In the Days of the Comet Read online

  Section 5

  For a long time I feared I should have to go back to Clayton withoutanother word to Nettie, she seemed insensible to the need I feltfor a talk with her, and I was thinking even of a sudden demandfor that before them all. It was a transparent manoeuver of hermother's who had been watching my face, that sent us out at lasttogether to do something--I forget now what--in one of the greenhouses.Whatever that little mission may have been it was the merest, mostbarefaced excuse, a door to shut, or a window to close, and I don'tthink it got done.

  Nettie hesitated and obeyed. She led the way through one ofthe hot-houses. It was a low, steamy, brick-floored alley betweenstaging that bore a close crowd of pots and ferns, and behind bigbranching plants that were spread and nailed overhead so as to makean impervious cover of leaves, and in that close green privacy shestopped and turned on me suddenly like a creature at bay.

  "Isn't the maidenhair fern lovely?" she said, and looked at me witheyes that said, "NOW."

  "Nettie," I began, "I was a fool to write to you as I did."

  She startled me by the assent that flashed out upon her face. Butshe said nothing, and stood waiting.

  "Nettie," I plunged, "I can't do without you. I--I love you."

  "If you loved me," she said trimly, watching the white fingersshe plunged among the green branches of a selaginella, "could youwrite the things you do to me?"

  "I don't mean them," I said. "At least not always."

  I thought really they were very good letters, and that Nettie wasstupid to think otherwise, but I was for the moment clearly awareof the impossibility of conveying that to her.

  "You wrote them."

  "But then I tramp seventeen miles to say I don't mean them."

  "Yes. But perhaps you do."

  I think I was at a loss; then I said, not very clearly, "I don't."

  "You think you--you love me, Willie. But you don't."

  "I do. Nettie! You know I do."

  For answer she shook her head.

  I made what I thought was a most heroic plunge. "Nettie," I said,"I'd rather have you than--than my own opinions."

  The selaginella still engaged her. "You think so now," she said.

  I broke out into protestations.

  "No," she said shortly. "It's different now."

  "But why should two letters make so much difference?" I said.

  "It isn't only the letters. But it is different. It's differentfor good."

  She halted a little with that sentence, seeking her expression.She looked up abruptly into my eyes and moved, indeed slightly,but with the intimation that she thought our talk might end.

  But I did not mean it to end like that.

  "For good?" said I. "No! . . Nettie! Nettie! You don't mean that!"

  "I do," she said deliberately, still looking at me, and with allher pose conveying her finality. She seemed to brace herself forthe outbreak that must follow.

  Of course I became wordy. But I did not submerge her. She stoodentrenched, firing her contradictions like guns into my scattereddiscursive attack. I remember that our talk took the absurd formof disputing whether I could be in love with her or not. And therewas I, present in evidence, in a deepening and widening distressof soul because she could stand there, defensive, brighter andprettier than ever, and in some inexplicable way cut off from meand inaccessible.

  You know, we had never been together before without little enterprisesof endearment, without a faintly guilty, quite delightful excitement.

  I pleaded, I argued. I tried to show that even my harsh and difficultletters came from my desire to come wholly into contact with her.I made exaggerated fine statements of the longing I felt for herwhen I was away, of the shock and misery of finding her estrangedand cool. She looked at me, feeling the emotion of my speech andimpervious to its ideas. I had no doubt--whatever poverty in mywords, coolly written down now--that I was eloquent then. I meantmost intensely what I said, indeed I was wholly concentrated uponit. I was set upon conveying to her with absolute sincerity mysense of distance, and the greatness of my desire. I toiled towardher painfully and obstinately through a jungle of words.

  Her face changed very slowly--by such imperceptible degrees as whenat dawn light comes into a clear sky. I could feel that I touchedher, that her hardness was in some manner melting, her determinationsoftening toward hesitations. The habit of an old familiarity lurkedsomewhere within her. But she would not let me reach her.

  "No," she cried abruptly, starting into motion.

  She laid a hand on my arm. A wonderful new friendliness came intoher voice. "It's impossible, Willie. Everything is differentnow--everything. We made a mistake. We two young sillies made amistake and everything is different for ever. Yes, yes."

  She turned about.

  "Nettie!" cried I, and still protesting, pursued her along the narrowalley between the staging toward the hot-house door. I pursued herlike an accusation, and she went before me like one who is guiltyand ashamed. So I recall it now.

  She would not let me talk to her again.

  Yet I could see that my talk to her had altogether abolishedthe clear-cut distance of our meeting in the park. Ever and againI found her hazel eyes upon me. They expressed something novel--asurprise, as though she realized an unwonted relationship, and asympathetic pity. And still--something defensive.

  When we got back to the cottage, I fell talking rather more freelywith her father about the nationalization of railways, and my spiritsand temper had so far mended at the realization that I could stillproduce an effect upon Nettie, that I was even playful with Puss.Mrs. Stuart judged from that that things were better with me thanthey were, and began to beam mightily.

  But Nettie remained thoughtful and said very little. She was lostin perplexities I could not fathom, and presently she slipped awayfrom us and went upstairs.