In the Days of the Comet

  Section 3

  I sought them in vain the next morning, but after midday I came inquick succession on a perplexing multitude of clues. After failingto find any young couple that corresponded to young Verralland Nettie, I presently discovered an unsatisfactory quartette ofcouples.

  Any of these four couples might have been the one I sought; withregard to none of them was there conviction. They had all arrivedeither on Wednesday or Thursday. Two couples were still in occupationof their rooms, but neither of these were at home. Late in theafternoon I reduced my list by eliminating a young man in drab, withside whiskers and long cuffs, accompanied by a lady, of thirty ormore, of consciously ladylike type. I was disgusted at the sightof them; the other two young people had gone for a long walk, andthough I watched their boarding-house until the fiery cloud shoneout above, sharing and mingling in an unusually splendid sunset,I missed them. Then I discovered them dining at a separate tablein the bow window, with red-shaded candles between them, peeringout ever and again at this splendor that was neither night nor day.The girl in her pink evening dress looked very light and prettyto me--pretty enough to enrage me,--she had well shaped arms andwhite, well-modeled shoulders, and the turn of her cheek and thefair hair about her ears was full of subtle delights; but she wasnot Nettie, and the happy man with her was that odd degenerate typeour old aristocracy produced with such odd frequency, chinless,large bony nose, small fair head, languid expression, and a neckthat had demanded and received a veritable sleeve of collar. Istood outside in the meteor's livid light, hating them and cursingthem for having delayed me so long. I stood until it was evidentthey remarked me, a black shape of envy, silhouetted against theglare.

  That finished Shaphambury. The question I now had to debate waswhich of the remaining couples I had to pursue.

  I walked back to the parade trying to reason my next step out, andmuttering to myself, because there was something in that luminouswonderfulness that touched one's brain, and made one feel a littlelight-headed.

  One couple had gone to London; the other had gone to the Bungalowvillage at Bone Cliff. Where, I wondered, was Bone Cliff?

  I came upon my wooden-legged man at the top of his steps.

  "Hullo," said I.

  He pointed seaward with his pipe, his silver ring shone in the skylight.

  "Rum," he said.

  "What is?" I asked.

  "Search-lights! Smoke! Ships going north! If it wasn't for thisblasted Milky Way gone green up there, we might see."

  He was too intent to heed my questions for a time. Then he vouchsafedover his shoulder--

  "Know Bungalow village?--rather. Artis' and such. Nice goings on!Mixed bathing--something scandalous. Yes."

  "But where is it?" I said, suddenly exasperated.

  "There!" he said. "What's that flicker? A gunflash--or I'm a lostsoul!"

  "You'd hear," I said, "long before it was near enough to see aflash."

  He didn't answer. Only by making it clear I would distract him untilhe told me what I wanted to know could I get him to turn from hisabsorbed contemplation of that phantom dance between the sea rim andthe shine. Indeed I gripped his arm and shook him. Then he turnedupon me cursing.

  "Seven miles," he said, "along this road. And now go to 'ell withyer!"

  I answered with some foul insult by way of thanks, and so we parted,and I set off towards the bungalow village.

  I found a policeman, standing star-gazing, a little way beyond theend of the parade, and verified the wooden-legged man's directions.

  "It's a lonely road, you know," he called after me. . . .

  I had an odd intuition that now at last I was on the right track.I left the dark masses of Shaphambury behind me, and pushed outinto the dim pallor of that night, with the quiet assurance of atraveler who nears his end.

  The incidents of that long tramp I do not recall in any orderlysuccession, the one progressive thing is my memory of a growingfatigue. The sea was for the most part smooth and shining like amirror, a great expanse of reflecting silver, barred by slow broadundulations, but at one time a little breeze breathed like a faintsigh and ruffled their long bodies into faint scaly ripples thatnever completely died out again. The way was sometimes sandy, thickwith silvery colorless sand, and sometimes chalky and lumpy, withlumps that had shining facets; a black scrub was scattered, sometimesin thickets, sometimes in single bunches, among the somnolenthummocks of sand. At one place came grass, and ghostly great sheeplooming up among the gray. After a time black pinewoods intervened,and made sustained darknesses along the road, woods that frayedout at the edges to weirdly warped and stunted trees. Then isolatedpine witches would appear, and make their rigid gestures at me asI passed. Grotesquely incongruous amidst these forms, I presentlycame on estate boards, appealing, "Houses can be built to suitpurchaser," to the silence, to the shadows, and the glare.

