Review of Hei-iewn, Iil2j06. 



In the Days of the Gomet. 



621 



was so absurdly powerful, and instantly her son 

 and Nettie's face were flaming in my braui. The 

 Stuarts had, no doubt, already accepted accom- 

 plished facts. And I too 



What was I doing here? 



What was I doing here while judgment escaped 

 me ? 



I woke up. I was injected with energy. I took 

 one reassuring look at the curate's obsequious back, 

 at the old lady's projected nose and quivering hand, 

 and then with swift, clean movements I had the 

 little drawer open, four sovereigns in my pocket, 

 and the drawer shut again. Then again at the 

 window — ttiey were etill talking. 



That was all right. He might not look in that 

 drawer for hours. I glanced at his clock. Twenty 

 minutes still before the Birmingham traiij. Time 

 to buy a pair of boots and get away. "But how 

 was I to get to the station ? 



I went out boldly into the passage, and took my 

 hat and stick. Walk boldly past him? 



Yes. That was all right ! He could not argue 

 with me while so important a person engaged him. 

 I came down the steps. 



" I want a list made, Mr. Gabbitas, of all the 

 reallv deserving cases," old Mrs. Verrall was say- 

 ing. 



It was curious, but it did not occur to me that 

 here was a mother whose son I was going to kill. 

 I did not see her in that aspect at all. Instead. I 

 was possessed by a realisation of the blazing im- 

 becility of a social system that gave this palsied old 

 woman the power to give, or withhold, the urgent 

 necessities of life from hundreds of her fellow-crea- 

 tures just according to her poor, foolish old fancies 

 of desert. 



"We could make a provhioiiaJ list of that sort," 

 he was saying, and glanced round with a preoccu- 

 pied expression at me. 



" I miist go," I said at his flash of inquiry, and 

 added, " I'll be back in twenty minutes," and went 

 on mv way. He turned again to his patroness as 

 though he forgot me on the instant. Perhaps after 

 all he was not sorrv. 



I felt extraordinarily cool and capable, exhila- 

 rated, if anything, by this prompt, effectual theft. 

 After all, my great determination would achieve 

 itself. I was no longer oppressed by a sense of ob- 

 stacles ; I felt I could grasp accidents and turn 

 them to my advantage. I would now go down 

 Hacker-street to the little shoemaker's — get a sound 

 good pair of boots — ten minutes — and then to the 

 railway station — five minutes more — and off. I 

 felt as efficient and non-moral as if I was Nietzsche's 

 superman already come. It did not occur to me 

 that the curate's clock might have a considerable 

 nvargin of error. 



VT. 



T missed the train. 



Partlv, that was because the curate's clock was 



slow, and partly, it was due to the commercial ob- 

 stinacy of the shoemaker, who would try on another 

 pair after I had declared my time was up. I 

 bought the final pair, however, gave him a wrong 

 address for the return of the old ones, and only 

 ceased to feel like the Nietzschean superman when 

 I saw the train running out of the station. 



Even then I did not lose my head. It occurred to 

 me almost at once that, in the event of a prornpt 

 pursuit, there would be a great advantage in not 

 taking a train from Clayton; that, indeed, to have 

 done so would have been an error from which only 

 luck had saved me. As it was, I had already 

 been very indiscreet in my inquiries about Shapham- 

 bury; for, once on the scent, the clerk could not 

 fail to remember me. Now the chances were against 

 his coming into the case. I did not go into the 

 station, therefore, at all, I made no demonstration 

 of having missed the train, but walked quietlv past, 

 ilo^n the road, crossed the iron footbridge, "and 

 took the way back circuitously by White's brick 

 fields and the allotments to the way over Clayton 

 Crest to Two-Mile Stone, where I calculated I 

 should have an ample margin for the 6.13 train. 



I was not very greatly excited or alarmed then. 

 Suppose, I reasoned, that by some accident the 

 curate goes to that drawer at once ; will he be cer- 

 tain to miss four out of ten or eleven sovereigns ? 

 If he does, will he at once think I have taken them? 

 If he does, will he act at once or wait for mv re- 

 turn? If he acts at once, will he talk to my mother 

 or call in the police ? Then there are a dozen roads 

 and even railways out of the Clayton region ; how is 

 he to know which I ha\^e taken ? Suppose he goes 

 straight at once to the right station, they will not 

 remember my departure for the simple reason that 

 T rlidn't depart. But they mav remember about 

 Shaphambury ? It was unlikely. 



I resolved not to go directly to Shaphambury from 

 Birmingham, but to go thence to \Ionkshampton, 

 thence to Wyvern, and then come down on Shap- 

 hambury from the north. That might involve a 

 night at some intermediate stopping place, but it 

 would effectually conceal me from any but the most 

 persistent pursuit. And this was not a case of mur- 

 der yet, but only the theft of four so\ereigns. 



I had argued away all anxiety before I reached 

 Clayton Crest. 



At the Crest I looked back. 'Wliat a world it 

 was ! And suddenly it came to me that I was look- 

 ing at this world for the last time. If I overtook 

 the fugitives and succeeded I should die with them 

 — or hang. I stopped and looked back more atten- 

 tively at that wide, ugly valley. 



It was my native valley, and I was going out 

 of it. I thought, never to return, and vet in that last 

 prospect, the group of towns that had borne me 

 and dwarfed and crippled and made me. seemed, in 

 some indefinable marmer, strange. T was, perhaps, 

 more used to seeing it from this comprehensive view- 



