In the Days of the Comet

CH

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ken out of a re

ng 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-n

en there rose upon my consciousness, intermingling with t

ht be, drifted and vanished again in

was as stil

owering barley field, that was in some inexplicable way saturated with light and beauty. I sat up, and remained for a long time filled wi

What was this place? How ha

not re

d 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 som

ustled the barley-heads,

t was a good w

th a quality of painted unreality, transfigured as a beggar might have been by

had owned that arm and hand, as

croscope. 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.

now, something absurd, tha

able creature! Poor litt

e 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

n incons

he still and silent barley fields of God, full o

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s in heaven, but no doubt there w

But, indeed, everything was very still! No bird sang. Surely I was alone in the world! No birds sang

ew; but to be alone! I stood up and met the hot summons of the rising sun, hurryi

hard, and I looked down to discover my revolver,

ent that

nder of the quiet took possession of

edge 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 fr

on. 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

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 mo

perched upon a cornflower. I thought at first it was the breeze that stirred it, and then I saw its wings w

h. And now, life was returning to this thing and that on every side of me, with s

e 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 lifte

for a time with clean and happy eyes looking at the intricate delica

thread of song; one lark, and then presently another, invisibly in

finite 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 u

glad, looking at this beautiful thing and that, moving a step and stopping, then movin

s a round label, and on the label t

ng all the implications of these words. But they perp

up their little hearts and s

nclusion 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 worl

wing certitude of health and happiness. It might be the old world, but the dus

anger and universal darkness and the whirling green vapors of extinction. The co

terwar

d

f 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 pas

dells has got

mer 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

t of things accomplished stabbed my mirth, and I was weeping, weeping

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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 f

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, "the

rkened 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 eno

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

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her 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 b

nto the lane forthwith, and so came upon Melmo

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 th

wrong?

ng a profile, a well-modeled nose, a sensitive, clumsy, big lip, known to every car

ter and sock and boot off, the motor gauntlets had been cast aside, and he w

said, "you'

ame," he said, without looking up. .

few moments except for

sked, "what has ha

his diagnosis. "It's

eated, "what has hap

g up at me incuriousl

some diff

terest was coming into his eyes. "I've been a little preoccupied with my own int

nd a queer feeling, a

ravely. "I woke up," he said,

nd

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

f green gas came out of nothing ever

re's something odd in the air. I was-I was rushing along a road in a motor-car, very m

c 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 s

should have forgotten!

had hea

t last

t. One or two i

, but the whole of that seems like a silly dream. Do you think there WAS a Lord Warden? Do

sily and freely with so great a man. "Yes," I said; "that's it. One feels one has awakened-f

alf of his leg thoughtfully. "I mad

reticence in the man that held him for the moment. "It is a very curious thing," he b

re in

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

tared 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 p

ieve 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 w

made last night," he said, "was damned mischievous nonsense, you know. Nothing can alter

that he should adopt this incredible note of frankness,

all indisputable fact, and I can't

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asion 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 sensatio

en. Before those days, not only did we think badly, but what we thought, a thousand short-sighted considerations, dignity, objec

said, and told me half solilo

ely. 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 eff

f indiscret

e 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 pu

dible whisperings,

t of the morning of the Change I forgot Nettie and Verrall as completely as though they were no more than c

l this must end. How it ever began---! My dear boy, how did all those things ever begin? I feel like a new Adam

ge to either of us that he should requisition my services or that I should cheerfully obey. I helped him bandage his ankle, and we

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an 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 tak

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

re until we had made another of our tripod struggles along the beach. At

the groin, "there had been such

t takes his clay, as a man who builds takes site and stone, and made---" He flung out his big br

re wouldn't have been such stories

re 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 m

to you. "And there, where those little skerries of weed rock run out to the eb

ing there-amo

others feel like you and I," he said, "there'll be

oor 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.

ess 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 th

tar-fish writhed its slowly feeling limbs, struggling b

panted Melmount, leaning on my

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 r

kly-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

on 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

t 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,

tle scared at ourselves-all, a

things like this!" He jerked his

to know what has happe

r stuff. But I know w

always known. . . . Bu

going to

e with his clumsy

stepping forward inst

wine 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

pau

Father," he began presently

whisper. His hand tightened painfu