In the Days of the Comet Read online

  Section 1

  I HAVE set myself to write the story of the Great Change, so faras it has affected my own life and the lives of one or two peopleclosely connected with me, primarily to please myself.

  Long ago in my crude unhappy youth, I conceived the desire ofwriting a book. To scribble secretly and dream of authorship wasone of my chief alleviations, and I read with a sympathetic envyevery scrap I could get about the world of literature and thelives of literary people. It is something, even amidst this presenthappiness, to find leisure and opportunity to take up and partiallyrealize these old and hopeless dreams. But that alone, in a worldwhere so much of vivid and increasing interest presents itself tobe done, even by an old man, would not, I think, suffice to setme at this desk. I find some such recapitulation of my past asthis will involve, is becoming necessary to my own secure mentalcontinuity. The passage of years brings a man at last to retrospection;at seventy-two one's youth is far more important than it was atforty. And I am out of touch with my youth. The old life seems socut off from the new, so alien and so unreasonable, that at timesI find it bordering upon the incredible. The data have gone, thebuildings and places. I stopped dead the other afternoon in my walkacross the moor, where once the dismal outskirts of Swathingleastraggled toward Leet, and asked, "Was it here indeed that Icrouched among the weeds and refuse and broken crockery and loadedmy revolver ready for murder? Did ever such a thing happen in mylife? Was such a mood and thought and intention ever possible tome? Rather, has not some queer nightmare spirit out of dreamlandslipped a pseudo-memory into the records of my vanished life?"There must be many alive still who have the same perplexities. AndI think too that those who are now growing up to take our placesin the great enterprise of mankind, will need many such narrativesas mine for even the most partial conception of the old worldof shadows that came before our day. It chances too that my caseis fairly typical of the Change; I was caught midway in a gustof passion; and a curious accident put me for a time in the verynucleus of the new order.

  My memory takes me back across the interval of fifty years to alittle ill-lit room with a sash window open to a starry sky, andinstantly there returns to me the characteristic smell of thatroom, the penetrating odor of an ill-trimmed lamp, burning cheapparaffin. Lighting by electricity had then been perfected for fifteenyears, but still the larger portion of the world used these lamps.All this first scene will go, in my mind at least, to that olfactoryaccompaniment. That was the evening smell of the room. By dayit had a more subtle aroma, a closeness, a peculiar sort of faintpungency that I associate--I know not why--with dust.

  Let me describe this room to you in detail. It was perhaps eightfeet by seven in area and rather higher than either of thesedimensions; the ceiling was of plaster, cracked and bulging inplaces, gray with the soot of the lamp, and in one place discoloredby a system of yellow and olive-green stains caused by the percolationof damp from above. The walls were covered with dun-colored paper,upon which had been printed in oblique reiteration a crimson shape,something of the nature of a curly ostrich feather, or an acanthusflower, that had in its less faded moments a sort of dingy gaiety.There were several big plaster-rimmed wounds in this, caused byParload's ineffectual attempts to get nails into the wall, wherebythere might hang pictures. One nail had hit between two bricks andgot home, and from this depended, sustained a little insecurelyby frayed and knotted blind-cord, Parload's hanging bookshelves,planks painted over with a treacly blue enamel and further decoratedby a fringe of pinked American cloth insecurely fixed by tacks. Belowthis was a little table that behaved with a mulish vindictivenessto any knee that was thrust beneath it suddenly; it was coveredwith a cloth whose pattern of red and black had been rendered lessmonotonous by the accidents of Parload's versatile ink bottle, andon it, leit motif of the whole, stood and stank the lamp. This lamp,you must understand, was of some whitish translucent substance thatwas neither china nor glass, it had a shade of the same substance,a shade that did not protect the eyes of a reader in any measure,and it seemed admirably adapted to bring into pitiless prominencethe fact that, after the lamp's trimming, dust and paraffin hadbeen smeared over its exterior with a reckless generosity.

  The uneven floor boards of this apartment were covered with scratchedenamel of chocolate hue, on which a small island of frayed carpetdimly blossomed in the dust and shadows.

  There was a very small grate, made of cast-iron in one piece andpainted buff, and a still smaller misfit of a cast-iron fenderthat confessed the gray stone of the hearth. No fire was laid, onlya few scraps of torn paper and the bowl of a broken corn-cob pipewere visible behind the bars, and in the corner and rather thrustaway was an angular japanned coal-box with a damaged hinge. Itwas the custom in those days to warm every room separately from aseparate fireplace, more prolific of dirt than heat, and the ricketysash window, the small chimney, and the loose-fitting door wereexpected to organize the ventilation of the room among themselveswithout any further direction.

  Parload's truckle bed hid its gray sheets beneath an old patchworkcounterpane on one side of the room, and veiled his boxes andsuchlike oddments, and invading the two corners of the window werean old whatnot and the washhandstand, on which were distributedthe simple appliances of his toilet.

  This washhandstand had been made of deal by some one with anexcess of turnery appliances in a hurry, who had tried to distractattention from the rough economies of his workmanship by an arrestingornamentation of blobs and bulbs upon the joints and legs. Apparentlythe piece had then been placed in the hands of some person ofinfinite leisure equipped with a pot of ocherous paint, varnish,and a set of flexible combs. This person had first painted thearticle, then, I fancy, smeared it with varnish, and then sat downto work with the combs to streak and comb the varnish into a weirdimitation of the grain of some nightmare timber. The washhandstand somade had evidently had a prolonged career of violent use, had beenchipped, kicked, splintered, punched, stained, scorched, hammered,dessicated, damped, and defiled, had met indeed with almost everypossible adventure except a conflagration or a scrubbing, until atlast it had come to this high refuge of Parload's attic to sustainthe simple requirements of Parload's personal cleanliness. Therewere, in chief, a basin and a jug of water and a slop-pail of tin,and, further, a piece of yellow soap in a tray, a tooth-brush, arat-tailed shaving brush, one huckaback towel, and one or two otherminor articles. In those days only very prosperous people had morethan such an equipage, and it is to be remarked that every dropof water Parload used had to be carried by an unfortunate servantgirl,--the "slavey," Parload called her--up from the basement tothe top of the house and subsequently down again. Already we beginto forget how modern an invention is personal cleanliness. It is afact that Parload had never stripped for a swim in his life; neverhad a simultaneous bath all over his body since his childhood. Notone in fifty of us did in the days of which I am telling you.

  A chest, also singularly grained and streaked, of two large andtwo small drawers, held Parload's reserve of garments, and pegson the door carried his two hats and completed this inventoryof a "bed-sitting-room" as I knew it before the Change. But I hadforgotten--there was also a chair with a "squab" that apologizedinadequately for the defects of its cane seat. I forgot that forthe moment because I was sitting on the chair on the occasion thatbest begins this story.

  I have described Parload's room with such particularity because itwill help you to understand the key in which my earlier chaptersare written, but you must not imagine that this singular equipmentor the smell of the lamp engaged my attention at that time to theslightest degree. I took all this grimy unpleasantness as if itwere the most natural and proper setting for existence imaginable.It was the world as I knew it. My mind was entirely occupied thenby graver and intenser matters, and it is only now in the distantretrospect that I see these details of environment as beingremarkable, as significant, as indeed obviously the outward visiblemanifestations of the old world disorder in our hearts.