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

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  Speaker 1: Book one, Chapter five, 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. Recording
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  Speaker 1: by Bershacht. In the Days of the Comet by H. G. Wells,
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  Speaker 1: Book one, Chapter five, Sections one and two, Chapter the
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  Speaker 1: fifth The Pursuit of the Two Lovers. Section one. As
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  Speaker 1: the train carried me on from Birmingham to Monxhampton, it
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  Speaker 1: carried me not only into a country where I had
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  Speaker 1: never been before, but out of the commonplace daylight and
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  Speaker 1: the touch and quality of ordinary things, into the strange,
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  Speaker 1: unprecedented night that was ruled by the giant meteor of
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  Speaker 1: the last days. There was at that time a curious
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  Speaker 1: accentuation of the common alternation of night and day. They
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  Speaker 1: became separated, with a widening difference of value in regard
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  Speaker 1: to all mundane affairs. During the day, the comet was
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  Speaker 1: an item in the newspapers. It was jostled by a
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  Speaker 1: thousand more living interests. It was as nothing in the
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  Speaker 1: skirts of the war storm that was now upon us.
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  Speaker 1: It was an astronomical phenomenon somewhere away over China, millions
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  Speaker 1: of miles away in the deeps, we forgot it. But
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  Speaker 1: directly the sun sank. One turned ever and again towards
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  Speaker 1: the east, and the meteor resumed its sway over us.
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  Speaker 1: One waited for its rising, and yet each night it
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  Speaker 1: came as a surprise. Always it rose brighter than one
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  Speaker 1: had dared to think, always larger, and with some wonder
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  Speaker 1: change in its outline, and now with a strange, less, luminous,
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  Speaker 1: greener disk upon it that grew with its growth the
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  Speaker 1: umbra of the Earth. It shone also with its own light,
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  Speaker 1: so that this shadow was not hard or black, but
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  Speaker 1: it shone phosphorescently, and with a diminishing intensity, where the
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  Speaker 1: stimulus of the Sun's rays was withdrawn. As it ascended
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  Speaker 1: towards the zenith. As the last trailing daylight went after
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  Speaker 1: the abdicating sun, its greenish white illumination banished the realities
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  Speaker 1: of day, diffused a bright ghostliness over all things. It
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  Speaker 1: changed the starless sky about it to an extraordinary, deep blue,
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  Speaker 1: the profoundest color in the world, such as I have
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  Speaker 1: never seen before or since. I remember too, that as
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  Speaker 1: I peered from the train that was rattling me up
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  Speaker 1: long to Monkshampton, I perceived and was puzzled by a
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  Speaker 1: coppery red light that mingled with all the shadows that
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  Speaker 1: were cast by it. It turned our ugly English industrial
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  Speaker 1: towns to phantom cities. Everywhere the local authorities discontinued street lighting.
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  Speaker 1: One could read small print in the glare, and so
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  Speaker 1: at Monkshampton, I went through the pale, white, unfamiliar streets,
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  Speaker 1: whose electric globes had shadows on the path lit windows
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  Speaker 1: here and there burnt ruddy orange like holes cut in
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  Speaker 1: some dream curtain that hung before a furnace. A policeman
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  Speaker 1: with noiseless feet showed me an inn woven of moonshine.
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  Speaker 1: A green faced man opened to us, and there I
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  Speaker 1: abode the night. And the next morning it opened with
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  Speaker 1: a mighty clatter, and was a dirty little beer house
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  Speaker 1: that stank of beer. And there was a fat and
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  Speaker 1: grimy landlord with red spots upon his and much noisy
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  Speaker 1: traffic going by on the cobbles outside. I came out,
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  Speaker 1: after I had paid my bill, into a street that
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  Speaker 1: echoed to the bawlings of two news vendors and to
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  Speaker 1: the noisy yappings of a dog they had raised emulation.
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  Speaker 1: They were shouting Great British disaster in the North Sea,
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  Speaker 1: a battleship lost with all hands. I bought a paper,
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  Speaker 1: went on to the railway station, reading such details as
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  Speaker 1: were given of this triumph of the old civilization, of
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  Speaker 1: the blowing up of this great iron ship, full of
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  Speaker 1: guns and explosives and the most costly and beautiful machinery
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  Speaker 1: of which that time was capable, together with nine hundred
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  Speaker 1: able bodied men, all of them above the average, by
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  Speaker 1: a contact mine towed by a German submarine. I read
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  Speaker 1: myself into a fever of warlike emotions. Not only did
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  Speaker 1: I forget the meteor, but for a time I forgot
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  Speaker 1: even the purpose that took me on to the railway station,
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  Speaker 1: bought my ticket, and was now carrying me onward to Shaphambury.
