +to them, from open windows, from something seen or overheard, +I might get a clue to guide me. Should I advance circuitously, +creeping upon them, or should I walk straight to the door? It was +bright enough for her to recognize me clearly at a distance of many +paces. + +The difficulty to my mind lay in this, that if I involved other +people by questions, I might at last confront my betrayers with +these others close about me, ready to snatch my weapon and seize +my hands. Besides, what names might they bear here? + +"Boom!" the sound crept upon my senses, and then again it came. + +I turned impatiently as one turns upon an impertinence, and beheld +a great ironclad not four miles out, steaming fast across the +dappled silver, and from its funnels sparks, intensely red, poured +out into the night. As I turned, came the hot flash of its guns, +firing seaward, and answering this, red flashes and a streaming +smoke in the line between sea and sky. So I remembered it, and I +remember myself staring at it--in a state of stupid arrest. It was +an irrelevance. What had these things to do with me? + +With a shuddering hiss, a rocket from a headland beyond the village +leapt up and burst hot gold against the glare, and the sound of +the third and fourth guns reached me. + +The windows of the dark bungalows, one after another, leapt out, +squares of ruddy brightness that flared and flickered and became +steadily bright. Dark heads appeared looking seaward, a door opened, +and sent out a brief lane of yellow to mingle and be lost in the +comet's brightness. That brought me back to the business in hand. + +"Boom! boom!" and when I looked again at the great ironclad, +a little torchlike spurt of flame wavered behind her funnels. I +could hear the throb and clangor of her straining engines. . . . + +I became aware of the voices of people calling to one another in +the village. A white-robed, hooded figure, some man in a bathing +wrap, absurdly suggestive of an Arab in his burnous, came out from +one of the nearer bungalows, and stood clear and still and shadowless +in the glare. + +He put his hands to shade his seaward eyes, and shouted to people +within. + +The people within--MY people! My fingers tightened on my revolver. +What was this war nonsense to me? I would go round among the hummocks +with the idea of approaching the three bungalows inconspicuously +from the flank. This fight at sea might serve my purpose--except +for that, it had no interest for me at all. Boom! boom! The huge +voluminous concussions rushed past me, beat at my heart and passed. +In a moment Nettie would come out to see. + +First one and then two other wrappered figures came out of the +bungalows to join the first. His arm pointed seaward, and his voice, +a full tenor, rose in explanation. I could hear some of the words. +"It's a German!" he said. "She's caught." + +Some one disputed that, and there followed a little indistinct +babble of argument. I went on slowly in the circuit I had marked +out, watching these people as I went. + +They shouted together with such a common intensity of direction +that I halted and looked seaward. I saw the tall fountain flung by +a shot that had just missed the great warship. A second rose still +nearer us, a third, and a fourth, and then a great uprush of dust, +a whirling cloud, leapt out of the headland whence the rocket had +come, and spread with a slow deliberation right and left. Hard on +that an enormous crash, and the man with the full voice leapt and +cried, "Hit!" + +Let me see! Of course, I had to go round beyond the bungalows, and +then come up towards the group from behind. + +A high-pitched woman's voice called, "Honeymooners! honeymooners! +Come out and see!" + +Something gleamed in the shadow of the nearer bungalow, and +a man's voice answered from within. What he said I did not catch, +but suddenly I heard Nettie calling very distinctly, "We've been +bathing." + +The man who had first come out shouted, "Don't you hear the guns? +They're fighting--not five miles from shore." + +"Eh?" answered the bungalow, and a window opened. + +"Out there!" + +I did not hear the reply, because of the faint rustle of my own +movements. Clearly these people were all too much occupied by the +battle to look in my direction, and so I walked now straight toward +the darkness that held Nettie and the black desire of my heart. + +"Look!" cried some one, and pointed skyward. + +I glanced up, and behold! The sky was streaked with bright green +trails. They radiated from a point halfway between the western +horizon and the zenith, and within the shining clouds of the meteor +a streaming movement had begun, so that it seemed to be pouring +both westwardly and back toward the east, with a crackling sound, as +though the whole heaven was stippled over with phantom pistol-shots. +It seemed to me then as if the meteor was coming to help me, +descending with those thousand pistols like a curtain to fend off +this unmeaning foolishness of the sea. + +"Boom!" went a gun on the big ironclad, and "boom!" and the guns +of the pursuing cruisers flashed in reply. + +To glance up at that streaky, stirring light scum of the sky made +one's head swim. I stood for a moment dazed, and more than a little +giddy. I had a curious instant of purely speculative thought. Suppose, +after all, the fanatics were right, and the world WAS coming to an +end! What a score that would be for Parload! + +Then it came into my head that all these things were happening to +consecrate my revenge! The war below, the heavens above, were the +thunderous garment of my deed. I heard Nettie's voice cry out not +fifty yards away, and my passion surged again. I was to return to +her amid these terrors bearing unanticipated death. I was to possess +her, with a bullet, amidst thunderings and fear. At the thought I +lifted up my voice to a shout that went unheard, and advanced now +recklessly, revolver displayed in my hand. + +It was fifty yards, forty yards, thirty yards--the little group +of people, still heedless of me, was larger and more important now, +the green-shot sky and the fighting ships remoter. Some one darted +out from the bungalow, with an interrupted question, and stopped, +suddenly aware of me. It was Nettie, with some coquettish dark +wrap about her, and the green glare shining on her sweet face and +white throat. I could see her expression, stricken with dismay and +terror, at my advance, as though something had seized her by the +heart and held her still--a target for my shots. + +"Boom!" came the ironclad's gunshot like a command. "Bang!" the +bullet leapt from my hand. Do you know, I did not want to shoot +her then. Indeed I did not want to shoot her then! Bang! and I +had fired again, still striding on, and--each time it seemed I had +missed. + +She moved a step or so toward me, still staring, and then someone +intervened, and near beside her I saw young Verrall. + +A heavy stranger, the man in the hooded bath-gown, a fat, foreign-looking +man, came out of nowhere like a shield before them. He seemed a +preposterous interruption. His face was full of astonishment and +terror. He rushed across my path with arms extended and open hands, +as one might try to stop a runaway horse. He shouted some nonsense. +He seemed to want to dissuade me, as though dissuasion had anything +to do with it now. + +"Not you, you fool!" I said hoarsely. "Not you!" But he hid Nettie +nevertheless. + +By an enormous effort I resisted a mechanical impulse to shoot +through his fat body. Anyhow, I knew I mustn't shoot him. For +a moment I was in doubt, then I became very active, turned aside +abruptly and dodged his pawing arm to the left, and so found two +others irresolutely in my way. I fired a third shot in the air, just +over their heads, and ran at them. They hastened left and right; I +pulled up and faced about within a yard of a foxy-faced young man +coming sideways, who seemed about to grapple me. At my resolute +halt he fell back a pace, ducked, and threw up a defensive arm, +and then I perceived the course was clear, and ahead of me, young +Verrall and Nettie--he was holding her arm to help her--running +away. "Of course!" said I. + +I fired a fourth ineffectual shot, and then in an access of fury +at my misses, started out to run them down and shoot them barrel to +backbone. "These people!" I said, dismissing all these interferences. +. . . "A yard," I panted, speaking aloud to myself, "a yard! Till +then, take care, you mustn't--mustn't shoot again." + +Some one pursued me, perhaps several people--I do not +know, we left them all behind. . . . + +We ran. For a space I was altogether intent upon the swift monotony +of flight and pursuit. The sands were changed to a whirl of green +moonshine, the air was thunder. A luminous green haze rolled about +us. What did such things matter? We ran. Did I gain or lose? that +was the question. They ran through a gap in a broken fence that +sprang up abruptly out of nothingness and turned to the right. I +noted we were in a road. But this green mist! One seemed to plough +through it. They were fading into it, and at that thought I made +a spurt that won a dozen feet or more. + +She staggered. He gripped her arm, and dragged her forward. They +doubled to the left. We were off the road again and on turf. It +felt like turf. I tripped and fell at a ditch that was somehow +full of smoke, and was up again, but now they were phantoms +half gone into the livid swirls about me. . . . + +Still I ran. + +On, on! I groaned with the violence of my effort. I staggered +again and swore. I felt the concussions of great guns tear past me +through the murk. + +They were gone! Everything was going, but I kept on running. Once +more I stumbled. There was something about my feet that impeded +me, tall grass or heather, but I could not see what it was, only +this smoke that eddied about my knees. There was a noise and spinning +in my brain, a vain resistance to a dark green curtain that was +falling, falling, falling, fold upon fold. Everything grew darker +and darker. + +I made one last frantic effort, and raised my revolver, fired my +penultimate shot at a venture, and fell headlong to the ground. +And behold! the green curtain was a black one, and the earth and +I and all things ceased to be. + + + + + +BOOK THE SECOND + +THE GREEN VAPORS + + + + +CHAPTER THE FIRST + +THE CHANGE + + + +Section 1 + +I SEEMED to awaken out of a refreshing sleep. + +I did not awaken with a start, but opened my eyes, and lay very +comfortably looking at a line of extraordinarily scarlet poppies +that glowed against a glowing sky. It was the sky of a magnificent +sunrise, and an archipelago of gold-beached purple islands floated in +a sea of golden green. The poppies too, swan-necked buds, blazing +corollas, translucent stout seed-vessels, stoutly upheld, had a +luminous quality, seemed wrought only from some more solid kind of +light. + +I stared unwonderingly at these things for a time, and then there +rose upon my consciousness, intermingling with these, the bristling +golden green heads of growing barley. + +A remote faint question, where I might be, drifted and vanished +again in my mind. Everything was very still. + +Everything was as still as death. + +I felt very light, full of the sense of physical well-being. +I perceived I was lying on my side in a little trampled space +in a weedy, flowering barley field, that was in some inexplicable +way saturated with light and beauty. I sat up, and remained for a +long time filled with the delight and charm of the delicate little +convolvulus that twined among the barley stems, the pimpernel that +laced the ground below. + +Then that question returned. What was this place? How had I come +to be sleeping here? + +I could not remember. + +It perplexed me that somehow my body felt strange to me. It was +unfamiliar--I could not tell how--and the barley, and the beautiful +weeds, and the slowly developing glory of the dawn behind; all +those things partook of the same unfamiliarity. I felt as though +I was a thing in some very luminous painted window, as though this +dawn broke through me. I felt I was part of some exquisite picture +painted in light and joy. + +A faint breeze bent and rustled the barley-heads, and jogged my +mind forward. + +Who was I? That was a good way of beginning. + +I held up my left hand and arm before me, a grubby hand, a frayed +cuff; but with a quality of painted unreality, transfigured as a +beggar might have been by Botticelli. I looked for a time steadfastly +at a beautiful pearl sleeve-link. + +I remembered Willie Leadford, who had owned that arm and hand, as +though he had been some one else. + +Of course! My history--its rough outline rather than the immediate +past--began to shape itself in my memory, very small, very bright +and inaccessible, like a thing watched through a microscope. +Clayton and Swathinglea returned to my mind; the slums and darkness, +Dureresque, minute and in their rich dark colors pleasing, and through +them I went towards my destiny. I sat hands on knees recalling that +queer passionate career that had ended with my futile shot into +the growing darkness of the End. The thought of that shot awoke my +emotions again. + +There was something in it now, something absurd, that made me smile +pityingly. + +Poor little angry, miserable creature! Poor little angry, miserable +world! + +I sighed for pity, not only pity for myself, but for all the hot +hearts, the tormented brains, the straining, striving things of hope +and pain, who had found their peace at last beneath the pouring +mist and suffocation of the comet. Because certainly that world was +over and done. They were all so weak and unhappy, and I was now so +strong and so serene. For I felt sure I was dead; no one living +could have this perfect assurance of good, this strong and confident +peace. I had made an end of the fever called living. I was dead, +and it was all right, and these------? + +I felt an inconsistency. + +These, then, must be the barley fields of God!--the still and +silent barley fields of God, full of unfading poppy flowers whose +seeds bear peace. + + + +Section 2 + +It was queer to find barley fields in heaven, but no doubt there +were many surprises in store for me. + +How still everything was! Peace! The peace that passeth understanding. +After all it had come to me! But, indeed, everything was very still! +No bird sang. Surely I was alone in the world! No birds sang. Yes, +and all the distant sounds of life had ceased, the lowing +of cattle, the barking of dogs. . . . + +Something that was like fear beatified came into my heart. It was +all right, I knew; but to be alone! I stood up and met the hot +summons of the rising sun, hurrying towards me, as it were, +with glad tidings, over the spikes of the barley. . . . + +Blinded, I made a step. My foot struck something hard, and I looked +down to discover my revolver, a blue-black thing, like a dead snake +at my feet. + +For a moment that puzzled me. + +Then I clean forgot about it. The wonder of the quiet took possession +of my soul. Dawn, and no birds singing! + +How beautiful was the world! How beautiful, but how still! I walked +slowly through the barley towards a line of elder bushes, wayfaring +tree and bramble that made the hedge of the field. I noted as +I passed along a dead shrew mouse, as it seemed to me, among the +halms; then a still toad. I was surprised that this did not leap +aside from my footfalls, and I stooped and picked it up. Its body +was limp like life, but it made no struggle, the brightness of its +eye was veiled, it did not move in my hand. + +It seems to me now that I stood holding that lifeless little creature +for some time. Then very softly I stooped down and replaced it. I +was trembling--trembling with a nameless emotion. I looked with +quickened eyes closely among the barley stems, and behold, now +everywhere I saw beetles, flies, and little creatures that did not +move, lying as they fell when the vapors overcame them; they seemed +no more than painted things. Some were novel creatures to me. I +was very unfamiliar with natural things. "My God!" I cried; "but +is it only I------?" + +And then at my next movement something squealed sharply. I turned +about, but I could not see it, only I saw a little stir in a rut +and heard the diminishing rustle of the unseen creature's flight. +And at that I turned to my toad again, and its eye moved and it +stirred. And presently, with infirm and hesitating gestures, it +stretched its limbs and began to crawl away from me. + +But wonder, that gentle sister of fear, had me now. I saw a little +way ahead a brown and crimson butterfly perched upon a cornflower. +I thought at first it was the breeze that stirred it, and then I +saw its wings were quivering. And even as I watched it, it started +into life, and spread itself, and fluttered into the air. + +I watched it fly, a turn this way, a turn that, until suddenly it +seemed to vanish. And now, life was returning to this thing and +that on every side of me, with slow stretchings and bendings, +with twitterings, with a little start and stir. . . . + +I came slowly, stepping very carefully because of these drugged, +feebly awakening things, through the barley to the hedge. It was a +very glorious hedge, so that it held my eyes. It flowed along and +interlaced like splendid music. It was rich with lupin, honeysuckle, +campions, and ragged robin; bed straw, hops, and wild clematis +twined and hung among its branches, and all along its ditch border +the starry stitchwort lifted its childish faces, and chorused in +lines and masses. Never had I seen such a symphony of note-like +flowers and tendrils and leaves. And suddenly in its depths, I +heard a chirrup and the whirr of startled wings. + +Nothing was dead, but everything had changed to beauty! And I +stood for a time with clean and happy eyes looking at the intricate +delicacy before me and marveling how richly God has made +his worlds. . . . . + +"Tweedle-Tweezle," a lark had shot the stillness with his shining +thread of song; one lark, and then presently another, invisibly in +the air, making out of that blue quiet a woven cloth of gold. . . . + +The earth recreated--only by the reiteration of such phrases +may I hope to give the intense freshness of that dawn. For a time +I was altogether taken up with the beautiful details of being, as +regardless of my old life of jealous passion and impatient sorrow +as though I was Adam new made. I could tell you now with infinite +particularity of the shut flowers that opened as I looked, of tendrils +and grass blades, of a blue-tit I picked up very tenderly--never +before had I remarked the great delicacy of feathers--that presently +disclosed its bright black eye and judged me, and perched, swaying +fearlessly, upon my finger, and spread unhurried wings and flew +away, and of a great ebullition of tadpoles in the ditch; like all +the things that lived beneath the water, they had passed unaltered +through the Change. Amid such incidents, I lived those first great +moments, losing for a time in the wonder of each little part the +mighty wonder of the whole. + +A little path ran between hedge and barley, and along this, leisurely +and content and glad, looking at this beautiful thing and that, +moving a step and stopping, then moving on again, I came presently +to a stile, and deep below it, and overgrown, was a lane. + +And on the worn oak of the stile was a round label, and on the +label these words, "Swindells' G 90 Pills." + +I sat myself astraddle on the stile, not fully grasping all the +implications of these words. But they perplexed me even more than +the revolver and my dirty cuff. + +About me now the birds lifted up their little hearts and sang, ever +more birds and more. + +I read the label over and over again, and joined it to the fact +that I still wore my former clothes, and that my revolver had been +lying at my feet. One conclusion stared out at me. This was no new +planet, no glorious hereafter such as I had supposed. This beautiful +wonderland was the world, the same old world of my rage and death! +But at least it was like meeting a familiar house-slut, washed and +dignified, dressed in a queen's robes, worshipful and fine. . . . + +It might be the old world indeed, but something new lay upon all +things, a glowing certitude of health and happiness. It might be +the old world, but the dust and fury of the old life was certainly +done. At least I had no doubt of that. + +I recalled the last phases of my former life, that darkling climax +of pursuit and anger and universal darkness and the whirling green +vapors of extinction. The comet had struck the earth and made an +end to all things; of that too I was assured. + +But afterward? . . . + +And now? + +The imaginations of my boyhood came back as speculative possibilities. +In those days I had believed firmly in the necessary advent of a +last day, a great coming out of the sky, trumpetings and fear, the +Resurrection, and the Judgment. My roving fancy now suggested to +me that this Judgment must have come and passed. That it had passed +and in some manner missed me. I was left alone here, in a swept and +garnished world (except, of course, for this label of Swindells') +to begin again perhaps. . . . + +No doubt Swindells has got his deserts. + +My mind ran for a time on Swindells, on the imbecile pushfulness of +that extinct creature, dealing in rubbish, covering the country-side +with lies in order to get--what had he sought?--a silly, ugly, +great house, a temper-destroying motor-car, a number of disrespectful, +abject servants; thwarted intrigues for a party-fund baronetcy as +the crest of his life, perhaps. You cannot imagine the littleness +of those former times; their naive, queer absurdities! And for +the first time in my existence I thought of these things without +bitterness. In the former days I had seen wickedness, I had +seen tragedy, but now I saw only the extraordinary foolishness of +the old life. The ludicrous side of human wealth and importance +turned itself upon me, a shining novelty, poured down upon me like +the sunrise, and engulfed me in laughter. Swindells! Swindells, +damned! My vision of Judgment became a delightful burlesque. I saw +the chuckling Angel sayer with his face veiled, and the corporeal +presence of Swindells upheld amidst the laughter of the spheres. +"Here's a thing, and a very pretty thing, and what's to be done with +this very pretty thing?" I saw a soul being drawn from a rotund, +substantial-looking body like a whelk from its shell. . . . + +I laughed loudly and long. And behold! even as I laughed the keen +point of things accomplished stabbed my mirth, and I was weeping, +weeping aloud, convulsed with weeping, and the tears were pouring +down my face. + + + +Section 3 + +Everywhere the awakening came with the sunrise. We awakened to the +gladness of the morning; we walked dazzled in a light that was joy. +Everywhere that was so. It was always morning. It was morning +because, until the direct rays of the sun touched it, the changing +nitrogen of our atmosphere did not pass into its permanent phase, +and the sleepers lay as they had fallen. In its intermediate +state the air hung inert, incapable of producing either revival or +stupefaction, no longer green, but not yet changed to the +gas that now lives in us. . . . + +To every one, I think, came some parallel to the mental states I +have already sought to describe--a wonder, an impression of joyful +novelty. There was also very commonly a certain confusion of the +intelligence, a difficulty in self-recognition. I remember clearly +as I sat on my stile that presently I had the clearest doubts of +my own identity and fell into the oddest metaphysical questionings. +"If this be I," I said, "then how is it I am no longer madly seeking +Nettie? Nettie is now the remotest thing--and all my wrongs. Why +have I suddenly passed out of all that passion? Why does +not the thought of Verrall quicken my pulses?" . . . + +I was only one of many millions who that morning had the same doubts. I +suppose one knows one's self for one's self when one returns from +sleep or insensibility by the familiarity of one's bodily sensations, +and that morning all our most intimate bodily sensations were +changed. The intimate chemical processes of life were changed, its +nervous metaboly. For the fluctuating, uncertain, passion-darkened +thought and feeling of the old time came steady, full-bodied, +wholesome processes. Touch was different, sight was different, sound +and all the senses were subtler; had it not been that our thought +was steadier and fuller, I believe great multitudes of men would +have gone mad. But, as it was, we understood. The dominant impression +I would convey in this account of the Change is one of enormous +release, of a vast substantial exaltation. There was an effect, as +it were, of light-headedness that was also clear-headedness, and +the alteration in one's bodily sensations, instead of producing the +mental obfuscation, the loss of identity that was a common mental +trouble under former conditions, gave simply a new detachment from +the tumid passions and entanglements of the personal life. + +In this story of my bitter, restricted youth that I have been +telling you, I have sought constantly to convey the narrowness, the +intensity, the confusion, muddle, and dusty heat of the old world. +It was quite clear to me, within an hour of my awakening, that all +that was, in some mysterious