In the Days of the Comet Read online

  Section 5

  The figure of my mother comes always into my conception of theChange.

  I remember how one day she confessed herself.

  She had been very sleepless that night, she said, and took thereports of the falling stars for shooting; there had been riotingin Clayton and all through Swathinglea all day, and so she got outof bed to look. She had a dim sense that I was in all such troubles.

  But she was not looking when the Change came.

  "When I saw the stars a-raining down, dear," she said, "and thoughtof you out in it, I thought there'd be no harm in saying a prayerfor you, dear? I thought you wouldn't mind that."

  And so I got another of my pictures--the green vapors come and go,and there by her patched coverlet that dear old woman kneels anddroops, still clasping her poor gnarled hands in the attitude ofprayer--prayer to IT--for me!

  Through the meagre curtains and blinds of the flawed refractingwindow I see the stars above the chimneys fade, the pale light ofdawn creeps into the sky, and her candle flares and dies. . . .

  That also went with me through the stillness--that silentkneeling figure, that frozen prayer to God to shield me, silentin a silent world, rushing through the emptiness of space. . . .