In the Days of the Comet

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s going to hi

men who got into the

id the o

of gas, that comet. We sha’

it matt

what else might happen, if only that end was ensured. All my thwarted passions had turned to rage. I would have accepted eternal torment that night without a second thought, to be certain of revenge. A hundred possibilities of

intensest jealousy, with the keen, unmeasuring hatr

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lk over the hill — I remember very vividly a little man with a shrill voice who was preaching under a gas-lamp against a hoarding to a thin crowd of Sunday ev

with the end of the world. He had got that jumbled up with i

ave halted at all but his crowd blocked my path, and the sight of his qu

nts, the Judgments of the most High God! It is appointed unto all men to die — unto all men to

d occupied me before — where I could buy a revolver, and how I might master its use — and probably I should have forgotten all about him had he n

e days that seem now to have been w

violence in Nettie’s eyes or I must kill her. I would not let myself fall away from that. I felt that if I let this matter pass, my last shred of pride and honor woul

t easy to buy

ess land. As I knew nothing of caliber or impact, I wanted also to be able to ask with a steady face at what distance a man or woman could be killed by the weapon that might be offered me. I was pretty cool-headed in relation to such practical aspects of my affair. I had some little difficulty in finding a gunsmith. In Clayton there

this purchase, and I found it at last a very easy transaction. The pawnbroker told me whe

They were already at “play.” The Conciliation Board was doing its best to keep the coal-miners and masters from a breach, but young Lord Redcar, the greatest of our coal owners and landlord of all Swathinglea and half Clayton, was taking a fine upstanding attitude that made the breach inevitable. He was a handsome young man, a gallant young man; his pride revolted at the idea of being dictated to by a “lot of bally miners,” and he meant, he said, to make a fight for it. The world had treated him sumptuously from his earliest years; the shares in the common stock of five thousand people had gone to pay for his handsome upbringing, and large, romantic, expensive ambitions filled his generously nurtured mind. He had early distinguished himself at Oxf

till going on, he was visible almost every day in and about the Four Towns, driving that big motor car of his that could take him sixty miles an hour. The English passion for fair play one might have thou

ooded as a cloud will sometimes brood permanently upon a mountain crest, in the

d Redcar’s passing automobile with a special

night the rain poured in on her bed and gave her a cold, and stained and soaked her poor old patchwork counterpane. Then she got me to compose an excessively polite letter to old Pettigrew, begging him as a favor to perform his legal obligations. It is part of the general imbecility of those days that such one-sided law as existed was a profound mystery to the common people, its provisions impossible to ascertain, its machinery impossible to set in motion. Instead of the clearly written code, the lucid statements of rules and principles that are now at the service of every one, the law was the muddle secret of the leg

incredible. I can only

indignation, and took the matter into my own hands. I wrote and asked him, with a withering air of technicality, to have the roof repaired “as per agreement,” and added, “if not done in one week from now we shall be obl

o old Mr. Pettigrew li

iful way to her when she said that she had settled everything with him — she wouldn’t say how, but I could guess well e

evaded my illumination; he saw me coming up his front steps — I can still see his queer old nose and the crinkled brow over his eye and the little wisp of gray hair that showed over t

on leaseholds, the taxation of ground rents, and the private ownership of the soil. And Lord Redcar, whose spirit revolted at democracy, and who cultivated a pert humiliating manner with his inferiors to show as much, earned my distinguished hatred for ever by causing his secretary to present his compliments to me, and his

r-car whizzed by me, as I went about upon my long meandering quest for a weapon. And I discovered after a time that my mother had bruised her knee and was lame. Fearing to irritate me by bringing the thing before me again, she had set herself to move her bed out of the way o

he strike, the rumors and indignations, the gatherings and meetings, the increasing gravity of the policemen’s faces, the combative headlines of the local papers, the knots of picketers who scrutinized any one who passed near the silent, smokele

thought of Nettie, my Nettie, and her gentleman lover ma

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ended in the bloody affair of Peacock Grove and the flooding out of the entire line of the Swathinglea collieries. It

gh to refresh my impression of what I saw. They lie before me — queer, shriveled, incredible things; the cheap paper has already become brittle and brown and split along the creases, the ink faded or smeared, and I have to handle them with the utmost care when I glance among their raging headlines. As I sit here in this serene place, their quality throughout, their arrangement, th

spent the afternoon, experimenting and practising with careful deliberation and grim persistence. I had brought an old kite-frame of cane with me, that folded and unfolded, and each shot-hole I made I marked and numbered to compare with my other endeavors. At last I was satisfied