way, over and done. That, too, was the +common experience. Men stood up; they took the new air into their +lungs--a deep long breath, and the past fell from them; they could +forgive, they could disregard, they could attempt. . . . And it +was no new thing, no miracle that sets aside the former order of +the world. It was a change in material conditions, a change in the +atmosphere, that at one bound had released them. Some of them it +had released to death. . . . Indeed, man himself had changed not +at all. We knew before the Change, the meanest knew, by glowing +moments in ourselves and others, by histories and music and beautiful +things, by heroic instances and splendid stories, how fine mankind +could be, how fine almost any human being could upon occasion be; +but the poison in the air, its poverty in all the nobler elements +which made such moments rare and remarkable--all that has changed. +The air was changed, and the Spirit of Man that had drowsed and +slumbered and dreamt dull and evil things, awakened, and stood with +wonder-clean eyes, refreshed, looking again on life. + + + +Section 4 + +The miracle of the awakening came to me in solitude, the laughter, +and then the tears. Only after some time did I come upon another +man. Until I heard his voice calling I did not seem to feel there +were any other people in the world. All that seemed past, with +all the stresses that were past. I had come out of the individual +pit in which my shy egotism had lurked, I had overflowed to all +humanity, I had seemed to be all humanity; I had laughed at Swindells +as I could have laughed at myself, and this shout that came to me +seemed like the coming of an unexpected thought in my own mind. +But when it was repeated I answered. + +"I am hurt," said the voice, and I descended into the lane forthwith, +and so came upon Melmount sitting near the ditch with his back to +me. + +Some of the incidental sensory impressions of that morning bit so +deeply into my mind that I verily believe, when at last I face the +greater mysteries that lie beyond this life, when the things of +this life fade from me as the mists of the morning fade before the +sun, these irrelevant petty details will be the last to leave me, +will be the last wisps visible of that attenuating veil. I believe, +for instance, I could match the fur upon the collar of his great +motoring coat now, could paint the dull red tinge of his big +cheek with his fair eyelashes just catching the light and showing +beyond. His hat was off, his dome-shaped head, with its smooth hair +between red and extreme fairness, was bent forward in scrutiny of +his twisted foot. His back seemed enormous. And there was something +about the mere massive sight of him that filled me with liking. + +"What's wrong?" said I. + +"I say," he said, in his full deliberate tones, straining round +to see me and showing a profile, a well-modeled nose, a sensitive, +clumsy, big lip, known to every caricaturist in the world, "I'm in +a fix. I fell and wrenched my ankle. Where are you?" + +I walked round him and stood looking at his face. I perceived he +had his gaiter and sock and boot off, the motor gauntlets had been +cast aside, and he was kneading the injured part in an exploratory +manner with his thick thumbs. + +"By Jove!" I said, "you're Melmount!" + +"Melmount!" He thought. "That's my name," he said, without looking +up. . . . "But it doesn't affect my ankle." + +We remained silent for few moments except for a grunt of pain from +him. + +"Do you know?" I asked, "what has happened to things?" + +He seemed to complete his diagnosis. "It's not broken," he said. + +"Do you know," I repeated, "what has happened to everything?" + +"No," he said, looking up at me incuriously for the first time. + +"There's some difference------" + +"There's a difference." He smiled, a smile of unexpected pleasantness, +and an interest was coming into his eyes. "I've been a little +preoccupied with my own internal sensations. I remark an extraordinary +brightness about things. Is that it?" + +"That's part of it. And a queer feeling, a clear-headedness------" + +He surveyed me and meditated gravely. "I woke up," he said, feeling +his way in his memory. + +"And I." + +"I lost my way--I forget quite how. There was a curious green fog." +He stared at his foot, remembering. "Something to do with a comet. +I was by a hedge in the darkness. Tried to run. . . . Then I +must have pitched into this lane. Look!" He pointed with his head. +"There's a wooden rail new broken there. I must have stumbled over +that out of the field above." He scrutinized this and concluded. +"Yes. . . ." + +"It was dark," I said, "and a sort of green gas came out of nothing +everywhere. That is the last I remember." + +"And then you woke up? So did I. . . . In a state of great bewilderment. +Certainly there's something odd in the air. I was--I was rushing +along a road in a motor-car, very much excited and preoccupied. I +got down----" He held out a triumphant finger. "Ironclads!" + +"NOW I've got it! We'd strung our fleet from here to Texel. We'd +got right across them and the Elbe mined. We'd lost the Lord Warden. +By Jove, yes. The Lord Warden! A battleship that cost two million +pounds--and that fool Rigby said it didn't matter! Eleven hundred +men went down. . . . I remember now. We were sweeping up the North +Sea like a net, with the North Atlantic fleet waiting at the Faroes +for 'em--and not one of 'em had three days' coal! Now, was that a +dream? No! I told a lot of people as much--a meeting was it?--to +reassure them. They were warlike but extremely frightened. Queer +people--paunchy and bald like gnomes, most of them. Where? Of +course! We had it all over--a big dinner--oysters!--Colchester. +I'd been there, just to show all this raid scare was nonsense. And +I was coming back here. . . . But it doesn't seem as though that +was--recent. I suppose it was. Yes, of course!--it was. I got out +of my car at the bottom of the rise with the idea of walking along +the cliff path, because every one said one of their battleships was +being chased along the shore. That's clear! I heard their guns------" + +He reflected. "Queer I should have forgotten! Did YOU hear any +guns?" + +I said I had heard them. + +"Was it last night?" + +"Late last night. One or two in the morning." + +He leant back on his hand and looked at me, smiling frankly. "Even +now," he said, "it's odd, but the whole of that seems like a silly +dream. Do you think there WAS a Lord Warden? Do you really believe +we sank all that machinery--for fun? It was a dream. And yet--it +happened." + +By all the standards of the former time it would have been remarkable +that I talked quite easily and freely with so great a man. "Yes," +I said; "that's it. One feels one has awakened--from something +more than that green gas. As though the other things also--weren't +quite real." + +He knitted his brows and felt the calf of his leg thoughtfully. "I +made a speech at Colchester," he said. + +I thought he was going to add something more about that, but there +lingered a habit of reticence in the man that held him for the +moment. "It is a very curious thing," he broke away; "that this +pain should be, on the whole, more interesting than disagreeable." + +"You are in pain?" + +"My ankle is! It's either broken or badly sprained--I think sprained; +it's very painful to move, but personally I'm not in pain. That +sort of general sickness that comes with local injury--not a trace +of it! . . ." He mused and remarked, "I was speaking at Colchester, +and saying things about the war. I begin to see it better. The +reporters--scribble, scribble. Max Sutaine, 1885. Hubbub. Compliments +about the oysters. Mm--mm. . . . What was it? About the war? A war +that must needs be long and bloody, taking toll from castle and +cottage, taking toll! . . . Rhetorical gusto! Was I drunk last +night?" + +His eyebrows puckered. He had drawn up his right knee, his elbow +rested thereon and his chin on his fist. The deep-set gray eyes +beneath his thatch of eyebrow stared at unknown things. "My God!" +he murmured, "My God!" with a note of disgust. He made a big brooding +figure in the sunlight, he had an effect of more than physical +largeness; he made me feel that it became me to wait upon his thinking. +I had never met a man of this sort before; I did not know +such men existed. . . . + +It is a curious thing, that I cannot now recall any ideas whatever +that I had before the Change about the personalities of statesmen, +but I doubt if ever in those days I thought of them at all as +tangible individual human beings, conceivably of some intellectual +complexity. I believe that my impression was a straightforward blend +of caricature and newspaper leader. I certainly had no respect for +them. And now without servility or any insincerity whatever, as if +it were a first-fruit of the Change, I found myself in the presence +of a human being towards whom I perceived myself inferior and +subordinate, before whom I stood without servility or any insincerity +whatever, in an attitude of respect and attention. My inflamed, my +rancid egotism--or was it after all only the chances of life?--had +never once permitted that before the Change. + +He emerged from his thoughts, still with a faint perplexity in +his manner. "That speech I made last night," he said, "was damned +mischievous nonsense, you know. Nothing can alter that. Nothing. . . . +No! . . . Little fat gnomes in evening dress--gobbling oysters. +Gulp!" + +It was a most natural part of the wonder of that morning that he +should adopt this incredible note of frankness, and that it should +abate nothing from my respect for him. + +"Yes," he said, "you are right. It's all indisputable fact, and I +can't believe it was anything but a dream." + + + +Section 5 + +That memory stands out against the dark past of the world with +extraordinary clearness and brightness. The air, I remember, was full +of the calling and piping and singing of birds. I have a curious +persuasion too that there was a distant happy clamor of pealing +bells, but that I am half convinced is a mistake. Nevertheless, there +was something in the fresh bite of things, in the dewy newness of +sensation that set bells rejoicing in one's brain. And that big, +fair, pensive man sitting on the ground had beauty even in his +clumsy pose, as though indeed some Great Master of strength and +humor had made him. + +And--it is so hard now to convey these things--he spoke to me, +a stranger, without reservations, carelessly, as men now speak to +men. Before those days, not only did we think badly, but what we +thought, a thousand short-sighted considerations, dignity, objective +discipline, discretion, a hundred kindred aspects of shabbiness of +soul, made us muffle before we told it to our fellow-men. + +"It's all returning now," he said, and told me half soliloquizingly +what was in his mind. + +I wish I could give every word he said to me; he struck out image +after image to my nascent intelligence, with swift broken fragments +of speech. If I had a precise full memory of that morning I should +give it you, verbatim, minutely. But here, save for the little +sharp things that stand out, I find only blurred general impressions. +Throughout I have to make up again his half-forgotten sentences +and speeches, and be content with giving you the general effect. +But I can see and hear him now as he said, "The dream got worst at +the end. The war--a perfectly horrible business! Horrible! And it +was just like a nightmare, you couldn't do anything to escape from +it--every one was driven!" + +His sense of indiscretion was gone. + +He opened the war out to me--as every one sees it now. Only that +morning it was astonishing. He sat there on the ground, absurdly +forgetful of his bare and swollen foot, treating me as the humblest +accessory and as altogether an equal, talking out to himself the +great obsessions of his mind. "We could have prevented it! Any of +us who chose to speak out could have prevented it. A little decent +frankness. What was there to prevent us being frank with one another? +Their emperor--his position was a pile of ridiculous assumptions, +no doubt, but at bottom--he was a sane man." He touched off the +emperor in a few pithy words, the German press, the German people, +and our own. He put it as we should put it all now, but with a +certain heat as of a man half guilty and wholly resentful. "Their +damned little buttoned-up professors!" he cried, incidentally. +"Were there ever such men? And ours! Some of us might have taken +a firmer line. . . . If a lot of us had taken a firmer line and +squashed that nonsense early. . . ." + +He lapsed into inaudible whisperings, into silence. . . . + +I stood regarding him, understanding him, learning marvelously +from him. It is a fact that for the best part of the morning of +the Change I forgot Nettie and Verrall as completely as though they +were no more than characters in some novel that I had put aside to +finish at my leisure, in order that I might talk to this man. + +"Eh, well," he said, waking startlingly from his thoughts. "Here we +are awakened! The thing can't go on now; all this must end. How it +ever began------! My dear boy, how did all those things ever begin? +I feel like a new Adam. . . . Do you think this has happened--generally? +Or shall we find all these gnomes and things? . . . Who cares?" + +He made as if to rise, and remembered his ankle. He suggested I should +help him as far as his bungalow. There seemed nothing strange to +either of us that he should requisition my services or that I should +cheerfully obey. I helped him bandage his ankle, and we set out, +I his crutch, the two of us making up a sort of limping quadruped, +along the winding lane toward the cliffs and the sea. + + + +Section 6 + +His bungalow beyond the golf links was, perhaps, a mile and a +quarter from the lane. We went down to the beach margin and along +the pallid wave-smoothed sands, and we got along by making a swaying, +hopping, tripod dance forward until I began to give under him, and +then, as soon as we could, sitting down. His ankle was, in fact, +broken, and he could not put it to the ground without exquisite +pain. So that it took us nearly two hours to get to the house, +and it would have taken longer if his butler-valet had not come +out to assist me. They had found motor-car and chauffeur smashed +and still at the bend of the road near the house, and had been on +that side looking for Melmount, or they would have seen us before. + +For most of that time we were sitting now on turf, now on a chalk +boulder, now on a timber groin, and talking one to the other, with +the frankness proper to the intercourse of men of good intent, +without reservations or aggressions, in the common, open fashion +of contemporary intercourse to-day, but which then, nevertheless, +was the rarest and strangest thing in the world. He for the most +part talked, but at some shape of a question I told him--as plainly +as I could tell of passions that had for a time become incomprehensible +to me--of my murderous pursuit of Nettie and her lover, and how the +green vapors overcame me. He watched me with grave eyes and nodded +understandingly, and afterwards he asked me brief penetrating +questions about my education, my upbringing, my work. There was a +deliberation in his manner, brief full pauses, that had in them no +element of delay. + +"Yes," he said, "yes--of course. What a fool I have been!" and said +no more until we had made another of our tripod struggles along +the beach. At first I did not see the connection of my story with +that self-accusation. + +"Suppose," he said, panting on the groin, "there had been such a +thing as a statesman! . . ." + +He turned to me. "If one had decided all this muddle shall end! If +one had taken it, as an artist takes his clay, as a man who builds +takes site and stone, and made------" He flung out his big broad hand +at the glories of sky and sea, and drew a deep breath, "something +to fit that setting." + +He added in explanation, "Then there wouldn't have been such stories +as yours at all, you know. . . ." + +"Tell me more about it," he said, "tell me all about yourself. I +feel all these things have passed away, all these things are to be +changed for ever. . . . You won't be what you have been from this +time forth. All the things you have done--don't matter now. To +us, at any rate, they don't matter at all. We have met, who were +separated in that darkness behind us. Tell me. + +"Yes," he said; and I told my story straight and as frankly as I +have told it to you. "And there, where those little skerries of weed +rock run out to the ebb, beyond the headland, is Bungalow village. +What did you do with your pistol?" + +"I left it lying there--among the barley." + +He glanced at me from under his light eyelashes. "If others feel +like you and I," he said, "there'll be a lot of pistols left among +the barley to-day. . . ." + +So we talked, I and that great, strong man, with the love of +brothers so plain between us it needed not a word. Our souls went +out to one another in stark good faith; never before had I had +anything but a guarded watchfulness for any fellow-man. Still I +see him, upon that wild desolate beach of the ebb tide, I see him +leaning against the shelly buttress of a groin, looking down at the +poor drowned sailor whose body we presently found. For we found a +newly drowned man who had just chanced to miss this great dawn in +which we rejoiced. We found him lying in a pool of water, among +brown weeds in the dark shadow of the timberings. You must not +overrate the horrors of the former days; in those days it was scarcely +more common to see death in England than it would be to-day. This +dead man was a sailor from the Rother Adler, the great German +battleship that--had we but known it--lay not four miles away along +the coast amidst ploughed-up mountains of chalk ooze, a torn and +battered mass of machinery, wholly submerged at high water, and +holding in its interstices nine hundred drowned brave men, all +strong and skilful, all once capable of doing fine things. . . . + +I remember that poor boy very vividly. He had been drowned during +the anaesthesia of the green gas, his fair young face was quiet +and calm, but the skin of his chest had been crinkled by scalding +water and his right arm was bent queerly back. Even to this needless +death and all its tale of cruelty, beauty and dignity had come. +Everything flowed together to significance as we stood there, I, +the ill-clad, cheaply equipped proletarian, and Melmount in his +great fur-trimmed coat--he was hot with walking but he had not +thought to remove it--leaning upon the clumsy groins and pitying +this poor victim of the war he had helped to make. "Poor lad!" he +said, "poor lad! A child we blunderers sent to death! Do look at +the quiet beauty of that face, that body--to be flung aside like +this!" + +(I remember that near this dead man's hand a stranded star-fish +writhed its slowly feeling limbs, struggling back toward the sea. +It left grooved traces in the sand.) + +"There must be no more of this," panted Melmount, leaning on my +shoulder, "no more of this. . . ." + +But most I recall Melmount as he talked a little later, sitting upon +a great chalk boulder with the sunlight on his big, perspiration-dewed +face. He made his resolves. "We must end war," he said, in that +full whisper of his; "it is stupidity. With so many people able +to read and think--even as it is--there is no need of anything of +the sort. Gods! What have we rulers been at? . . . Drowsing like +people in a stifling room, too dull and sleepy and too base toward +each other for any one to get up and open the window. What haven't +we been at?" + +A great powerful figure he sits there still in my memory, perplexed +and astonished at himself and all things. "We must change all this," +he repeated, and threw out his broad hands in a powerful gesture +against the sea and sky. "We have done so weakly--Heaven alone +knows why!" I can see him now, queer giant that he looked on that +dawnlit beach of splendor, the sea birds flying about us and that +crumpled death hard by, no bad symbol in his clumsiness and needless +heat of the unawakened powers of the former time. I remember it +as an integral part of that picture that far away across the sandy +stretches one of those white estate boards I have described, stuck +up a little askew amidst the yellow-green turf upon the crest of +the low cliffs. + +He talked with a sort of wonder of the former things. "Has it ever +dawned upon you to imagine the pettiness--the pettiness!--of every +soul concerned in a declaration of war?" he asked. He went on, +as though speech was necessary to make it credible, to describe +Laycock, who first gave the horror words at the cabinet council, +"an undersized Oxford prig with a tenoring voice and a garbage of +Greek--the sort of little fool who is brought up on the +admiration of his elder sisters. . . . + +"All the time almost," he said, "I was watching him--thinking what +an ass he was to be trusted with men's lives. . . . I might have +done better to have thought that of myself. I was doing nothing +to prevent it all! The damned little imbecile was up to his neck +in the drama of the thing, he liked to trumpet it out, he goggled +round at us. 'Then it is war!' he said. Richover shrugged his +shoulders. I made some slight protest and gave in. . . . Afterward +I dreamt of him. + +"What a lot we were! All a little scared at ourselves--all, +as it were, instrumental. . . . + +"And it's fools like that lead to things like this!" He jerked his +head at that dead man near by us. + +"It will be interesting to know what has happened to the world. . . . +This green vapor--queer stuff. But I know what has happened to me. +It's Conversion. I've always known. . . . But this is being a fool. +Talk! I'm going to stop it." + +He motioned to rise with his clumsy outstretched hands. + +"Stop what?" said I, stepping forward instinctively to help him. + +"War," he said in his great whisper, putting his big hand on my +shoulder but making no further attempt to arise, "I'm going to put +an end to war--to any sort of war! And all these things that must +end. The world is beautiful, life is great and splendid, we had +only to lift up our eyes and see. Think of the glories through which +we have been driving, like a herd of swine in a garden place. The +color in life--the sounds--the shapes! We have had our jealousies, +our quarrels, our ticklish rights, our invincible prejudices, our +vulgar enterprise and sluggish timidities, we have chattered and +pecked one another and fouled the world--like daws in the temple, +like unclean birds in the holy place of God. All my life has been +foolishness and pettiness, gross pleasures and mean discretions--all. +I am a meagre dark thing in this morning's glow, a penitence, a +shame! And, but for God's mercy, I might have died this night--like +that poor lad there--amidst the squalor of my sins! No more of +this! No more of this!