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In the Days of the Comet Book First Chapter Third Section 1-2 · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Book one, chapter three, sections one and two of In
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  Speaker 1: the Days of the Comet. This is a LibriVox recording.
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  Speaker 1: All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
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  Speaker 1: information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recorded
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  Speaker 1: by Lewis In the Days of the Comet by H. G. Wells,
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  Speaker 1: Book one, chapter three, Sections one and two. That comment
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  Speaker 1: is going to hit the earth, so said one of
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  Speaker 1: the two men who got into the train and settled down. Ah,
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  Speaker 1: said the other man. They do say that it's made
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  Speaker 1: of gas. That comment we shan't blow up sell us.
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  Speaker 1: What did it matter to me? I was thinking of revenge,
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  Speaker 1: revenge against the primary conditions of my being. I was
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  Speaker 1: thinking of Nettie and her lover. I was firmly resolved
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  Speaker 1: he should not have her, though I had to kill
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  Speaker 1: them both to prevent it. I did not care what
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  Speaker 1: else might happen. If only that end was insured, all
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  Speaker 1: my thwarted passions had turned to rage, I would have
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  Speaker 1: accepted eternal torment that night without a second thought. To
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  Speaker 1: be certain of revenge. A hundred possibilities of action, a
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  Speaker 1: hundred stormy situations, a whirl of violent schemes chased one
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  Speaker 1: another through my shamed, exasperated mind. The sole prospect I
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  Speaker 1: could endure was of some gigantic, inexorably cruel vindication of
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  Speaker 1: my humiliated self and Nettie. I loved Nettie still, but
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  Speaker 1: now with the intensest jealousy, with the keen unmeasuring hatred,
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  Speaker 1: of wounded pride and baffled passionate desire. Section two. As
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  Speaker 1: I came to the hill from Clayton Crest for my
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  Speaker 1: shilling and a penny only permitted my traveling by train
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  Speaker 1: as far as two mile Stone, and thence I had
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  Speaker 1: to walk over the hill. I remember very vividly a
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  Speaker 1: little man with a shrill voice who was preaching under
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  Speaker 1: a gas lamp against a hoarding to a thin crowd
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  Speaker 1: of Sunday evening loafers. He was a short man, bald,
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  Speaker 1: with a little fair curly beard and hair, and watery
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  Speaker 1: blue eyes, and he was preaching that the end of
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  Speaker 1: the world drew near. I think that is the first
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  Speaker 1: time I heard any one link the comet with the
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  Speaker 1: end of the world. He had got that jumbled up
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  Speaker 1: with international politics and prophecies from the Book of Daniel.
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  Speaker 1: I stopped to hear him only for a moment, or so.
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  Speaker 1: I do not think I should have halted at all,
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  Speaker 1: But his crowd blocked my path, and the sight of
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  Speaker 1: his queer, wild expression, the gesture of his upward pointing
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  Speaker 1: finger held me. This is the end of all your
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  Speaker 1: sins and follies. He bawled. There there is the star
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  Speaker 1: of judgments, the judgments of the most high God. It
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  Speaker 1: is appointed unto all men to die, unto all men
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  Speaker 1: to die. His voice changed to a curious, flat chant.
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  Speaker 1: And after death, the judgment, the judgment. I pushed and
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  Speaker 1: threaded my way through the bystanders and went on, And
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  Speaker 1: his curious, harsh, flat voice pursued me. I went on
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  Speaker 1: with the thoughts that had occupied me before. Where I
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  Speaker 1: could buy a revolver, and how I might master its use?
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  Speaker 1: And probably I should have forgotten all about him, had
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  Speaker 1: he not taken part in the hideous dream that ended
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  Speaker 1: the little sleep I had that night. For the most part,
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  Speaker 1: I I awake thinking of Nettie and her lover. Then
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  Speaker 1: came three strange days, three days that seemed now to
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  Speaker 1: have been wholly concentrated upon one business. This dominant business
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  Speaker 1: was the purchase of my revolver. I held myself resolutely
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  Speaker 1: to the idea that I must either restore myself by
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  Speaker 1: some extraordinary act of vigor and violence in Nettie's eyes,
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  Speaker 1: or I must kill her. I would not let myself
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  Speaker 1: fall away from that. I felt that if I let
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  Speaker 1: this matter pass, my last spread of pride and honor
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  Speaker 1: would pass with it. That for the rest of my
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  Speaker 1: life I should never deserve the slightest respect or any
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  Speaker 1: woman's love. Pride kept me to my purpose between my
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  Speaker 1: guests of passion. Yet it was not easy to buy
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  Speaker 1: that revolver. I had a kind of shyness of the
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  Speaker 1: moment when I should have to face the shopman, and
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  Speaker 1: I was particularly anxious to have a story ready if
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  Speaker 1: he should see fit to ask questions why I bought
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  Speaker 1: such a thing. I determined to say I was going
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  Speaker 1: to Texas, and I thought it might prove useful there.
