Revietc of Kevietci, l/lojoe. 



In the Days of the Gomet. 



4>; 



chauffeur, }ouiig Verrall, and Lord Redcar — the 

 latter holding up his long skirts of fur, and making 

 a grotesque figure — one behind the other, in full 

 bolt across a coldly comet-lit interval, toward the 

 open gates of the colliery. 



I raised myself up on my hands. 



Young Verrall ! 



My revolver! I had forgotten it. 1 was covered 

 with coaly mud, knees, elbows, shoulders, back. 

 And / /tad not even dra-ii'n m\ revolver! 



A feeling of ridiculous impotence overwhelmed 

 me. I struggled painfully to my feet. 



1 hesitated for a moment toward the gates of the 

 collier)-, and then went limping homeward, thwarted, 

 painful, confused, and ashamed. I had not the 

 heart or desire to help in the wrecking and burning 

 of Lord Redcar's motor. 



IV. 



In the night, fever, pain, fatigue — it may have 

 been the indigestion of my supper of bread and 

 cheese — roused me at last out of a hag-rid sleep 

 to face despair. 1 was a soul lost amidst desola- 

 tions and shame, dishonoured, evilly treated, hope- 

 less. I raged against the God I denied, and cursed 

 Him as I lay. 



And it was in the nature of my fever, which was 

 indeed only half-fatigue and illness, and the rest 

 the fever of passionate youth, that Xettie, a strange- 

 ly distorted Xettie, should come through the brief 

 dreams that marked the exhaustions of that vigil, 

 to dominate my misery. I was sensible, with an 

 exaggerated distinctness, of the intensit)- of her 

 physical charm for me, of her every grace and 

 beauty ; she took to her.self the whole gamut of 

 desire in me and the whole gamut of pride. She, 

 bodily, was my lost honour. It was not only loss, 

 but disgrace, to lose her. She stood for Life and 

 all that was denied ; she mocked me as a creature 

 of failure and defeat. 



There were times when something near madness 

 took me, and I gnashed my teeth and dug my nails 

 into my hands, and ceased to curse and crv out 

 only by reason of the insufficiencv of words. ' .And 

 once, toward dawn, I got out of bed, and sat bv 

 my looking-glass with my loaded revolver in my 

 hand. I stood up at last and put it carefully in my 

 drawer and locked it — out of reach of anv gusty 

 impulse. After that I slept for a little while. 



Such nights were nothing rare and strange in that 

 old order of the world. Never a citi,-, never a night 

 the whole year round, but amidst those who slept 

 were those who waked, plumbing the depths of 

 wTath and misery. Countless thousands there were 

 so ill, so troubled, they agonised near to the verv 

 border line of madness, ear-h one the centre of a 

 universe darkened and lost. 



The next day I spent in gloomv lethargv. T 

 had intended to go to Cherkshill' that dav. but 

 m\ bruised ankle was too swollen for that to be 



possible. I sat indoors in the ill-lit downstairs kit- 

 chen, with my foot bandaged, and mused darkly, 

 and read. My dear old mother waited on me, and 

 her brown eyes watched me and wondered at my 

 black silences, my frowning preoccupations. I had 

 not told her how it was my ankle came to be bruised 

 and my clothes muddy. She had brushed my 

 clothes in the morning before I got up. 



Ah, well : Mothers are not treated in that way 

 now. That, I suppose, must console me. I won- 

 der how far you will be able to picture that dark, 

 grimy, untidy room, with its bare deal table, its 

 tattered wallpaper, the saucepans and kettle on the 

 narrow, cheap, but by no means economical, range, 

 the ashes under the fireplace, the rust-spotted steel 

 fender on which my bandaged feet rested; I won- 

 der how near }ou can come to seeing the scow^ling, 

 pale-faced hobbledehoy I was, unshaven and collar- 

 less, in the Windsor chair, and the little, timid, 

 dirty, devoted old woman who hovered about me 

 with love peering out from her puckered eyelids. 



When she went out to buy some vegetables in the 

 middle of the morning she got me a half-penny 

 journal. It was just such a one as these upon my 

 desk, only that the copy I read was damp from the 

 press ; and these are so dry and brittle they crack if 

 I touch them. I have a copy of the actual issue 

 I read that morning ; it was a paper called emphati- 

 cally the " New Paper," but everybody bought it, 

 and ever) body called it the " yell." It was full 

 that morning of stupendous news and still more 

 stupendous headlines, so stupendous that for a 

 little while I was roused from my egotistical brood- 

 ing to wider interests. For it seemed that Ger- 

 many and England were on the brink of war. 



Of all the monstrous, irrational phenomena of the 

 fonner time, war was certainly the most strikingly 

 insane. In reality, it was probablv far less mis- 

 chievous than such quieter evils as, for example, 

 the general acquiescence in the private ownership 

 of land, but its evil consequences showed so plainlv 

 that even in those days of stifling confusion one 

 marvelled at it. On no conceivable grounds was 

 there any sense in modern war. Save for the 

 slaughter and mangling of a multitude of people, 

 the destruction of vast quantities of material, and 

 the waste of innumerable units of energy', it effected 

 nothing. The old war of savage and barbaric na-' 

 tions did, at least, change humanity. You assumed 

 yourselves to be a superior tribe in physique and 

 discipline, you demonstrated this upon your neigh- 

 bours, and, if .successful, you took their land and 

 their women, and perpetuated and enlarged vour 

 superiority. 



The new war changed nothing but the colour of 

 maps, the design of postage stamps, and the rela- 

 tionship of a few accidentally conspicuous indivi- 

 duals. In one of the last of these international epi- 

 leptic fits, for example, the English, with much dy- 