--whether the whole world has changed or no, +matters nothing. WE TWO HAVE SEEN THIS DAWN! . . ." + +He paused. + +"I will arise and go unto my Father," he began presently, "and will +say unto Him------" + +His voice died away in an inaudible whisper. His hand +tightened painfully on my shoulder and he rose. . . . + + + + +CHAPTER THE SECOND + +THE AWAKENING + + + +Section 1 + +So the great Day came to me. + +And even as I had awakened so in that same dawn the whole world +awoke. + +For the whole world of living things had been overtaken by the +same tide of insensibility; in an hour, at the touch of this new +gas in the comet, the shiver of catalytic change had passed about +the globe. They say it was the nitrogen of the air, the old AZOTE, +that in the twinkling of an eye was changed out of itself, and in an +hour or so became a respirable gas, differing indeed from oxygen, +but helping and sustaining its action, a bath of strength and +healing for nerve and brain. I do not know the precise changes +that occurred, nor the names our chemists give them, my work has +carried me away from such things, only this I know--I and all men +were renewed. + +I picture to myself this thing happening in space, a planetary +moment, the faint smudge, the slender whirl of meteor, drawing +nearer to this planet,--this planet like a ball, like a shaded +rounded ball, floating in the void, with its little, nearly impalpable +coat of cloud and air, with its dark pools of ocean, its gleaming +ridges of land. And as that midge from the void touches it, the +transparent gaseous outer shell clouds in an instant green +and then slowly clears again. . . . + +Thereafter, for three hours or more,--we know the minimum time for +the Change was almost exactly three hours because all the clocks +and watches kept going--everywhere, no man nor beast nor bird nor +any living thing that breathes the air stirred at all but lay still. . . . + +Everywhere on earth that day, in the ears of every one who breathed, +there had been the same humming in the air, the same rush of green +vapors, the crepitation, the streaming down of shooting stars. +The Hindoo had stayed his morning's work in the fields to stare +and marvel and fall, the blue-clothed Chinaman fell head foremost +athwart his midday bowl of rice, the Japanese merchant came out +from some chaffering in his office amazed and presently lay there +before his door, the evening gazers by the Golden Gates were overtaken +as they waited for the rising of the great star. This had happened +in every city of the world, in every lonely valley, in every home +and house and shelter and every open place. On the high seas, the +crowding steamship passengers, eager for any wonder, gaped and +marveled, and were suddenly terror-stricken, and struggled for the +gangways and were overcome, the captain staggered on the bridge +and fell, the stoker fell headlong among his coals, the engines +throbbed upon their way untended, the fishing craft drove by +without a hail, with swaying rudder, heeling and dipping. . . . + +The great voice of material Fate cried Halt! And in the midst of +the play the actors staggered, dropped, and were still. The figure +runs from my pen. In New York that very thing occurred. Most of +the theatrical audiences dispersed, but in two crowded houses the +company, fearing a panic, went on playing amidst the gloom, and the +people, trained by many a previous disaster, stuck to their seats. +There they sat, the back rows only moving a little, and there, in +disciplined lines, they drooped and failed, nodded, and fell forward +or slid down upon the floor. I am told by Parload--though indeed I +know nothing of the reasoning on which his confidence rests---that +within an hour of the great moment of impact the first green +modification of nitrogen had dissolved and passed away, leaving the +air as translucent as ever. The rest of that wonderful interlude +was clear, had any had eyes to see its clearness. In London it +was night, but in New York, for example, people were in the full +bustle of the evening's enjoyment, in Chicago they were sitting +down to dinner, the whole world was abroad. The moonlight must have +illuminated streets and squares littered with crumpled figures, +through which such electric cars as had no automatic brakes had +ploughed on their way until they were stopped by the fallen bodies. +People lay in their dress clothes, in dining-rooms, restaurants, +on staircases, in halls, everywhere just as they had been overcome. +Men gambling, men drinking, thieves lurking in hidden places, sinful +couples, were caught, to arise with awakened mind and conscience +amidst the disorder of their sin. America the comet reached in the +full tide of evening life, but Britain lay asleep. But as I have +told, Britain did not slumber so deeply but that she was in the +full tide of what may have been battle and a great victory. Up and +down the North Sea her warships swept together like a net about +their foes. On land, too, that night was to have decided great +issues. The German camps were under arms from Redingen to Markirch, +their infantry columns were lying in swathes like mown hay, in +arrested night march on every track between Longuyon and Thiancourt, +and between Avricourt and Donen. The hills beyond Spincourt were +dusted thick with hidden French riflemen; the thin lash of the French +skirmishers sprawled out amidst spades and unfinished rifle-pits +in coils that wrapped about the heads of the German columns, +thence along the Vosges watershed and out across the frontier +near Belfort nearly to the Rhine. . . . + +The Hungarian, the Italian peasant, yawned and thought the morning +dark, and turned over to fall into a dreamless sleep; the Mahometan +world spread its carpet and was taken in prayer. And in Sydney, +in Melbourne, in New Zealand, the thing was a fog in the afternoon, +that scattered the crowd on race-courses and cricket-fields, +and stopped the unloading of shipping and brought men out from +their afternoon rest to stagger and litter the streets. . . . + + + +Section 2 + +My thoughts go into the woods and wildernesses and jungles of the +world, to the wild life that shared man's suspension, and I think +of a thousand feral acts interrupted and truncated--as it were +frozen, like the frozen words Pantagruel met at sea. Not only men +it was that were quieted, all living creatures that breathe the air +became insensible, impassive things. Motionless brutes and birds +lay amidst the drooping trees and herbage in the universal twilight, +the tiger sprawled beside his fresh-struck victim, who bled to +death in a dreamless sleep. The very flies came sailing down the +air with wings outspread; the spider hung crumpled in his loaded +net; like some gaily painted snowflake the butterfly drifted +to earth and grounded, and was still. And as a queer contrast +one gathers that the fishes in the sea suffered not at all. . . . + +Speaking of the fishes reminds me of a queer little inset upon that +great world-dreaming. The odd fate of the crew of the submarine +vessel B 94 has always seemed memorable to me. So far as I know, +they were the only men alive who never saw that veil of green drawn +across the world. All the while that the stillness held above, they +were working into the mouth of the Elbe, past the booms and the +mines, very slowly and carefully, a sinister crustacean of steel, +explosive crammed, along the muddy bottom. They trailed a long +clue that was to guide their fellows from the mother ship floating +awash outside. Then in the long channel beyond the forts they came +up at last to mark down their victims and get air. That must have +been before the twilight of dawn, for they tell of the brightness +of the stars. They were amazed to find themselves not three hundred +yards from an ironclad that had run ashore in the mud, and heeled +over with the falling tide. It was afire amidships, but no one heeded +that--no one in all that strange clear silence heeded that--and +not only this wrecked vessel, but all the dark ships lying about +them, it seemed to their perplexed and startled minds must be full +of dead men! + +Theirs I think must have been one of the strangest of all experiences; +they were never insensible; at once, and, I am told, with a sudden +catch of laughter, they began to breathe the new air. None of +them has proved a writer; we have no picture of their wonder, no +description of what was said. But we know these men were active and +awake for an hour and a half at least before the general awakening +came, and when at last the Germans stirred and sat up they found +these strangers in possession of their battleship, the submarine +carelessly adrift, and the Englishmen, begrimed and weary, but +with a sort of furious exultation, still busy, in the bright dawn, +rescuing insensible enemies from the sinking conflagration. . . . + +But the thought of certain stokers the sailors of the submarine +failed altogether to save brings me back to the thread of grotesque +horror that runs through all this event, the thread I cannot overlook +for all the splendors of human well-being that have come from it. +I cannot forget the unguided ships that drove ashore, that went +down in disaster with all their sleeping hands, nor how, inland, +motor-cars rushed to destruction upon the roads, and trains upon +the railways kept on in spite of signals, to be found at last by +their amazed, reviving drivers standing on unfamiliar lines, their +fires exhausted, or, less lucky, to be discovered by astonished +peasants or awakening porters smashed and crumpled up into heaps +of smoking, crackling ruin. The foundry fires of the Four Towns +still blazed, the smoke of our burning still denied the sky. +Fires burnt indeed the brighter for the Change--and spread. . . . + + + +Section 3 + +Picture to yourself what happened between the printing and composing +of the copy of the New Paper that lies before me now. It was the +first newspaper that was printed upon earth after the Great Change. +It was pocket-worn and browned, made of a paper no man ever intended +for preservation. I found it on the arbor table in the inn garden +while I was waiting for Nettie and Verrall, before that last +conversation of which I have presently to tell. As I look at it all +that scene comes back to me, and Nettie stands in her white raiment +against a blue-green background of sunlit garden, scrutinizing +my face as I read. . . . + +It is so frayed that the sheet cracks along the folds and comes to +pieces in my hands. It lies upon my desk, a dead souvenir of the +dead ages of the world, of the ancient passions of my heart. I know +we discussed its news, but for the life of me I cannot recall what +we said, only I remember that Nettie said very little, and that +Verrall for a time read it over my shoulder. And I did not like +him to read over my shoulder. . . . + +The document before me must have helped us through the first +awkwardness of that meeting. + +But of all that we said and did then I must tell in a later chapter. . . . + +It is easy to see the New Paper had been set up overnight, and then +large pieces of the stereo plates replaced subsequently. I do not +know enough of the old methods of printing to know precisely what +happened. The thing gives one an impression of large pieces of +type having been cut away and replaced by fresh blocks. There is +something very rough and ready about it all, and the new portions +print darker and more smudgily than the old, except toward the +left, where they have missed ink and indented. A friend of mine, +who knows something of the old typography, has suggested to me that +the machinery actually in use for the New Paper was damaged that +night, and that on the morning of the Change Banghurst borrowed a +neighboring office--perhaps in financial dependence upon him--to +print in. + +The outer pages belong entirely to the old period, the only parts +of the paper that had undergone alteration are the two middle +leaves. Here we found set forth in a curious little four-column +oblong of print, WHAT HAS HAPPENED. This cut across a column with +scare headings beginning, "Great Naval Battle Now in Progress. The +Fate of Two Empires in the Balance. Reported Loss of Two More------" + +These things, one gathered, were beneath notice now. Probably it +was guesswork, and fabricated news in the first instance. + +It is curious to piece together the worn and frayed fragments, and +reread this discolored first intelligence of the new epoch. + +The simple clear statements in the replaced portion of the paper +impressed me at the time, I remember, as bald and strange, in that +framework of shouting bad English. Now they seem like the voice of +a sane man amidst a vast faded violence. But they witness to the +prompt recovery of London from the gas; the new, swift energy of +rebound in that huge population. I am surprised now, as I reread, +to note how much research, experiment, and induction must have been +accomplished in the day that elapsed before the paper was printed. +. . . But that is by the way. As I sit and muse over this partly +carbonized sheet, that same curious remote vision comes again to me +that quickened in my mind that morning, a vision of those newspaper +offices I have already described to you going through the crisis. + +The catalytic wave must have caught the place in full swing, in +its nocturnal high fever, indeed in a quite exceptional state of +fever, what with the comet and the war, and more particularly with +the war. Very probably the Change crept into the office imperceptibly, +amidst the noise and shouting, and the glare of electric light that +made the night atmosphere in that place; even the green flashes +may have passed unobserved there, the preliminary descending trails +of green vapor seemed no more than unseasonable drifting wisps +of London fog. (In those days London even in summer was not safe +against dark fogs.) And then at the last the Change poured in and +overtook them. + +If there was any warning at all for them, it must have been a sudden +universal tumult in the street, and then a much more universal +quiet. They could have had no other intimation. + +There was no time to stop the presses before the main development +of green vapor had overwhelmed every one. It must have folded +about them, tumbled them to the earth, masked and stilled them. +My imagination is always curiously stirred by the thought of that, +because I suppose it is the first picture I succeeded in making for +myself of what had happened in the towns. It has never quite lost +its strangeness for me that when the Change came, machinery went +on working. I don't precisely know why that should have seemed so +strange to me, but it did, and still to a certain extent does. One +is so accustomed, I suppose, to regard machinery as an extension +of human personality that the extent of its autonomy the Change +displayed came as a shock to me. The electric lights, for example, +hazy green-haloed nebulas, must have gone on burning at least +for a time; amidst the thickening darkness the huge presses must +have roared on, printing, folding, throwing aside copy after copy +of that fabricated battle report with its quarter column of scare +headlines, and all the place must have still quivered and throbbed +with the familiar roar of the engines. And this though no men ruled +there at all any more! Here and there beneath that thickening fog +the crumpled or outstretched forms of men lay still. + +A wonderful thing that must have seemed, had any man had by chance +the power of resistance to the vapor, and could he have walked +amidst it. + +And soon the machines must have exhausted their feed of ink and +paper, and thumped and banged and rattled emptily amidst the general +quiet. Then I suppose the furnaces failed for want of stoking, the +steam pressure fell in the pistons, the machinery slackened, the +lights burnt dim, and came and went with the ebb of energy from the +power-station. Who can tell precisely the sequence of these things +now? + +And then, you know, amidst the weakening and terminating noises +of men, the green vapor cleared and vanished, in an hour indeed it +had gone, and it may be a breeze stirred and blew and went about +the earth. + +The noises of life were all dying away, but some there were that +abated nothing, that sounded triumphantly amidst the universal +ebb. To a heedless world the church towers tolled out two and then +three. Clocks ticked and chimed everywhere about the earth +to deafened ears. . . . + +And then came the first flush of morning, the first rustlings +of the revival. Perhaps in that office the filaments of the lamps +were still glowing, the machinery was still pulsing weakly, when +the crumpled, booted heaps of cloth became men again and began to +stir and stare. The chapel of the printers was, no doubt, shocked +to find itself asleep. Amidst that dazzling dawn the New Paper +woke to wonder, stood up and blinked at its amazing self. . . . + +The clocks of the city churches, one pursuing another, struck four. +The staffs, crumpled and disheveled, but with a strange refreshment +in their veins, stood about the damaged machinery, marveling and +questioning; the editor read his overnight headlines with incredulous +laughter. There was much involuntary laughter that morning. Outside, +the mail men patted the necks and rubbed the knees of their +awakening horses. . . . + +Then, you know, slowly and with much conversation and doubt, they +set about to produce the paper. + +Imagine those bemused, perplexed people, carried on by the inertia +of their old occupations and doing their best with an enterprise +that had suddenly become altogether extraordinary and irrational. +They worked amidst questionings, and yet light-heartedly. At every +stage there must have been interruptions for discussion. The paper +only got down to Menton five days late. + + + +Section 4 + +Then let me give you a vivid little impression I received of a +certain prosaic person, a grocer, named Wiggins, and how he passed +through the Change. I heard this man's story in the post-office at +Menton, when, in the afternoon of the First Day, I bethought me to +telegraph to my mother. The place was also a grocer's shop, and I +found him and the proprietor talking as I went in. They were trade +competitors, and Wiggins had just come across the street to break +the hostile silence of a score of years. The sparkle of the Change +was in their eyes, their slightly flushed cheeks, their more elastic +gestures, spoke of new physical influences that had invaded their +beings. + +"It did us no good, all our hatred," Mr. Wiggins said to me, +explaining the emotion of their encounter; "it did our customers +no good. I've come to tell him that. You bear that in mind, young +man, if ever you come to have a shop of your own. It was a sort +of stupid bitterness possessed us, and I can't make out we didn't +see it before in that light. Not so much downright wickedness it +wasn't as stupidity. A stupid jealousy! Think of it!--two human +beings within a stone's throw, who have not spoken for twenty years, +hardening our hearts against each other!" + +"I can't think how we came to such a state, Mr. Wiggins," said +the other, packing tea into pound packets out of mere habit as he +spoke. "It was wicked pride and obstinacy. We KNEW it was foolish +all the time." + +I stood affixing the adhesive stamp to my telegram. + +"Only the other morning," he went on to me, "I was cutting French +eggs. Selling at a loss to do it. He'd marked down with a great +staring ticket to ninepence a dozen--I saw it as I went past. Here's +my answer!" He indicated a ticket. "'Eightpence a dozen--same as +sold elsewhere for ninepence.' A whole penny down, bang off! Just +a touch above cost--if that--and even then------" He leant over +the counter to say impressively, "NOT THE SAME EGGS!" + +"Now, what people in their senses would do things like that?" said +Mr. Wiggins. + +I sent my telegram--the proprietor dispatched it for me, and while +he did so I fell exchanging experiences with Mr. Wiggins. He knew +no more than I did then the nature of the change that had come over +things. He had been alarmed by the green flashes, he said, so much +so that after watching for a time from behind his bedroom window +blind, he had got up and hastily dressed and made his family get +up also, so that they might be ready for the end. He made them put +on their Sunday clothes. They all went out into the garden together, +their minds divided between admiration at the gloriousness of the +spectacle and a great and growing awe. They were Dissenters, and +very religious people out of business hours, and it seemed to them +in those last magnificent moments that, after all, science must be +wrong and the fanatics right. With the green vapors came +conviction, and they prepared to meet their God. . . . + +This man, you must understand, was a common-looking man, in his +shirt-sleeves and with an apron about his paunch, and he told his +story in an Anglian accent that sounded mean and clipped to my +Staffordshire ears; he told his story without a thought of pride, +and as it were incidentally, and yet he gave me a vision of something +heroic. + +These people did not run hither and thither as many people did. These +four simple, common people stood beyond their back door in their +garden pathway between the gooseberry bushes, with the terrors +of their God and His Judgments closing in upon them, swiftly +and wonderfully--and there they began to sing. There they stood, +father and mother and two daughters, chanting out stoutly, but no +doubt a little flatly after the manner of their kind-- + + "In Zion's Hope abiding, + My soul in Triumph sings---" + +until one by one they fell, and lay still. + +The postmaster had heard them in the gathering darkness, +"In Zion's Hope abiding." . . . + +It was the most extraordinary thing in the world to hear this flushed +and happy-eyed man telling that story of his recent death. It did +not seem at all possible to have happened in the last twelve hours. +It was minute and remote, these people who went singing through +the darkling to their God. It was like a scene shown to me, very +small and very distinctly painted, in a locket. + +But that effect was not confined to this particular thing. A vast +number of things that had happened before the coming of the comet +had undergone the same transfiguring reduction. Other people, too, +I have learnt since, had the same illusion, a sense of enlargement. +It seems to me even now that the little dark creature who had +stormed across England in pursuit of Nettie and her lover must +have been about an inch high, that all that previous life of ours +had been an ill-lit marionette show, acted in the twilight. . . . + + + +Section 5 + +The figure of my mother comes always into my conception of the +Change. + +I remember how one day she confessed herself. + +She had been very sleepless that night, she said, and took the +reports of the falling stars for shooting; there had been rioting +in Clayton and all through Swathinglea all day, and so she got out +of bed to look. She had a dim sense that I was in all such troubles. + +But she was not looking when the Change came. + +"When I saw the stars a-raining down, dear," she said, "and thought +of you out in it, I thought there'd be no harm in saying a prayer +for you, dear? I thought you wouldn't mind that." + +And so I got another of my pictures--the green vapors come and go, +and there by her patched coverlet that dear old woman kneels and +droops, still clasping her poor gnarled hands in the attitude of +prayer--prayer to IT--for me! + +Through the meagre curtains and blinds of the flawed refracting +window I see the stars above the chimneys fade, the pale light of +dawn creeps into the sky, and her candle flares and dies. . . . + +That also went with me through the stillness--that silent +kneeling figure, that frozen prayer to God to shield me, silent +in a silent world, rushing through the emptiness of space. . . . + + + +Section 6 + +With the dawn that awakening went about the earth. I have told how +it came to me, and how I walked in wonder through the transfigured +cornfields of Shaphambury. It came to every one. Near me, and for +the time, clear forgotten by me, Verrall and Nettie woke--woke near +one another, each heard before all other sounds the other's voice +amidst the stillness, and the light. And the scattered people who +had run to and fro, and fallen on the beach of Bungalow village, +awoke; the sleeping villagers of Menton started, and sat up in +that unwonted freshness and newness; the contorted figures in the +garden, with the hymn still upon their lips, stirred amidst the +flowers, and touched each other timidly, and thought of Paradise. +My mother found herself crouched against the bed, and rose--rose +with a glad invincible conviction of accepted prayer. . . . + +Already, when it came to us, the soldiers, crowded between the +lines of dusty poplars along the road to Allarmont, were chatting +and sharing coffee with the French riflemen, who had hailed them +from their carefully hidden pits among the vineyards up the slopes +of Beauville. A certain perplexity had come to these marksmen, who +had dropped asleep tensely ready for the rocket that should wake +the whirr and rattle of their magazines. At the sight and sound of +the stir and human confusion in the roadway below, it had come to +each man individually that he could not shoot. One conscript, at +least, has told his story of his awakening, and how curious he thought +the rifle there beside him in his pit, how he took it on his knees +to examine. Then, as his memory of its purpose grew clearer, he +dropped the thing, and stood up with a kind of joyful horror at +the crime escaped, to look more closely at the men he was to have +assassinated. "Brave types," he thought, they looked for such +a fate. The summoning rocket never flew. Below, the men did not +fall into ranks again, but sat by the roadside, or stood in groups +talking, discussing with a novel incredulity the ostensible causes +of the war. "The Emperor!" said they; and "Oh, nonsense! We're +civilized men. Get some one else for this job! . . . Where's the +coffee?" + +The officers held their own horses, and talked to the men frankly, +regardless of discipline. Some Frenchmen out of the rifle-pits came +sauntering down the hill. Others stood doubtfully, rifles still in +hand. Curious faces scanned these latter. Little arguments sprang +as: "Shoot at us! Nonsense! They're respectable French citizens." +There is a picture of it all, very bright and detailed in the +morning light, in the battle gallery amidst the ruins at old Nancy, +and one sees the old-world uniform of the "soldier," the odd caps +and belts and boots, the ammunition-belt, the water-bottle, the +sort of tourist's pack the men carried, a queer elaborate equipment. +The soldiers had awakened one by one, first one and then another. +I wonder sometimes whether, perhaps, if the two armies had come +awake in an instant, the battle, by mere habit and inertia, might +not have begun. But the men who waked first, sat up, looked +about them in astonishment, had time to think a little. . . . + + + +Section 7 + +Everywhere there was laughter, everywhere tears. + +Men and women in the common life, finding themselves suddenly lit +and exalted, capable of doing what had hitherto been impossible, +incapable of doing what had hitherto been irresistible, happy, +hopeful, unselfishly energetic, rejected altogether the supposition +that this was merely a change in the blood and material texture of +life. They denied the bodies God had given them, as once the Upper +Nile savages struck out their canine teeth, because these made +them like the beasts. They declared that this was the coming of a +spirit, and nothing else would satisfy their need for explanations. +And