a pillar-box, the steam-trams began. So far that dirty hot way had been unusually quiet and empty, but beyond the corner, where the first group of beershops clustered, it became populous. It was very

k Burden pit, Jack Briscoe, was a socialist, and he had distinguished himself by a violent letter upon the crisis to the leading socialistic paper in England, The Clarion, in which he had adventured among the motives

ccasion. But they came out in a sort of semiofficial strike from all Lord Redcar’s collieries beyond the canal that besets Swathinglea. They did so without formal notice, committing a breach of contract by this sudden cessati

ing, and there was a rumor that men from Durham had been held in readiness by Lord Redcar, and were already in the mine. Now, it is absol

ustrial drama without asking a question, if Lord Redcar had not chanced to come u

active all that afternoon in meeting the quarrel half way, and preparing as conspicuously as possible for the scra

he affair outside the Bantock Burden p

self how the th

ent on, and the lines of the steam-tramway that started out from before my feet, and were here shining and acutely visible with reflected skylight and here lost in a shadow, took up for one acute moment the greasy yellow irradiation of a newly lit gaslamp as they vanished round the bend. Beyond, spread a darkling marsh of homes, an infinitude of little smoking hovels, and emergent, meager churches, public-houses, board schools, and other buildings amidst the prevailing chimneys of Swathinglea. To the right, very clear and

kyline to the west, and the comet rose eastward out of the pouring

ss and inevitable rush upon our earth, until it had equaled and surpassed the moon. Now it was the most splendid thing this sky of earth has ever held. I have never seen a photograph that gave a proper idea of it. Never at any time did it assume the conventional tailed outline, comets are supposed to have. Astronomers talked o

a moment with a vague anticipation that, after all, in some way so strange and glorious an object must hav

t

c men that the thing weighed so little — at the utmost a few hundred tons of thinly diffused gas and dust — that even were it to sm

rose up, the presence of those watching groups of peopl

threaded my course through the stagnating threat of this gathering, and wa

te. It was not a word, it was a sound that mingled threat and protest, something between a prolonged “Ah!” and “Ugh!” Then with a hoarse intensity of anger came a low heavy booing, “Boo! boo — oo!” a

towards the colliery gate

I saw the motor-car stop and move forward again, an

was a man who tried to pass across the front of the motor-car as it came slowly through the crowd, who escaped by a hair’s breadth, and then slipped on the tram-rail and fell down. I have both ac

everything swayed violently to the right for perhaps te

as a matter of fact, something had gone wrong with the motor, what in those old-fashioned contrivances was called a backfire. A thin puff of bluish smoke hung in th

as if to prevent it from starting again; one — it was Mitchell, a well-known labor leader — argued in fierce low tones with Lord Redcar. I could not hear anything they said, I was not near enough. Behind me the colliery gates were open, and there was a sense of help coming to the m

at my fingers should close up

d, and not so quickly but that several men hurried

some young man with a fine tenor voice and an instinct for gallant effect. My eyes were drawn to him at first wholly. He seemed a symbol, a triumphant symbol, of all that the theory of aristocracy claims,

ll, over and over again. “You’ll wa

,” said Redcar; and to the chauffe

Mitchell; and the chauffeur stoo

, and for the first time my attention was drawn to him. It was young Verra

oice of Mitchell and Lord Redcar. This new fact sen

rpose coming to

it seemed certain to come to

tightened on my revolver, and then I remembered it was unloaded. I had thought my course out in an instan

ught, among the dump heaps across the roa

with his fists clenched, halted f

“Ain’t afraid o

wing him my pistol, and the expression changed in his ey

s growing loud an

ds the heaps. Some instinct told me not to be detected loading. I was co

ed all the others. I did it slowly because I felt a little clumsy, and at the end came a moment of inspection — had I forgotten any thing? And then for a few seconds I crouched before I rose, resisting the first gust of reaction against my impulse. I took thought, and for a moment that great g

bout

e to think out that

again, and walked slowly

had to kil

that distant other world of Checkshill, the world of parks and gardens, the world of sunlit emotions and Nettie. His appearance here was disconcerting. I was taken by surprise. I was too tired and hungry to think clearly, and the hard implication

shriek of a woman, and the crowd ca

car and felled Mitchell, and men were already run

at one time between two big men so that my arms were pinned to my sides, but all the other detail

tment. His face was touched with orange from the automobile’s big lamps, which conflicted with the shadows of the comet light, and distorte

