In the Days of the Comet (12 page)

Then I fell to upon the door-knocker and gave a loud rat-tat-too,
and followed this up with an amiable "Hel-lo!"

For a time no one answered me, and I stood listening and expectant,
with my fingers about my weapon. Some one moved about upstairs
presently, and was still again. The tension of waiting seemed to
brace my nerves.

I had my hand on the knocker for the second time, when Puss appeared
in the doorway.

For a moment we remained staring at one another without speaking.
Her hair was disheveled, her face dirty, tear-stained, and irregularly
red. Her expression at the sight of me was pure astonishment.
I thought she was about to say something, and then she had darted
away out of the house again.

"I say, Puss!" I said. "Puss!"

I followed her out of the door. "Puss! What's the matter? Where's
Nettie?"

She vanished round the corner of the house.

I hesitated, perplexed whether I should pursue her. What did it
all mean? Then I heard some one upstairs.

"Willie!" cried the voice of Mrs. Stuart. "Is that you?"

"Yes," I answered. "Where's every one? Where's Nettie? I want to
have a talk with her."

She did not answer, but I heard her dress rustle as she moved. I
Judged she was upon the landing overhead.

I paused at the foot of the stairs, expecting her to appear and
come down.

Suddenly came a strange sound, a rush of sounds, words jumbled
and hurrying, confused and shapeless, borne along upon a note of
throaty distress that at last submerged the words altogether and
ended in a wail. Except that it came from a woman's throat it was
exactly the babbling sound of a weeping child with a grievance. "I
can't," she said, "I can't," and that was all I could distinguish.
It was to my young ears the strangest sound conceivable from a
kindly motherly little woman, whom I had always thought of chiefly
as an unparalleled maker of cakes. It frightened me. I went upstairs
at once in a state of infinite alarm, and there she was upon the
landing, leaning forward over the top of the chest of drawers beside
her open bedroom door, and weeping. I never saw such weeping. One
thick strand of black hair had escaped, and hung with a spiral
twist down her back; never before had I noticed that she had gray
hairs.

As I came up upon the landing her voice rose again. "Oh that I should
have to tell you, Willie! Oh that I should have to tell you!" She
dropped her head again, and a fresh gust of tears swept all further
words away.

I said nothing, I was too astonished; but I drew nearer
to her, and waited. . . .

I never saw such weeping; the extraordinary wetness of her dripping
handkerchief abides with me to this day.

"That I should have lived to see this day!" she wailed. "I had
rather a thousand times she was struck dead at my feet."

I began to understand.

"Mrs. Stuart," I said, clearing my throat; "what has become of
Nettie?"

"That I should have lived to see this day!" she said by way of
reply.

I waited till her passion abated.

There came a lull. I forgot the weapon in my pocket. I said nothing,
and suddenly she stood erect before me, wiping her swollen eyes.
"Willie," she gulped, "she's gone!"

"Nettie?"

"Gone! . . . Run away. . . . Run away from her home. Oh, Willie,
Willie! The shame of it! The sin and shame of it!"

She flung herself upon my shoulder, and clung to me, and began
again to wish her daughter lying dead at our feet.

"There, there," said I, and all my being was a-tremble. "Where has
she gone?" I said as softly as I could.

But for the time she was preoccupied with her own sorrow, and I had
to hold her there, and comfort her with the blackness of finality
spreading over my soul.

"Where has she gone?" I asked for the fourth time.

"I don't know—we don't know. And oh, Willie, she went out yesterday
morning! I said to her, 'Nettie,' I said to her, 'you're mighty
fine for a morning call.' 'Fine clo's for a fine day,' she said,
and that was her last words to me!—Willie!—the child I suckled
at my breast!"

"Yes, yes. But where has she gone?" I said.

She went on with sobs, and now telling her story with a sort of
fragmentary hurry: "She went out bright and shining, out of this
house for ever. She was smiling, Willie—as if she was glad to be
going. ("Glad to be going," I echoed with soundless lips.) 'You're
mighty fine for the morning,' I says; 'mighty fine.' 'Let the girl
be pretty,' says her father, 'while she's young!' And somewhere
she'd got a parcel of her things hidden to pick up, and she was
going off—out of this house for ever!"

She became quiet.

"Let the girl be pretty," she repeated; "let the girl be pretty
while she's young. . . . Oh! how can we go on LIVING, Willie? He
doesn't show it, but he's like a stricken beast. He's wounded to
the heart. She was always his favorite. He never seemed to care
for Puss like he did for her. And she's wounded him—"

"Where has she gone?" I reverted at last to that.

