In the Days of the Comet (7 page)

"Sit down!" said her father. "Give him a chair, Puss."

We talked a little stiffly—they were evidently surprised by my
sudden apparition, dusty, fatigued, and white faced; but Nettie
did not remain to keep the conversation going.

"There!" she cried suddenly, as if she were vexed. "I declare!"
and she darted out of the room.

"Lord! what a girl it is!" said Mrs. Stuart. "I don't know what's
come to her."

It was half an hour before Nettie came back. It seemed a long time
to me, and yet she had been running, for when she came in again
she was out of breath. In the meantime, I had thrown out casually
that I had given up my place at Rawdon's. "I can do better than
that," I said.

"I left my book in the dell," she said, panting. "Is tea
ready?" and that was her apology. . .

We didn't shake down into comfort even with the coming of the
tea-things. Tea at the gardener's cottage was a serious meal, with
a big cake and little cakes, and preserves and fruit, a fine spread
upon a table. You must imagine me, sullen, awkward, and preoccupied,
perplexed by the something that was inexplicably unexpected in
Nettie, saying little, and glowering across the cake at her, and all
the eloquence I had been concentrating for the previous twenty-four
hours, miserably lost somewhere in the back of my mind. Nettie's
father tried to set me talking; he had a liking for my gift of ready
speech, for his own ideas came with difficulty, and it pleased and
astonished him to hear me pouring out my views. Indeed, over there
I was, I think, even more talkative than with Parload, though to
the world at large I was a shy young lout. "You ought to write it
out for the newspapers," he used to say. "That's what you ought to
do. I never heard such nonsense."

Or, "You've got the gift of the gab, young man. We ought to ha'
made a lawyer of you."

But that afternoon, even in his eyes, I didn't shine. Failing any
other stimulus, he reverted to my search for a situation, but even
that did not engage me.

For a long time I feared I should have to go back to Clayton without
another word to Nettie, she seemed insensible to the need I felt
for a talk with her, and I was thinking even of a sudden demand
for that before them all. It was a transparent manoeuver of her
mother's who had been watching my face, that sent us out at last
together to do something—I forget now what—in one of the greenhouses.
Whatever that little mission may have been it was the merest, most
barefaced excuse, a door to shut, or a window to close, and I don't
think it got done.

Nettie hesitated and obeyed. She led the way through one of
the hot-houses. It was a low, steamy, brick-floored alley between
staging that bore a close crowd of pots and ferns, and behind big
branching plants that were spread and nailed overhead so as to make
an impervious cover of leaves, and in that close green privacy she
stopped and turned on me suddenly like a creature at bay.

"Isn't the maidenhair fern lovely?" she said, and looked at me with
eyes that said, "NOW."

"Nettie," I began, "I was a fool to write to you as I did."

She startled me by the assent that flashed out upon her face. But
she said nothing, and stood waiting.

"Nettie," I plunged, "I can't do without you. I—I love you."

"If you loved me," she said trimly, watching the white fingers
she plunged among the green branches of a selaginella, "could you
write the things you do to me?"

"I don't mean them," I said. "At least not always."

I thought really they were very good letters, and that Nettie was
stupid to think otherwise, but I was for the moment clearly aware
of the impossibility of conveying that to her.

"You wrote them."

"But then I tramp seventeen miles to say I don't mean them."

"Yes. But perhaps you do."

I think I was at a loss; then I said, not very clearly, "I don't."

"You think you—you love me, Willie. But you don't."

"I do. Nettie! You know I do."

For answer she shook her head.

I made what I thought was a most heroic plunge. "Nettie," I said,
"I'd rather have you than—than my own opinions."

The selaginella still engaged her. "You think so now," she said.

I broke out into protestations.

"No," she said shortly. "It's different now."

"But why should two letters make so much difference?" I said.

"It isn't only the letters. But it is different. It's different
for good."

She halted a little with that sentence, seeking her expression.
She looked up abruptly into my eyes and moved, indeed slightly,
but with the intimation that she thought our talk might end.

But I did not mean it to end like that.

"For good?" said I. "No! . . Nettie! Nettie! You don't mean that!"

"I do," she said deliberately, still looking at me, and with all
her pose conveying her finality. She seemed to brace herself for
the outbreak that must follow.

