In the Days of the Comet

IT OF THE

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ere I had never been before, but out of the commonplace daylight and the touch and quality of ordina

ay, 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 phe

ow 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hard or black, but it shone phosphorescently and with a diminishing intensity where the stimulus of the sun's rays was withdrawn.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.

ric 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 t

newsvendors and to the noisy yappings of a dog they had raised to emulation. They wer

t 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

its own again, and pe

ace. 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 c

been," we said; "thu

y, 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

efore. 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, i

I was greatly tormented, as that unparalleled glory of the night returned, to think t

oung couples who promenaded, with my hand in my pocket ready, and a curious ache in my heart that had no

whole hour late; they said it was on account of the m

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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 a

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 i

med 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 enterpr

it must seem impossibly queer,-and after an

r a long time over that-at first I was a little tired

, 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

turned toward the big hotel. Its gorgeous magnificence seemed to my inexpert j

ened 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 bras

y and gentleman who c

ay,"

e asked with a terrib

ched there, but they had had no room. But I went out-door opened again for me obsequiously-

s, 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 sta

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, a

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 ha

hem. I have already told how I went through the dusk seeking them in every couple that drew near. And I dropped a

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perplexing multitude of clues. After failing to find any young couple that corresponded t

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 f

on I now had to debate was which of t

ering to myself, because there was something in that luminous wonderful

had gone to the Bungalow village at Bone

en-legged man at th

o," s

his pipe, his silver rin

" he

is?" I

h! If it wasn't for this blasted Milky

questions for a time. Then he

e?-rather. Artis' and

-something sc

?" I said, sudde

's that flicker? A gunf

long before it was near

o know could I get him to turn from his absorbed contemplation of that phantom dance between th

"along this road. And

ay of thanks, and so we parted, and I

little way beyond the end of the parade, an

, you know," he cal

he dark masses of Shaphambury behind me, and pushed out into the dim pallo

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 int

lly. 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 reca

range 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, dea

enish light still hanging in the sky. And after that there was a shiver and whispering in the a

r that was near Shaphambury or near the end of my walk. The hesitat

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 so

he 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,

ul! Peace! peace!-the peace that passeth un

d, and suddenly

nge in my blood. It came to me t

reat desire had come to me to escape from life, from the daylight which is heat and c

I was filled with an inarticulate spirit of pr

solve 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

, revenge? It entered

atter now and let

ngled the natures of water and light, to stand there bre

y

fort. I walked slowly up

ck at the sea. No! Som

N

st t

I sat down amidst a black cluster of shrubs, and rested, chin on hand. I drew my rev

ps of being, but indeed imperceptib

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were bathin

ed 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 th

ess that hid nothing of the shining, d

hat pierced me to the heart, and fled up the beach obliquely toward me, running like the wind, and passed me, v

between exhaustion

g up with hands held up and clenched, rigid in gest

ht and beauty was Nettie-and this was

ht have died there by the she

revolver in hand, in quiet unsuspected pursui

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age I had been seeking, nestling in a crescent lap of dunes. A d

nto one of these three they had gone, and I was too late to see whic

mprovised 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, enhance

ast that is the impression I have brought with me across the gulf of the great Change. To succeed in

ght 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,

as never for dalliance, I was never a jesting lover. I wanted fiercely; I made love impatiently. Perhaps I h

g 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 vill

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tood planning w

til one of the two I sought answered to m

s-perhaps until morning-

en or overheard, I might get a clue to guide me. Should I advance circuitously, creeping upon them, or should

ns, I might at last confront my betrayers with these others close about me, ready

pt upon my senses, an

rks, 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

the village leapt up and burst hot gold against the glar

flickered and became steadily bright. Dark heads appeared looking seaward, a door opened, and sent out a brie

little torchlike spurt of flame wavered behind her funnels. I c

hooded figure, some man in a bathing wrap, absurdly suggestive of an Arab in his burnous, cam

e his seaward eyes, and

dea of approaching the three bungalows inconspicuously from the flank. This fight at sea might serve my purpose-except for that, it had no interes

the first. His arm pointed seaward, and his voice, a full tenor, rose in explan

istinct babble of argument. I went on slowly in the cir

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

ound beyond the bungalows, and then

s voice called, "Hone

ut and

s voice answered from within. What he said I did not catch, but su

come out shouted, "D

ng-not five mi

he bungalow, and

the

e people were all too much occupied by the battle to look in my direction, and so I wal

some one, and

e 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 wit

lad, and "boom!" and the guns of th

azed, and more than a little giddy. I had a curious instant of purely speculative thought. Suppose, after

d 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,

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 sw

d. Do you know, I did not want to shoot her then. Indeed I did not want to shoot her the

staring, and then someone intervened,

posterous interruption. His face was full of astonishment and terror. He rushed across my path with arms extended and open hands, as one migh

d hoarsely. "Not you!" But

ound 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 t

n and shoot them barrel to backbone. "These people!" I said, dismissing all these interferences. . . . "A

several people-I do not know,

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 tur

he road again and on turf. It felt like turf. I tripped and fell at a ditch that was somehow full o

l I

. I staggered again and swore. I felt the concus

all 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

ic effort, and raised

venture, and fell he

curtain was a black

things cea

THE S

REEN