"The World's Great Age begins anew, The Golden Years return, The Earth doth like a Snake renew Her Winter Skin outworn: Heaven smiles, and Faiths and Empires gleam Like Wrecks of a Dissolving Dream."
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
PAGE
THE MAN WHO WROTE IN THE TOWER . . . 3
BOOK THE FIRST
THE COMET
CHAPTER
I. DUST IN THE SHADOWS . . . . . . 9 II. NETTIE . . . . . . . . . . . . 52III. THE REVOLVER . . . . . . . . . 89 IV. WAR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152 V. THE PURSUIT OF THE TWO LOVERS . . 184
BOOK THE SECOND
THE GREEN VAPORS
I. THE CHANGE . . . . . . . . . 221 II. THE AWAKENING . . . . . . . . . 252III. THE CABINET COUNCIL . . . . . . . 279
BOOK THE THIRD
THE NEW WORLD
CHAPTER PAGE
I. LOVE AFTER THE CHANGE . . . . . . 303 II. MY MOTHER'S LAST DAYS . . . . . . 335III. BELTANE AND NEW YEAR'S EVE . . . 353
EPILOGUE
THE WINDOW OF THE TOWER . . . . . . . 375
IN THE DAYS OF THE COMET
PROLOGUE
THE MAN WHO WROTE IN THE TOWER
I SAW a gray-haired man, a figure of hale age, sitting at a deskand writing.
He seemed to be in a room in a tower, very high, so that throughthe tall window on his left one perceived only distances, a remotehorizon of sea, a headland and that vague haze and glitter in thesunset that many miles away marks a city. All the appointments ofthis room were orderly and beautiful, and in some subtle quality,in this small difference and that, new to me and strange. They werein no fashion I could name, and the simple costume the man woresuggested neither period nor country. It might, I thought, be theHappy Future, or Utopia, or the Land of Simple Dreams; an errantmote of memory, Henry James's phrase and story of "The Great GoodPlace," twinkled across my mind, and passed and left no light.
The man I saw wrote with a thing like a fountain pen, a modern touchthat prohibited any historical retrospection, and as he finishedeach sheet, writing in an easy flowing hand, he added it to a growingpile upon a graceful little table under the window. His last donesheets lay loose, partly covering others that were clipped togetherinto fascicles.
Clearly he was unaware of my presence, and I stood waiting untilhis pen should come to a pause. Old as he certainly washe wrote with a steady hand. . . .
I discovered that a concave speculum hung slantingly high over hishead; a movement in this caught my attention sharply, and I lookedup to see, distorted and made fantastic but bright and beautifullycolored, the magnified, reflected, evasive rendering of a palace,of a terrace, of the vista of a great roadway with many people,people exaggerated, impossible-looking because of the curvature ofthe mirror, going to and fro. I turned my head quickly that I mightsee more clearly through the window behind me, but it was too highfor me to survey this nearer scene directly, and after a momentarypause I came back to that distorting mirror again.
But now the writer was leaning back in his chair. He put down hispen and sighed the half resentful sigh--"ah! you, work, you! howyou gratify and tire me!"--of a man who has been writing to hissatisfaction.
"What is this place," I asked, "and who are you?"
He looked around with the quick movement of surprise.
"What is this place?" I repeated, "and where am I?"
He regarded me steadfastly for a moment under his wrinkled brows,and then his expression softened to a smile. He pointed to a chairbeside the table. "I am writing," he said.
"About this?"
"About the change."
I sat down. It was a very comfortable chair, and well placed underthe light.
"If you would like to read--" he said.
I indicated the manuscript. "This explains?" I asked.
"That explains," he answered.
He drew a fresh sheet of paper toward him as he looked at me.
I glanced from him about his apartment and back to the littletable. A fascicle marked very distinctly "1" caught my attention,and I took it up. I smiled in his friendly eyes. "Very well," saidI, suddenly at my ease, and he nodded and went on writing. And ina mood between confidence and curiosity, I began to read.
This is the story that happy, active-looking old man in that pleasantplace had written.