In the Days of the Comet

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evening on which Parload first showed me the comet — I think I only pr

lear 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

mself, 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 w

; here’s distress and hunger coming, here’s all the capitalistic competitive system like a wou

e said slowly, as though it was a ne

etings of an evenin

nk they’

sten fast

said Parload, looking

nemployed at Swathinglea on Sun

hile and I said several things. He

h an awkward movement towards his spec

com

es

ve in astrology. What does it matter what flames

it’s s

want now is social

reluctant to g

“but if that thing up there WAS

tters but h

it killed

d I, “tha

oad, dreadfully divid

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 abou

Leadford,” he said. “You do

so used to entire possession of our talk that his brief contrad

said P

t h

han socialism,” he said. “Socialism’s a th

ly all he seemed

ht, 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 me

own the street, but I felt that he was already back at the window wor

ur or so, before I was

ho had first introdu

rea

tern, 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

n, “how much the more must we punish those who would give over the State to the pursuit

f only you’d listened to

my only gossip, and it cost me much to keep away from him and th

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,

conclusive mala

mpered, ill-disposed youth with

an excus

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

comprehensive fac

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 distr

ssibly result simply from ignorance and want of thought and feeling. We needed more dramatic factors than these mental fogs, these mere atmospheric d

ing up the caricatures of capital and labor that adorned

tio

ned the affair was over forever —“I’ve done with women,” I sai

ondering with a growing emotion w

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

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 spok

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

ve 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, al

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 ans

g the quality of the old-world love-mak

together 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

ked ourselves we were linked for life. Then afterwards we discovered that other was

tie on the Sunday afternoon and suddenly came upon her, light bodied, slenderly feminine, hazel eyed, with her soft sweet

feminine, the embodiment of the inner thing in life for

r pose, but indeed she was standing quite still, looking away towards the gray and lichenous shrubbery wall

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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

llie!” s

stant all the elaborate things I had intende

pris

es

me — her impenetrable dear face. She laughed a queer little laugh and her c

hat?” she said wi

lain myself to think of

“that I didn’t mean quite . .

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ogether. Now we were a year and three-quarters older, and she — her metamorphosis wa

pened little mind flashed out their intuitive scheme of action. She treated

d you come?

er I had

t down. Indeed it was near tea-time (the Stuarts had tea at the old-fashioned hour of five). Every one would be SO surpri

at a distance, without e

I came over to

if you please! And besi

a new note, that

ned her pa

to explain

do so. I said a few discrepant things that she a

r 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 n

ed the end of

reca

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 f

it back and

as 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 beg

walked in before me. “Guess wh

m the parlor, and a chair creaked. I

ed in her clear yo

as her

alked all the way from Clayton, and they gath

,” said her father; “now you h

me curiousl

ut 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 —

er father. “Give h

by my sudden apparition, dusty, fatigued, and white faced

if she were vexed. “I declare!

said Mrs. Stuart. “I don’

een running, for when she came in again she was out of breath. In the meantime, I had throw

he said, panting. “Is tea ready

cted 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 diffic

the gab, young man. We ought

. Failing any other stimulus, he reverted to my sear

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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 w

aging that bore a close crowd of pots and ferns, and behind big branching plants that were spread and nailed overhead so as to m

ely?” she said, and looked at

“I was a fool to wr

flashed out upon her face. But sh

“I can’t do without

e fingers she plunged among the green branches of a s

m,” I said. “At l

ie was stupid to think otherwise, but I was for the moment

wrote

venteen miles to say

t perhap

s; then I said, not ve

you love me, Will

tie! You k

she shook

c plunge. “Nettie,” I said, “I’d rathe

engaged her. “You th

t into pro

shortly. “It’s

letters make so much

rs. But it is different.

. She looked up abruptly into my eyes and moved, indeed slight

mean it to e

o! . . Nettie! Nettie!

nd with all her pose conveying her finality. She seem

er 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 widen

thout little enterprises of endearment, withou

ery 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 intense

ould feel that I touched her, that her hardness was in some manner melting, her determination softening toward

abruptly, star

impossible, Willie. Everything is different now — everything. We made a mistake.

urned

tween the staging toward the hot-house door. I pursued her like an accusation,

let me talk

he park. Ever and again I found her hazel eyes upon me. They expressed something novel — a surprise, as

d my spirits and temper had so far mended at the realization that I could still produce an effect upon Nettie, that I was ev

She was lost in perplexities I could not fathom, and

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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

oonlight. “With the comet t

ted, “you MUST

ll di

ick undertone, and with a persuasive look that puzzled me. E

up with, “The hollies by the shrubbery are a

dark,” said I. “Nor of

s! Supposing o

uld 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 re

nd glad to be so easily brave, but a little sor

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

e corner of the shrubbery I was startled to come unexpe

moonlight, his cigar glowed like a blood-red star, and it did not occur to me at

a sort of amiable chal

light. “Who cares

ntermittent dispute between the House people and the villager public about the use

cried in

y, I suppose,” said I, a

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 t

answered. “Dam

t is by

find himself face to face w

vil are YOU

expedient of re-echoing,

,” he

ed to be public land. You’ve stolen the land — you and yours, and now you want to steal th

the improvised club in my pocket gripped ready, and I would have fought w

id, alert and quiet and with

of

philosophically, “and I haven’t the faintes

tter not,

N

N

here was a brief pause. “Cat

ot to answer. “Yes

a pleasant even

and he stood aside. There seemed nothing to do but go

a surly

ly burst with some violence as I went on my silent wa

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e of two entirely divergent things, that

following the short cut to Checkshill

elligent detachment of my sudden interest. I turned sharply, and stood looking at the moo

arition in the dark blue deeps! It looked brighter than the moon because it was smaller, but the shadow it cast, though c

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

l of perplexities for me, the mysterious invisible thing that had held Nettie and myse

she had hurried me in, the nature of the “book” she had run back to fetch, the reason why she had wa

ture, 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

y discovery. Meanwhile my feet and my previous direction carried me through the warm darkness

mpartments of that time — and the sudden nearly frantic insurgence of my rage. I stood up with the cry

t 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, de

of the carriage with my bruised and wounded hand pressed under my arm, and still insensible to its pain, trying