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  Speaker 1: So the hot day came to its own again, and
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  Speaker 1: people forgot the night. Each night there shone upon us
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  Speaker 1: more and more insistently beauty, wonder and the promise of
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  Speaker 1: the deeps, and we were hushed and marveled for space,
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  Speaker 1: and at the first gray sounds of dawn again, at
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  Speaker 1: the shooting of bolts and the noise of milk carts
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  Speaker 1: we forgot, and the dusty habitual day came yawning and
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  Speaker 1: stretching back again. The stains of coal smoke crept across
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  Speaker 1: the heavens, and we rose to the soil disorderly routine
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  Speaker 1: of life. Thus life has always been, we said, Thus
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  Speaker 1: it will always be. The glory of those nights was
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  Speaker 1: almost universally regarded as spectacular. Merely it signified nothing to us.
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  Speaker 1: So far as Western Europe went. It was only a
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  Speaker 1: small and ignorant section of the lower classes who regarded
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  Speaker 1: the comet as a portends to the end of the world. Abroad,
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  Speaker 1: where there were peasantries, it was different. But in England
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  Speaker 1: the peasantry had already disappeared. Everyone read the newspaper in
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  Speaker 1: the quiet days before our swift quarrel with Germany rushed
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  Speaker 1: to its climax, had absolutely dispelled all possibilities of a
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  Speaker 1: panic in this matter. The very tramps upon the high roads,
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  Speaker 1: the children in the nursery had learned that at the utmost,
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  Speaker 1: the whole of that shining cloud could weigh but a
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  Speaker 1: few score tons. This fact had been shown quite conclusively
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  Speaker 1: by the enormous deflections that had at last swung it
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  Speaker 1: round squarely at our world. It had passed near three
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  Speaker 1: of the smallest asteroids without producing the minutest perceptible deflection
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  Speaker 1: in their course, while on its own part it had
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  Speaker 1: described the course through nearly three degrees. When it struck
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  Speaker 1: our Earth, there was to be a magnificent spectacle, no doubt,
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  Speaker 1: for those who were on the right side of our
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  Speaker 1: planet to see. But beyond that nothing it was doubtful
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  Speaker 1: whether we were on the right side. The meteor would
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  Speaker 1: loom larger and larger in the sky, but with the
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  Speaker 1: umber of our Earth eating its heart of brightness out,
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  Speaker 1: and at last it would be the whole sky, a
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  Speaker 1: sky of luminous green clouds with a white brightness about
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  Speaker 1: the horizon west and east. Then a pause, a pause
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  Speaker 1: of not very exactly definite duration, and then, no doubt,
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  Speaker 1: a great blaze of shooting stars. There might be some
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  Speaker 1: unwonted color because of the unknown element that line in
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  Speaker 1: the green revealed. For a little while the zenith would
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  Speaker 1: spout shooting stars, some it was hoped, would reach the
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  Speaker 1: Earth and be available for analysis. That science said would
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  Speaker 1: be all. The green clouds would whirl and vanish, and
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  Speaker 1: there might be thunderstorms. But though the attenuated wisps of
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  Speaker 1: comet shine the old sky, the old stars would reappear,
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  Speaker 1: and all would be as it had been before. And
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  Speaker 1: since this was to happen between one and eleven in
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  Speaker 1: the morning of the approaching Tuesday, I slept at Monkshampton
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  Speaker 1: on Saturday night, it would be only partially visible, if
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  Speaker 1: visible at all, on our side of the earth. Perhaps
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  Speaker 1: if it came late, one would see no more than
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  Speaker 1: a shooting star low down in the sky. All this
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  Speaker 1: we had with the utmost assurances of science. Still it
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  Speaker 1: did not prevent the last nights being the most beautiful
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  Speaker 1: and memorable of human experiences. The nights had become very warm,
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  Speaker 1: and when next day I had ranged Shaphambury in Vain,
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  Speaker 1: I was greatly tormented as that unparalleled glory of the
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  Speaker 1: night returned to think that under its splendid benediction young
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  Speaker 1: Verral and Nettie made love to one another. I walked
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  Speaker 1: backward and forward, backward and forward along the sea front,
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  Speaker 1: peering into the faces of the young couples who promenaded,
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  Speaker 1: with my hand in my pocket, ready and a curious
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  Speaker 1: ache in my heart that had no kindred with rage,
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  Speaker 1: until at last all the promenaders had gone home to bed,
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  Speaker 1: and I was alone with this star. My train from
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  Speaker 1: Wivren to Shaphambury that morning was a whole hour late.
