In the Days of the Comet Read online

  Section 3

  This old newspaper, this first reissue of the New Paper,dessicated last relic of a vanished age, is like the little pieceof identification the superstitious of the old days--those queerreligionists who brought a certain black-clad Mrs. Piper to thehelp of Christ--used to put into the hand of a clairvoyant. Atthe crisp touch of it I look across a gulf of fifty years and seeagain the three of us sitting about that table in the arbor, and Ismell again the smell of the sweet-briar that filled the air aboutus, and hear in our long pauses the abundant murmuring of beesamong the heliotrope of the borders.

  It is the dawn of the new time, but we bear, all three of us, themarks and liveries of the old.

  I see myself, a dark, ill-dressed youth, with the bruise Lord Redcargave me still blue and yellow beneath my jaw; and young Verrallsits cornerwise to me, better grown, better dressed, fair and quiet,two years my senior indeed, but looking no older than I because ofhis light complexion; and opposite me is Nettie, with dark eyes uponmy face, graver and more beautiful than I had ever seen her in theformer time. Her dress is still that white one she had worn whenI came upon her in the park, and still about her dainty neck shewears her string of pearls and that little coin of gold. She is somuch the same, she is so changed; a girl then and now a woman--andall my agony and all the marvel of the Change between! Over the endof the green table about which we sit, a spotless cloth is spread,it bears a pleasant lunch spread out with a simple equipage. Behindme is the liberal sunshine of the green and various garden. I seeit all. Again I sit there, eating awkwardly, this paper lies uponthe table and Verrall talks of the Change.

  "You can't imagine," he says in his sure, fine accents, "how muchthe Change has destroyed of me. I still don't feel awake. Men ofmy sort are so tremendously MADE; I never suspected it before."

  He leans over the table toward me with an evident desire to makehimself perfectly understood. "I find myself like some creaturethat is taken out of its shell--soft and new. I was trained todress in a certain way, to behave in a certain way, to think ina certain way; I see now it's all wrong and narrow--most of itanyhow--a system of class shibboleths. We were decent to each otherin order to be a gang to the rest of the world. Gentlemen indeed!But it's perplexing------"

  I can hear his voice saying that now, and see the lift of hiseyebrows and his pleasant smile.

  He paused. He had wanted to say that, but it was not the thing wehad to say.

  I leant forward a little and took hold of my glass very tightly."You two," I said, "will marry?"

  They looked at one another.

  Nettie spoke very softly. "I did not mean to marry when I cameaway," she said.

  "I know," I answered. I looked up with a sense of effort and metVerrall's eyes.

  He answered me. "I think we two have joined our lives. . . . Butthe thing that took us was a sort of madness."

  I nodded. "All passion," I said, "is madness." Then I fell into adoubting of those words.

  "Why did we do these things?" he said, turning to her suddenly.

  Her hands were clasped under her chin, her eyes downcast.

  "We HAD to," she said, with her old trick of inadequate expression.

  Then she seemed to open out suddenly.

  "Willie," she cried with a sudden directness, with her eyes appealingto me, "I didn't mean to treat you badly--indeed I didn't. I keptthinking of you--and of father and mother, all the time. Only itdidn't seem to move me. It didn't move me not one bit from the wayI had chosen."

  "Chosen!" I said.

  "Something seemed to have hold of me," she admitted. "It's all sounaccountable. . . ."

  She gave a little gesture of despair.

  Verrall's fingers played on the cloth for a space. Then he turnedhis face to me again.

  "Something said 'Take her.' Everything. It was a raging desire--forher. I don't know. Everything contributed to that--or counted fornothing. You------"

  "Go on," said I.

  "When I knew of you------"

  I looked at Nettie. "You never told him about me?" I said, feeling,as it were, a sting out of the old time.

  Verrall answered for her. "No. But things dropped; I saw you thatnight, my instincts were all awake. I knew it was you."

  "You triumphed over me? . . . If I could I would have triumphedover you," I said. "But go on!"

  "Everything conspired to make it the finest thing in life. It hadan air of generous recklessness. It meant mischief, it might meanfailure in that life of politics and affairs, for which I wastrained, which it was my honor to follow. That made it all thefiner. It meant ruin or misery for Nettie. That made it all thefiner. No sane or decent man would have approved of what we did.That made it more splendid than ever. I had all the advantages ofposition and used them basely. That mattered not at all."

  "Yes," I said; "it is true. And the same dark wave that lifted you,swept me on to follow. With that revolver--and blubbering withhate. And the word to you, Nettie, what was it? 'Give?' Hurl yourselfdown the steep?"

  Nettie's hands fell upon the table. "I can't tell what it was," shesaid, speaking bare-hearted straight to me. "Girls aren't trainedas men are trained to look into their minds. I can't see it yet.All sorts of mean little motives were there--over and above the'must.' Mean motives. I kept thinking of his clothes." She smiled--aflash of brightness at Verrall. "I kept thinking of being like alady and sitting in an hotel--with men like butlers waiting. It'sthe dreadful truth, Willie. Things as mean as that! Things meanerthan that!"

  I can see her now pleading with me, speaking with a frankness asbright and amazing as the dawn of the first great morning.

  "It wasn't all mean," I said slowly, after a pause.

  "No!" They spoke together.

  "But a woman chooses more than a man does," Nettie added. "I sawit all in little bright pictures. Do you know--that jacket--there'ssomething------ You won't mind my telling you? But you won't now!"

  I nodded, "No."

  She spoke as if she spoke to my soul, very quietly and veryearnestly, seeking to give the truth. "Something cottony in thatcloth of yours," she said. "I know there's something horrible inbeing swung round by things like that, but they did swing me round.In the old time--to have confessed that! And I hated Clayton--andthe grime of it. That kitchen! Your mother's dreadful kitchen!And besides, Willie, I was afraid of you. I didn't understand youand I did him. It's different now--but then I knew what he meant.And there was his voice."

  "Yes," I said to Verrall, making these discoveries quietly, "yes,Verrall, you have a good voice. Queer I never thought of thatbefore!"

  We sat silently for a time before our vivisected passions.

  "Gods!" I cried, "and there was our poor little top-hamper ofintelligence on all these waves of instinct and wordless desire,these foaming things of touch and sight and feeling, like--likea coop of hens washed overboard and clucking amidst the seas."

  Verrall laughed approval of the image I had struck out. "A weekago," he said, trying it further, "we were clinging to our chickencoops and going with the heave and pour. That was true enough aweek ago. But to-day------?"

  "To-day," I said, "the wind has fallen. The world storm is over.And each chicken coop has changed by a miracle to a vessel thatmakes head against the sea."