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  Speaker 1: Texas in those days had the reputation of a wild,
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  Speaker 1: lawless land, as I knew nothing of caliber or impact.
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  Speaker 1: I wanted also to be able to ask with a
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  Speaker 1: steady face at what distance a man or woman could
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  Speaker 1: be killed by the weapon that might be offered me.
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  Speaker 1: I was pretty cool headed in relation to such practical aspects.
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  Speaker 1: Of my affair. I had some little difficulty in finding
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  Speaker 1: a gunsmith in Clayton. There were some rook rifles and
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  Speaker 1: so forth in a cycle shop, but the only revolvers
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  Speaker 1: these people had impressed me as being too small and
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  Speaker 1: toy like for my purpose. It was in a pawn
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  Speaker 1: shop window in the narrow high street of Swathinglea's that
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  Speaker 1: I found my choice, a reasonably and serious looking implement,
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  Speaker 1: ticketed as used in the American Army. I had drawn
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  Speaker 1: out my balance from the savings bank matter of two
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  Speaker 1: pounds and more to make this purchase, and I found it,
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  Speaker 1: at last a very easy transaction. The pawnbroker told me
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  Speaker 1: where I could get ammunition, and I went home that
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  Speaker 1: night with bulging pockets an armed man. The purchase of
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  Speaker 1: my revolver was, I say, that chief business of those days.
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  Speaker 1: But you must not think I was so intent upon
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  Speaker 1: it as to be insensible to the stirring things that
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  Speaker 1: were happening in the streets through which I went seeking
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  Speaker 1: the means to effect my purpose. They were full of murmurings.
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  Speaker 1: The whole region of the four towns scowled, louring from
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  Speaker 1: its narrow doors. The ordinary healthy flow of people going
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  Speaker 1: to work. People going about their business was chilled and checked.
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  Speaker 1: Men stood about the street in knots and groups as corpuscles,
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  Speaker 1: gather and catching the blood vessels in the opening stage
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  Speaker 1: of inflammation. The women looked haggard and worried. The ironworkers
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  Speaker 1: had refused the proposed reduction of their wages, and the
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  Speaker 1: lockout had begun. They were already at play. The Conciliation
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  Speaker 1: Board was doing its best to keep the coal miners
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  Speaker 1: and masters from a breach. But young Lord Redcar, the
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  Speaker 1: greatest of our coal owners and landlord of all Swathingbleas
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  Speaker 1: and half of Clayton, was taking a fine upstanding attitude
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  Speaker 1: that made the breach inevitable. He was a handsome young man,
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  Speaker 1: a gallant young man. His pride revolted at the idea
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  Speaker 1: of being dictated to by a lot of valley miners,
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  Speaker 1: and he meant, he said, to make a fight for it.
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  Speaker 1: The world had treated him sumptuously from his earliest years.
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  Speaker 1: The shares in the common stock of five thousand people
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  Speaker 1: had gone to pay for his handsome upbringing, and large, romantic,
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  Speaker 1: expensive ambitions filled his generously nurtured mind. He had early
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  Speaker 1: distinguished himself at Oxford by his scornful attitude towards democracy.
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  Speaker 1: There was something that appealed to the imagination in his
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  Speaker 1: fine antagonism to the crowd. On the one hand, was
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  Speaker 1: the brilliant young nobleman, picturesquely alone. On the other the ugly,
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  Speaker 1: inexpressive multitude, dressed inelegantly in shop clothes, under educated, underfed,
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  Speaker 1: envious base, and with a wicked disinclination for work and
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  Speaker 1: a wicked appetite for the good things it could so
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  Speaker 1: rarely get. For common imaginative purposes, one left out the
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  Speaker 1: policeman from the design, the stalward policeman protecting his lordship,
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  Speaker 1: and ignored the fact that while Lord Redcar had his
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  Speaker 1: hands immediately and legally on the workman's shelter and bread,
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  Speaker 1: they could touch him to the skin only by some
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  Speaker 1: violent breach of the law. He lived at Lochester House,
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  Speaker 1: five miles or so beyond Checkshill, but partly to show
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  Speaker 1: how little he cared for his antagonists, and partly, no doubt,
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  Speaker 1: to keep himself in touch with the negotiations that were
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  Speaker 1: still going on. He was visible almost every day in
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  Speaker 1: and about the four towns, driving that big motor car
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  Speaker 1: of his that could take him sixty miles an hour.
