In the Days of the Comet (29 page)

"But we have settled that—part we must."

"But WHY?"

"I love you."

"Well, and why should I hide it Willie?—I love you. . . ." Our
eyes met. She flushed, she went on resolutely: "You are stupid.
The whole thing is stupid. I love you both."

I said, "You do not understand what you say. No!"

"You mean that I must go."

"Yes, yes. Go!"

For a moment we looked at one another, mute, as though deep down
in the unfathomable darkness below the surface and present reality
of things dumb meanings strove to be. She made to speak and desisted.

"But MUST I go?" she said at last, with quivering lips, and the
tears in her eyes were stars. Then she began, "Willie——"

"Go!" I interrupted her. . . . "Yes."

Then again we were still.

She stood there, a tearful figure of pity, longing for me, pitying
me. Something of that wider love, that will carry our descendants
at last out of all the limits, the hard, clear obligations of our
personal life, moved us, like the first breath of a coming wind
out of heaven that stirs and passes away. I had an impulse to take
her hand and kiss it, and then a trembling came to me, and I knew
that if I touched her, my strength would all pass from me. . . .

And so, standing at a distance one from the other, we parted, and
Nettie went, reluctant and looking back, with the man she had chosen,
to the lot she had chosen, out of my life—like the sunlight
out of my life. . . .

Then, you know, I suppose I folded up this newspaper and put it
in my pocket. But my memory of that meeting ends with the face of
Nettie turning to go.

I remember all that very distinctly to this day. I could almost
vouch for the words I have put into our several mouths. Then comes
a blank. I have a dim memory of being back in the house near the
Links and the bustle of Melmount's departure, of finding Parker's
energy distasteful, and of going away down the road with a strong
desire to say good-bye to Melmount alone.

Perhaps I was already doubting my decision to part for ever from
Nettie, for I think I had it in mind to tell him all that
had been said and done. . . .

I don't think I had a word with him or anything but a hurried hand
clasp. I am not sure. It has gone out of my mind. But I have a
very clear and certain memory of my phase of bleak desolation as
I watched his car recede and climb and vanish over Mapleborough
Hill, and that I got there my first full and definite intimation
that, after all, this great Change and my new wide aims in life,
were not to mean indiscriminate happiness for me. I had a sense of
protest, as against extreme unfairness, as I saw him go. "It is
too soon," I said to myself, "to leave me alone."

I felt I had sacrificed too much, that after I had said good-bye to
the hot immediate life of passion, to Nettie and desire, to physical
and personal rivalry, to all that was most intensely myself, it was
wrong to leave me alone and sore hearted, to go on at once with
these steely cold duties of the wider life. I felt new born, and
naked, and at a loss.

"Work!" I said with an effort at the heroic, and turned about with
a sigh, and I was glad that the way I had to go would at
least take me to my mother. . . .

But, curiously enough, I remember myself as being fairly cheerful
in the town of Birmingham that night, I recall an active and
interested mood. I spent the night in Birmingham because the train
service on was disarranged, and I could not get on. I went to listen
to a band that was playing its brassy old-world music in the public
park, and I fell into conversation with a man who said he had been
a reporter upon one of their minor local papers. He was full and
keen upon all the plans of reconstruction that were now shaping
over the lives of humanity, and I know that something of that
noble dream came back to me with his words and phrases. We walked
up to a place called Bourneville by moonlight, and talked of the
new social groupings that must replace the old isolated homes, and
how the people would be housed.

This Bourneville was germane to that matter. It had been an
attempt on the part of a private firm of manufacturers to improve
the housing of their workers. To our ideas to-day it would seem the
feeblest of benevolent efforts, but at the time it was extraordinary
and famous, and people came long journeys to see its trim cottages
with baths sunk under the kitchen floors (of all conceivable
places), and other brilliant inventions. No one seemed to see the
danger to liberty in that aggressive age, that might arise through
making workpeople tenants and debtors of their employer, though an
Act called the Truck Act had long ago intervened to prevent minor
developments in the same direction. . . . But I and my chance
acquaintance seemed that night always to have been aware of that
possibility, and we had no doubt in our minds of the public nature
of the housing duty. Our interest lay rather in the possibility of
common nurseries and kitchens and public rooms that should economize
toil and give people space and freedom.