mediately I meant attacking. He struck out at once

t hand out of my pocket and brought it up in a belated

went back I saw recognition ming

u swine,” I crie

of Lord Redcar as a great furry bulk, towering like some Homeric hero above the fray. I went down before

t do. The picketa’s

t past me. I rolled over on my face and beheld the chauffeur, young Verrall, and Lord Redcar — the latter holding up his long skirts of fur,

yself up o

g Ve

it. I was covered with coaly mud — knees, elbows, s

otence overwhelmed me. I st

limping homeward, thwarted, painful, confused, and ashamed. I had not the

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used me at last out of a hag-rid sleep to face despair. I was a soul lost amidst desolations and sha

my misery. I was sensible, with an exaggerated distinctness, of the intensity of her physical charm for me, of her every grace and beauty; she took to herself the whole gamut of desire in me and the whole gamut of pride. She, bodily, was my lost honor. It was not only

by reason of the insufficiency of words. And once towards dawn I got out of bed, and sat by my looking-glass with my revolver loaded in my hand

ut amidst those who slept were those who waked, plumbing the deeps of wrath and misery. Countless thousands there were so ill

I spent in gl

with my foot bandaged, and mused darkly and read. My dear old mother waited on me, and her brown eyes watched me and wondered at my black silences, my frown

saucepans and kettle on the narrow, cheap, but by no means economical range, the ashes under the fireplace, the rust-spotted steel fender on which my bandaged feet rested; I wonder how near you can come to seein

brittle, they crack if I touch them. I have a copy of the actual issue I read that morning; it was a paper called emphatically the New Paper, but everybody bought it and everybody called it the “yell.” It was full that morn

s to be a superior tribe in physique and discipline, you demonstrated this upon your neighbors, and if successful you took their land and their women and perpetuated and enlarged your superiority. The new war changed nothing but the color of maps, the design of postage stamps, and the relationship of a few accidentally conspicuous individuals. In one of the last of these international epileptic fits, for example, the English, with much dysentery and bad poetry, and a few hundred deaths in battle, conquered the South African Boers at a gross cost of about three thousand pounds per head — they could have bought the whole of that preposterous imitation of a nation for a tenth of that sum — a

resonating futility, the cheering, the anxieties, the songs and the waving of flags, the wrongs of generous Buller and the glorious heroism of De Wet — who ALWAYS got away; that was the great point abo

tself as a thing inevitable, sinking now a little out of attention only to resume more emphatically, now flashing into some acute defin

re growing up with only the vaguest early memories of the old world, I find the greatest diffi

llions, in a state of confusion no whit better than our own, and the noisy little creatures who directed papers and wrote books and gave lectures, and generally in that time of world-dementia pretended to be the national mind, were busy in both countries, with a sort of infernal unanimity, exhorting — and not only exhorting but successfully persuading — the two peoples to divert such small common store of material, moral and intellectual energy as either possessed

elligence, the legacy of inordinate passion we have received from the brute from which we came. Just as I had become the slave of my own surprise and anger and went hither and thither with a loaded revolver, seeking and intending vague fluctuating crim

that kept these two huge multitudes o

as all our world has happened,— because there was no clear Will in the world to bring about anything better. Towards the end this “press” was almost entirely under the direction of youngish men of that eager, rather unintelligent type, that is never able to detect itself aimless, tha

you, very briefly

ere is a throbbing of telephones and a clicking of telegraph needles, a rushing of messengers, a running to and fro of heated men, clutching proofs and copy. Then begins a clatter roar of machinery catching the infection, going faster and faster, and whizzing and banging,— engineers, who have never had time to wash since their birth, flying about with oil-cans, while paper runs off its rolls with a shudder of haste. The proprietor you must suppose arriving explosively on a swift motor-car, leaping out before the thing is at a standstil

aper at every door, bales, heaps, torrents of papers, that are snatched and flung about in what looks like a free fight, and off with a rush and clatter east, west, north, and south. The interest passe

cels, into separate papers, and the dawn happens unnoticed amidst a great running and shouting of boys, a shoving through letter slots, openings of windows, spreading out upon book-stalls. For the space of a few hours you must figure the whole country dotted white with rustling papers — placards everywhere vociferating the hurried lie for the day; men

one — gone utterly, vanished as

sense, unreasonable excitement, witless mischief,

steel fender in that dark underground kitchen of my mother’s, clean roused from my personal troubles b

ne of forty-one million such corpuscles and, for all my preoccupations, these potent headlines, this paper ferment, caught me and swung me about. And all over the