in a sense the Spirit came. The Great Revival sprang directly +from the Change--the last, the deepest, widest, and most enduring +of all the vast inundations of religious emotion that go by that +name. + +But indeed it differed essentially from its innumerable predecessors. +The former revivals were a phase of fever, this was the first +movement of health, it was altogether quieter, more intellectual, +more private, more religious than any of those others. In the old +time, and more especially in the Protestant countries where the +things of religion were outspoken, and the absence of confession +and well-trained priests made religious states of emotion explosive +and contagious, revivalism upon various scales was a normal phase +in the religious life, revivals were always going on--now a little +disturbance of consciences in a village, now an evening of emotion +in a Mission Room, now a great storm that swept a continent, and +now an organized effort that came to town with bands and banners +and handbills and motor-cars for the saving of souls. Never at +any time did I take part in nor was I attracted by any of these +movements. My nature, although passionate, was too critical (or +sceptical if you like, for it amounts to the same thing) and shy +to be drawn into these whirls; but on several occasions Parload and +I sat, scoffing, but nevertheless disturbed, in the back seats of +revivalist meetings. + +I saw enough of them to understand their nature, and I am not +surprised to learn now that before the comet came, all about the +world, even among savages, even among cannibals, these same, or +at any rate closely similar, periodic upheavals went on. The world +was stifling; it was in a fever, and these phenomena were neither +more nor less than the instinctive struggle of the organism against +the ebb of its powers, the clogging of its veins, the limitation +of its life. Invariably these revivals followed periods of sordid +and restricted living. Men obeyed their base immediate motives +until the world grew unendurably bitter. Some disappointment, some +thwarting, lit up for them--darkly indeed, but yet enough for +indistinct vision--the crowded squalor, the dark inclosure of life. +A sudden disgust with the insensate smallness of the old-world way +of living, a realization of sin, a sense of the unworthiness of all +individual things, a desire for something comprehensive, sustaining, +something greater, for wider communions and less habitual things, +filled them. Their souls, which were shaped for wider issues, cried +out suddenly amidst the petty interests, the narrow prohibitions, +of life, "Not this! not this!" A great passion to escape from the +jealous prison of themselves, an inarticulate, stammering, weeping +passion shook them. . . . + +I have seen------ I remember how once in Clayton Calvinistic +Methodist chapel I saw--his spotty fat face strangely distorted +under the flickering gas-flares--old Pallet the ironmonger repent. +He went to the form of repentance, a bench reserved for such +exhibitions, and slobbered out his sorrow and disgust for some +sexual indelicacy--he was a widower--and I can see now how his +loose fat body quivered and swayed with his grief. He poured it +out to five hundred people, from whom in common times he hid his +every thought and purpose. And it is a fact, it shows where reality +lay, that we two youngsters laughed not at all at that blubbering +grotesque, we did not even think the distant shadow of a smile. +We two sat grave and intent--perhaps wondering. + +Only afterward and with an effort did we scoff. . . . + +Those old-time revivals were, I say, the convulsive movements of +a body that suffocates. They are the clearest manifestations from +before the Change of a sense in all men that things were not right. +But they were too often but momentary illuminations. Their force +spent itself in inco-ordinated shouting, gesticulations, tears. +They were but flashes of outlook. Disgust of the narrow life, of +all baseness, took shape in narrowness and baseness. The quickened +soul ended the night a hypocrite; prophets disputed for precedence; +seductions, it is altogether indisputable, were frequent among +penitents! and Ananias went home converted and returned with +a falsified gift. And it was almost universal that the converted +should be impatient and immoderate, scornful of reason and +a choice of expedients, opposed to balance, skill, and knowledge. +Incontinently full of grace, like thin old wine-skins overfilled, +they felt they must burst if once they came into contact with hard +fact and sane direction. + +So the former revivals spent themselves, but the Great Revival did +not spend itself, but grew to be, for the majority of Christendom +at least, the permanent expression of the Change. For many it has +taken the shape of an outright declaration that this was the Second +Advent--it is not for me to discuss the validity of that suggestion, +for nearly all it has amounted to an enduring broadening +of all the issues of life. . . . + + + +Section 8 + +One irrelevant memory comes back to me, irrelevant, and yet by some +subtle trick of quality it summarizes the Change for me. It is the +memory of a woman's very beautiful face, a woman with a flushed +face and tear-bright eyes who went by me without speaking, rapt +in some secret purpose. I passed her when in the afternoon of the +first day, struck by a sudden remorse, I went down to Menton to send +a telegram to my mother telling her all was well with me. Whither +this woman went I do not know, nor whence she came; I never saw her +again, and only her face, glowing with that new and luminous +resolve, stands out for me. . . . + +But that expression was the world's. + + + + +CHAPTER THE THIRD + +THE CABINET COUNCIL + + + +Section 1 + +AND what a strange unprecedented thing was that cabinet council at +which I was present, the council that was held two days later in +Melmount's bungalow, and which convened the conference to frame the +constitution of the World State. I was there because it was convenient +for me to stay with Melmount. I had nowhere to go particularly, +and there was no one at his bungalow, to which his broken ankle +confined him, but a secretary and a valet to help him to begin his +share of the enormous labors that evidently lay before the rulers +of the world. I wrote shorthand, and as there was not even a phonograph +available, I went in so soon as his ankle had been dressed, and +sat at his desk to write at his dictation. It is characteristic +of the odd slackness that went with the spasmodic violence of the +old epoch, that the secretary could not use shorthand and that +there was no telephone whatever in the place. Every message had +to be taken to the village post-office in that grocer's shop at +Menton, half a mile away. . . . So I sat in the back of Melmount's +room, his desk had been thrust aside, and made such memoranda as +were needed. At that time his room seemed to me the most beautifully +furnished in the world, and I could identify now the vivid cheerfulness +of the chintz of the sofa on which the great statesman lay just in +front of me, the fine rich paper, the red sealing-wax, the silver +equipage of the desk I used. I know now that my presence in that +room was a strange and remarkable thing, the open door, even the +coming and going of Parker the secretary, innovations. In the old +days a cabinet council was a secret conclave, secrecy and furtiveness +were in the texture of all public life. In the old days everybody +was always keeping something back from somebody, being wary and +cunning, prevaricating, misleading--for the most part for no reason +at all. Almost unnoticed, that secrecy had dropped out of life. + +I close my eyes and see those men again, hear their deliberating +voices. First I see them a little diffusely in the cold explicitness +of daylight, and then concentrated and drawn together amidst the +shadow and mystery about shaded lamps. Integral to this and very +clear is the memory of biscuit crumbs and a drop of spilt water, +that at first stood shining upon and then sank into the +green table-cloth. . . . + +I remember particularly the figure of Lord Adisham. He came to the +bungalow a day before the others, because he was Melmount's personal +friend. Let me describe this statesman to you, this one of the +fifteen men who made the last war. He was the youngest member of +the Government, and an altogether pleasant and sunny man of forty. +He had a clear profile to his clean gray face, a smiling eye, a +friendly, careful voice upon his thin, clean-shaven lips, an easy +disabusing manner. He had the perfect quality of a man who had +fallen easily into a place prepared for him. He had the temperament +of what we used to call a philosopher--an indifferent, that is to say. +The Change had caught him at his week-end recreation, fly-fishing; +and, indeed, he said, I remember, that he recovered to find himself +with his head within a yard of the water's brim. In times of crisis +Lord Adisham invariably went fly-fishing at the week-end to keep his +mind in tone, and when there was no crisis then there was nothing +he liked so much to do as fly-fishing, and so, of course, as there +was nothing to prevent it, he fished. He came resolved, among other +things, to give up fly-fishing altogether. I was present when he +came to Melmount, and heard him say as much; and by a more naive +route it was evident that he had arrived at the same scheme of +intention as my master. I left them to talk, but afterward I came +back to take down their long telegrams to their coming colleagues. +He was, no doubt, as profoundly affected as Melmount by the +Change, but his tricks of civility and irony and acceptable humor +had survived the Change, and he expressed his altered attitude, +his expanded emotions, in a quaint modification of the old-time +man-of-the-world style, with excessive moderation, with a trained +horror of the enthusiasm that swayed him. + +These fifteen men who ruled the British Empire were curiously unlike +anything I had expected, and I watched them intently whenever my +services were not in request. They made a peculiar class at that +time, these English politicians and statesmen, a class that has +now completely passed away. In some respects they were unlike the +statesmen of any other region of the world, and I do not find that +any really adequate account remains of them. . . . Perhaps you are +a reader of the old books. If so, you will find them rendered with +a note of hostile exaggeration by Dickens in "Bleak House," with +a mingling of gross flattery and keen ridicule by Disraeli, who +ruled among them accidentally by misunderstanding them and pleasing +the court, and all their assumptions are set forth, portentously, +perhaps, but truthfully, so far as people of the "permanent +official" class saw them, in the novels of Mrs. Humphry Ward. All +these books are still in this world and at the disposal of the +curious, and in addition the philosopher Bagehot and the picturesque +historian Macaulay give something of their method of thinking, the +novelist Thackeray skirts the seamy side of their social life, and +there are some good passages of irony, personal descriptions, and +reminiscence to be found in the "Twentieth Century Garner" from the +pens of such writers, for example, as Sidney Low. But a picture of +them as a whole is wanting. Then they were too near and too great; +now, very rapidly, they have become incomprehensible. + +We common people of the old time based our conception of our +statesmen almost entirely on the caricatures that formed the most +powerful weapon in political controversy. Like almost every main +feature of the old condition of things these caricatures were an +unanticipated development, they were a sort of parasitic outgrowth +from, which had finally altogether replaced, the thin and vague +aspirations of the original democratic ideals. They presented +not only the personalities who led our public life, but the most +sacred structural conceptions of that life, in ludicrous, vulgar, +and dishonorable aspects that in the end came near to destroying +entirely all grave and honorable emotion or motive toward the State. +The state of Britain was represented nearly always by a red-faced, +purse-proud farmer with an enormous belly, that fine dream +of freedom, the United States, by a cunning, lean-faced rascal +in striped trousers and a blue coat. The chief ministers of state +were pickpockets, washerwomen, clowns, whales, asses, elephants, +and what not, and issues that affected the welfare of millions of +men were dressed and judged like a rally in some idiotic pantomime. +A tragic war in South Africa, that wrecked many thousand homes, +impoverished two whole lands, and brought death and disablement +to fifty thousand men, was presented as a quite comical quarrel +between a violent queer being named Chamberlain, with an eyeglass, +an orchid, and a short temper, and "old Kroojer," an obstinate +and very cunning old man in a shocking bad hat. The conflict was +carried through in a mood sometimes of brutish irritability and +sometimes of lax slovenliness, the merry peculator plied his trade +congenially in that asinine squabble, and behind these fooleries +and masked by them, marched Fate--until at last the clowning of +the booth opened and revealed--hunger and suffering, brands burning +and swords and shame. . . . These men had come to fame and power in +that atmosphere, and to me that day there was the oddest suggestion +in them of actors who have suddenly laid aside grotesque and foolish +parts; the paint was washed from their faces, the posing put aside. + +Even when the presentation was not frankly grotesque and degrading +it was entirely misleading. When I read of Laycock, for example, +there arises a picture of a large, active, if a little wrong-headed, +intelligence in a compact heroic body, emitting that "Goliath" speech +of his that did so much to precipitate hostilities, it tallies not +at all with the stammering, high-pitched, slightly bald, and very +conscience-stricken personage I saw, nor with Melmount's contemptuous +first description of him. I doubt if the world at large will ever +get a proper vision of those men as they were before the Change. +Each year they pass more and more incredibly beyond our intellectual +sympathy. Our estrangement cannot, indeed, rob them of their +portion in the past, but it will rob them of any effect of reality. +The whole of their history becomes more and more foreign, more and +more like some queer barbaric drama played in a forgotten tongue. +There they strut through their weird metamorphoses of caricature, +those premiers and presidents, their height preposterously exaggerated by +political buskins, their faces covered by great resonant inhuman +masks, their voices couched in the foolish idiom of public +utterance, disguised beyond any semblance to sane humanity, roaring +and squeaking through the public press. There it stands, this +incomprehensible faded show, a thing left on one side, and now still +and deserted by any interest, its many emptinesses as inexplicable +now as the cruelties of medieval Venice, the theology of old Byzantium. +And they ruled and influenced the lives of nearly a quarter of +mankind, these politicians, their clownish conflicts swayed the +world, made mirth perhaps, made excitement, and permitted--infinite +misery. + +I saw these men quickened indeed by the Change, but still wearing +the queer clothing of the old time, the manners and conventions of +the old time; if they had disengaged themselves from the outlook +of the old time they still had to refer back to it constantly as a +common starting-point. My refreshed intelligence was equal to that, +so that I think I did indeed see them. There was Gorrell-Browning, +the Chancellor of the Duchy; I remember him as a big round-faced +man, the essential vanity and foolishness of whose expression, whose +habit of voluminous platitudinous speech, triumphed absurdly once +or twice over the roused spirit within. He struggled with it, he +burlesqued himself, and laughed. Suddenly he said simply, intensely--it +was a moment for every one of clean, clear pain, "I have been a +vain and self-indulgent and presumptuous old man. I am of little +use here. I have given myself to politics and intrigues, and life +is gone from me." Then for a long time he sat still. There was +Carton, the Lord Chancellor, a white-faced man with understanding, +he had a heavy, shaven face that might have stood among the busts +of the Caesars, a slow, elaborating voice, with self-indulgent, +slightly oblique, and triumphant lips, and a momentary, voluntary, +humorous twinkle. "We have to forgive," he said. "We have to +forgive--even ourselves." + +These two were at the top corner of the table, so that I saw their +faces well. Madgett, the Home Secretary, a smaller man with wrinkled +eyebrows and a frozen smile on his thin wry mouth, came next to +Carton; he contributed little to the discussion save intelligent +comments, and when the electric lights above glowed out, the shadows +deepened queerly in his eye-sockets and gave him the quizzical +expression of an ironical goblin. Next him was that great peer, +the Earl of Richover, whose self-indulgent indolence had accepted +the role of a twentieth-century British Roman patrician of culture, +who had divided his time almost equally between his jockeys, +politics, and the composition of literary studies in the key of +his role. "We have done nothing worth doing," he said. "As for me, +I have cut a figure!" He reflected--no doubt on his ample patrician +years, on the fine great houses that had been his setting, the +teeming race-courses that had roared his name, the enthusiastic +meetings he had fed with fine hopes, the futile Olympian beginnings. +. . . "I have been a fool," he said compactly. They heard him in +a sympathetic and respectful silence. + +Gurker, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, was partially occulted, so +far as I was concerned, by the back of Lord Adisham. Ever and again +Gurker protruded into the discussion, swaying forward, a deep throaty +voice, a big nose, a coarse mouth with a drooping everted lower lip, +eyes peering amidst folds and wrinkles. He made his confession for +his race. "We Jews," he said, "have gone through the system of this +world, creating nothing, consolidating many things, destroying much. +Our racial self-conceit has been monstrous. We seem to have used our +ample coarse intellectuality for no other purpose than to develop +and master and maintain the convention of property, to turn life into +a sort of mercantile chess and spend our winnings grossly. . . . We +have had no sense of service to mankind. Beauty which is godhead--we +made it a possession." + +These men and these sayings particularly remain in my memory. +Perhaps, indeed, I wrote them down at the time, but that I do not +now remember. How Sir Digby Privet, Revel, Markheimer, and the others +sat I do not now recall; they came in as voices, interruptions, +imperfectly assigned comments. . . . + +One got a queer impression that except perhaps for Gurker or Revel +these men had not particularly wanted the power they held; had +desired to do nothing very much in the positions they had secured. +They had found themselves in the cabinet, and until this moment +of illumination they had not been ashamed; but they had made no +ungentlemanly fuss about the matter. Eight of that fifteen came from +the same school, had gone through an entirely parallel education; +some Greek linguistics, some elementary mathematics, some emasculated +"science," a little history, a little reading in the silent or +timidly orthodox English literature of the seventeenth, eighteenth, +and nineteenth centuries, all eight had imbibed the same dull gentlemanly +tradition of behavior; essentially boyish, unimaginative--with +neither keen swords nor art in it, a tradition apt to slobber into +sentiment at a crisis and make a great virtue of a simple duty rather +clumsily done. None of these eight had made any real experiments +with life, they had lived in blinkers, they had been passed from +nurse to governess, from governess to preparatory school, from Eton +to Oxford, from Oxford to the politico-social routine. Even their +vices and lapses had been according to certain conceptions of good +form. They had all gone to the races surreptitiously from Eton, had +all cut up to town from Oxford to see life--music-hall life--had +all come to heel again. Now suddenly they discovered their +limitations. . . . + +"What are we to do?" asked Melmount. "We have awakened; this empire +in our hands. . . ." I know this will seem the most fabulous of all +the things I have to tell of the old order, but, indeed, I saw it +with my eyes, I heard it with my ears. It is a fact that this group +of men who constituted the Government of one-fifth of the habitable +land of the earth, who ruled over a million of armed men, who +had such navies as mankind had never seen before, whose empire of +nations, tongues, peoples still dazzles in these greater days, had +no common idea whatever of what they meant to do with the world. +They had been a Government for three long years, and before the +Change came to them it had never even occurred to them that it was +necessary to have no common idea. There was no common idea at all. +That great empire was no more than a thing adrift, an aimless thing +that ate and drank and slept and bore arms, and was inordinately +proud of itself because it had chanced to happen. It had no plan, +no intention; it meant nothing at all. And the other great empires +adrift, perilously adrift like marine mines, were in the self-same +case. Absurd as a British cabinet council must seem to you now, it +was no whit more absurd than the controlling ganglion, autocratic +council, president's committee, or what not, of each of +its blind rivals. . . . + + + +Section 2 + +I remember as one thing that struck me very forcibly at the time, +the absence of any discussion, any difference of opinion, about the +broad principles of our present state. These men had lived hitherto +in a system of conventions and acquired motives, loyalty to a party, +loyalty to various secret agreements and understandings, loyalty +to the Crown; they had all been capable of the keenest attention +to precedence, all capable of the most complete suppression of +subversive doubts and inquiries, all had their religious emotions +under perfect control. They had seemed protected by invisible but +impenetrable barriers from all the heady and destructive speculations, +the socialistic, republican, and communistic theories that one may +still trace through the literature of the last days of the comet. +But now it was as if the very moment of the awakening those barriers +and defences had vanished, as if the green vapors had washed +through their minds and dissolved and swept away a hundred once +rigid boundaries and obstacles. They had admitted and assimilated +at once all that was good in the ill-dressed propagandas that had +clamored so vehemently and vainly at the doors of their minds in +the former days. It was exactly like the awakening from an absurd +and limiting dream. They had come out together naturally and +inevitably upon the broad daylight platform of obvious and reasonable +agreement upon which we and all the order of our world now stand. + +Let me try to give the chief things that had vanished from their +minds. There was, first, the ancient system of "ownership" that +made such an extraordinary tangle of our administration of the +land upon which we lived. In the old time no one believed in that +as either just or ideally convenient, but every one accepted it. +The community which lived upon the land was supposed to have waived +its necessary connection with the land, except in certain limited +instances of highway and common. All the rest of the land was +cut up in the maddest way into patches and oblongs and triangles +of various sizes between a hundred square miles and a few acres, +and placed under the nearly absolute government of a series of +administrators called landowners. They owned the land almost as +a man now owns his hat; they bought it and sold it, and cut it up +like cheese or ham; they were free to ruin it, or leave it waste, +or erect upon it horrible and devastating eyesores. If the community +needed a road or a tramway, if it wanted a town or a village in any +position, nay, even if it wanted to go to and fro, it had to do so +by exorbitant treaties with each of the monarchs whose territory +was involved. No man could find foothold on the face of the earth +until he had paid toll and homage to one of them. They had practically +no relations and no duties to the nominal, municipal, or national +Government amidst whose larger areas their own dominions lay. . . . +This sounds, I know, like a lunatic's dream, but mankind was that +lunatic; and not only in the old countries of Europe and Asia, +where this system had arisen out of the rational delegation of local +control to territorial magnates, who had in the universal baseness +of those times at last altogether evaded and escaped their duties, +did it obtain, but the "new countries," as we called them then--the +United States of America, the Cape Colony, Australia, and New +Zealand--spent much of the nineteenth century in the frantic giving +away of land for ever to any casual person who would take it. Was +there coal, was there petroleum or gold, was there rich soil or +harborage, or the site for a fine city, these obsessed and witless +Governments cried out for scramblers, and a stream of shabby, +tricky, and violent adventurers set out to found a new section of +the landed aristocracy of the world. After a brief century of hope +and pride, the great republic of the United States of America, +the hope as it was deemed of mankind, became for the most part a +drifting crowd of landless men; landlords and railway lords, food +lords (for the land is food) and mineral lords ruled its life, +gave it Universities as one gave coins to a mendicant, and spent +its resources upon such vain, tawdry, and foolish luxuries as the +world had never seen before. Here was a thing none of these statesmen +before the Change would have regarded as anything but the natural +order of the world, which not one of them now regarded as anything +but the mad and vanished illusion of a period of dementia. + +And as it was with the question of the land, so was it also +with a hundred other systems and institutions and complicated and +disingenuous factors in the life of man. They spoke of trade, and +I realized for the first time there could be buying and selling +that was no loss to any man; they spoke of industrial organization, +and one saw it under captains who sought no base advantages. The +haze of old associations, of personal entanglements and habitual +recognitions had been dispelled from every stage and process of +the social training of men. Things long hidden appeared discovered +with an amazing clearness and nakedness. These men who had +awakened, laughed dissolvent laughs, and the old muddle of schools +and colleges, books and traditions, the old fumbling, half-figurative, +half-formal teaching of the Churches, the complex of weakening and +confusing suggestions and hints, amidst which the pride and honor +of adolescence doubted and stumbled and fell, became nothing but +a curious and pleasantly faded memory. "There must be a common +training of the young," said Richover; "a frank initiation. We have +not so much educated them as hidden things from them, and set traps. +And it might have been so easy--it can all be done so easily." + +That hangs in my memory as the refrain of that council, "It can +all be done so easily," but when they said it then, it came to my +ears with a quality of enormous refreshment and power. It can all +be done so easily, given frankness, given courage. Time was when +these platitudes had the freshness and wonder of a gospel. + +In this enlarged outlook the war with the Germans--that mythical, +heroic, armed female, Germany, had vanished from men's imaginations--was +a mere exhausted episode. A truce had already been arranged +by Melmount, and these ministers, after some marveling reminiscences, +set aside the matter of peace as a mere question of particular +arrangements. . . . The whole scheme of the world's government had +become fluid and provisional in their minds, in small details as +in great, the unanalyzable tangle of wards and vestries, districts +and municipalities, counties, states, boards, and nations, the +interlacing, overlapping, and conflicting authorities, the felt of +little interests and claims, in which an innumerable and insatiable +multitude of lawyers, agents, managers, bosses, organizers lived +like fleas in a dirty old coat, the web of the conflicts, jealousies, +heated patchings up and jobbings apart, of the old order--they +flung it all on one side. + +"What are the new needs?" said Melmount. "This muddle is too rotten +to handle. We're beginning again. Well, let us begin afresh." + + + +Section 3 + +"Let us begin afresh!" This piece of obvious common sense seemed +then to me instinct with courage, the noblest of words. My heart +went out to him as he spoke. It was, indeed, that day as vague as +it was valiant; we did not at all see the forms of what we were +thus beginning. All that we saw was the clear inevitableness +that the old order should end. . . . + +And then in a little space of time mankind in halting but effectual +brotherhood was moving out to make its world anew. Those early +years, those first and second decades of the new epoch, were in +their daily detail a time of rejoicing toil; one saw chiefly one's +own share in that, and little of the whole. It is only now that I +look back at it all from these ripe years, from this high tower, +that I see the dramatic sequence of its changes, see the cruel old +confusions of the ancient time become clarified, simplified, and +dissolve and vanish away. Where is that old world now? Where is +London, that somber city of smoke and drifting darkness, full of the +deep roar and haunting music of disorder, with its oily, shining, +mud-rimmed, barge-crowded river, its black pinnacles and blackened +dome, its sad wildernesses of smut-grayed houses, its myriads of +draggled prostitutes, its millions of hurrying clerks? The very +leaves upon its trees were foul with greasy black defilements. +Where is lime-white Paris, with its green and disciplined foliage, +its hard unflinching tastefulness, its smartly organized viciousness, +and the myriads of workers, noisily shod, streaming over the bridges +in the gray cold light of dawn. Where is New York, the high city +of clangor and infuriated energy, wind swept and competition swept, +its huge buildings jostling one another and straining ever upward +for a place in the sky, the fallen pitilessly overshadowed. Where +are its lurking corners of heavy and costly luxury, the shameful +bludgeoning bribing vice of its ill ruled underways, and all the +gaunt extravagant ugliness of its strenuous life? And where now is +Philadelphia, with its innumerable small and isolated homes, and +Chicago with its interminable blood-stained stockyards, its polyglot +underworld of furious discontent. + +All these vast cities have given way and gone, even as my native +Potteries and the Black Country have gone, and the lives that were +caught, crippled, starved, and maimed amidst their labyrinths, their +forgotten and neglected maladjustments, and their vast, inhuman, +ill-conceived industrial machinery have escaped--to life. Those +cities of growth and accident are altogether gone, never a chimney +smokes about our world to-day, and the sound of the weeping of +children who toiled and hungered, the dull despair of overburdened +women, the noise of brute quarrels in alleys, all shameful pleasures +and all the ugly grossness of wealthy pride have gone with them, +with the utter change in our lives. As I look back into the past +I see a vast exultant dust of house-breaking and removal rise +up into the clear air that followed the hour of the green vapors, +I live again the Year of Tents, the Year of Scaffolding, and like +the triumph of a new theme in a piece of music--the great cities +of our new days arise. Come Caerlyon and Armedon, the twin cities +of lower England, with the winding summer city of the Thames between, +and I see the gaunt dirt of old Edinburgh die to rise again white +and tall beneath the shadow of her ancient hill; and Dublin too, +reshaped, returning enriched, fair, spacious, the city of rich +laughter and warm hearts, gleaming gaily in a shaft of sunlight +through the soft warm rain. I see the great cities America has +planned and made; the Golden City, with ever-ripening fruit along +its broad warm ways, and the bell-glad City of a Thousand Spires. +I see again as I have seen, the city of theaters and meeting-places, +the City of the Sunlight Bight, and the new city that is still +called Utah; and dominated by its observatory dome and the plain and +dignified lines of the university facade upon the cliff, Martenabar +the great white winter city of the upland snows. And the lesser +places, too, the townships, the quiet resting-places, villages half +forest with a brawl of streams down their streets, villages laced +with avenues of cedar, villages of garden, of roses and wonderful +flowers and the perpetual humming of bees. And through all the +world go our children, our sons the old world would have made into +servile clerks and shopmen, plough drudges and servants; our daughters +who were erst anaemic drudges, prostitutes, sluts, anxiety-racked +mothers or sere, repining failures; they go about this world glad +and brave, learning, living, doing, happy and rejoicing, brave and +free. I think of them wandering in the clear quiet of the ruins of +Rome, among the tombs of Egypt or the temples of Athens, of their +coming to Mainington and its strange happiness, to Orba and the +wonder of its white and slender tower. . . . But who can tell of +the fullness and pleasure of life, who can number all our new cities +in the world?--cities made by the loving hands of men for living +men, cities men weep to enter, so fair they are, so gracious +and so kind. . . . + +Some vision surely of these things must have been vouchsafed me +as I sat there behind Melmount's couch, but now my knowledge of +accomplished things has mingled with and effaced my expectations. +Something indeed I must have foreseen--or else why was my heart so +glad? + + + + + +BOOK THE THIRD + +THE NEW WORLD + + + + +CHAPTER THE FIRST + +LOVE AFTER THE CHANGE + + + +Section 1 + +So far I have said nothing of Nettie. I have departed widely from +my individual story. I have tried to give you the effect of the +change in relation to the general framework of human life, its +effect of swift, magnificent dawn, of an overpowering letting in +and inundation of light, and the spirit of living. In my memory all +my life before the Change has the quality of a dark passage, with +the dimmest side gleams of beauty that come and go. The rest is dull +pain and darkness. Then suddenly the walls, the bitter confines, +are smitten and vanish, and I walk, blinded, perplexed, and yet +rejoicing, in this sweet, beautiful world, in its fair incessant +variety, its satisfaction, its opportunities, exultant in this glorious +gift of life. Had I the power of music I would make a world-wide +motif swell and amplify, gather to itself this theme and that, and +rise at last to sheer ecstasy of triumph and rejoicing. It should +be all sound, all pride, all the hope of outsetting in the morning +brightness, all the glee of unexpected happenings, all the gladness +of painful effort suddenly come to its reward; it should be like +blossoms new opened and the happy play of children, like tearful, +happy mothers holding their first-born, like cities building to +the sound of music, and great ships, all hung with flags and wine +bespattered, gliding down through cheering multitudes to their first +meeting with the sea. Through it all should march Hope, confident +Hope, radiant and invincible, until at last it would be the triumph +march of Hope the conqueror, coming with trumpetings and banners +through the wide-flung gates of the world. + +And then out of that luminous haze of gladness comes Nettie, +transfigured. + +So she came again to me--amazing, a thing incredibly forgotten. + +She comes back, and Verrall is in her company. She comes back +into my memories now, just as she came back then, rather quaintly +at first--at first not seen very clearly, a little distorted by +intervening things, seen with a doubt, as I saw her through the +slightly discolored panes of crinkled glass in the window of the +Menton post-office and grocer's shop. It was on the second day +after the Change, and I had been sending telegrams for Melmount, +who was making arrangements for his departure for Downing Street. +I saw the two of them at first as small, flawed figures. The glass +made them seem curved, and it enhanced and altered their gestures +and paces. I felt it became me to say "Peace" to them, and I went +out, to the jangling of the door-bell. At the sight of me they +stopped short, and Verrall cried with the note of one who has +sought, "Here he is!" And Nettie cried, "Willie!" + +I went toward them, and all the perspectives of my reconstructed +universe altered as I did so. + +I seemed to see these two for the first time; how fine they were, +how graceful and human. It was as though I had never really looked +at them before, and, indeed, always before I had beheld them through +a mist of selfish passion. They had shared the universal darkness +and dwarfing of the former time; they shared the universal exaltation +of the new. Now suddenly Nettie, and the love of Nettie, a great +passion for Nettie, lived again in me. This change which had enlarged +men's hearts had made no end to love. Indeed, it had enormously +enlarged and glorified love. She stepped into the center of that +dream of world reconstruction that filled my mind and took possession +of it all. A little wisp of hair had blown across her cheek, her +lips fell apart in that sweet smile of hers; her eyes were full +of wonder, of a welcoming scrutiny, of an infinitely courageous +friendliness. + +I took her outstretched hand, and wonder overwhelmed me. "I wanted +to kill you," I said simply, trying to grasp that idea. It seemed +now like stabbing the stars, or murdering the sunlight. + +"Afterward we looked for you," said Verrall; "and we could not find +you. . . . We heard another shot." + +I turned my eyes to him, and Nettie's hand fell from me. It was +then I thought of how they had fallen together, and what it must +have been to have awakened in that dawn with Nettie by one's side. +I had a vision of them as I had glimpsed them last amidst the +thickening vapors, close together, hand in hand. The green hawks of +the Change spread their darkling wings above their last stumbling +paces. So they fell. And awoke--lovers together in a morning +of Paradise. Who can tell how bright the sunshine was to them, +how fair the flowers, how sweet the singing of the birds? . . . + +This was the thought of my heart. But my lips were saying, "When +I awoke I threw my pistol away." Sheer blankness kept my thoughts +silent for a little while; I said empty things. "I am very glad +I did not kill you--that you are here, so fair and well. . . ." + +"I am going away back to Clayton on the day after to-morrow," I +said, breaking away to explanations. "I have been writing shorthand +here for Melmount, but that is almost over now. . . ." + +Neither of them said a word, and though all facts had suddenly ceased +to matter anything, I went on informatively, "He is to be taken to +Downing Street where there is a proper staff, so that there will +be no need of me. . . . Of course, you're a little perplexed at +my being with Melmount. You see I met him--by accident--directly +I recovered. I found him with a broken ankle--in that lane. . . . +I am to go now to the Four Towns to help prepare a report. So that +I am glad to see you both again"--I found a catch in my voice--"to +say good-bye to you, and wish you well." + +This was after the quality of what had come into my mind when first +I saw them through the grocer's window, but it was not what I felt +and thought as I said it. I went on saying it because otherwise +there would have been a gap. It had come to me that it was going +to be hard to part from Nettie. My words sounded with an effect of +unreality. I stopped, and we stood for a moment in silence looking +at one another. + +It was I, I think, who was discovering most. I was realizing for +the first time how little the Change had altered in my essential +nature. I had forgotten this business of love for a time in +a world of wonder. That was all. Nothing was lost from my nature, +nothing had gone, only the power of thought and restraint had been +wonderfully increased and new interests had been forced upon me. +The Green Vapors had passed, our minds were swept and garnished, but +we were ourselves still, though living in a new and finer air. My +affinities were unchanged; Nettie's personal charm for me was only +quickened by the enhancement of my perceptions. In her presence, +meeting her eyes, instantly my desire, no longer frantic but sane, +was awake again. + +It was just like going to Checkshill in the old time, after +writing about socialism. . . . + +I relinquished her hand. It was absurd to part in these terms. + +So we all felt it. We hung awkwardly over our sense of that. It +was Verrall, I think, who shaped the thought for me, and said that +to-morrow then we must meet and say good-bye, and so turned our +encounter into a transitory making of arrangements. We settled we +would come to the inn at Menton, all three of us, and take +our midday meal together. . . . + +Yes, it was clear that was all we had to say now. . . . + +We parted a little awkwardly. I went on down the village street, +not looking back, surprised at myself, and infinitely perplexed. +It was as if I had discovered something overlooked that disarranged +all my plans, something entirely disconcerting. For the first time +I went back preoccupied and without eagerness to Melmount's work. +I wanted to go on thinking about Nettie; my mind had suddenly become +voluminously productive concerning her and Verrall. + + + +Section 2 + +The talk we three had together in the dawn of the new time is very +strongly impressed upon my memory. There was something fresh and +simple about it, something young and flushed and exalted. We took +up, we handled with a certain naive timidity, the most difficult +questions the Change had raised for men to solve. I recall we +made little of them. All the old scheme of human life had dissolved +and passed away, the narrow competitiveness, the greed and base +aggression, the jealous aloofness of soul from soul. Where had +it left us? That was what we and a thousand million others +were discussing. . . . + +It chances that this last meeting with Nettie is inseparably +associated--I don't know why--with the landlady of the Menton inn. + +The Menton inn was one of the rare pleasant corners of the old +order; it was an inn of an unusual prosperity, much frequented by +visitors from Shaphambury, and given to the serving of lunches and +teas. It had a broad mossy bowling-green, and round about it were +creeper-covered arbors amidst beds of snap-dragon, and hollyhock, +and blue delphinium, and many such tall familiar summer flowers. +These stood out against a background of laurels and holly, and +above these again rose the gables of the inn and its signpost--a +white-horsed George slaying the dragon--against copper beeches under +the sky. + +While I waited for Nettie and Verrall in this agreeable trysting +place, I talked to the landlady--a broad-shouldered, smiling, +freckled woman--about the morning of the Change. That motherly, +abundant, red-haired figure of health was buoyantly sure that +everything in the world was now to be changed for the better. +That confidence, and something in her voice, made me love her as +I talked to her. "Now we're awake," she said, "all sorts of things +will be put right that hadn't any sense in them. Why? Oh! I'm sure +of it." + +Her kind blue eyes met mine in an infinitude of friendliness. Her +lips in her pauses shaped in a pretty faint smile. + +Old tradition was strong in us; all English inns in those days +charged the unexpected, and I asked what our lunch was to cost. + +"Pay or not," she said, "and what you like. It's holiday these days. +I suppose we'll still have paying and charging, however we manage +it, but it won't be the worry it has been--that I feel sure. It's +the part I never had no fancy for. Many a time I peeped through the +bushes worrying to think what was just and right to me and mine, +and what would send 'em away satisfied. It isn't the money I care +for. There'll be mighty changes, be sure of that; but here I'll +stay, and make people happy--them that go by on the roads. It's a +pleasant place here when people are merry; it's only when they're +jealous, or mean, or tired, or eat up beyond any stomach's digesting, or +when they got the drink in 'em that Satan comes into this garden. +Many's the happy face I've seen here, and many that come again +like friends, but nothing to equal what's going to be, now things +are being set right." + +She smiled, that bounteous woman, with the joy of life and hope. +"You shall have an omelet," she said, "you and your friends; such +an omelet--like they'll have 'em in heaven! I feel there's cooking +in me these days like I've never cooked before. I'm rejoiced +to have it to do. . . ." + +It was just then that Nettie and Verrall appeared under a rustic +archway of crimson roses that led out from the inn. Nettie wore +white and a sun-hat, and Verrall was a figure of gray. "Here +are my friends," I said; but for all the magic of the Change, +something passed athwart the sunlight in my soul like the passing +of the shadow of a cloud. "A pretty couple," said the landlady, +as they crossed the velvet green toward us. . . . + +They were indeed a pretty couple, but that did not greatly gladden +me. No--I winced a little at that. + + + +Section 3 + +This old newspaper, this first reissue of the New Paper, +dessicated last relic of a vanished age, is like the little piece +of identification the superstitious of the old days--those queer +religionists who brought a certain black-clad Mrs. Piper to the +help of Christ--used to put into the hand of a clairvoyant. At +the crisp touch of it I look across a gulf of fifty years and see +again the three of us sitting about that table in the arbor, and I +smell again the smell of the sweet-briar that filled the air about +us, and hear in our long pauses the abundant murmuring of bees +among the heliotrope of the borders. + +It is the dawn of the new time, but we bear, all three of us, the +marks and liveries of the old. + +I see myself, a dark, ill-dressed youth, with the bruise Lord Redcar +gave me still blue and yellow beneath my jaw; and young Verrall +sits cornerwise to me, better grown, better dressed, fair and quiet, +two years my senior indeed, but looking no older than I because of +his light complexion; and opposite me is Nettie, with dark eyes upon +my face, graver and more beautiful than I had ever seen her in the +former time. Her dress is still that white one she had worn when +I came upon her in the park, and still about her dainty neck she +wears her string of pearls and that little coin of gold. She is so +much the same, she is so changed; a girl then and now a woman--and +all my agony and all the marvel of the Change between! Over the end +of the green table about which we sit, a spotless cloth is spread, +it bears a pleasant lunch spread out with a simple equipage. Behind +me is the liberal sunshine of the green and various garden. I see +it all. Again I sit there, eating awkwardly, this paper lies upon +the table and Verrall talks of the Change. + +"You can't imagine," he says in his sure, fine accents, "how much +the Change has destroyed of me. I still don't feel awake. Men of +my sort are so tremendously MADE; I never suspected it before." + +He leans over the table toward me with an evident desire to make +himself perfectly understood. "I find myself like some creature +that is taken out of its shell--soft and new. I was trained to +dress in a certain way, to behave in a certain way, to think in +a certain way; I see now it's all wrong and narrow--most of it +anyhow--a system of class shibboleths. We were decent to each other +in order to be a gang to the rest of the world. Gentlemen indeed! +But it's perplexing------" + +I can hear his voice saying that now, and see the lift of his +eyebrows and his pleasant smile. + +He paused. He had wanted to say that, but it was not the thing we +had to say. + +I leant forward a little and took hold of my glass very tightly. +"You two," I said, "will marry?" + +They looked at one another. + +Nettie spoke very softly. "I did not mean to marry when I came +away," she said. + +"I know," I answered. I looked up with a sense of effort and met +Verrall's eyes. + +He answered me. "I think we two have joined our lives. . . . But +the thing that took us was a sort of madness." + +I nodded. "All passion," I said, "is madness." Then I fell into a +doubting of those words. + +"Why did we do these things?" he said, turning to her suddenly. + +Her hands were clasped under her chin, her eyes downcast. + +"We HAD to," she said, with her old trick of inadequate expression. + +Then she seemed to open out suddenly. + +"Willie," she cried with a sudden directness, with her eyes appealing +to me, "I didn't mean to treat you badly--indeed I didn't. I kept +thinking of you--and of father and mother, all the time. Only it +didn't seem to move me. It didn't move me not one bit from the way +I had chosen." + +"Chosen!" I said. + +"Something seemed to have hold of me," she admitted. "It's all so +unaccountable. . . ." + +She gave a little gesture of despair. + +Verrall's fingers played on the cloth for a space. Then he turned +his face to me again. + +"Something said 'Take her.' Everything. It was a raging desire--for +her. I don't know. Everything contributed to that--or counted for +nothing. You------" + +"Go on," said I. + +"When I knew of you------" + +I looked at Nettie. "You never told him about me?" I said, feeling, +as it were, a sting out of the old time. + +Verrall answered for her. "No. But things dropped; I saw you that +night, my instincts were all awake. I knew it was you." + +"You triumphed over me? . . . If I could I would have triumphed +over you," I said. "But go on!" + +"Everything conspired to make it the finest thing in life. It had +an air of generous recklessness. It meant mischief, it might mean +failure in that life of politics and affairs, for which I was +trained, which it was my honor to follow. That made it all the +finer. It meant ruin or misery for Nettie. That made it all the +finer. No sane or decent man would have approved of what we did. +That made it more splendid than ever. I had all the advantages of +position and used them basely. That mattered not at all." + +"Yes," I said; "it is true. And the same dark wave that lifted you, +swept me on to follow. With that revolver--and blubbering with +hate. And the word to you, Nettie, what was it? 