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  Speaker 1: The English passion for fair play, one might have thought
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  Speaker 1: sufficient to rob this bold procedure of any dangerous possibilities.
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  Speaker 1: But he did not go altogether free from insult, And
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  Speaker 1: on one occasion at least an intoxicated irishwoman shook her
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  Speaker 1: fist at him. A dark, quiet crowd that was greater
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  Speaker 1: each day, a crowd more than half women brooded as
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  Speaker 1: a cloud was sometimes brewed permanently upon a mountain crest
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  Speaker 1: in the market place outside Clayton town Hall, where the
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  Speaker 1: conference was held. I consider myself justified in regarding Lord
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  Speaker 1: Redcar's passing automobile with a special animosity because of the
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  Speaker 1: leaks in our roof. We held our little house on lease.
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  Speaker 1: The owner was a mean, saving old man named Pettigrew,
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  Speaker 1: who lived in a villa adorned with plaster images of
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  Speaker 1: dogs and goats at Overcastle, And in spite of our
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  Speaker 1: specific agreement, he would do no repairs for us at all.
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  Speaker 1: He rested secure in my mother's timidity. Once long ago
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  Speaker 1: she had been behindhand with her rent with half of
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  Speaker 1: her quarter's rent, and he had extended the days of
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  Speaker 1: gray some month her since that someday she might need
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  Speaker 1: the same mercy again again made her his abject slave.
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  Speaker 1: She was afraid even to ask that he should cause
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  Speaker 1: the roof to be mended, for fear he might take offense.
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  Speaker 1: But one night the rain poured in on her bed
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  Speaker 1: and gave her a cold and stained and soaked her
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  Speaker 1: poor old patchwork counterpane. Then she got me to compose
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  Speaker 1: an excessively polite letter to old Pedigrew, begging him as
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  Speaker 1: a favor to perform his legal obligation. It is part
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  Speaker 1: of the general imbecility of those days that such one
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  Speaker 1: sided law as existed was a profound mystery to the
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  Speaker 1: common people, its provisions impossible to ascertain, its machinery impossible
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  Speaker 1: to set in motion. Instead of the clearly written code,
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  Speaker 1: the lucid statements of rules and principles that are now
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  Speaker 1: at the service of everyone, the law was the muddle
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  Speaker 1: secret of the legal profession. Poor people, overworked people had
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  Speaker 1: constantly to submit to petty wrongs because of the intolerable
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  Speaker 1: uncertainty not only of law, but of cost, and of
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  Speaker 1: the demands upon time and energy proceedings might make. There
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  Speaker 1: was indeed no justice for anyone too poor to command
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  Speaker 1: a good solicitor's deference. And loyalty. There was nothing but
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  Speaker 1: rough police protection and the magistrate's grudging or eccentric advice
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  Speaker 1: for the mass of the population. The civil law in
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  Speaker 1: particular was a mysterious upper class weapon, and I can
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  Speaker 1: imagine no injustice that would have been sufficient to induce
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  Speaker 1: my poor old mother to appeal to it. All this
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  Speaker 1: begins to sound incredible, I can only assure you that
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  Speaker 1: it was so. But I, when I learned that old
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  Speaker 1: Pettigrew had been down to tell my mother all about
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  Speaker 1: his rheumatism, to inspect the roof, and to allege that
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  Speaker 1: nothing was needed, gave way to my most frequent emotion
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  Speaker 1: in those days, a burning indignation, and took the matter
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  Speaker 1: into my own hands. I wrote and asked him, with
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  Speaker 1: a withering air of technicality, to have the roof repaired
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  Speaker 1: as per agreement, and added, if not done in one
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  Speaker 1: week from now, we shall be obliged to take proceedings.
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  Speaker 1: I had not mentioned this high line of conduct to
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  Speaker 1: my mother at first, and so when old Pettigrew came
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  Speaker 1: down in a state of great agitation with my letter
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  Speaker 1: in his hand, she was almost equally agitated. How could
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  Speaker 1: you write to old mister Pettigrew like that, she asked me.