as the message of the New Paper, and the monster towered over me, threatening fresh outrages, visibly spitting upon my faultless country’s colors. Somebody had hoisted a British flag on the right bank of some tropical river I had never heard of before, and a drunken German officer under ambiguous instructions had torn it down. Then one of

r COME

ne. One’s heart lea

g of battles and victories by land and sea, of shell fire, and e

tarted, I remember, in a curiously hopeful state

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There was a great confusion of dramatically conceived intentions in my head, scenes of threatening and denunciation an

because I had the revolver and was a foolish young lout. It was

the last unfaded trail of some obliterated dream, that after all Nettie might relent toward me, that her heart was kind toward me in spite of all that I imagined had

y ankle warmed to forgetfulness, and the rest of th

ssible that we could really have parted ourselves for good and all. A wave of tenderness flowed over me, and still flooded me as I came through the little dell and drew towards the hollies. But there the sweet Nettie of my boy’

trembling was succeeded by a feeling of cold, and whiteness, and self-pity. I was astonished to find myself grimacing, to feel my cheeks wet, and thereupon I gave way completely to a wild passion of weeping. I must take just a little time before the thing was done. . . . I turned away from

Stuart. He was leaning against the staging, his hands in

ent on towards th

dows was open, and the customary short blind, with its brass upper rail partly unfastened, drooped obliquely acro

rderly hall an odd look — it was about half-past two in the afternoon — was a pile o

, looked into either

and gave a loud rat-tat-too, and foll

th my fingers about my weapon. Some one moved about upstairs presently

for the second time, when P

ce dirty, tear-stained, and irregularly red. Her expression at the sight of me was pure astonishm

ss!” I sai

e door. “Puss! What’s th

ound the corne

ould pursue her. What did it all me

e voice of Mrs. St

very one? Where’s Nettie? I w

dress rustle as she moved. I Judge

the stairs, expecting he

a grievance. “I can’t,” she said, “I can’t,” and that was all I could distinguish. It was to my young ears the strangest sound conceivable from a kindly motherly little woman, whom I had always thought of chiefly as an unparalleled maker of cakes. It frightened me. I went upstairs at once in a state of infi

ave to tell you, Willie! Oh that I should have to tell you!” She droppe

stonished; but I drew neare

rdinary wetness of her dripping hand

ay!” she wailed. “I had rather a thousa

to und

clearing my throat; “wh

ed to see this day!” sh

ll her pass

aid nothing, and suddenly she stood erect before me, wip

tti

from her home. Oh, Willie, Willie! The

nd clung to me, and began again to wi

being was a-tremble. “Where has she

rrow, and I had to hold her there, and comfort her w

one?” I asked fo

, ‘Nettie,’ I said to her, ‘you’re mighty fine for a morning call.’ ‘Fine clo’s for a fine d

where has she

ie — as if she was glad to be going. (“Glad to be going,” I echoed with soundless lips.) ‘You’re mighty fine for the morning,’ I says; ‘mighty fine.’ ‘Let the girl be

ecame

go on LIVING, Willie? He doesn’t show it, but he’s like a stricken beast. He’s wounded to the heart. She

one?” I reverted

rusts herself — Oh, Willie, it’ll kill me! I wi

ps and spoke slowly —“sh

ht be so, Willie. I’ve prayed that he’d ta

out: “Who

he was a gentleman. She d

s she written? Can

ther to

rites — When

e this

it come from?

she was happy. She said lo

letter? Let me see it. A

tared

ow who

” she pr

she said or not?” Her eyes ma

g Ver

I could do for you, Wil

ng Verrall?

. . Then she plumped back to the chest of drawers, and her wet pocke

s her mistress’s son as well as I! And f

of old Stuart, out in the greenhouse, and turned and went downstairs. As I did so,

tio

art was

seen him. He did not move as I drew near him; he glanced at

id, “this is a blac

u going to d

on so,” he said.

you mea

an to do in

cried, “

o marry her

cried. “He must

But what am I to do? Suppose he w

th an intensi

rgument. “We’ve lived here all our lives, you might say .

etween these broken words. I found his lethargy, and the dimly shaped mental at

econds, then woke up again and produced her letter. He drew

me for the first time, “What

d. “It’s a bruise;” a

nd and upright and clear as though it had been done in a writing lesson. Always her letters were like masks upon her image; they fell like curtains before the changing charm of her face;