'Give?' Hurl yourself +down the steep?" + +Nettie's hands fell upon the table. "I can't tell what it was," she +said, speaking bare-hearted straight to me. "Girls aren't trained +as men are trained to look into their minds. I can't see it yet. +All sorts of mean little motives were there--over and above the +'must.' Mean motives. I kept thinking of his clothes." She smiled--a +flash of brightness at Verrall. "I kept thinking of being like a +lady and sitting in an hotel--with men like butlers waiting. It's +the dreadful truth, Willie. Things as mean as that! Things meaner +than that!" + +I can see her now pleading with me, speaking with a frankness as +bright and amazing as the dawn of the first great morning. + +"It wasn't all mean," I said slowly, after a pause. + +"No!" They spoke together. + +"But a woman chooses more than a man does," Nettie added. "I saw +it all in little bright pictures. Do you know--that jacket--there's +something------ You won't mind my telling you? But you won't now!" + +I nodded, "No." + +She spoke as if she spoke to my soul, very quietly and very +earnestly, seeking to give the truth. "Something cottony in that +cloth of yours," she said. "I know there's something horrible in +being swung round by things like that, but they did swing me round. +In the old time--to have confessed that! And I hated Clayton--and +the grime of it. That kitchen! Your mother's dreadful kitchen! +And besides, Willie, I was afraid of you. I didn't understand you +and I did him. It's different now--but then I knew what he meant. +And there was his voice." + +"Yes," I said to Verrall, making these discoveries quietly, "yes, +Verrall, you have a good voice. Queer I never thought of that +before!" + +We sat silently for a time before our vivisected passions. + +"Gods!" I cried, "and there was our poor little top-hamper of +intelligence on all these waves of instinct and wordless desire, +these foaming things of touch and sight and feeling, like--like +a coop of hens washed overboard and clucking amidst the seas." + +Verrall laughed approval of the image I had struck out. "A week +ago," he said, trying it further, "we were clinging to our chicken +coops and going with the heave and pour. That was true enough a +week ago. But to-day------?" + +"To-day," I said, "the wind has fallen. The world storm is over. +And each chicken coop has changed by a miracle to a vessel that +makes head against the sea." + + + +Section 4 + +"What are we to do?" asked Verrall. + +Nettie drew a deep crimson carnation from the bowl before us, and +began very neatly and deliberately to turn down the sepals of its +calyx and remove, one by one, its petals. I remember that went +on through all our talk. She put those ragged crimson shreds in a +long row and adjusted them and readjusted them. When at last I was +alone with these vestiges the pattern was still incomplete. + +"Well," said I, "the matter seems fairly simple. You two"--I +swallowed it--"love one another." + +I paused. They answered me by silence, by a thoughtful silence. + +"You belong to each other. I have thought it over and looked at it +from many points of view. I happened to want--impossible things. +. . . I behaved badly. I had no right to pursue you." I turned to +Verrall. "You hold yourself bound to her?" + +He nodded assent. + +"No social influence, no fading out of all this generous clearness +in the air--for that might happen--will change you back . . . ?" + +He answered me with honest eyes meeting mine, "No, Leadford, no!" + +"I did not know you," I said. "I thought of you as something very +different from this." + +"I was," he interpolated. + +"Now," I said, "it is all changed." + +Then I halted--for my thread had slipped away from me. + +"As for me," I went on, and glanced at Nettie's downcast face, and +then sat forward with my eyes upon the flowers between us, "since +I am swayed and shall be swayed by an affection for Nettie, since +that affection is rich with the seeds of desire, since to see her +yours and wholly yours is not to be endured by me--I must turn +about and go from you; you must avoid me and I you. . . . We must +divide the world like Jacob and Esau. . . . I must direct myself +with all the will I have to other things. After all--this passion +is not life! It is perhaps for brutes and savages, but for men. +No! We must part and I must forget. What else is there but that?" + +I did not look up, I sat very tense with the red petals printing +an indelible memory in my brain, but I felt the assent of Verrall's +pose. There were some moments of silence. Then Nettie spoke. +"But------" she said, and ceased. + +I waited for a little while. I sighed and leant back in my chair. +"It is perfectly simple," I smiled, "now that we have cool heads." + +"But IS it simple?" asked Nettie, and slashed my discourse out of +being. + +I looked up and found her with her eyes on Verrall. "You see," +she said, "I like Willie. It's hard to say what one feels--but I +don't want him to go away like that." + +"But then," objected Verrall, "how------?" + +"No," said Nettie, and swept her half-arranged carnation petals back +into a heap of confusion. She began to arrange them very quickly +into one long straight line. + +"It's so difficult------ I've never before in all my life tried +to get to the bottom of my mind. For one thing, I've not treated +Willie properly. He--he counted on me. I know he did. I was +his hope. I was a promised delight--something, something to crown +life--better than anything he had ever had. And a secret pride. . . . +He lived upon me. I knew--when we two began to meet together, +you and I------ It was a sort of treachery to him------" + +"Treachery!" I said. "You were only feeling your way through all +these perplexities." + +"You thought it treachery." + +"I don't now." + +"I did. In a sense I think so still. For you had need of me." + +I made a slight protest at this doctrine and fell thinking. + +"And even when he was trying to kill us," she said to her lover, +"I felt for him down in the bottom of my mind. I can understand +all the horrible things, the humiliation--the humiliation! he went +through." + +"Yes," I said, "but I don't see------" + +"I don't see. I'm only trying to see. But you know, Willie, you +are a part of my life. I have known you longer than I have known +Edward. I know you better. Indeed I know you with all my heart. +You think all your talk was thrown away upon me, that I never +understood that side of you, or your ambitions or anything. I did. +More than I thought at the time. Now--now it is all clear to me. +What I had to understand in you was something deeper than Edward +brought me. I have it now. . . . You are a part of my life, and I +don't want to cut all that off from me now I have comprehended it, +and throw it away." + +"But you love Verrall." + +"Love is such a queer thing! . . . Is there one love? I mean, only +one love?" She turned to Verrall. "I know I love you. I can speak +out about that now. Before this morning I couldn't have done. It's +just as though my mind had got out of a scented prison. But what +is it, this love for you? It's a mass of fancies--things about +you--ways you look, ways you have. It's the senses--and the senses +of certain beauties. Flattery too, things you said, hopes and +deceptions for myself. And all that had rolled up together and taken +to itself the wild help of those deep emotions that slumbered in my +body; it seemed everything. But it wasn't. How can I describe it? +It was like having a very bright lamp with a thick shade--everything +else in the room was hidden. But you take the shade off and there +they are--it is the same light--still there! Only it lights every +one!" + +Her voice ceased. For awhile no one spoke, and Nettie, with a quick +movement, swept the petals into the shape of a pyramid. + +Figures of speech always distract me, and it ran through my mind +like some puzzling refrain, "It is still the same light. . . ." + +"No woman believes these things," she asserted abruptly. + +"What things?" + +"No woman ever has believed them." + +"You have to choose a man," said Verrall, apprehending her before +I did. + +"We're brought up to that. We're told--it's in books, in stories, +in the way people look, in the way they behave--one day there will +come a man. He will be everything, no one else will be anything. +Leave everything else; live in him." + +"And a man, too, is taught that of some woman," said Verrall. + +"Only men don't believe it! They have more obstinate minds. . . . +Men have never behaved as though they believed it. One need not +be old to know that. By nature they don't believe it. But a woman +believes nothing by nature. She goes into a mold hiding her secret +thoughts almost from herself." + +"She used to," I said. + +"You haven't," said Verrall, "anyhow." + +"I've come out. It's this comet. And Willie. And because I never +really believed in the mold at all--even if I thought I did. It's +stupid to send Willie off--shamed, cast out, never to see him +again--when I like him as much as I do. It is cruel, it is wicked +and ugly, to prance over him as if he was a defeated enemy, and +pretend I'm going to be happy just the same. There's no sense in +a rule of life that prescribes that. It's selfish. It's brutish. +It's like something that has no sense. I------" there was a sob in +her voice: "Willie! I WON'T." + +I sat lowering, I mused with my eyes upon her quick fingers. + +"It IS brutish," I said at last, with a careful unemotional +deliberation. "Nevertheless--it is in the nature of things. . . . +No! . . . You see, after all, we are still half brutes, Nettie. +And men, as you say, are more obstinate than women. The comet +hasn't altered that; it's only made it clearer. We have come into +being through a tumult of blind forces. . . . I come back to what +I said just now; we have found our poor reasonable minds, our wills +to live well, ourselves, adrift on a wash of instincts, passions, +instinctive prejudices, half animal stupidities. . . . Here we +are like people clinging to something--like people awakening--upon +a raft." + +"We come back at last to my question," said Verrall, softly; "what +are we to do?" + +"Part," I said. "You see, Nettie, these bodies of ours are not +the bodies of angels. They are the same bodies------ I have read +somewhere that in our bodies you can find evidence of the lowliest +ancestry; that about our inward ears--I think it is--and about our +teeth, there remains still something of the fish, that there are +bones that recall little--what is it?--marsupial forebears--and +a hundred traces of the ape. Even your beautiful body, Nettie, +carries this taint. No! Hear me out." I leant forward earnestly. +"Our emotions, our passions, our desires, the substance of them, +like the substance of our bodies, is an animal, a competing thing, as +well as a desiring thing. You speak to us now a mind to minds--one +can do that when one has had exercise and when one has eaten, when +one is not doing anything--but when one turns to live, one turns +again to matter." + +"Yes," said Nettie, slowly following me, "but you control it." + +"Only through a measure of obedience. There is no magic in the +business--to conquer matter, we must divide the enemy, and take +matter as an ally. Nowadays it is indeed true, by faith a man can +remove mountains; he can say to a mountain, Be thou removed and be +thou cast into the sea; but he does it because he helps and trusts +his brother men, because he has the wit and patience and courage +to win over to his side iron, steel, obedience, dynamite, cranes, +trucks, the money of other people. . . . To conquer my desire for +you, I must not perpetually thwart it by your presence; I must go +away so that I may not see you, I must take up other interests, +thrust myself into struggles and discussions------" + +"And forget?" said Nettie. + +"Not forget," I said; "but anyhow--cease to brood upon you." + +She hung on that for some moments. + +"No," she said, demolished her last pattern and looked up at Verrall +as he stirred. + +Verrall leant forward on the table, elbows upon it, and the fingers +of his two hands intertwined. + +"You know," he said, "I haven't thought much of these things. At +school and the university, one doesn't. . . . It was part of the +system to prevent it. They'll alter all that, no doubt. We seem"--he +thought--"to be skating about over questions that one came to at +last in Greek--with variorum readings--in Plato, but which it never +occurred to any one to translate out of a dead language into living +realities. . . ." He halted and answered some unspoken question +from his own mind with, "No. I think with Leadford, Nettie, that, +as he put it, it is in the nature of things for men to be exclusive. +. . . Minds are free things and go about the world, but only one +man can possess a woman. You must dismiss rivals. We are made for +the struggle for existence--we ARE the struggle for existence; the +things that live are the struggle for existence incarnate--and that +works out that the men struggle for their mates; for each woman +one prevails. The others go away." + +"Like animals," said Nettie. + +"Yes. . . ." + +"There are many things in life," I said, "but that is the rough +universal truth." + +"But," said Nettie, "you don't struggle. That has been altered +because men have minds." + +"You choose," I said. + +"If I don't choose to choose?" + +"You have chosen." + +She gave a little impatient "Oh! Why are women always the slaves of +sex? Is this great age of Reason and Light that has come to alter +nothing of that? And men too! I think it is all--stupid. I do not +believe this is the right solution of the thing, or anything but +the bad habits of the time that was. . . Instinct! You don't let +your instincts rule you in a lot of other things. Here am I between +you. Here is Edward. I--love him because he is gay and pleasant, +and because--because I LIKE him! Here is Willie--a part of me--my +first secret, my oldest friend! Why must I not have both? Am I not +a mind that you must think of me as nothing but a woman? imagine +me always as a thing to struggle for?" She paused; then she made +her distressful proposition to me. "Let us three keep together," +she said. "Let us not part. To part is hate, Willie. Why should we +not anyhow keep friends? Meet and talk?" + +"Talk?" I said. "About this sort of thing?" + +I looked across at Verrall and met his eyes, and we studied one +another. It was the clean, straight scrutiny of honest antagonism. +"No," I decided. "Between us, nothing of that sort can be." + +"Ever?" said Nettie. + +"Never," I said, convinced. + +I made an effort within myself. "We cannot tamper with the law and +customs of these things," I said; "these passions are too close +to one's essential self. Better surgery than a lingering disease! +From Nettie my love--asks all. A man's love is not devotion--it is +a demand, a challenge. And besides"--and here I forced my theme--"I +have given myself now to a new mistress--and it is I, Nettie, who +am unfaithful. Behind you and above you rises the coming City +of the World, and I am in that building. Dear heart! you are only +happiness--and that------Indeed that calls! If it is only that my +life blood shall christen the foundation stones--I could almost +hope that should be my part, Nettie--I will join myself in that." +I threw all the conviction I could into these words. . . . "No +conflict of passion." I added a little lamely, "must distract me." + +There was a pause. + +"Then we must part," said Nettie, with the eyes of a woman one +strikes in the face. + +I nodded assent. . . . + +There was a little pause, and then I stood up. We stood up, all +three. We parted almost sullenly, with no more memorable words, +and I was left presently in the arbor alone. + +I do not think I watched them go. I only remember myself left there +somehow--horribly empty and alone. I sat down again and fell into +a deep shapeless musing. + + + +Section 5 + +Suddenly I looked up. Nettie had come back and stood looking down +at me. + +"Since we talked I have been thinking," she said. "Edward has let +me come to you alone. And I feel perhaps I can talk better to you +alone." + +I said nothing and that embarrassed her. + +"I don't think we ought to part," she said. + +"No--I don't think we ought to part," she repeated. + +"One lives," she said, "in different ways. I wonder if you will +understand what I am saying, Willie. It is hard to say what I feel. +But I want it said. If we are to part for ever I want it said--very +plainly. Always before I have had the woman's instinct and the +woman's training which makes one hide. But------ Edward is not all +of me. Think of what I am saying--Edward is not all of me. . . . I +wish I could tell you better how I see it. I am not all of myself. +You, at any rate, are a part of me and I cannot bear to leave you. +And I cannot see why I should leave you. There is a sort of blood +link between us, Willie. We grew together. We are in one another's +bones. I understand you. Now indeed I understand. In some way +I have come to an understanding at a stride. Indeed I understand +you and your dream. I want to help you. Edward--Edward has no dreams. +. . . It is dreadful to me, Willie, to think we two are to part." + +"But we have settled that--part we must." + +"But WHY?" + +"I love you." + +"Well, and why should I hide it Willie?--I love you. . . ." Our +eyes met. She flushed, she went on resolutely: "You are stupid. +The whole thing is stupid. I love you both." + +I said, "You do not understand what you say. No!" + +"You mean that I must go." + +"Yes, yes. Go!" + +For a moment we looked at one another, mute, as though deep down +in the unfathomable darkness below the surface and present reality +of things dumb meanings strove to be. She made to speak and desisted. + +"But MUST I go?" she said at last, with quivering lips, and the +tears in her eyes were stars. Then she began, "Willie------" + +"Go!" I interrupted her. . . . "Yes." + +Then again we were still. + +She stood there, a tearful figure of pity, longing for me, pitying +me. Something of that wider love, that will carry our descendants +at last out of all the limits, the hard, clear obligations of our +personal life, moved us, like the first breath of a coming wind +out of heaven that stirs and passes away. I had an impulse to take +her hand and kiss it, and then a trembling came to me, and I knew +that if I touched her, my strength would all pass from me. . . . + +And so, standing at a distance one from the other, we parted, and +Nettie went, reluctant and looking back, with the man she had chosen, +to the lot she had chosen, out of my life--like the sunlight +out of my life. . . . + +Then, you know, I suppose I folded up this newspaper and put it +in my pocket. But my memory of that meeting ends with the face of +Nettie turning to go. + + + +Section 6 + +I remember all that very distinctly to this day. I could almost +vouch for the words I have put into our several mouths. Then comes +a blank. I have a dim memory of being back in the house near the +Links and the bustle of Melmount's departure, of finding Parker's +energy distasteful, and of going away down the road with a strong +desire to say good-bye to Melmount alone. + +Perhaps I was already doubting my decision to part for ever from +Nettie, for I think I had it in mind to tell him all that +had been said and done. . . . + +I don't think I had a word with him or anything but a hurried hand +clasp. I am not sure. It has gone out of my mind. But I have a +very clear and certain memory of my phase of bleak desolation as +I watched his car recede and climb and vanish over Mapleborough +Hill, and that I got there my first full and definite intimation +that, after all, this great Change and my new wide aims in life, +were not to mean indiscriminate happiness for me. I had a sense of +protest, as against extreme unfairness, as I saw him go. "It is +too soon," I said to myself, "to leave me alone." + +I felt I had sacrificed too much, that after I had said good-bye to +the hot immediate life of passion, to Nettie and desire, to physical +and personal rivalry, to all that was most intensely myself, it was +wrong to leave me alone and sore hearted, to go on at once with +these steely cold duties of the wider life. I felt new born, and +naked, and at a loss. + +"Work!" I said with an effort at the heroic, and turned about with +a sigh, and I was glad that the way I had to go would at +least take me to my mother. . . . + +But, curiously enough, I remember myself as being fairly cheerful +in the town of Birmingham that night, I recall an active and +interested mood. I spent the night in Birmingham because the train +service on was disarranged, and I could not get on. I went to listen +to a band that was playing its brassy old-world music in the public +park, and I fell into conversation with a man who said he had been +a reporter upon one of their minor local papers. He was full and +keen upon all the plans of reconstruction that were now shaping +over the lives of humanity, and I know that something of that +noble dream came back to me with his words and phrases. We walked +up to a place called Bourneville by moonlight, and talked of the +new social groupings that must replace the old isolated homes, and +how the people would be housed. + +This Bourneville was germane to that matter. It had been an +attempt on the part of a private firm of manufacturers to improve +the housing of their workers. To our ideas to-day it would seem the +feeblest of benevolent efforts, but at the time it was extraordinary +and famous, and people came long journeys to see its trim cottages +with baths sunk under the kitchen floors (of all conceivable +places), and other brilliant inventions. No one seemed to see the +danger to liberty in that aggressive age, that might arise through +making workpeople tenants and debtors of their employer, though an +Act called the Truck Act had long ago intervened to prevent minor +developments in the same direction. . . . But I and my chance +acquaintance seemed that night always to have been aware of that +possibility, and we had no doubt in our minds of the public nature +of the housing duty. Our interest lay rather in the possibility of +common nurseries and kitchens and public rooms that should economize +toil and give people space and freedom. + +It was very interesting, but still a little cheerless, and when I +lay in bed that night I thought of Nettie and the queer modifications +of preference she had made, and among other things and in a way, I +prayed. I prayed that night, let me confess it, to an image I had +set up in my heart, an image that still serves with me as a symbol +for things inconceivable, to a Master Artificer, the unseen captain +of all who go about the building of the world, the making of mankind. + +But before and after I prayed I imagined I was talking and reasoning +and meeting again with Nettie. . . . She never came into the temple +of that worshiping with me. + + + + +CHAPTER THE SECOND + +MY MOTHER'S LAST DAYS + + + +Section 1 + +NEXT day I came home to Clayton. + +The new strange brightness of the world was all the brighter there, +for the host of dark distressful memories, of darkened childhood, +toilsome youth, embittered adolescence that wove about the place +for me. It seemed to me that I saw morning there for the first time. +No chimneys smoked that day, no furnaces were burning, the people +were busy with other things. The clear strong sun, the sparkle in +the dustless air, made a strange gaiety in the narrow streets. I +passed a number of smiling people coming home from the public +breakfasts that were given in the Town Hall until better things +could be arranged, and happened on Parload among them. "You were +right about that comet," I sang out at the sight of him; and he +came toward me and clasped my hand. + +"What are people doing here?" said I. + +"They're sending us food from outside," he said, "and we're going +to level all these slums--and shift into tents on to the moors;" +and he began to tell me of many things that were being arranged, +the Midland land committees had got to work with remarkable celerity +and directness of purpose, and the redistribution of population +was already in its broad outlines planned. He was working at +an improvised college of engineering. Until schemes of work were +made out, almost every one was going to school again to get as much +technical training as they could against the demands of the huge +enterprise of reconstruction that was now beginning. + +He walked with me to my door, and there I met old Pettigrew coming +down the steps. He looked dusty and tired, but his eye was brighter +than it used to be, and he carried in a rather unaccustomed manner, +a workman's tool basket. + +"How's the rheumatism, Mr. Pettigrew?" I asked. + +"Dietary," said old Pettigrew, "can work wonders. . . ." He looked +me in the eye. "These houses," he said, "will have to come down, +I suppose, and our notions of property must undergo very considerable +revision--in the light of reason; but meanwhile I've been doing +something to patch that disgraceful roof of mine! To think that +I could have dodged and evaded------" + +He raised a deprecatory hand, drew down the loose corners of his +ample mouth, and shook his old head. + +"The past is past, Mr. Pettigrew." + +"Your poor dear mother! So good and honest a woman! So simple and +kind and forgiving! To think of it! My dear young man!"