Review of Reviews, 119/06. 



In the Days of the Gomet. 



3°i 



mistake, and everjthing is different forever. Yes, 

 yes." 



She turned about. 



■Nettie!' cried I, and still protesting, pursued 

 her along the narrow alley between the staging 

 toward the hothouse door. I pursued her like an 

 accusation, and she went before me like one who 

 is guilty and ashamed. So I recall it now. 



She would not let me talk to her again. 



Yet I could see that my talk to her had altogether 

 abolished the clear-cut distance of our meeting in 

 the park. Ever and again I found her hazel eyes 

 upon me. They expressed something novel — a sur- 

 prise, as though she realised an unwonted relation- 

 ship, and a sympathetic pity. And still — something 

 defensive. 



When we got back to the cottage, I fell talking 

 rather more freely with her father about the 

 nationalisation of railways, and my spirits and tem- 

 per had so far mended at the realisation that I 

 could still produce an effect upon Nettie, that I was 

 even playful with Puss. Mrs. Stuart judged from 

 that that things were better with me than they were, 

 and began to beam mightily. 



But Nettie remained thoughtful and said very 

 little. She was lost in perplexities I could not 

 fathom, and presently she slipped away from us and 

 went upstairs. 



VI. 



I was, of course, too footsore tO' walk back to 

 Clayton, but I had a shilling and a jjenny in my 

 pocket for the train between Checkshill and Two 

 Mile Stone, and that much of the distance I pro- 

 posed to do in the train. And when I got ready 

 to go, Nettie amazed me bv waking up to the most 

 remarkable solicitude for me. 1 must, she said, go 

 by the road. It was altogether too dark for the 

 short way to the lodge gates. 



I pointed out that it was moonlight. " With the 

 ccmet thrown in," said old Stuart. 



'■ No," she insisted, " you must go by the road." 



I still disputed. 



She was standing near me. " To please me," she 

 urged, in a quick undertone, and with a persuasive 

 look that puzzled me. Even in the moment I asked 

 myself why should this please her? 



I might have agreed had she not followed that 

 up ^\ ith : " The hollies by the shrubbery are as 

 dark as pitch. And there are the deerhounds. ' 



'• I'm not afraid of the dark,' said I. " Nor of 

 the deerhounds, either." 



" But; those dogs ! Supposing one was loose ! ' 



That was a girl's argument, a girl who still had 

 to understand that fear is an overt argument only 

 for her own sex. I thought too of those grizzly, lank 

 brutes straining at their chains and of the chorus 

 they could make of a night when they heard belated 

 footsteps along the edge of the Killing Wood, and 

 the thought banished my wish to please her. Like 

 most imaginative natures, I was acutely capable of 



dreads and retreats, and constantly occupied with 

 their suppression and concealment, and to refuse 

 the short cut when it might appear that I did it on 

 account of half-a-dozen almost certainly chained 

 dogs, was impossible. 



So I set off in spite of her, feeling valiant and 

 glad to be so easily brave, but a little sorry that 

 she should think herself crossed by me. 



A thin cloud veiled thje moon, and the way under 

 the beeches was dark and indistinct. I was not so 

 preoccupied with my love affairs as to neglect what 

 I will confess was always my custom at night across 

 that wild and lonely park. I made myself a club 

 by fastening a big flint to one end of my twisted 

 handkerchief and tying the other about my wrist, 

 and with this in my pocket, went on comforted. 



And it chanced that, as I emerged from the 

 hollies by the corner of the shrubbery, I was startled 

 to come unexf)ectedly upon a young man in evening 

 dress smoking a cigar. 



I was walking on turf, so that the sound I made 

 was slight. He stood clear in the moonlight, his 

 cigar glowed like a blood-red star, and it did not 

 occur to me at the time that I advanced toward him 

 almost invisibly in an impenetrable shadow. 



" Hello !" he cried, with a sort of amiable chal- 

 lenge. " I'm here first 1" 



I came out into the light. "Who cares if you 

 are?" said I. 



I jumped at once to an interpretation of his 

 words. I knew that there was an intermittent dis- 

 pute between the house people and the villager 

 public about the use of this track, and it is needless 

 to say where my sympathies fell in that dispute. 



•' Eh ?" he cried in surprise. 



" Thought I would run away, I suppose," said I, 

 and came close up to him. 



.'Ml my enormous hatred of his class had flared 

 up at the sight of his costume, at the fancied chal- 

 lenge of his words. I knew him. He was Edward 

 Verrall, son of the man who owned not onlv this 

 great estate, but more than half of Rawdon's pot- 

 bank, and who had interests and possessions, col- 

 lieries and rents, all over the district of the Four 

 Towns. He was a gallant youngster, p>eople said, 

 and very clever. Young as he was, there was 

 talk of Parliament for him : he had been a great 

 success at the university, and he was being sedulously 

 popularised among us. He took with a light con- 

 fidence, as a matter of course, advantages that I 

 would have faced the rack to get, and I firmly be- 

 lieved myself a better man than he. He was, as 

 he stood there, a concentrated figure of all that 

 filled me with bitterness. One day he had stopped 

 in a motor outside our house, and I remember the 

 thrill of rage with which I had noted the dutiful 

 admiration in my mother's eyes as she peered 

 through her blind at him. " That's young Mr. Ver- 

 rall," she said. " They say he's very clever." 