EAR M

sakes, but it seems that it had to be. Love is a very difficult thing, and takes hold of one in ways one does not expect. Do not thi

ather and Puss. “Y

nguish of rage. It plunged me into a pit of hopeless shame; there seemed to remain no pride for me in life until I had revenge

d, and stared down at the postm

re she is; she hadn’t anything to complain of; a sort of pet for all of us. Not even made to do her share of the ‘ousework. And she goes of

to happe

to show that probl

said in an even voice; “y

ut the envelope with a gesture; “and what could I d

r, man! If she was my daughter — if she was my daughter — I’d

can

ewhip him! Horsewhip him,

his head. Then, with an intolerable note of sluggish gentle wisdom

terribly mangled by some cat, and killed it in a frenzy of horror and pity. I had a gust of that same emotion now

look?”

the envelope

with his garden-rough forefinger. “I.

hich bore the name of the office of departure and the date. The impact in this particular case had been light

P

faintly b

that to my mind. Perhaps in a sort of semi-visibility other letters were there, at least hinti

ied I— an

e good of t

clined to think almost fearfully, into my

— I should r

hink you got

e envelope

hought it might b

e Hampton?” He turned the envelope about. “H.A.M.—

nvelope and stood erect to put

ncil from my waistcoat pocket, turned a little away from him and wrot

an air of having do

e unimportant observatio

whatever vague re

third person waiting

tio

ld Mrs.

ant colors were black and fur browns, and the effect of richness was due entirely to the extreme costliness of the materials employed. She affected silk brocades with rich and elaborate patterns, priceless black lace over creamy or purple satin, intricate trimmings through which threads and bands of velvet wriggled, and in the winter rare furs. Her gloves fitted exquisitely, and ostentatiously simple chains of fine gold and pearls, and a great number of bracelets, laced about her little person. One was forced to feel that the slightest article she wore cost mo

ltimate confidence, and it was clear to me that she had come to interview Stuar

dification one found in Russia, for example, of a poor nobility. A peerage was an hereditary possession that, like the family land, concerned only the eldest sons of the house; it radiated no luster of noblesse oblige. The rest of the world were in law and practice common — and all America was common. But through the private ownership of land that had resulted from the neglect of feudal obligations in Britain and the utter want of political foresight in the Americas, large masses of property had become artificially stable in the hands of a small minority, to whom it was necessary to mortgage all new public and private enterprises, and who were held together not by any tradition of service and nobility but by the natural sympathy of common interests and a common large scale of liv

hat they had not a dread of falling towards the pit, they were always lashing themselves by new ropes, their cultivation of “connexions,” of interests, their desire to confirm and improve their positions, was a constant ignoble preoccupation. You must read Thackeray to get the full flavor of their lives. Then the bacterium was apt to disregard class distinctions, and they were never really happy in their servants. Read their surviving books. Each generation bewails the decay of that “fidelity” of servants, no generation ever saw. A world that is squalid in one corner is squalid altogether, but that they never understood. They believed there was not enough of anything to go round, they

tion of Nettie with young Verrall. One or other had to suffer. And as they were both in a state of great emotional exaltation and capable of strange generosities toward each other, it was an open question and naturally a source of great anxiety to a mother in Mrs. Ve

sacrifice my life, was not good enough to marry young Verrall. And I had only to look at his even, handsome, characterless face to perceive a creature weaker and no better than myself. She was to be his pleasure until he chose to cast her aside, and the poison of our social system had so saturated her nature — his evening dress, his freedom and

peace? If there was one hope in the disorders of that

old life, you will begin to appreciate the interpretation of o

to compromise

LD compromise! I sa

and his mistress made me behave in a violent and irrational way. I wanted t

urned my back on him wit

by the old lady, and so

led, and her eyes grew round. She found me a queer customer even at the first sig

to the level of the hothouse floor. She receded a pace or two,

no sort of

ogizing now for the thing I said to her — I strip these things before you — if only I can get them stark

onverting her by a violent metonymy into a comprehensive plural. “You infernal la

I passed rudely beyond her and vanished, striding

and sought for Stuart among the greenhouses. Then abruptly I flashed into being down that green-walled, brick-floored vista as a black-avised, ill-clad young man, who first stared and then advanced scowling toward her. Once in existence I developed rapidly. I grew larger in perspective and became more and more important and sinister every

it had always been except for the wild swirl in it, and

y as I saw them, and wickedly denied. But indeed old Mrs. Verrall was no more capable of doubting the perfection of her family’s right to dominate a wide cou

ghtened her tremendously. B

g leapt out of the black for a moment and vanished, like a threatening figure by a desolate roadside lit for a moment by one’s belated carriage-lamp and