In the Days of the Comet Page 63

  Section 4

  It seems to me as if the intense memory of Nettie vanished utterlyout of my mind at the touch of Anna's lips. I loved Anna.

  We went to the council of our group--commune it was then called--andshe was given me in marriage, and within a year she had borne mea son. We saw much of one another, and talked ourselves very closetogether. My faithful friend she became and has been always, andfor a time we were passionate lovers. Always she has loved me andkept my soul full of tender gratitude and love for her; alwayswhen we met our hands and eyes clasped in friendly greeting, allthrough our lives from that hour we have been each other's securehelp and refuge, each other's ungrudging fastness of help and sweetlyfrank and open speech. . . . And after a little while my love anddesire for Nettie returned as though it had never faded away.

  No one will have a difficulty now in understanding how that couldbe, but in the evil days of the world malaria, that would have beenheld to be the most impossible thing. I should have had to crushthat second love out of my thoughts, to have kept it secret fromAnna, to have lied about it to all the world. The old-world theorywas there was only one love--we who float upon a sea of love findthat hard to understand. The whole nature of a man was supposed togo out to the one girl or woman who possessed him, her whole natureto go out to him. Nothing was left over--it was a discreditablething to have any overplus at all. They formed a secret secludedsystem of two, two and such children as she bore him. All otherwomen he was held bound to find no beauty in, no sweetness, nointerest; and she likewise, in no other man. The old-time men andwomen went apart in couples, into defensive little houses, likebeasts into little pits, and in these "homes" they sat down purposingto love, but really coming very soon to jealous watching of thisextravagant mutual proprietorship. All freshness passed veryspeedily out of their love, out of their conversation, all prideout of their common life. To permit each other freedom was blankdishonor. That I and Anna should love, and after our love-journeytogether, go about our separate lives and dine at the public tables,until the advent of her motherhood, would have seemed a terriblestrain upon our unmitigable loyalty. And that I should have itin me to go on loving Nettie--who loved in different manner bothVerrall and me--would have outraged the very quintessence of theold convention.

  In the old days love was a cruel proprietary thing. But now Annacould let Nettie live in the world of my mind, as freely as a rosewill suffer the presence of white lilies. If I could hear notes thatwere not in her compass, she was glad, because she loved me, thatI should listen to other music than hers. And she, too, could seethe beauty of Nettie. Life is so rich and generous now, givingfriendship, and a thousand tender interests and helps and comforts, thatno one stints another of the full realization of all possibilitiesof beauty. For me from the beginning Nettie was the figure of beauty,the shape and color of the divine principle that lights the world.For every one there are certain types, certain faces and forms,gestures, voices and intonations that have that inexplicableunanalyzable quality. These come through the crowd of kindly friendlyfellow-men and women--one's own. These touch one mysteriously, stirdeeps that must otherwise slumber, pierce and interpret the world.To refuse this interpretation is to refuse the sun, to darken anddeaden all life. . . . I loved Nettie, I loved all who were likeher, in the measure that they were like her, in voice, or eyes, orform, or smile. And between my wife and me there was no bitternessthat the great goddess, the life-giver, Aphrodite, Queen of theliving Seas, came to my imagination so. It qualified our mutuallove not at all, since now in our changed world love is unstinted;it is a golden net about our globe that nets all humanity together.

  I thought of Nettie much, and always movingly beautiful thingsrestored me to her, all fine music, all pure deep color, alltender and solemn things. The stars were hers, and the mystery ofmoonlight; the sun she wore in her hair, powdered finely, beateninto gleams and threads of sunlight in the wisps and strands of herhair. . . . Then suddenly one day a letter came to me from her, inher unaltered clear handwriting, but in a new language of expression,telling me many things. She had learnt of my mother's death, andthe thought of me had grown so strong as to pierce the silence Ihad imposed on her. We wrote to one another--like common friendswith a certain restraint between us at first, and with a greatlonging to see her once more arising in my heart. For a time I leftthat hunger unexpressed, and then I was moved to tell it to her. Andso on New Year's Day in the Year Four, she came to Lowchester andme. How I remember that coming, across the gulf of fifty years! Iwent out across the park to meet her, so that we should meet alone.The windless morning was clear and cold, the ground new carpetedwith snow, and all the trees motionless lace and glitter of frostycrystals. The rising sun had touched the white with a spiritof gold, and my heart beat and sang within me. I remember now thesnowy shoulder of the down, sunlit against the bright blue sky. Andpresently I saw the woman I loved coming through the whitestill trees. . . .