"We don't know. She leaves her own blood, she trusts herself— Oh,
Willie, it'll kill me! I wish she and me together were lying in
our graves."

"But"—I moistened my lips and spoke slowly—"she may have gone
to marry."

"If that was so! I've prayed to God it might be so, Willie. I've
prayed that he'd take pity on her—him, I mean, she's with."

I jerked out: "Who's that?"

"In her letter, she said he was a gentleman. She did say he was
a gentleman."

"In her letter. Has she written? Can I see her letter?"

"Her father took it."

"But if she writes— When did she write?"

"It came this morning."

"But where did it come from? You can tell—"

"She didn't say. She said she was happy. She said love took one
like a storm—"

"Curse that! Where is her letter? Let me see it. And as for this
gentleman—"

She stared at me.

"You know who it is."

"Willie!" she protested.

"You know who it is, whether she said or not?" Her eyes made a mute
unconfident denial.

"Young Verrall?"

She made no answer. "All I could do for you, Willie," she began
presently.

"Was it young Verrall?" I insisted.

For a second, perhaps, we faced one another in stark understanding.
. . . Then she plumped back to the chest of drawers, and her wet
pocket-handkerchief, and I knew she sought refuge from my relentless
eyes.

My pity for her vanished. She knew it was her mistress's son as
well as I! And for some time she had known, she had felt.

I hovered over her for a moment, sick with amazed disgust. I suddenly
bethought me of old Stuart, out in the greenhouse, and turned and
went downstairs. As I did so, I looked up to see Mrs. Stuart moving
droopingly and lamely back into her own room.

Old Stuart was pitiful.

I found him still inert in the greenhouse where I had first seen
him. He did not move as I drew near him; he glanced at me, and then
stared hard again at the flowerpots before him.

"Eh, Willie," he said, "this is a black day for all of us."

"What are you going to do?" I asked.

"The missus takes on so," he said. "I came out here."

"What do you mean to do?"

"What IS a man to do in such a case?"

"Do!" I cried, "why— Do!"

"He ought to marry her," he said.

"By God, yes!" I cried. "He must do that anyhow."

"He ought to. It's—it's cruel. But what am I to do? Suppose he
won't? Likely he won't. What then?"

He drooped with an intensified despair.

"Here's this cottage," he said, pursuing some contracted argument.
"We've lived here all our lives, you might say. . . . Clear out.
At my age. . . . One can't die in a slum."

I stood before him for a space, speculating what thoughts might
fill the gaps between these broken words. I found his lethargy, and
the dimly shaped mental attitudes his words indicated, abominable.
I said abruptly, "You have her letter?"

He dived into his breast-pocket, became motionless for ten seconds,
then woke up again and produced her letter. He drew it clumsily
from its envelope, and handed it to me silently.

"Why!" he cried, looking at me for the first time, "What's come to
your chin, Willie?"

"It's nothing," I said. "It's a bruise;" and I opened the letter.

It was written on greenish tinted fancy note-paper, and with all
and more than Nettie's usual triteness and inadequacy of expression.
Her handwriting bore no traces of emotion; it was round and upright
and clear as though it had been done in a writing lesson. Always
her letters were like masks upon her image; they fell like curtains
before the changing charm of her face; one altogether forgot the
sound of her light clear voice, confronted by a perplexing stereotyped
thing that had mysteriously got a hold upon one's heart and pride.
How did that letter run?—

"MY DEAR MOTHER,

"Do not be distressed at my going away. I have gone somewhere safe,
and with some one who cares for me very much. I am sorry for your
sakes, but it seems that it had to be. Love is a very difficult
thing, and takes hold of one in ways one does not expect. Do not
think I am ashamed about this, I glory in my love, and you must not
trouble too much about me. I am very, very happy (deeply underlined).

"Fondest love to Father and Puss.

"Your loving

"Nettie."

That queer little document! I can see it now for the childish simple
thing it was, but at the time I read it in a suppressed anguish of
rage. It plunged me into a pit of hopeless shame; there seemed to
remain no pride for me in life until I had revenge. I stood staring
at those rounded upstanding letters, not trusting myself to speak
or move. At last I stole a glance at Stuart.

He held the envelope in his hand, and stared down at the postmark
between his horny thumbnails.

"You can't even tell where she is," he said, turning the thing
round in a hopeless manner, and then desisting. "It's hard on us,
Willie. Here she is; she hadn't anything to complain of; a sort of
pet for all of us. Not even made to do her share of the 'ousework.
And she goes off and leaves us like a bird that's learnt to fly.
Can't TRUST us, that's what takes me. Puts 'erself— But there!
What's to happen to her?"