--he said +it manfully--"I'm ashamed." + +"The whole world blushed at dawn the other day, Mr. Pettigrew," I +said, "and did it very prettily. That's over now. God knows, who +is NOT ashamed of all that came before last Tuesday." + +I held out a forgiving hand, naively forgetful that in this place +I was a thief, and he took it and went his way, shaking his head +and repeating he was ashamed, but I think a little comforted. + +The door opened and my poor old mother's face, marvelously cleaned, +appeared. "Ah, Willie, boy! YOU. You!" + +I ran up the steps to her, for I feared she might fall. + +How she clung to me in the passage, the dear woman! . . . + +But first she shut the front door. The old habit of respect for my +unaccountable temper still swayed her. "Ah deary!" she said, "ah +deary! But you were sorely tried," and kept her face close to my +shoulder, lest she should offend me by the sight of the tears that +welled within her. + +She made a sort of gulping noise and was quiet for a while, holding +me very tightly to her heart with her worn, long hands . . . + +She thanked me presently for my telegram, and I put my arm about +her and drew her into the living room. + +"It's all well with me, mother dear," I said, "and the dark times +are over--are done with for ever, mother." + +Whereupon she had courage and gave way and sobbed aloud, none +chiding her. + +She had not let me know she could still weep for five grimy years. . . . + + + +Section 2 + +Dear heart! There remained for her but a very brief while in this +world that had been renewed. I did not know how short that time +would be, but the little I could do--perhaps after all it was not +little to her--to atone for the harshness of my days of wrath and +rebellion, I did. I took care to be constantly with her, for I +perceived now her curious need of me. It was not that we had ideas +to exchange or pleasures to share, but she liked to see me at table, +to watch me working, to have me go to and fro. There was no toil +for her any more in the world, but only such light services as +are easy and pleasant for a worn and weary old woman to do, and I +think she was happy even at her end. + +She kept to her queer old eighteenth century version of religion, +too, without a change. She had worn this particular amulet so +long it was a part of her. Yet the Change was evident even in that +persistence. I said to her one day, "But do you still believe in +that hell of flame, dear mother? You--with your tender heart!" + +She vowed she did. + +Some theological intricacy made it necessary to her, but still------ + +She looked thoughtfully at a bank of primulas before her for a time, +and then laid her tremulous hand impressively on my arm. "You know, +Willie, dear," she said, as though she was clearing up a childish +misunderstanding of mine, "I don't think any one will GO there. I +never DID think that. . . ." + + + +Section 3 + +That talk stands out in my memory because of that agreeable theological +decision of hers, but it was only one of a great number of talks. +It used to be pleasant in the afternoon, after the day's work was +done and before one went on with the evening's study--how odd it +would have seemed in the old time for a young man of the industrial +class to be doing post-graduate work in sociology, and how much +a matter of course it seems now!--to walk out into the gardens +of Lowchester House, and smoke a cigarette or so and let her talk +ramblingly of the things that interested her. . . . Physically +the Great Change did not do so very much to reinvigorate her--she +had lived in that dismal underground kitchen in Clayton too long +for any material rejuvenescence--she glowed out indeed as a dying +spark among the ashes might glow under a draught of fresh air--and +assuredly it hastened her end. But those closing days were very +tranquil, full of an effortless contentment. With her, life was like +a rainy, windy day that clears only to show the sunset afterglow. +The light has passed. She acquired no new habits amid the comforts +of the new life, did no new things, but only found a happier light +upon the old. + +She lived with a number of other old ladies belonging to our commune +in the upper rooms of Lowchester House. Those upper apartments +were simple and ample, fine and well done in the Georgian style, +and they had been organized to give the maximum of comfort and +conveniences and to economize the need of skilled attendance. We +had taken over the various "great houses," as they used to be +called, to make communal dining-rooms and so forth--their kitchens +were conveniently large--and pleasant places for the old people +of over sixty whose time of ease had come, and for suchlike public +uses. We had done this not only with Lord Redcar's house, but also +with Checkshill House--where old Mrs. Verrall made a dignified +and capable hostess,--and indeed with most of the fine residences +in the beautiful wide country between the Four Towns district and +the Welsh mountains. About these great houses there had usually +been good outbuildings, laundries, married servants' quarters, +stabling, dairies, and the like, suitably masked by trees, we +turned these into homes, and to them we added first tents and wood +chalets and afterward quadrangular residential buildings. In order +to be near my mother I had two small rooms in the new collegiate +buildings which our commune was almost the first to possess, and they +were very convenient for the station of the high-speed electric +railway that took me down to our daily conferences and my secretarial +and statistical work in Clayton. + +Ours had been one of the first modern communes to get in order; we +were greatly helped by the energy of Lord Redcar, who had a fine +feeling for the picturesque associations of his ancestral home--the +detour that took our line through the beeches and bracken and +bluebells of the West Wood and saved the pleasant open wildness +of the park was one of his suggestions; and we had many reasons to +be proud of our surroundings. Nearly all the other communes that +sprang up all over the pleasant parkland round the industrial +valley of the Four Towns, as the workers moved out, came to us to +study the architecture of the residential squares and quadrangles +with which we had replaced the back streets between the great +houses and the ecclesiastical residences about the cathedral, and +the way in which we had adapted all these buildings to our new +social needs. Some claimed to have improved on us. But they could +not emulate the rhododendron garden out beyond our shrubberies; that +was a thing altogether our own in our part of England, because of +its ripeness and of the rarity of good peat free from lime. + +These gardens had been planned under the third Lord Redcar, fifty +years ago and more; they abounded in rhododendra and azaleas, and +were in places so well sheltered and sunny that great magnolias +flourished and flowered. There were tall trees smothered in crimson +and yellow climbing roses, and an endless variety of flowering +shrubs and fine conifers, and such pampas grass as no other garden +can show. And barred by the broad shadows of these, were glades and +broad spaces of emerald turf, and here and there banks of pegged +roses, and flower-beds, and banks given over some to spring bulbs, +and some to primroses and primulas and polyanthuses. My mother +loved these latter banks and the little round staring eyes of their +innumerable yellow, ruddy brown, and purple corollas, more than +anything else the gardens could show, and in the spring of the Year +of Scaffolding she would go with me day after day to the seat that +showed them in the greatest multitude. + +It gave her, I think, among other agreeable impressions, a sense +of gentle opulence. In the old time she had never known what it was +to have more than enough of anything agreeable in the world at all. + +We would sit and think, or talk--there was a curious effect of +complete understanding between us whether we talked or were still. + +"Heaven," she said to me one day, "Heaven is a garden." + +I was moved to tease her a little. "There's jewels, you know, walls +and gates of jewels--and singing." + +"For such as like them," said my mother firmly, and thought for +a while. "There'll be things for all of us, o' course. But for me +it couldn't be Heaven, dear, unless it was a garden--a nice sunny +garden. . . . And feeling such as we're fond of, are close and +handy by" + +You of your happier generation cannot realize the wonderfulness +of those early days in the new epoch, the sense of security, the +extraordinary effects of contrast. In the morning, except in high +summer, I was up before dawn, and breakfasted upon the swift, smooth +train, and perhaps saw the sunrise as I rushed out of the little +tunnel that pierced Clayton Crest, and so to work like a man. Now +that we had got all the homes and schools and all the softness of +life away from our coal and iron ore and clay, now that a thousand +obstructive "rights" and timidities had been swept aside, we could +let ourselves go, we merged this enterprise with that, cut across +this or that anciently obstructive piece of private land, joined and +separated, effected gigantic consolidations and gigantic economies, +and the valley, no longer a pit of squalid human tragedies and +meanly conflicting industries, grew into a sort of beauty of its +own, a savage inhuman beauty of force and machinery and flames. +One was a Titan in that Etna. Then back one came at midday to bath +and change in the train, and so to the leisurely gossiping lunch +in the club dining-room in Lowchester House, and the refreshment +of these green and sunlit afternoon tranquillities. + +Sometimes in her profounder moments my mother doubted whether all +this last phase of her life was not a dream. + +"A dream," I used to say, "a dream indeed--but a dream that is one +step nearer awakening than that nightmare of the former days." + +She found great comfort and assurance in my altered clothes--she +liked the new fashions of dress, she alleged. It was not simply +altered clothes. I did grow two inches, broaden some inches +round my chest, and increase in weight three stones before I was +twenty-three. I wore a soft brown cloth and she would caress my +sleeve and admire it greatly--she had the woman's sense of texture +very strong in her. + +Sometimes she would muse upon the past, rubbing together her poor +rough hands--they never got softened--one over the other. She told +me much I had not heard before about my father, and her own early +life. It was like finding flat and faded flowers in a book still +faintly sweet, to realize that once my mother had been loved with +passion; that my remote father had once shed hot tears of tenderness in +her arms. And she would sometimes even speak tentatively in those +narrow, old-world phrases that her lips could rob of all their +bitter narrowness, of Nettie. + +"She wasn't worthy of you, dear," she would say abruptly, leaving +me to guess the person she intended. + +"No man is worthy of a woman's love," I answered. "No woman is +worthy of a man's. I love her, dear mother, and that you cannot +alter." + +"There's others," she would muse. + +"Not for me," I said. "No! I didn't fire a shot that time; I burnt +my magazine. I can't begin again, mother, not from the beginning." + +She sighed and said no more then. + +At another time she said--I think her words were: "You'll be lonely +when I'm gone dear." + +"You'll not think of going, then," I said. + +"Eh, dear! but man and maid should come together." + +I said nothing to that. + +"You brood overmuch on Nettie, dear. If I could see you married to +some sweet girl of a woman, some good, KIND girl------" + +"Dear mother, I'm married enough. Perhaps some day------ Who knows? +I can wait." + +"But to have nothing to do with women!" + +"I have my friends. Don't you trouble, mother. There's plentiful +work for a man in this world though the heart of love is cast out +from him. Nettie was life and beauty for me--is--will be. Don't +think I've lost too much, mother." + +(Because in my heart I told myself the end had still to come.) + +And once she sprang a question on me suddenly that surprised me. + +"Where are they now?" she asked. + +"Who?" + +"Nettie and--him." + +She had pierced to the marrow of my thoughts. "I don't know," I +said shortly. + +Her shriveled hand just fluttered into touch of mine. + +"It's better so," she said, as if pleading. "Indeed . . . it is +better so." + +There was something in her quivering old voice that for a moment +took me back across an epoch, to the protests of the former time, +to those counsels of submission, those appeals not to offend It, +that had always stirred an angry spirit of rebellion within me. + +"That is the thing I doubt," I said, and abruptly I felt I could +talk no more to her of Nettie. I got up and walked away from her, +and came back after a while, to speak of other things, with a bunch +of daffodils for her in my hand. + +But I did not always spend my afternoons with her. There were days +when my crushed hunger for Nettie rose again, and then I had to be +alone; I walked, or bicycled, and presently I found a new interest +and relief in learning to ride. For the horse was already very +swiftly reaping the benefit to the Change. Hardly anywhere was the +inhumanity of horse traction to be found after the first year of +the new epoch, everywhere lugging and dragging and straining was +done by machines, and the horse had become a beautiful instrument +for the pleasure and carriage of youth. I rode both in the saddle +and, what is finer, naked and barebacked. I found violent exercises +were good for the states of enormous melancholy that came upon me, +and when at last horse riding palled, I went and joined the aviators +who practised soaring upon aeroplanes beyond Horsemarden Hill. . . . +But at least every alternate day I spent with my mother, and +altogether I think I gave her two-thirds of my afternoons. + + + +Section 4 + +When presently that illness, that fading weakness that made an euthanasia +for so many of the older people in the beginning of the new time, +took hold upon my mother, there came Anna Reeves to daughter +her--after our new custom. She chose to come. She was already +known to us a little from chance meetings and chance services she +had done my mother in the garden; she sought to give her help. She +seemed then just one of those plainly good girls the world at its +worst has never failed to produce, who were indeed in the dark old +times the hidden antiseptic of all our hustling, hating, faithless +lives. They made their secret voiceless worship, they did their +steadfast, uninspired, unthanked, unselfish work as helpful daughters, +as nurses, as faithful servants, as the humble providences of homes. +She was almost exactly three years older than I. At first I found +no beauty in her, she was short but rather sturdy and ruddy, with +red-tinged hair, and fair hairy brows and red-brown eyes. But her +freckled hands I found, were full of apt help, her voice +carried good cheer. . . . + +At first she was no more than a blue-clad, white-aproned benevolence, +that moved in the shadows behind the bed on which my old mother lay +and sank restfully to death. She would come forward to anticipate +some little need, to proffer some simple comfort, and always then +my mother smiled on her. In a little while I discovered the beauty +of that helpful poise of her woman's body, I discovered the grace +of untiring goodness, the sweetness of a tender pity, and the +great riches of her voice, of her few reassuring words and phrases. +I noted and remembered very clearly how once my mother's lean old +hand patted the firm gold-flecked strength of hers, as it went by +upon its duties with the coverlet. + +"She is a good girl to me," said my mother one day. "A good girl. +Like a daughter should be. . . . I never had a daughter--really." +She mused peacefully for a space. "Your little sister died," she +said. + +I had never heard of that little sister. + +"November the tenth," said my mother. "Twenty-nine months and three +days. . . . I cried. I cried. That was before you came, dear. So +long ago--and I can see it now. I was a young wife then, and your +father was very kind. But I can see its hands, its dear little +quiet hands. . . . Dear, they say that now--now they will not let +the little children die." + +"No, dear mother," I said. "We shall do better now." + +"The club doctor could not come. Your father went twice. There +was some one else, some one who paid. So your father went on into +Swathinglea, and that man wouldn't come unless he had his fee. And +your father had changed his clothes to look more respectful and he +hadn't any money, not even his tram fare home. It seemed cruel to +be waiting there with my baby thing in pain. . . . And I can't help +thinking perhaps we might have saved her. . . . But it was like +that with the poor always in the bad old times--always. When the +doctor came at last he was angry. 'Why wasn't I called before?' +he said, and he took no pains. He was angry because some one hadn't +explained. I begged him--but it was too late." + +She said these things very quietly with drooping eyelids, like one +who describes a dream. "We are going to manage all these things +better now," I said, feeling a strange resentment at this pitiful +little story her faded, matter-of-fact voice was telling me. + +"She talked," my mother went on. "She talked for her age wonderfully. +. . . Hippopotamus." + +"Eh?" I said. + +"Hippopotamus, dear--quite plainly one day, when her father was +showing her pictures. . . And her little prayers. 'Now I lay me. +. . . down to sleep.' . . . I made her little socks. Knitted they +was, dear, and the heel most difficult." + +Her eyes were closed now. She spoke no longer to me but to herself. +She whispered other vague things, little sentences, ghosts of long +dead moments. . . . Her words grew less distinct. + +Presently she was asleep and I got up and went out of the room, +but my mind was queerly obsessed by the thought of that little life +that had been glad and hopeful only to pass so inexplicably out of +hope again into nonentity, this sister of whom I had never +heard before. . . . + +And presently I was in a black rage at all the irrecoverable sorrows +of the past, of that great ocean of avoidable suffering of which +this was but one luminous and quivering red drop. I walked in the +garden and the garden was too small for me; I went out to wander +on the moors. "The past is past," I cried, and all the while across +the gulf of five and twenty years I could hear my poor mother's +heart-wrung weeping for that daughter baby who had suffered and +died. Indeed that old spirit of rebellion has not altogether died +in me, for all the transformation of the new time. . . . I quieted +down at last to a thin and austere comfort in thinking that the +whole is not told to us, that it cannot perhaps be told to such +minds as ours; and anyhow, and what was far more sustaining, that +now we have strength and courage and this new gift of wise love, +whatever cruel and sad things marred the past, none of these sorrowful +things that made the very warp and woof of the old life, need now +go on happening. We could foresee, we could prevent and save. "The +past is past," I said, between sighing and resolve, as I came into +view again on my homeward way of the hundred sunset-lit windows of +old Lowchester House. "Those sorrows are sorrows no more." + +But I could not altogether cheat that common sadness of the new +time, that memory, and insoluble riddle of the countless lives that +had stumbled and failed in pain and darkness before our air grew +clear. + + + + +CHAPTER THE THIRD + +BELTANE AND NEW YEAR'S EVE + + + +Section 1 + +IN the end my mother died rather suddenly, and her death came as +a shock to me. Diagnosis was still very inadequate at that time. +The doctors were, of course, fully alive to the incredible defects +of their common training and were doing all they could to supply +its deficiencies, but they were still extraordinarily ignorant. +Some unintelligently observed factor of her illness came into play +with her, and she became feverish and sank and died very quickly. +I do not know what remedial measures were attempted. I hardly knew +what was happening until the whole thing was over. + +At that time my attention was much engaged by the stir of the great +Beltane festival that was held on May-day in the Year of Scaffolding. +It was the first of the ten great rubbish burnings that opened the +new age. Young people nowadays can scarcely hope to imagine the +enormous quantities of pure litter and useless accumulation with +which we had to deal; had we not set aside a special day and season, +the whole world would have been an incessant reek of small fires; +and it was, I think, a happy idea to revive this ancient festival of +the May and November burnings. It was inevitable that the old idea +of purification should revive with the name, it was felt to be a +burning of other than material encumbrances, innumerable quasi-spiritual +things, deeds, documents, debts, vindictive records, went up on +those great flares. People passed praying between the fires, and +it was a fine symbol of the new and wiser tolerance that had come +to men, that those who still found their comfort in the orthodox +faiths came hither unpersuaded, to pray that all hate might be burnt +out of their professions. For even in the fires of Baal, now that +men have done with base hatred, one may find the living God. + +Endless were the things we had to destroy in those great purgings. +First, there were nearly all the houses and buildings of the old +time. In the end we did not save in England one building in five +thousand that was standing when the comet came. Year by year, as +we made our homes afresh in accordance with the saner needs of our +new social families, we swept away more and more of those horrible +structures, the ancient residential houses, hastily built, without +imagination, without beauty, without common honesty, without even +comfort or convenience, in which the early twentieth century had +sheltered until scarcely one remained; we saved nothing but what +was beautiful or interesting out of all their gaunt and melancholy +abundance. The actual houses, of course, we could not drag to +our fires, but we brought all their ill-fitting deal doors, their +dreadful window sashes, their servant-tormenting staircases, their +dank, dark cupboards, the verminous papers from their scaly walls, +their dust and dirt-sodden carpets, their ill-designed and yet +pretentious tables and chairs, sideboards and chests of drawers, +the old dirt-saturated books, their ornaments--their dirty, decayed, +and altogether painful ornaments--amidst which I remember there +were sometimes even STUFFED DEAD BIRDS!