In the Days of the Comet

TER THE

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anish, 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

inous haze of gladness c

me-amazing, a thing

ass 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

perspectives of my reconstruct

er 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 t

nted to kill you," I said simply, trying to grasp that idea. I

d Verrall; "and we could not find

de. 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 st

of my heart. But my l

stol away." Sheer bla

hile; I said empty th

hat you are here, so

I said, breaking away to explanations. "I have been writing sh

at 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

d 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

y 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 liv

kshill in the old time, after

and. It was absurd t

and said that to-morrow then we must meet and say good-bye, and so turned our encounter into a transitory making of a

that was all we ha

iscovered something overlooked that disarranged all my plans, something entirely disconcerting. For the first time I went back preoccupied and without

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, 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 pas

ttie is inseparably associated-I don't kn

as. 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. The

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

nitude of friendliness. Her lips in he

h inns in those days charged the unexpecte

hat 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 th

he said, "you and your friends; such an omelet-like they'll have 'em in heaven! I feel there's

n-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 sunli

but that did not greatly gladden

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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

but we bear, all three of us, th

raver 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 mar

h the Change has destroyed of me. I still don't feel awake. Men

ll-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

t now, and see the lift of his

to say that, but it was n

tle and took hold of

I said, "

ed at one

"I did not mean to marry w

I looked up with a s

ll's

joined our lives. . . . But the thing

d, "is madness." Then I fell i

things?" he said, tur

ped under her chin,

with her old trick of

med to open

o treat you badly-indeed I didn't. I kept thinking of you-and of father and mother, all the t

en!"

d of me," she admitted. "It's

ittle gestur

he cloth for a space. Then he

raging desire-for her. I don't know. Everything c

n," s

knew o

him about me?" I said, feeling, as i

s dropped; I saw you that night, my inst

f I could I would have triumphe

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

t me on to follow. With that revolver-and blubbering with hate. And the

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 Verra

ing with a frankness as bright and amazin

an," I said slowl

ey spoke

it all in little bright pictures. Do you know-that jacket-there

ded,

rrible 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 mo

eries quietly, "yes, Verrall, you have a good

a time before our

ese waves of instinct and wordless desire, these foaming things of touch and sight a

said, trying it further, "we were clinging to our chicken coops and going

orm is over. And each chicken coop has changed by a

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e to do?" a

ts calyx and remove, one by one, its petals. I remember that went on through all our talk. She put those ragged crimson shreds in

ems fairly simple. You two"-I

ed me by silence, by

her. I have thought it

iew. I happened to wa

. I had no right to p

hold yourself

dded

this generous clearness in the air-for that

onest eyes meeting mi

"I thought of you as somethi

he inte

id, "it is

my thread had sl

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. . .

ble memory in my brain, but I felt the assent of Verrall's pose. There wer

while. I sighed and

e," I smiled, "now tha

d Nettie, and slashed my

ou see," she said, "I like Willie. It's hard to say wh

bjected Verra

on petals back into a heap of confusion. She began to

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 eve

re only feeling your way thr

ght it tr

on't

think so still. For

test at this doctri

felt for him down in the bottom of my mind. I can understand all the

id, "but I

k 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 un

u love

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 th

, and Nettie, with a quick movement, swep

it ran through my mind like some puzzling

these things," sh

t th

ver has bel

man," said Verrall,

di

eople look, in the way they behave-one day there will come a man. He will be

taught that of some

h they believed it. One need not be old to know that. By nature they don't believe it. But a woma

ed to,"

," said Verr

o 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 sam

sed with my eyes upo

e 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

question," said Verrall, s

mething 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 th

slowly following me,

n, 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, t

get?" sa

d; "but anyhow-ceas

that for s

her last pattern and looked

le, elbows upon it, and the fing

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 th

mals," sa

. .

ife," I said, "but that is

t struggle. That has been alt

oose,"

t choose t

ave ch

as. . . 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 m

. "About this

another. It was the clean, straight scrutiny of honest antagon

" said

I said, c

nge. 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!

was a

ettie, with the eyes of a w

d assen

p, all three. We parted almost sullenly, with no more mem

self left there somehow-horribly empty and alone. I

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ttie had come back and s

id. "Edward has let me come to you alone. And

g and that em

we ought to p

k we ought to pa

- 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, Wil

settled that-

t W

ove

" Our eyes met. She flushed, she went on resolutely: "You

not understand w

n that I

yes.

the unfathomable darkness below the surface and present reality of

quivering lips, and the tears in her eye

rrupted her.

in we we

he 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

went, reluctant and looking back, with the man she had chosen, to the l

er and put it in my pocket. But my memory of that

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n 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 f

for ever from Nettie, for I think I had it in min

on 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 aim

esire, to physical and personal rivalry, to all that was most intensely myself, it was wrong to leave me alone and sor

ned about with a sigh, and I was glad that the way I

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

unk 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 di

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 serve

and reasoning and meeting again with Nettie. . . . Sh