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  Speaker 1: They said it was on account of the movement of
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  Speaker 1: troops to meet a possible raid from the Elbe Section two.
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  Speaker 1: Schaffhambury seemed an odd place to me even then, but
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  Speaker 1: something was quickening in me at that time to feel
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  Speaker 1: the oddness of many accepted things. Now in the wretro respect,
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  Speaker 1: I see it as intensely queer. The whole place was
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  Speaker 1: strange to my untraveled eyes. The sea even was strange.
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  Speaker 1: Only twice in my life had I been at the
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  Speaker 1: seaside before, and then I had gone by excursion to
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  Speaker 1: places on the Welsh coast, whose great cliffs of rock
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  Speaker 1: and mountain backgrounds made the effect of the horizon very
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  Speaker 1: different from what it is on the East Anglian Sea board. Here,
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  Speaker 1: what they call a cliff was a crumbling bank of whitey,
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  Speaker 1: brown earth, not fifty feet high. So soon as I
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  Speaker 1: arrived I made a systematic exploration of Schaffhambury. To this
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  Speaker 1: day I retained the clearest memories of the plan I
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  Speaker 1: shaped out then, and how my inquiries were incommoded by
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  Speaker 1: the overpowering desire of everyone to talk of the chances
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  Speaker 1: of a German raid before the Channel fleet got round
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  Speaker 1: to us. I slept at a small public house in
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  Speaker 1: the Schafhambury back street on Sunday night. I did not
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  Speaker 1: get on to Shaphambury from Wyvren until two in the
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  Speaker 1: afternoon because of the infrequency of Sunday trains, and I
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  Speaker 1: got no clue whatever until late in the afternoon of Monday.
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  Speaker 1: As the little local train bumped into sight of the place.
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  Speaker 1: Round the curve of a swelling hill, one saw a
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  Speaker 1: series of undulating grassy spaces, amidst which a number of
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  Speaker 1: conspicuous notice boards appealed to the eye and cut up
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  Speaker 1: the distant sea horizon. Most of these referred to comestibles
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  Speaker 1: or to remedies to follow the comestibles, and they were
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  Speaker 1: colored with a view to be memorable rather than beautiful,
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  Speaker 1: to stand out amidst the gentle, grayish tones of the
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  Speaker 1: East coast scenery. The greater number, I may remark, of
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  Speaker 1: the advertisements that were so conspicuous a factor in the
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  Speaker 1: life of those days, and which rendered our vast tree
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  Speaker 1: pulp newspapers possible referred to food, drinks, tobacco, and the
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  Speaker 1: drugs that promised a restoration of the u equanimity. These
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  Speaker 1: other articles had destroyed wherever one went, one was reminded
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  Speaker 1: in glaring letters that, after all, man was little better
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  Speaker 1: than a worm, that eyeless, earless thing that burrows and
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  Speaker 1: lives uncomplainingly amidst nutritious dirt and an alimentary canal, with
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  Speaker 1: the subservient appendages there too. But in addition to such
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  Speaker 1: boards there were also the big black and white boards
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  Speaker 1: of various grand eloquently named estates. The individualistic enterprise of
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  Speaker 1: the time had led to the plotting out of nearly
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  Speaker 1: all the country round the seaside towns into roads and
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  Speaker 1: building plots. All but a small portion of the South
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  Speaker 1: and East coast was in this condition, and had the
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  Speaker 1: promises of these schemes been realized, the entire population of
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  Speaker 1: the island might have been accommodated upon the seafrontiers. Nothing
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  Speaker 1: of the sort happened, of course. The whole of this
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  Speaker 1: uglification of the coastline was done to stimulate a little
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  Speaker 1: foolish gamboling in plots, and one saw everywhere agent's boards
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  Speaker 1: in every state of freshness and decay, Ill made exploitation
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  Speaker 1: roads overgrown with grass. And here and there at a
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  Speaker 1: corner a label Trafalgar Avenue or Seaview Road. Here and
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  Speaker 1: there too, some small investor, some shopmen with savings, had
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  Speaker 1: delivered his soul to the local builders and built himself
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  Speaker 1: a house. And there it stood, ill designed, mean looking, isolated,
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  Speaker 1: ill placed on a cheaply fenced plot, a thwart which
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  Speaker 1: his domestic washing fluttered in the breeze amidst oblique desolation
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  Speaker 1: of enterprise. Then presently our railway crossed a high road,
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  Speaker 1: and a row of mean yellow brick houses, workmen's cottages,
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  Speaker 1: and the filthy black sheds that made the allotments of
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  Speaker 1: that time a universal eyesore marked our approach to the
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  Speaker 1: more central areas of I quote the local guide book,
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  Speaker 1: one of the most delightful resorts in the East Anglian
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  Speaker 1: poppy land. Then more mean houses, the gaunt, ungainliness of
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  Speaker 1: the electric force station. It had a huge chimney because
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  Speaker 1: no one understood how to make combustion of coal complete.