  Once I remember the persistent barking of a dog from somewhere inlandof me, and several times I took out and examined my revolver verycarefully. I must, of course, have been full of my intention whenI did that, I must have been thinking of Nettie and revenge, butI cannot now recall those emotions at all. Only I see again verydistinctly the greenish gleams that ran over lock and barrel as Iturned the weapon in my hand.

  Then there was the sky, the wonderful, luminous, starless, moonlesssky, and the empty blue deeps of the edge of it, between the meteorand the sea. And once--strange phantoms!--I saw far out uponthe shine, and very small and distant, three long black warships,without masts, or sails, or smoke, or any lights, dark, deadly,furtive things, traveling very swiftly and keeping an equal distance.And when I looked again they were very small, and then the shinehad swallowed them up.

  Then once a flash and what I thought was a gun, until I lookedup and saw a fading trail of greenish light still hanging in thesky. And after that there was a shiver and whispering in the air,a stronger throbbing in one's arteries, a sense of refreshment,a renewal of purpose. . . .

  Somewhere upon my way the road forked, but I do not rememberwhether that was near Shaphambury or near the end of my walk. Thehesitation between two rutted unmade roads alone remains clear inmy mind.

  At last I grew weary. I came to piled heaps of decaying seaweedand cart tracks running this way and that, and then I had missedthe road and was stumbling among sand hummocks quite close to thesea. I came out on the edge of the dimly glittering sandy beach,and something phosphorescent drew me to the water's edge. I bentdown and peered at the little luminous specks that floated in theripples.

  Presently with a sigh I stood erect, and contemplated the lonelypeace of that last wonderful night. The meteor had now trailed itsshining nets across the whole space of the sky and was beginningto set; in the east the blue was coming to its own again; the seawas an intense edge of blackness, and now, escaped from that greatshine, and faint and still tremulously valiant, one weak elusivestar could just be seen, hovering on the verge of the invisible.

  How beautiful it was! how still and beautiful! Peace! peace!--thepeace that passeth understanding, robed in light descending! . . .

  My heart swelled, and suddenly I was weeping.

  There was something new and strange in my blood. It came to me thatindeed I did not want to kill.

  I did not want to kill. I did not want to be the servant of mypassions any more. A great desire had come to me to escape fromlife, from the daylight which is heat and conflict and desire, intothat cool night of eternity--and rest. I had played--I had done.

  I stood upon the edge of the great ocean, and I was filled with aninarticulate spirit of prayer, and I desired greatly--peace frommyself.

  And presently, there in the east, would come again the red discoloringcurtain over these mysteries, the finite world again, the gray andgrowing harsh certainties of dawn. My resolve I knew would take upwith me again. This was a rest for me, an interlude, but to-morrowI should be William Leadford once more, ill-nourished, ill-dressed,ill-equipped and clumsy, a thief and shamed, a wound upon the faceof lif
e, a source of trouble and sorrow even to the mother I loved;no hope in life left for me now but revenge before my death.

  Why this paltry thing, revenge? It entered into my thoughts thatI might end the matter now and let these others go.

  To wade out into the sea, into this warm lapping that mingled thenatures of water and light, to stand there breast-high, to thrustmy revolver barrel into my mouth------?

  Why not?

  I swung about with an effort. I walked slowly up the beach thinking. . . .

  I turned and looked back at the sea. No! Something within me said,"No!"

  I must think.

  It was troublesome to go further because the hummocks andthe tangled bushes began. I sat down amidst a black cluster ofshrubs, and rested, chin on hand. I drew my revolver from my pocketand looked at it, and held it in my hand. Life? Or Death? . . .

  I seemed to be probing the very deeps of being, but indeedimperceptibly I fell asleep, and sat dreaming.