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  Speaker 1: I said that Old Pettigrew was a shameful old rascal,
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  Speaker 1: or words to that effect, And I am afraid I
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  Speaker 1: behaved in a very undutiful way to her. When she
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  Speaker 1: said that she had settled everything with him. She wouldn't
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  Speaker 1: say how, but I could guess well enough, and that
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  Speaker 1: I was to promise her, promise her faithfully to do
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  Speaker 1: nothing more in the matter. I wouldn't promise her, And
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  Speaker 1: having nothing better to employ me, then I presently went
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  Speaker 1: raging to old Pettigrew in order to put the whole
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  Speaker 1: thing before him. In what I considered the proper light.
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  Speaker 1: Old Pettigrew evaded my illumination. He saw me coming up
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  Speaker 1: his front steps. I can still see his queer old
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  Speaker 1: nose in the crinkled brow over his eye, and the
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  Speaker 1: little wisp of gray hair that showed over the corner
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  Speaker 1: of his window blind. And he instructed his servant to
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  Speaker 1: put up the chain when she answered the door, and
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  Speaker 1: to tell me that he would not see me. So
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  Speaker 1: I had to fall back upon my pen. Then it was,
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  Speaker 1: as I had no idea what were the proper proceedings
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  Speaker 1: to take the brilliant idea occurred to me of appealing
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  Speaker 1: to Lord Redcar as the ground landlord, and as it were,
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  Speaker 1: our feudal chief, and pointing out to him that his
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  Speaker 1: security for his rent was depreciating in Old Pedigrew's hands.
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  Speaker 1: I added some general observations on leaseholds, the taxation of
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  Speaker 1: ground rents, and the private ownership of the soil. And
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  Speaker 1: Lord Redcar, whose spirit revolted at democracy, and who cultivated
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  Speaker 1: a pert humiliating manner with his inferiors, to show as
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  Speaker 1: much earned my distinguished hatred forever by causing his secretary
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  Speaker 1: to present his compliments to me, and his request that
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  Speaker 1: I would mind my own business and leave him to
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  Speaker 1: manage his, at which I was so greatly enraged that
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  Speaker 1: I first tore this note into minute, innumerable pieces, and
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  Speaker 1: then dashed it dramatically all over the floor of my room,
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  Speaker 1: from which, to keep my mother from the job, I
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  Speaker 1: afterward had to pick it up laboriously on all fours.
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  Speaker 1: I was still meditating a tram tremendous retort, an indictment
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  Speaker 1: of all Lord Redcar's class, their manners, morals, economic and
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  Speaker 1: political crimes. When my trouble with Nettie arose to swamp,
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  Speaker 1: all minor troubles, yet not so completely, but that I
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  Speaker 1: snarled aloud when his Lordship's motor car whizzed by me
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  Speaker 1: as I went about my long meandering quest for a weapon.
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  Speaker 1: And I discovered after a time that my mother had
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  Speaker 1: bruised her knee and was lame, fearing to irritate me
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  Speaker 1: by bringing the thing before me again. She had set
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  Speaker 1: herself to move her bed out of the way of
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  Speaker 1: the drip without my help, and she had knocked her knee.
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  Speaker 1: All her poor furnishings, I discovered, were cowering now close
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  Speaker 1: to the peeling bedroom walls. There had come a vast
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  Speaker 1: discoloration of the ceiling, and a washing tub was in
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  Speaker 1: occupation of the middle of her chamber. It is necessary
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  Speaker 1: that I should set these things before you, should give
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  Speaker 1: you the key of inconvenience and uneasyiness in which all
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  Speaker 1: things were arranged. Should suggest the breath of trouble that
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  Speaker 1: stirred among the hot summer streets, the anxiety about the strike,
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  Speaker 1: the rumors and indignations, the gatherings and meetings, the increasing
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  Speaker 1: gravity of the policeman's faces, the combative headlines of the
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  Speaker 1: local papers, the knots of picketers who scrutinized anyone who
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  Speaker 1: passed near the silent, smokeless forges. But in my mind
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  Speaker 1: you must understand, such impressions came and went irregularly. They
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  Speaker 1: made a moving background, changing undertones to my preoccupation by
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  Speaker 1: that darkly shaping purpose to which a revolver was so
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  Speaker 1: imperative and essential. Along the darkling streets amidst the sullen crowds,
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  Speaker 1: the thought of Nettie, My Nettie and her gentleman lover
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  Speaker 1: made ever a vivid, inflammatory spot of purpose in my brain.
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  Speaker 1: End of Book one, Chapter three, Sections one two