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  Speaker 1: And then we were in the railway station, and barely
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  Speaker 1: three quarters of a mile from the center of this
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  Speaker 1: haunt of health and pleasure. I inspected the town thoroughly
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  Speaker 1: before I made my inquiries. The road began badly with
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  Speaker 1: a row of cheap, pretentious, insolvent looking shops, a public house,
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  Speaker 1: and a cab stand. But after an interval of little
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  Speaker 1: red villas that were partly hidden amid shrubbery gardens, broke
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  Speaker 1: into a confusedly bright but not unpleasing high street. Shuttered
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  Speaker 1: that afternoon and sabbatically. Still Somewhere in the background, a
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  Speaker 1: church bell jangled, and children in bright, new looking clothes
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  Speaker 1: were going to Sunday school. Thence, through the square of
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  Speaker 1: stuccoed lodging houses that seemed a finer and cleaner version
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  Speaker 1: of my native square, I came to a garden of
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  Speaker 1: asphalt and theonymous the sea front. I sat down on
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  Speaker 1: a cast iron seat and surveyed first all of the
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  Speaker 1: broad stretches of muddy Sandy Beach, with its queer wheeled
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  Speaker 1: bathing machines painted with the advertisements of somebody's pills. And
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  Speaker 1: then at the house fronts that stared out upon these
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  Speaker 1: visceral councils, boarding houses, private hotels, and lodging houses and
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  Speaker 1: terraces clustered closely right and left of me, and then
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  Speaker 1: came to an end. In one direction, scaffolding marked a building,
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  Speaker 1: enterprise and progress. In the other. After a waste interval,
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  Speaker 1: rose a monstrous, bulging red shape, a huge hotel that
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  Speaker 1: dwarfed all other things. Northward were low, pale cliffs with
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  Speaker 1: white denticulations of tents, where the local volunteers, all under arms,
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  Speaker 1: lay encamped. And southward as spreading waste of sandy dunes
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  Speaker 1: with occasional bushes and clumps of stunted pine, and an
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  Speaker 1: advertisement board or so. A hard blue sky hung over
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  Speaker 1: all this prospect, the sunshine cast inky shadows, and eastward
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  Speaker 1: was a whitish sea. It was Sunday, and the midday
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  Speaker 1: meal still held people indoors. A queer world, thought I
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  Speaker 1: even then, to you now it must seem impossibly queer.
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  Speaker 1: And after an interval, I forced myself back to my
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  Speaker 1: own affair. How was I to ask? What was I
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  Speaker 1: to ask for? I puzzled for a long time over that.
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  Speaker 1: At first I was a little tired and indolent, and
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  Speaker 1: then presently I had a flow of ideas. My solution
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  Speaker 1: was fairly ingenious. I invented the following story. I happened
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  Speaker 1: to be taking a holiday in Shaphambury, and I was
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  Speaker 1: making use of the opportunity to seek the owner of
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  Speaker 1: a valuable feather boa which had been left behind in
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  Speaker 1: the hotel of my uncle at Wyvren by a young
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  Speaker 1: lady traveling with a young gentleman, no doubt a youthful
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  Speaker 1: married couple. They had reached Shaphambury somewhen on Thursday. I
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  Speaker 1: went over the story many times and gave my imaginary
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  Speaker 1: uncle and his hotel plausible names. At any rate, this
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  Speaker 1: yarn would serve as a complete justification for all the
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  Speaker 1: questions I might wish to ask. I settled that, but
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  Speaker 1: I still sat for a time, wanting the energy to begin.