--we burnt them all. The +paint-plastered woodwork, with coat above coat of nasty paint, that +in particular blazed finely. I have already tried to give you an +impression of old-world furniture, of Parload's bedroom, my mother's +room, Mr. Gabbitas's sitting-room, but, thank Heaven! there is +nothing in life now to convey the peculiar dinginess of it all. For +one thing, there is no more imperfect combustion of coal going on +everywhere, and no roadways like grassless open scars along the +earth from which dust pours out perpetually. We burnt and destroyed +most of our private buildings and all the woodwork, all our furniture, +except a few score thousand pieces of distinct and intentional +beauty, from which our present forms have developed, nearly all +our hangings and carpets, and also we destroyed almost every scrap +of old-world clothing. Only a few carefully disinfected types and +vestiges of that remain now in our museums. + +One writes now with a peculiar horror of the dress of the old world. +The men's clothes were worn without any cleansing process at all, +except an occasional superficial brushing, for periods of a year +or so; they were made of dark obscurely mixed patterns to conceal +the stage of defilement they had reached, and they were of a felted +and porous texture admirably calculated to accumulate drifting +matter. Many women wore skirts of similar substances, and of so +long and inconvenient a form that they inevitably trailed among +all the abomination of our horse-frequented roads. It was our boast +in England that the whole of our population was booted--their feet +were for the most part ugly enough to need it,--but it becomes +now inconceivable how they could have imprisoned their feet in the +amazing cases of leather and imitations of leather they used. I +have heard it said that a large part of the physical decline that +was apparent in our people during the closing years of the nineteenth +century, though no doubt due in part to the miscellaneous badness +of the food they ate, was in the main attributable to the vileness +of the common footwear. They shirked open-air exercise altogether +because their boots wore out ruinously and pinched and hurt them +if they took it. I have mentioned, I think, the part my own boots +played in the squalid drama of my adolescence. I had a sense +of unholy triumph over a fallen enemy when at last I found myself +steering truck after truck of cheap boots and shoes (unsold stock +from Swathinglea) to the run-off by the top of the Glanville blast +furnaces. + +"Plup!" they would drop into the cone when Beltane came, and the +roar of their burning would fill the air. Never a cold would come +from the saturation of their brown paper soles, never a corn from +their foolish shapes, never a nail in them get home at last in +suffering flesh. . . . + +Most of our public buildings we destroyed and burnt as we reshaped +our plan of habitation, our theater sheds, our banks, and inconvenient +business warrens, our factories (these in the first year of all), +and all the "unmeaning repetition" of silly little sham Gothic +churches and meeting-houses, mean looking shells of stone and +mortar without love, invention, or any beauty at all in them, that +men had thrust into the face of their sweated God, even as they +thrust cheap food into the mouths of their sweated workers; all +these we also swept away in the course of that first decade. Then +we had the whole of the superseded steam-railway system to scrap +and get rid of, stations, signals, fences, rolling stock; a plant +of ill-planned, smoke-distributing nuisance apparatus, that would, +under former conditions, have maintained an offensive dwindling +obstructive life for perhaps half a century. Then also there was a +great harvest of fences, notice boards, hoardings, ugly sheds, all +the corrugated iron in the world, and everything that was smeared +with tar, all our gas works and petroleum stores, all our horse +vehicles and vans and lorries had to be erased. . . . But I have +said enough now perhaps to give some idea of the bulk and quality +of our great bonfires, our burnings up, our meltings down, our +toil of sheer wreckage, over and above the constructive effort, in +those early years. + +But these were the coarse material bases of the Phoenix fires +of the world. These were but the outward and visible signs of the +innumerable claims, rights, adhesions, debts, bills, deeds, and +charters that were cast upon the fires; a vast accumulation of +insignia and uniforms neither curious enough nor beautiful enough +to preserve, went to swell the blaze, and all (saving a few truly +glorious trophies and memories) of our symbols, our apparatus and +material of war. Then innumerable triumphs of our old, bastard, +half-commercial, fine-art were presently condemned, great oil +paintings, done to please the half-educated middle-class, glared +for a moment and were gone, Academy marbles crumbled to useful lime, +a gross multitude of silly statuettes and decorative crockery, and +hangings, and embroideries, and bad music, and musical instruments +shared this fate. And books, countless books, too, and bales +of newspapers went also to these pyres. From the private houses +in Swathinglea alone--which I had deemed, perhaps not unjustly, +altogether illiterate--we gathered a whole dust-cart full of cheap +ill-printed editions of the minor English classics--for the most +part very dull stuff indeed and still clean--and about a truckload +of thumbed and dog-eared penny fiction, watery base stuff, the +dropsy of our nation's mind. . . . And it seemed to me that when +we gathered those books and papers together, we gathered together +something more than print and paper, we gathered warped and +crippled ideas and contagious base suggestions, the formulae of dull +tolerances and stupid impatiences, the mean defensive ingenuities +of sluggish habits of thinking and timid and indolent evasions. +There was more than a touch of malignant satisfaction for me in +helping gather it all together. + +I was so busy, I say, with my share in this dustman's work that +I did not notice, as I should otherwise have done, the little +indications of change in my mother's state. Indeed, I thought her +a little stronger; she was slightly flushed, slightly more talkative. . . . + +On Beltane Eve, and our Lowchester rummage being finished, I went +along the valley to the far end of Swathinglea to help sort the +stock of the detached group of potbanks there--their chief output +had been mantel ornaments in imitation of marble, and there was +very little sorting, I found, to be done--and there it was nurse +Anna found me at last by telephone, and told me my mother had died +in the morning suddenly and very shortly after my departure. + +For a while I did not seem to believe it; this obviously imminent +event stunned me when it came, as though I had never had an +anticipatory moment. For a while I went on working, and then almost +apathetically, in a mood of half-reluctant curiosity, I started +for Lowchester. + +When I got there the last offices were over, and I was shown my +old mother's peaceful white face, very still, but a little cold +and stern to me, a little unfamiliar, lying among white flowers. + +I went in alone to her, into that quiet room, and stood for +a long time by her bedside. I sat down then and thought. . . . + +Then at last, strangely hushed, and with the deeps of my loneliness +opening beneath me, I came out of that room and down into the world +again, a bright-eyed, active world, very noisy, happy, and busy +with its last preparations for the mighty cremation of past and +superseded things. + + + +Section 2 + +I remember that first Beltane festival as the most terribly lonely +night in my life. It stands in my mind in fragments, fragments of +intense feeling with forgotten gaps between. + +I recall very distinctly being upon the great staircase of Lowchester +House (though I don't remember getting there from the room in which +my mother lay), and how upon the landing I met Anna ascending as I +came down. She had but just heard of my return, and she was hurrying +upstairs to me. She stopped and so did I, and we stood and clasped +hands, and she scrutinized my face in the way women sometimes do. +So we remained for a second or so. I could say nothing to her at +all, but I could feel the wave of her emotion. I halted, answered +the earnest pressure of her hand, relinquished it, and after +a queer second of hesitation went on down, returning to my own +preoccupations. It did not occur to me at all then to ask myself +what she might be thinking or feeling. + +I remember the corridor full of mellow evening light, and how I +went mechanically some paces toward the dining-room. Then at the +sight of the little tables, and a gusty outburst of talking voices +as some one in front of me swung the door open and to, I remembered +that I did not want to eat. . . . After that comes an impression +of myself walking across the open grass in front of the house, and +the purpose I had of getting alone upon the moors, and how somebody +passing me said something about a hat. I had come out without my +hat. + +A fragment of thought has linked itself with an effect of long +shadows upon turf golden with the light of the sinking sun. The +world was singularly empty, I thought, without either Nettie or my +mother. There wasn't any sense in it any more. Nettie was +already back in my mind then. . . . + +Then I am out on the moors. I avoided the crests where the +bonfires were being piled, and sought the lonely places. . . . + +I remember very clearly sitting on a gate beyond the park, in a +fold just below the crest, that hid the Beacon Hill bonfire and its +crowd, and I was looking at and admiring the sunset. The golden +earth and sky seemed like a little bubble that floated in the globe +of human futility. . . . Then in the twilight I walked along an +unknown, bat-haunted road between high hedges. + +I did not sleep under a roof that night. But I hungered and ate. +I ate near midnight at a little inn over toward Birmingham, and +miles away from my home. Instinctively I had avoided the crests +where the bonfire crowds gathered, but here there were many people, +and I had to share a table with a man who had some useless mortgage +deeds to burn. I talked to him about them--but my soul stood at a +great distance behind my lips. . . . + +Soon each hilltop bore a little tulip-shaped flame flower. Little +black figures clustered round and dotted the base of its petals, +and as for the rest of the multitude abroad, the kindly night +swallowed them up. By leaving the roads and clear paths and wandering +in the fields I contrived to keep alone, though the confused noise +of voices and the roaring and crackling of great fires was always +near me. + +I wandered into a lonely meadow, and presently in a hollow of +deep shadows I lay down to stare at the stars. I lay hidden in the +darkness, and ever and again the sough and uproar of the Beltane +fires that were burning up the sere follies of a vanished age, and +the shouting of the people passing through the fires and praying to +be delivered from the prison of themselves, reached my ears. . . . + +And I thought of my mother, and then of my new loneliness and the +hunger of my heart for Nettie. + +I thought of many things that night, but chiefly of the overflowing +personal love and tenderness that had come to me in the wake of +the Change, of the greater need, the unsatisfied need in which I +stood, for this one person who could fulfil all my desires. So long +as my mother had lived, she had in a measure held my heart, given +me a food these emotions could live upon, and mitigated that emptiness +of spirit, but now suddenly that one possible comfort had left me. +There had been many at the season of the Change who had thought that +this great enlargement of mankind would abolish personal love; but +indeed it had only made it finer, fuller, more vitally necessary. +They had thought that, seeing men now were all full of the joyful +passion to make and do, and glad and loving and of willing service +to all their fellows, there would be no need of the one intimate +trusting communion that had been the finest thing of the former +life. And indeed, so far as this was a matter of advantage and +the struggle for existence, they were right. But so far as it was +a matter of the spirit and the fine perceptions of life, it was +altogether wrong. + +We had indeed not eliminated personal love, we had but stripped it +of its base wrappings, of its pride, its suspicions, its mercenary +and competitive elements, until at last it stood up in our minds +stark, shining and invincible. Through all the fine, divaricating +ways of the new life, it grew ever more evident, there were for +every one certain persons, mysteriously and indescribably in the +key of one's self, whose mere presence gave pleasure, whose mere +existence was interest, whose idiosyncrasy blended with accident +to make a completing and predominant harmony for their predestined +lovers. They were the essential thing in life. Without them the +fine brave show of the rejuvenated world was a caparisoned steed +without a rider, a bowl without a flower, a theater without a play. +. . . And to me that night of Beltane, it was as clear as white +flames that Nettie, and Nettie alone, roused those harmonies in +me. And she had gone! I had sent her from me; I knew not whither +she had gone. I had in my first virtuous foolishness cut her out +of my life for ever! + +So I saw it then, and I lay unseen in the darkness and called upon +Nettie, and wept for her, lay upon my face and wept for her, while +the glad people went to and fro, and the smoke streamed thick +across the distant stars, and the red reflections, the shadows and +the fluctuating glares, danced over the face of the world. + +No! the Change had freed us from our baser passions indeed, from +habitual and mechanical concupiscence and mean issues and coarse +imaginings, but from the passions of love it had not freed us. It +had but brought the lord of life, Eros, to his own. All through the +long sorrow of that night I, who had rejected him, confessed +his sway with tears and inappeasable regrets. . . . + +I cannot give the remotest guess of when I rose up, nor of +my tortuous wanderings in the valleys between the midnight fires, +nor how I evaded the laughing and rejoicing multitudes who went +streaming home between three and four, to resume their lives, swept +and garnished, stripped and clean. But at dawn, when the ashes of +the world's gladness were ceasing to glow--it was a bleak dawn that +made me shiver in my thin summer clothes--I came across a field +to a little copse full of dim blue hyacinths. A queer sense +of familiarity arrested my steps, and I stood puzzled. Then I was +moved to go a dozen paces from the path, and at once a singularly +misshapen tree hitched itself into a notch in my memory. This was +the place! Here I had stood, there I had placed my old kite, and +shot with my revolver, learning to use it, against the day when I +should encounter Verrall. + +Kite and revolver had gone now, and all my hot and narrow past, its +last vestiges had shriveled and vanished in the whirling gusts of +the Beltane fires. So I walked through a world of gray ashes at +last, back to the great house in which the dead, deserted image of +my dear lost mother lay. + + + +Section 3 + +I came back to Lowchester House very tired, very wretched; exhausted +by my fruitless longing for Nettie. I had no thought of what lay +before me. + +A miserable attraction drew me into the great house to look again +on the stillness that had been my mother's face, and as I came into +that room, Anna, who had been sitting by the open window, rose to +meet me. She had the air of one who waits. She, too, was pale with +watching; all night she had watched between the dead within and +the Beltane fires abroad, and longed for my coming. I stood +mute between her and the bedside. . . . + +"Willie," she whispered, and eyes and body seemed incarnate pity. + +An unseen presence drew us together. My mother's face became resolute, +commanding. I turned to Anna as a child may turn to its nurse. I +put my hands about her strong shoulders, she folded me to her, and +my heart gave way. I buried my face in her breast and clung +to her weakly, and burst into a passion of weeping. . . . + +She held me with hungry arms. She whispered to me, "There, there!" +as one whispers comfort to a child. . . . Suddenly she was kissing +me. She kissed me with a hungry intensity of passion, on my cheeks, +on my lips. She kissed me on my lips with lips that were +salt with tears. And I returned her kisses. . . . + +Then abruptly we desisted and stood apart--looking at one another. + + + +Section 4 + +It seems to me as if the intense memory of Nettie vanished utterly +out of my mind at the touch of Anna's lips. I loved Anna. + +We went to the council of our group--commune it was then called--and +she was given me in marriage, and within a year she had borne me +a son. We saw much of one another, and talked ourselves very close +together. My faithful friend she became and has been always, and +for a time we were passionate lovers. Always she has loved me and +kept my soul full of tender gratitude and love for her; always +when we met our hands and eyes clasped in friendly greeting, all +through our lives from that hour we have been each other's secure +help and refuge, each other's ungrudging fastness of help and sweetly +frank and open speech. . . . And after a little while my love and +desire for Nettie returned as though it had never faded away. + +No one will have a difficulty now in understanding how that could +be, but in the evil days of the world malaria, that would have been +held to be the most impossible thing. I should have had to crush +that second love out of my thoughts, to have kept it secret from +Anna, to have lied about it to all the world. The old-world theory +was there was only one love--we who float upon a sea of love find +that hard to understand. The whole nature of a man was supposed to +go out to the one girl or woman who possessed him, her whole nature +to go out to him. Nothing was left over--it was a discreditable +thing to have any overplus at all. They formed a secret secluded +system of two, two and such children as she bore him. All other +women he was held bound to find no beauty in, no sweetness, no +interest; and she likewise, in no other man. The old-time men and +women went apart in couples, into defensive little houses, like +beasts into little pits, and in these "homes" they sat down purposing +to love, but really coming very soon to jealous watching of this +extravagant mutual proprietorship. All freshness passed very +speedily out of their love, out of their conversation, all pride +out of their common life. To permit each other freedom was blank +dishonor. That I and Anna should love, and after our love-journey +together, go about our separate lives and dine at the public tables, +until the advent of her motherhood, would have seemed a terrible +strain upon our unmitigable loyalty. And that I should have it +in me to go on loving Nettie--who loved in different manner both +Verrall and me--would have outraged the very quintessence of the +old convention. + +In the old days love was a cruel proprietary thing. But now Anna +could let Nettie live in the world of my mind, as freely as a rose +will suffer the presence of white lilies. If I could hear notes that +were not in her compass, she was glad, because she loved me, that +I should listen to other music than hers. And she, too, could see +the beauty of Nettie. Life is so rich and generous now, giving +friendship, and a thousand tender interests and helps and comforts, that +no one stints another of the full realization of all possibilities +of beauty. For me from the beginning Nettie was the figure of beauty, +the shape and color of the divine principle that lights the world. +For every one there are certain types, certain faces and forms, +gestures, voices and intonations that have that inexplicable +unanalyzable quality. These come through the crowd of kindly friendly +fellow-men and women--one's own. These touch one mysteriously, stir +deeps that must otherwise slumber, pierce and interpret the world. +To refuse this interpretation is to refuse the sun, to darken and +deaden all life. . . . I loved Nettie, I loved all who were like +her, in the measure that they were like her, in voice, or eyes, or +form, or smile. And between my wife and me there was no bitterness +that the great goddess, the life-giver, Aphrodite, Queen of the +living Seas, came to my imagination so. It qualified our mutual +love not at all, since now in our changed world love is unstinted; +it is a golden net about our globe that nets all humanity together. + +I thought of Nettie much, and always movingly beautiful things +restored me to her, all fine music, all pure deep color, all +tender and solemn things. The stars were hers, and the mystery of +moonlight; the sun she wore in her hair, powdered finely, beaten +into gleams and threads of sunlight in the wisps and strands of her +hair. . . . Then suddenly one day a letter came to me from her, in +her unaltered clear handwriting, but in a new language of expression, +telling me many things. She had learnt of my mother's death, and +the thought of me had grown so strong as to pierce the silence I +had imposed on her. We wrote to one another--like common friends +with a certain restraint between us at first, and with a great +longing to see her once more arising in my heart. For a time I left +that hunger unexpressed, and then I was moved to tell it to her. And +so on New Year's Day in the Year Four, she came to Lowchester and +me. How I remember that coming, across the gulf of fifty years! I +went out across the park to meet her, so that we should meet alone. +The windless morning was clear and cold, the ground new carpeted +with snow, and all the trees motionless lace and glitter of frosty +crystals. The rising sun had touched the white with a spirit +of gold, and my heart beat and sang within me. I remember now the +snowy shoulder of the down, sunlit against the bright blue sky. And +presently I saw the woman I loved coming through the white +still trees. . . . + +I had made a goddess of Nettie, and behold she was a fellow-creature! +She came, warm-wrapped and tremulous, to me, with the tender promise +of tears in her eyes, with her hands outstretched and that dear +smile quivering upon her lips. She stepped out of the dream I had +made of her, a thing of needs and regrets and human kindliness. Her +hands as I took them were a little cold. The goddess shone through +her indeed, glowed in all her body, she was a worshipful temple of +love for me--yes. But I could feel, like a thing new discovered, +the texture and sinews of her living, her dear personal +and mortal hands. . . . + + + + +THE EPILOGUE + +THE WINDOW OF THE TOWER + +This was as much as this pleasant-looking, gray-haired man +had written. I had been lost in his story throughout the earlier +portions of it, forgetful of the writer and his gracious room, and +the high tower in which he was sitting. But gradually, as I drew +near the end, the sense of strangeness returned to me. It was more +and more evident to me that this was a different humanity from any +I had known, unreal, having different customs, different beliefs, +different interpretations, different emotions. It was no mere change +in conditions and institutions the comet had wrought. It had made +a change of heart and mind. In a manner it had dehumanized the +world, robbed it of its spites, its little intense jealousies, its +inconsistencies, its humor. At the end, and particularly after +the death of his mother, I felt his story had slipped away from my +sympathies altogether. Those Beltane fires had burnt something in +him that worked living still and unsubdued in me, that rebelled in +particular at that return of Nettie. I became a little inattentive. +I no longer felt with him, nor gathered a sense of complete +understanding from his phrases. His Lord Eros indeed! He and these +transfigured people--they were beautiful and noble people, like the +people one sees in great pictures, like the gods of noble sculpture, +but they had no nearer fellowship than these to men. As the change +was realized, with every stage of realization the gulf widened and +it was harder to follow his words. + +I put down the last fascicle of all, and met his friendly eyes. It +was hard to dislike him. + +I felt a subtle embarrassment in putting the question that perplexed +me. And yet it seemed so material to me I had to put it. "And did +you--?" I asked. "Were you--lovers?" + +His eyebrows rose. "Of course." + +"But your wife--?" + +It was manifest he did not understand me. + +I hesitated still more. I was perplexed by a conviction of baseness. +"But--" I began. "You remained lovers?" + +"Yes." I had grave doubts if I understood him. Or he me. + +I made a still more courageous attempt. "And had Nettie no other +lovers?" + +"A beautiful woman like that! I know not how many loved beauty in +her, nor what she found in others. But we four from that time were +very close, you understand, we were friends, helpers, personal +lovers in a world of lovers." + +"Four?" + +"There was Verrall." + +Then suddenly it came to me that the thoughts that stirred in my mind +were sinister and base, that the queer suspicions, the coarseness +and coarse jealousies of my old world were over and done for these +more finely living souls. "You made," I said, trying to be liberal +minded, "a home together." + +"A home!" He looked at me, and, I know not why, I glanced down at +my feet. What a clumsy, ill-made thing a boot is, and how hard and +colorless seemed my clothing! How harshly I stood out amidst these +fine, perfected things. I had a moment of rebellious detestation. +I wanted to get out of all this. After all, it wasn't my style. I +wanted intensely to say something that would bring him down a peg, +make sure, as it were, of my suspicions by launching an offensive +accusation. I looked up and he was standing. + +"I forgot," he said. "You are pretending the old world is still +going on. A home!" + +He put out his hand, and quite noiselessly the great window widened +down to us, and the splendid nearer prospect of that dreamland city +was before me. There for one clear moment I saw it; its galleries +and open spaces, its trees of golden fruit and crystal waters, +its music and rejoicing, love and beauty without ceasing flowing +through its varied and intricate streets. And the nearer people I +saw now directly and plainly, and no longer in the distorted mirror +that hung overhead. They really did not justify my suspicions, and +yet--! They were such people as one sees on earth--save that they +were changed. How can I express that change? As a woman is changed +in the eyes of her lover, as a woman is changed by the love of a +lover. They were exalted. . . . + +I stood up beside him and looked out. I was a little flushed, my +ears a little reddened, by the inconvenience of my curiosities, +and by my uneasy sense of profound moral differences. He +was taller than I. . . . + +"This is our home," he said smiling, and with thoughtful eyes on me. + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of In the Days of the Comet, by H. G. 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