It was very interesting, but still a little cheerless, and when I
lay in bed that night I thought of Nettie and the queer modifications
of preference she had made, and among other things and in a way, I
prayed. I prayed that night, let me confess it, to an image I had
set up in my heart, an image that still serves with me as a symbol
for things inconceivable, to a Master Artificer, the unseen captain
of all who go about the building of the world, the making of mankind.

But before and after I prayed I imagined I was talking and reasoning
and meeting again with Nettie. . . . She never came into the temple
of that worshiping with me.

NEXT day I came home to Clayton.

The new strange brightness of the world was all the brighter there,
for the host of dark distressful memories, of darkened childhood,
toilsome youth, embittered adolescence that wove about the place
for me. It seemed to me that I saw morning there for the first time.
No chimneys smoked that day, no furnaces were burning, the people
were busy with other things. The clear strong sun, the sparkle in
the dustless air, made a strange gaiety in the narrow streets. I
passed a number of smiling people coming home from the public
breakfasts that were given in the Town Hall until better things
could be arranged, and happened on Parload among them. "You were
right about that comet," I sang out at the sight of him; and he
came toward me and clasped my hand.

"What are people doing here?" said I.

"They're sending us food from outside," he said, "and we're going
to level all these slums—and shift into tents on to the moors;"
and he began to tell me of many things that were being arranged,
the Midland land committees had got to work with remarkable celerity
and directness of purpose, and the redistribution of population
was already in its broad outlines planned. He was working at
an improvised college of engineering. Until schemes of work were
made out, almost every one was going to school again to get as much
technical training as they could against the demands of the huge
enterprise of reconstruction that was now beginning.

He walked with me to my door, and there I met old Pettigrew coming
down the steps. He looked dusty and tired, but his eye was brighter
than it used to be, and he carried in a rather unaccustomed manner,
a workman's tool basket.

"How's the rheumatism, Mr. Pettigrew?" I asked.

"Dietary," said old Pettigrew, "can work wonders. . . ." He looked
me in the eye. "These houses," he said, "will have to come down,
I suppose, and our notions of property must undergo very considerable
revision—in the light of reason; but meanwhile I've been doing
something to patch that disgraceful roof of mine! To think that
I could have dodged and evaded——"

He raised a deprecatory hand, drew down the loose corners of his
ample mouth, and shook his old head.

"The past is past, Mr. Pettigrew."

"Your poor dear mother! So good and honest a woman! So simple and
kind and forgiving! To think of it! My dear young man!"—he said
it manfully—"I'm ashamed."

"The whole world blushed at dawn the other day, Mr. Pettigrew," I
said, "and did it very prettily. That's over now. God knows, who
is NOT ashamed of all that came before last Tuesday."

I held out a forgiving hand, naively forgetful that in this place
I was a thief, and he took it and went his way, shaking his head
and repeating he was ashamed, but I think a little comforted.

The door opened and my poor old mother's face, marvelously cleaned,
appeared. "Ah, Willie, boy! YOU. You!"

I ran up the steps to her, for I feared she might fall.

How she clung to me in the passage, the dear woman! . . .

But first she shut the front door. The old habit of respect for my
unaccountable temper still swayed her. "Ah deary!" she said, "ah
deary! But you were sorely tried," and kept her face close to my
shoulder, lest she should offend me by the sight of the tears that
welled within her.

She made a sort of gulping noise and was quiet for a while, holding
me very tightly to her heart with her worn, long hands . . .

She thanked me presently for my telegram, and I put my arm about
her and drew her into the living room.

"It's all well with me, mother dear," I said, "and the dark times
are over—are done with for ever, mother."

Whereupon she had courage and gave way and sobbed aloud, none
chiding her.

She had not let me know she could still weep for five grimy years. . . .

