In the Days of the Comet Read online

  Section 3

  Picture to yourself what happened between the printing and composingof the copy of the New Paper that lies before me now. It was thefirst newspaper that was printed upon earth after the Great Change.It was pocket-worn and browned, made of a paper no man ever intendedfor preservation. I found it on the arbor table in the inn gardenwhile I was waiting for Nettie and Verrall, before that lastconversation of which I have presently to tell. As I look at it allthat scene comes back to me, and Nettie stands in her white raimentagainst a blue-green background of sunlit garden, scrutinizingmy face as I read. . . .

  It is so frayed that the sheet cracks along the folds and comes topieces in my hands. It lies upon my desk, a dead souvenir of thedead ages of the world, of the ancient passions of my heart. I knowwe discussed its news, but for the life of me I cannot recall whatwe said, only I remember that Nettie said very little, and thatVerrall for a time read it over my shoulder. And I did not likehim to read over my shoulder. . . .

  The document before me must have helped us through the firstawkwardness of that meeting.

  But of all that we said and did then I must tell in a later chapter. . . .

  It is easy to see the New Paper had been set up overnight, and thenlarge pieces of the stereo plates replaced subsequently. I do notknow enough of the old methods of printing to know precisely whathappened. The thing gives one an impression of large pieces oftype having been cut away and replaced by fresh blocks. There issomething very rough and ready about it all, and the new portionsprint darker and more smudgily than the old, except toward theleft, where they have missed ink and indented. A friend of mine,who knows something of the old typography, has suggested to me thatthe machinery actually in use for the New Paper was damaged thatnight, and that on the morning of the Change Banghurst borrowed aneighboring office--perhaps in financial dependence upon him--toprint in.

  The outer pages belong entirely to the old period, the only partsof the paper that had undergone alteration are the two middleleaves. Here we found set forth in a curious little four-columnoblong of print, WHAT HAS HAPPENED. This cut across a column withscare headings beginning, "Great Naval Battle Now in Progress. TheFate of Two Empires in the Balance. Reported Loss of Two More------"

  These things, one gathered, were beneath notice now. Probably itwas guesswork, and fabricated news in the first instance.

  It is curious to piece together the worn and frayed fragments, andreread this discolored first intelligence of the new epoch.

  The simple clear statements in the replaced portion of the paperimpressed me at the time, I remember, as bald and strange, in thatframework of shouting bad English. Now they seem like the voice ofa sane man amidst a vast faded violence. But they witness to theprompt recovery of London from the gas; the new, swift energy ofrebound in that huge population. I am surprised now, as I reread,to note how much research, experiment, and induction must have beenaccomplished in the day that elapsed before the paper was printed.. . . But that is by the way. As I sit and muse over this partlycarbonized sheet, that same curious remote vision comes again to methat quickened in my mind that morning, a vision of those newspaperoffices I have already described to you going through the crisis.

  The catalytic wave must have caught the place in full swing, inits nocturnal high fever, indeed in a quite exceptional state offever, what with the comet and the war, and more particularly withthe war. Very probably the Change crept into the office imperceptibly,amidst the noise and shouting, and the glare of electric light thatmade the night atmosphere in that place; even the green flashesmay have passed unobserved there, the preliminary descending trailsof green vapor seemed no more than unseasonable drifting wispsof London fog. (In those days London even in summer was not safeagainst dark fogs.) And then at the last the Change poured in andovertook them.

  If there was any warning at all for them, it must have been a suddenuniversal tumult in the street, and then a much more universalquiet. They could have had no other intimation.

  There was no time to stop the presses before the main developmentof green vapor had overwhelmed every one. It must have foldedabout them, tumbled them to the earth, masked and stilled them.My imagination is always curiously stirred by the thought of that,because I suppose it is the first picture I succeeded in making formyself of what had happened in the towns. It has never quite lostits strangeness for me that when the Change came, machinery wenton working. I don't precisely know why that should have seemed sostrange to me, but it did, and still to a certain extent does. Oneis so accustomed, I suppose, to regard machinery as an extensionof human personality that the extent of its autonomy the Changedisplayed came as a shock to me. The electric lights, for example,hazy green-haloed nebulas, must have gone on burning at leastfor a time; amidst the thickening darkness the huge presses musthave roared on, printing, folding, throwing aside copy after copyof that fabricated battle report with its quarter column of scareheadlines, and all the place must have still quivered and throbbedwith the familiar roar of the engines. And this though no men ruledthere at all any more! Here and there beneath that thickening fogthe crumpled or outstretched forms of men lay still.

  A wonderful thing that must have seemed, had any man had by chancethe power of resistance to the vapor, and could he have walkedamidst it.

  And soon the machines must have exhausted their feed of ink andpaper, and thumped and banged and rattled emptily amidst the generalquiet. Then I suppose the furnaces failed for want of stoking, thesteam pressure fell in the pistons, the machinery slackened, thelights burnt dim, and came and went with the ebb of energy from thepower-station. Who can tell precisely the sequence of these thingsnow?

  And then, you know, amidst the weakening and terminating noisesof men, the green vapor cleared and vanished, in an hour indeed ithad gone, and it may be a breeze stirred and blew and went aboutthe earth.

  The noises of life were all dying away, but some there were thatabated nothing, that sounded triumphantly amidst the universalebb. To a heedless world the church towers tolled out two and thenthree. Clocks ticked and chimed everywhere about the earthto deafened ears. . . .

  And then came the first flush of morning, the first rustlingsof the revival. Perhaps in that office the filaments of the lampswere still glowing, the machinery was still pulsing weakly, whenthe crumpled, booted heaps of cloth became men again and began tostir and stare. The chapel of the printers was, no doubt, shockedto find itself asleep. Amidst that dazzling dawn the New Paperwoke to wonder, stood up and blinked at its amazing self. . . .

  The clocks of the city churches, one pursuing another, struck four.The staffs, crumpled and disheveled, but with a strange refreshmentin their veins, stood about the damaged machinery, marveling andquestioning; the editor read his overnight headlines with incredulouslaughter. There was much involuntary laughter that morning. Outside,the mail men patted the necks and rubbed the knees of theirawakening horses. . . .

  Then, you know, slowly and with much conversation and doubt, theyset about to produce the paper.

  Imagine those bemused, perplexed people, carried on by the inertiaof their old occupations and doing their best with an enterprisethat had suddenly become altogether extraordinary and irrational.They worked amidst questionings, and yet light-heartedly. At everystage there must have been interruptions for discussion. The paperonly got down to Menton five days late.