Heriew of Kevieua, i/7/06. 



in the Days of the Gomet. 



89 



toned and made fantastic, but bright and beauti- 

 fully coloured, the magnified, reflected, evasive ren- 

 dering of a palace, of a terrace, of the vista of a 

 great roadway with many people, people exag- 

 gerated, impossible-looking because of the curva- 

 ture of the mirror, going to and fro. I turned my 

 head quickly, that I might see more clearly through 

 the window behind me, but it was too high for me 

 to survey this nearer scene directly, and after a 

 momentary pause I came back to that distorting 

 mirror again. 



But now the writer was leaning back in his chair. 

 He put down his pen and sighed the half-resentful 

 sigh — " Ah ! you work, you ! how you gratify and 

 tire me!" — of a man who has been writing to his 

 satisfaction. 



'What is this place?" I asked, "and who are 



you ?" 



He looked round with the quick movement of 

 surprise. 



"What is this place?" I repeated, "and where 

 am I?" 



He regarded me steadfastly for a moment from 

 undei his wrinkled brows, and then his expression 

 softened to a smile. He pointed to a chair beside 

 the table. " I am writing," he said. 



"About this?" 



" About the Change." 



I sat down. It was a ver\ comfortable clviir, 

 and well placed under the light. 



" If you would like to read " he said. 



I indicated the manuscr;[it. "This explains?" I 

 asked. 



" That explains," he answered. 



He drew a fresh sheet of paper toward him as 

 he looked at me. 



I glanced from him about his apartment and 

 back to the little table. \ fascicle marked very 

 distinctly " I " caught my attention, and I took it 

 up. I smiled in his friendly eyes. " Very well," 

 said I, suddenly at my ease', and he nodded and 

 went on writing. And in a mood between con- 

 fidence and curiosity, I began to read. 



This is the story that happy, active-looking old 

 man in that pleasant place had written. 



BOOK THE FIRST. 



CHAPTER THE FIEST- 



I. 



I have set myself to write the story of the Great 

 Change so far as it has affected my own life and 

 the lives of one or two people closely connected 

 with me, primarily to please myself. 



Long ago, in my crude, unhappy youth, I con- 

 ceived the desire of writing a book. To scribble 

 secretly and dream of authorship was one of mv 

 chief alleviations, and I read with a sympathetic 

 envy every scrap I could get about the world of 

 literature and the lives of literary {>eople. It is 

 something, even amidst this present happiness, to 

 find leisure and opportunity to take up and par- 

 tially realise these old and hopeless dreams. But 

 that alone, in a world where so much of vivid and 

 increasing interest presents itself to be done even 

 by an old man, would not, I think, suffice to set me 

 at this desk. I find some such recapitulation of 

 my past as this will involve, is becoming necessary 

 to my own secure mental continuity. The passage 

 of years brings a mart at last to retrosf)ection ; at 

 seventy-two one's youth is far more important than 

 It was at forty. And I am out of touch with my 

 youth. The old life seems so cut off from the 

 new, so alien and so unreasonable, that at times I 

 find it bordering upon the incredible. The data 

 have gone, the buildings and places. I stopped 

 dead the other day in my afternoon's walk across 

 the moor, where once the dismal outskirts of 

 .Swathinglea straggled toward Leet, and asked : 

 " Was it here indeed that I crouched among the 

 weeds and refuse and broken crockery, and loaded 



DCST IN THE SHADOWS. 



my revolver, ready for murder? Did ever such a 

 thing happen in my life? Was such a mood and 

 thought and intention ever possible to me ? Rather, 

 has not some queer nightmare spirit out of dream- 

 land slipped a pseudo-memory into the records of 

 my vanished life? There must be many alive still 

 who have the same perplexities. And I think, 

 too, that those who are now growing up to take 

 fiur places in the great enterprise of mankind will 

 need many such narratives as mine for even the 

 most partial conception of the old worid of shadows 

 that came before our day. It chances that my 

 case is fairiy typical of the Change; I was caught 

 midway in a gust of passion and a curious accident 

 put me for a time in the very nucleus of the new 

 order. ... 



My memory takes me back across the interval 

 of fifty years to a little ill-lit room with a sash- 

 \vindow open to a starry sky, and instantly there 

 returns to me the characteristic smell of that room, 

 the penetrating odour of an ill-trimmed lamp burn- 

 ing cheap paraffin. Lighting by electricity had then 

 been perfected for fifteen years, but still the larger 

 portion of the world used these lamps. All this 

 first scene will go, in my mind at least, to that 

 olfactory accompaniment. That was the evening 

 smell of the room. By day it had a more subtle 

 aroma, a closeness, a peculiar sort of faint pun- 

 gency, that I associate — I know not why— with 

 dust. 



Let me describe this room to you in detail. It 

 was perhaps eight feet by seven in area, and rather 