Dear heart! There remained for her but a very brief while in this
world that had been renewed. I did not know how short that time
would be, but the little I could do—perhaps after all it was not
little to her—to atone for the harshness of my days of wrath and
rebellion, I did. I took care to be constantly with her, for I
perceived now her curious need of me. It was not that we had ideas
to exchange or pleasures to share, but she liked to see me at table,
to watch me working, to have me go to and fro. There was no toil
for her any more in the world, but only such light services as
are easy and pleasant for a worn and weary old woman to do, and I
think she was happy even at her end.

She kept to her queer old eighteenth century version of religion,
too, without a change. She had worn this particular amulet so
long it was a part of her. Yet the Change was evident even in that
persistence. I said to her one day, "But do you still believe in
that hell of flame, dear mother? You—with your tender heart!"

She vowed she did.

Some theological intricacy made it necessary to her, but still——

She looked thoughtfully at a bank of primulas before her for a time,
and then laid her tremulous hand impressively on my arm. "You know,
Willie, dear," she said, as though she was clearing up a childish
misunderstanding of mine, "I don't think any one will GO there. I
never DID think that. . . ."

That talk stands out in my memory because of that agreeable theological
decision of hers, but it was only one of a great number of talks.
It used to be pleasant in the afternoon, after the day's work was
done and before one went on with the evening's study—how odd it
would have seemed in the old time for a young man of the industrial
class to be doing post-graduate work in sociology, and how much
a matter of course it seems now!—to walk out into the gardens
of Lowchester House, and smoke a cigarette or so and let her talk
ramblingly of the things that interested her. . . . Physically
the Great Change did not do so very much to reinvigorate her—she
had lived in that dismal underground kitchen in Clayton too long
for any material rejuvenescence—she glowed out indeed as a dying
spark among the ashes might glow under a draught of fresh air—and
assuredly it hastened her end. But those closing days were very
tranquil, full of an effortless contentment. With her, life was like
a rainy, windy day that clears only to show the sunset afterglow.
The light has passed. She acquired no new habits amid the comforts
of the new life, did no new things, but only found a happier light
upon the old.

She lived with a number of other old ladies belonging to our commune
in the upper rooms of Lowchester House. Those upper apartments
were simple and ample, fine and well done in the Georgian style,
and they had been organized to give the maximum of comfort and
conveniences and to economize the need of skilled attendance. We
had taken over the various "great houses," as they used to be
called, to make communal dining-rooms and so forth—their kitchens
were conveniently large—and pleasant places for the old people
of over sixty whose time of ease had come, and for suchlike public
uses. We had done this not only with Lord Redcar's house, but also
with Checkshill House—where old Mrs. Verrall made a dignified
and capable hostess,—and indeed with most of the fine residences
in the beautiful wide country between the Four Towns district and
the Welsh mountains. About these great houses there had usually
been good outbuildings, laundries, married servants' quarters,
stabling, dairies, and the like, suitably masked by trees, we
turned these into homes, and to them we added first tents and wood
chalets and afterward quadrangular residential buildings. In order
to be near my mother I had two small rooms in the new collegiate
buildings which our commune was almost the first to possess, and they
were very convenient for the station of the high-speed electric
railway that took me down to our daily conferences and my secretarial
and statistical work in Clayton.

Ours had been one of the first modern communes to get in order; we
were greatly helped by the energy of Lord Redcar, who had a fine
feeling for the picturesque associations of his ancestral home—the
detour that took our line through the beeches and bracken and
bluebells of the West Wood and saved the pleasant open wildness
of the park was one of his suggestions; and we had many reasons to
be proud of our surroundings. Nearly all the other communes that
sprang up all over the pleasant parkland round the industrial
valley of the Four Towns, as the workers moved out, came to us to
study the architecture of the residential squares and quadrangles
with which we had replaced the back streets between the great
houses and the ecclesiastical residences about the cathedral, and
the way in which we had adapted all these buildings to our new
social needs. Some claimed to have improved on us. But they could
not emulate the rhododendron garden out beyond our shrubberies; that
was a thing altogether our own in our part of England, because of
its ripeness and of the rarity of good peat free from lime.