  I had made a goddess of Nettie, and behold she was a fellow-creature!She came, warm-wrapped and tremulous, to me, with the tender promiseof tears in her eyes, with her hands outstretched and that dearsmile quivering upon her lips. She stepped out of the dream I hadmade of her, a thing of needs and regrets and human kindliness. Herhands as I took them were a little cold. The goddess shone throughher indeed, glowed in all her body, she was a worshipful temple oflove for me--yes. But I could feel, like a thing new discovered,the texture and sinews of her living, her dear personaland mortal hands. . . .

  THE EPILOGUE

  THE WINDOW OF THE TOWER

  This was as much as this pleasant-looking, gray-haired manhad written. I had been lost in his story throughout the earlierportions of it, forgetful of the writer and his gracious room, andthe high tower in which he was sitting. But gradually, as I drewnear the end, the sense of strangeness returned to me. It was moreand more evident to me that this was a different humanity from anyI had known, unreal, having different customs, different beliefs,different interpretations, different emotions. It was no mere changein conditions and institutions the comet had wrought. It had madea change of heart and mind. In a manner it had dehumanized theworld, robbed it of its spites, its little intense jealousies, itsinconsistencies, its humor. At the end, and particularly afterthe death of his mother, I felt his story had slipped away from mysympathies altogether. Those Beltane fires had burnt something inhim that worked living still and unsubdued in me, that rebelled inparticular at that return of Nettie. I became a little inattentive.I no longer felt with him, nor gathered a sense of completeunderstanding from his phrases. His Lord Eros indeed! He and thesetransfigured people--they were beautiful and noble people, like thepeople one sees in great pictures, like the gods of noble sculpture,but they had no nearer fellowship than these to men. As the changewas realized, with every stage of realization the gulf widened andit was harder to follow his words.

  I put down the last fascicle of all, and met his friendly eyes. Itwas hard to dislike him.

  I felt a subtle embarrassment in putting the question that perplexedme. And yet it seemed so material to me I had to put it. "And didyou--?" I asked. "Were you--lovers?"

  His eyebrows rose. "Of course."

  "But your wife--?"

  It was manifest he did not understand me.

  I hesitated still more. I was perplexed by a conviction of baseness."But--" I began. "You remained lovers?"

  "Yes." I had grave doubts if I understood him. Or he me.

  I made a still more courageous attempt. "And had Nettie no otherlovers?"

  "A beautiful woman like that! I know not how many loved beauty inher, nor what she found in others. But we four from that time werevery close, you understand, we were friends, helpers, personallovers in a world of lovers."

  "Four?"

  "There was Verrall."

  Then suddenly it came to me that the thoughts that stirred in my mindwere sinister and base, that the queer suspicions, the coarsenessand coarse jealousies of my old world were over and done for thesemore fi
nely living souls. "You made," I said, trying to be liberalminded, "a home together."

  "A home!" He looked at me, and, I know not why, I glanced down atmy feet. What a clumsy, ill-made thing a boot is, and how hard andcolorless seemed my clothing! How harshly I stood out amidst thesefine, perfected things. I had a moment of rebellious detestation.I wanted to get out of all this. After all, it wasn't my style. Iwanted intensely to say something that would bring him down a peg,make sure, as it were, of my suspicions by launching an offensiveaccusation. I looked up and he was standing.

  "I forgot," he said. "You are pretending the old world is stillgoing on. A home!"

  He put out his hand, and quite noiselessly the great window wideneddown to us, and the splendid nearer prospect of that dreamland citywas before me. There for one clear moment I saw it; its galleriesand open spaces, its trees of golden fruit and crystal waters,its music and rejoicing, love and beauty without ceasing flowingthrough its varied and intricate streets. And the nearer people Isaw now directly and plainly, and no longer in the distorted mirrorthat hung overhead. They really did not justify my suspicions, andyet--! They were such people as one sees on earth--save that theywere changed. How can I express that change? As a woman is changedin the eyes of her lover, as a woman is changed by the love of alover. They were exalted. . . .

  I stood up beside him and looked out. I was a little flushed, myears a little reddened, by the inconvenience of my curiosities,and by my uneasy sense of profound moral differences. Hewas taller than I. . . .

  "This is our home," he said smiling, and with thoughtful eyes on me.

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