Of course I became wordy. But I did not submerge her. She stood
entrenched, firing her contradictions like guns into my scattered
discursive attack. I remember that our talk took the absurd form
of disputing whether I could be in love with her or not. And there
was I, present in evidence, in a deepening and widening distress
of soul because she could stand there, defensive, brighter and
prettier than ever, and in some inexplicable way cut off from me
and inaccessible.

You know, we had never been together before without little enterprises
of endearment, without a faintly guilty, quite delightful excitement.

I pleaded, I argued. I tried to show that even my harsh and difficult
letters came from my desire to come wholly into contact with her.
I made exaggerated fine statements of the longing I felt for her
when I was away, of the shock and misery of finding her estranged
and cool. She looked at me, feeling the emotion of my speech and
impervious to its ideas. I had no doubt—whatever poverty in my
words, coolly written down now—that I was eloquent then. I meant
most intensely what I said, indeed I was wholly concentrated upon
it. I was set upon conveying to her with absolute sincerity my
sense of distance, and the greatness of my desire. I toiled toward
her painfully and obstinately through a jungle of words.

Her face changed very slowly—by such imperceptible degrees as when
at dawn light comes into a clear sky. I could feel that I touched
her, that her hardness was in some manner melting, her determination
softening toward hesitations. The habit of an old familiarity lurked
somewhere within her. But she would not let me reach her.

"No," she cried abruptly, starting into motion.

She laid a hand on my arm. A wonderful new friendliness came into
her voice. "It's impossible, Willie. Everything is different
now—everything. We made a mistake. We two young sillies made a
mistake and everything is different for ever. Yes, yes."

She turned about.

"Nettie!" cried I, and still protesting, pursued her along the narrow
alley between the staging toward the hot-house 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
surprise, as though she realized an unwonted relationship, 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 nationalization of railways, and my spirits
and temper had so far mended at the realization 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.

I was, of course, too footsore to walk back to Clayton, but I had
a shilling and a penny in my pocket for the train between Checkshill
and Two-Mile Stone, and that much of the distance I proposed to
do in the train. And when I got ready to go, Nettie amazed me by
waking up to the most remarkable solicitude for me. I 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 comet 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 with, "The hollies
by the shrubbery are as dark as pitch. And there's the deer-hounds."

"I'm not afraid of the dark," said I. "Nor of the deer-hounds,
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 grisly lank brutes straining at their chains and 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 the 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 unexpectedly 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 towards
him almost invisibly in an impenetrable shadow.

"Hullo," he cried, with a sort of amiable challenge. "I'm here
first!"

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

I had jumped at once to an interpretation of his words. I knew that
there was an intermittent dispute 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.

All my enormous hatred of his class had flared up at the sight of
his costume, at the fancied challenge of his words. I knew him. He
was Edward Verrall, son of the man who owned not only this great
estate but more than half of Rawdon's pot-bank, and who had interests
and possessions, collieries and rents, all over the district of
the Four Towns. He was a gallant youngster, people 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
popularized among us. He took with a light confidence, as a matter
of course, advantages that I would have faced the rack to get, and
I firmly believed 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. Verrall," she said. "They say he's very clever."

"They would," I answered. "Damn them and him!"

But that is by the way.

He was clearly astonished to find himself face to face with a man.
His note changed.

"Who the devil are YOU?" he asked.

My retort was the cheap expedient of re-echoing, "Who the devil
are you?"

"WELL," he said.

"I'm coming along this path if I like," I said. "See? It's a public
path—just as this used to be public land. You've stolen the land—you
and yours, and now you want to steal the right of way. You'll
ask us to get off the face of the earth next. I sha'n't oblige.
See?"

I was shorter and I suppose a couple of years younger than he, but
I had the improvised club in my pocket gripped ready, and I would
have fought with him very cheerfully. But he fell a step backward
as I came toward him.

"Socialist, I presume?" he said, alert and quiet and with the
faintest note of badinage.

"One of many."

"We're all socialists nowadays," he remarked philosophically, "and
I haven't the faintest intention of disputing your right of way."

"You'd better not," I said.

"No!"

"No."

He replaced his cigar, and there was a brief pause. "Catching a
train?" he threw out.

It seemed absurd not to answer. "Yes," I said shortly.

He said it was a pleasant evening for a walk.

I hovered for a moment and there was my path before me, and he
stood aside. There seemed nothing to do but go on. "Good night,"
said he, as that intention took effect.

I growled a surly good-night.