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  Speaker 1: Then I turned toward the big hotel. Its gorgeous magnificence seemed,
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  Speaker 1: to my inexpert judgment to indicate the very place a
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  Speaker 1: rich young man of good family would select. Huge draft
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  Speaker 1: proof doors were swung round for me by an ironically
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  Speaker 1: polite under porter in a magnificent green uniform, who looked
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  Speaker 1: at my clothes as he listened to my question, and then,
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  Speaker 1: with a German accident, referred me to a gorgeous head
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  Speaker 1: porter who directed me to a princely young man behind
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  Speaker 1: a counter of brass and polish, like a bank, like
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  Speaker 1: several banks. This young man, while he answered me, kept
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  Speaker 1: his eye on my collar and tie, and I knew
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  Speaker 1: that they were abominable. I want to find a lady
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  Speaker 1: and gentlemen who came to Shaphambury on Tuesday, I said,
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  Speaker 1: friends of yours? He asked, with a terrible fineness of irony.
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: I made out at last that here, at any rate,
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  Speaker 1: the young people had not been They might have lunch there,
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  Speaker 1: but they had had no room. But I went out.
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: The door opened again for me obsequiously, in a state
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  Speaker 1: of social discomfiture, and did not attack any other establishment.
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: That afternoon, my resolution had come to a sort of ebb.
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: More people were promenading, and their Sunday smartness abashed me.
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: I forgot my purpose in an acute sense of myself.
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  Speaker 1: I felt that the bulge of my pocket caused by
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: the revolver was aspicuous, and I was ashamed. I went
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: along the sea front, away from the town, and presently
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: lay down among pebbles and sea poppies. This mood of
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  Speaker 1: reaction prevailed with me all that afternoon. In the evening,
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: about sundown, I went to the station and asked questions
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  Speaker 1: of the outporters there. But outporters I found, were a
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  Speaker 1: class of men who remembered luggage rather than people, and
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  Speaker 1: I had no sort of idea what luggage young Verrall
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  Speaker 1: and Nettie were likely to have with them. Then I
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  Speaker 1: fell into conversation with a salacious, wooden legged old man
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  Speaker 1: with a silver ring, who swept the steps that went
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  Speaker 1: down to the beach from the parade. He knew much
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  Speaker 1: about young couples, but only in general terms, and nothing
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  Speaker 1: of the particular young couple I sought. He reminded me
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  Speaker 1: in the most disagreeable way of the sensuous aspects of life,
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  Speaker 1: and I was not sorry when presently a gunboat appeared
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  Speaker 1: in the offing, signaling the coast guard in the camp,
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  Speaker 1: and cut short his observations upon holidays, beaches and morals.
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  Speaker 1: I went, And now I was past my ebb and
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  Speaker 1: sat in a seat upon the parade, and watched the
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  Speaker 1: brightening of those rising clouds of chilly fire that made
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  Speaker 1: the ruddy west seem tame. My midday lassitude was going,
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  Speaker 1: My blood was running warmer again, And as the twilight
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  Speaker 1: and that filmy brightness replaced the dusty sunlight, and robbed
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  Speaker 1: this unfamiliar place of all its matter of fact queerness,
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  Speaker 1: its sense of aimless materialism. Romance returned to me, and
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  Speaker 1: passion and my thoughts of honor and revenge. I remember
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  Speaker 1: that change of mood as occurring very vividly on this occasion,
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  Speaker 1: but I fancy that less distinctly I had felt this
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  Speaker 1: before many times in the old times. Night and the
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: starlight had an effect of intimate reality. The daytime did
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: not possess the day time as one saw it in
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: towns and populous places had hold of one, no doubt,
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  Speaker 1: but only as an uproar might. It was distracting, conflicting,
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: insistent darkness veiled the more salient aspects of those agglomerations
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  Speaker 1: of human absurdity, and one could exist. One could imagine.
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  Speaker 1: I had a queer illusion that night that Nettie and
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  Speaker 1: her lover were close at hand, that suddenly I should
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  Speaker 1: come on them. I have already told how I went
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: through the dusk seeking them in every couple that drew near,
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: and I dropped asleep at last in an unfamiliar bedroom
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: hung with gaudily decorated texts, cursing myself for having wasted
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: a day end of Book one, Chapter five, Sections one
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: and two. Recording by Bershacht