"What's to happen to him?"

He shook his head to show that problem was beyond him.

"You'll go after her," I said in an even voice; "you'll make him
marry her?"

"Where am I to go?" he asked helplessly, and held out the envelope
with a gesture; "and what could I do? Even if I knew— How could
I leave the gardens?"

"Great God!" I cried, "not leave these gardens! It's your Honor,
man! If she was my daughter—if she was my daughter—I'd tear the
world to pieces!" . . I choked. "You mean to stand it?"

"What can I do?"

"Make him marry her! Horsewhip him! Horsewhip him, I say!—I'd
strangle him!"

He scratched slowly at his hairy cheek, opened his mouth, and
shook his head. Then, with an intolerable note of sluggish gentle
wisdom, he said, "People of our sort, Willie, can't do things like
that."

I came near to raving. I had a wild impulse to strike him in the
face. Once in my boyhood I happened upon a bird terribly mangled
by some cat, and killed it in a frenzy of horror and pity. I had
a gust of that same emotion now, as this shameful mutilated soul
fluttered in the dust, before me. Then, you know, I dismissed him
from the case.

"May I look?" I asked.

He held out the envelope reluctantly.

"There it is," he said, and pointing with his garden-rough forefinger.
"I.A.P.A.M.P. What can you make of that?"

I took the thing in my hands. The adhesive stamp customary in those
days was defaced by a circular postmark, which bore the name of
the office of departure and the date. The impact in this particular
case had been light or made without sufficient ink, and half the
letters of the name had left no impression. I could distinguish—

I A P A M P

and very faintly below D.S.O.

I guessed the name in an instant flash of intuition. It was
Shaphambury. The very gaps shaped that to my mind. Perhaps in a
sort of semi-visibility other letters were there, at least hinting
themselves. It was a place somewhere on the east coast, I knew,
either in Norfolk or Suffolk.

"Why!" cried I—and stopped.

What was the good of telling him?

Old Stuart had glanced up sharply, I am inclined to think almost
fearfully, into my face. "You—you haven't got it?" he said.

Shaphambury—I should remember that.

"You don't think you got it?" he said.

I handed the envelope back to him.

"For a moment I thought it might be Hampton," I said.

"Hampton," he repeated. "Hampton. How could you make Hampton?" He
turned the envelope about. "H.A.M.—why, Willie, you're a worse
hand at the job than me!"

He replaced the letter in the envelope and stood erect to put this
back in his breast pocket.

I did not mean to take any risks in this affair. I drew a stump
of pencil from my waistcoat pocket, turned a little away from him
and wrote "Shaphambury" very quickly on my frayed and rather grimy
shirt cuff.

"Well," said I, with an air of having done nothing remarkable.

I turned to him with some unimportant observation—I have forgotten
what.

I never finished whatever vague remark I commenced.

I looked up to see a third person waiting at the greenhouse door.

It was old Mrs. Verrall.

I wonder if I can convey the effect of her to you. She was a little
old lady with extraordinarily flaxen hair, her weak aquiline features
were pursed up into an assumption of dignity, and she was richly
dressed. I would like to underline that "richly dressed," or have
the words printed in florid old English or Gothic lettering. No
one on earth is now quite so richly dressed as she was, no one old
or young indulges in so quiet and yet so profound a sumptuosity.
But you must not imagine any extravagance of outline or any beauty
or richness of color. The predominant colors were black and fur
browns, and the effect of richness was due entirely to the extreme
costliness of the materials employed. She affected silk brocades
with rich and elaborate patterns, priceless black lace over creamy
or purple satin, intricate trimmings through which threads and
bands of velvet wriggled, and in the winter rare furs. Her gloves
fitted exquisitely, and ostentatiously simple chains of fine gold
and pearls, and a great number of bracelets, laced about her little
person. One was forced to feel that the slightest article she wore
cost more than all the wardrobe of a dozen girls like Nettie; her
bonnet affected the simplicity that is beyond rubies. Richness,
that is the first quality about this old lady that I would like to
convey to you, and the second was cleanliness. You felt that old
Mrs. Verrall was exquisitely clean. If you had boiled my poor dear
old mother in soda for a month you couldn't have got her so clean
as Mrs. Verrall constantly and manifestly was. And pervading all
her presence shone her third great quality, her manifest confidence
in the respectful subordination of the world.