In the Days of the Comet

A

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he world. I had no hope of pride or pleasure left in me, I was raging rebellion against God and mankind. There were no more va

ivable delightfulnesses, the lost imaginations of the youthful heart, the unattainable joys in life; and Verrall who stood for all who profited by the incurable

lishing the stars, triumphant over the yellow waning moon that f

l!" I cried. "Le

over the heath towards Lowchester talking to myself, and now that night had fully come I was tramping home

t myself mad, but I c

ght nor day. There were times when I reasoned in a topsy-turvy fashion with what I

ide that cannot be satisfied, with desires that turn and rend me? Is it a jest, t

rm-making filth for it to trail through, filth that disgusts it, starving it, bruising it, mocking it? Why should y

angs of a soul. Ah! How can I believe you? You forget I have eyes for other things. Let my o

fling out a ridiculous little debat

e 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

fury, when I thought of Nettie mocking me and laughing

so!" I screamed. "I

y revolver from my pocket and fired into

thing I had done, and then, with a slow finality, the vast and patient night healed again to cal

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, a

OU?" I sai

itary desert who has sudd

too, p

night walked out to stare at the comet, and the little preacher in the waste beyond the

ry behind. The gas-lamps were all extinguished because of the brightness of the comet, and that too was unfamiliar. The little newsagent in

but one word upon it in s

at the placard. And amidst that sleeping stillness, smeared hastily upon the board, a little askew and crumpled, b

AR

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uanimity that so often foll

beside my bed. She had some bre

en sleeping. It was three o'clock when you got

sheet and your eyes shining. . . . It frightened

thing still bulged. She probably had not noticed.

the tray upon my knees, she kissed my hair softly. For a moment we b

y from her to

id sharply, as she moved towards them

saying, "You dear mother, you! A little-I understa

, she went from me. Dear heart of submis

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

ollars, and shaving much more carefully than was my wont;

emoranda from the time-tables. The porters I asked were not very clear about Shaphambury, but the booking-office clerk was helpfu

rary and into the newspaper r

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

rl

tore 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

ow is swiftest," Parload used to say, and I meant to get everything thou

y midday meal, but I determined not to pledge

ntly, revo

tio

some scraps of cabbage and bacon-I put on my overcoat and got it

d 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 t

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 l

. 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-

round his dull red curtains with a sort of alarmed resolution in his eye and vanished,

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

nly 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

of friendly ease. "Haven't seen you f

ed very greatly to have refused it, never was invitation more inopportune, but I had not th

lified. "One doesn't get much opportuni

jumpy fragments, rubbing his hands together, and taking peeps at me over and round his glasses. As I sat down in h

h Sea, it seems," he remarked with a sort of

eplace 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 look

he war had to come sooner or later. If we smash their

spectacles at a water-color by his sister-the subject was a bunch of violets-above th

dered how I might

n talking in a confidential tone of this "dreadful business" of the strikes. "

colliers in striking merely for the sake of the union, and this stirred

the men didn't strike for the union now, if they let that be brok

en the masters were selling bottom-price coal. I replied, "That isn't i

been in the Four Towns some time, and I must say I don't t

" I agreed, wilfully

skill in self-extraction, and my irritation crept into my voice. Three little spots of color ca

think this world was made for a small minor

d the Rev. Gabbitas,

at doesn't lead m

e heel of this confo

ap at the front door, and, as he hung suspended, the

y, but he would not let me. "No, no, no!"

t with an effect of physical co

; and there entered Miss Ramell, an elderly little

eau, and I remained standing by my chair but unable to get

t the carriers and opened his desk.

d 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 o

ush-fringed mantelboard, and studied the photographs, pipes, and ash-trays t

ng forced to leap over a bottomless chasm-and alighted upon the sovere

alk further," said Miss R

ted her into the passage, and for a moment or so I had the fullest sense of pr

and he returned. My ch

tio

h a curiously reinforced desir

to call you away." Then with an evident desire to shift the venue of our t

pinions to him. Why should I pretend a feeling of intellectual and social inferiority toward him. He asked what I thought of Burble. I resolved

e book you lent me

and indicated the armchair with a

I didn't think much of

sa

cleverest bishops

s dodging about in a jo

u m

on't think he proves

He knows himself for

soning'

itiation vanished from his manner. His eyes and mouth were round,

t," he said at last, wit

two toward the window and turned. "I suppose you will admit-" he began

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 n

her 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 no

e echoes of the a

foolish things on either side. And on the whole-from the impartial perspective of my three and seve

ous 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

master. Indeed, all I knew of him had come to me through a two-column article in The

he Rev. Gabbitas was absolutely ignorant even of the name of Nietzsche, although that writer presented

che," said I, with an air

rdly at the name that

Nietzsche says?" I p

uately answered," said he,

ly. "Tell me that!" and be

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embarrassment of that challenge, and carried me

t, and the gride and cessation of wheels. I glimpsed a straw-hatted coachman

dow. "Why, it's old Mrs. Verrall! It's old Mrs

sed and his face shone like the sun. It was not every

cuse me a minute! Then-then I'll tell you about that fellow. But don'

room waving vague p

," I cried

I think it was he added, and "quite mistaken;" and I s

e window, and this brought me wit

ul, and instantly her son and Nettie's face were flaming in my brain. Th

s I doi

here while judg

d lady's projected nose and quivering hand, and then with swift, clean movements I had the little drawer ope

d at his clock. Twenty minutes still before the Birmingham train. Time t

the passage, and took

pas

e with me while so important a person enga

, of all the really DESERVING cas

nstead, I was possessed by a realization of the blazing imbecility of a social system that gave this palsied old woman the power to give o

at sort," he was saying, and glanced ro

twenty minutes," and went on my way. He turned again to his patroness a

acles, 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-sta

tio

ed the

uld 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

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 misse

hink 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

down on Shaphambury from the north. That might involve a night at some intermediate stopping-place but it would effectually co

l anxiety before I r

king at this world for the last time. If I overtook the fugitives and succeeded, I should

h 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

them all. I write down that realization of disorder and suffocation here and now as though I had thought it, but ind

see that coun

At any rate I wasn't

sweet air, und

sound, the minute undulation of a rem

w I was leaving it all! Thank God I was leaving it al

aware 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

h

est rising between me and home. I had

as missed them already, what should I return to? A

ced my revenge? What of the time whe

hing had

y, left her some message, reassured her at least for a littl

r a telegram fro

tell the course I had taken, to bring pursuit upon me, swift

e, but now as if some greater will th

and just caught the last train for Monksham