In the Days of the Comet

Always with Parload I was chief talker.

I can look back upon myself with, I believe, an almost perfect detachment, things have so changed that indeed now I am another being, with scarce anything in common with that boastful foolish youngster whose troubles I recall.  I see him vulgarly theatrical, egotistical, insincere, indeed I do not like him save with that instinctive material sympathy that is the fruit of incessant intimacy.  Because he was myself I may be able to feel and write understandingly about motives that will put him out of sympathy with nearly every reader, but why should I palliate or defend his quality?

Always, I say, I did the talking, and it would have amazed me beyond measure if any one had told me that mine was not the greater intelligence in these wordy encounters.  Parload was a quiet youth, and stiff and restrained in all things, while I had that supreme gift for young men and democracies, the gift of copious expression.  Parload I diagnosed in my secret heart as a trifle dull; he posed as pregnant quiet, I thought, and was obsessed by the congenial notion of “scientific caution.”  I did not remark that while my hands were chiefly useful for gesticulation or holding a pen Parload’s hands could do all sorts of things, and I did not think therefore that fibers must run from those fingers to something in his brain.  Nor, though I bragged perpetually of my shorthand, of my literature, of my indispensable share in Rawdon’s business, did Parload lay stress on the conics and calculus he “mugged” in the organized science school.  Parload is a famous man now, a great figure in a great time, his work upon intersecting radiations has broadened the intellectual horizon of mankind for ever, and I, who am at best a hewer of intellectual wood, a drawer of living water, can smile, and he can smile, to think how I patronized and posed and jabbered over him in the darkness of those early days.

That night I was shrill and eloquent beyond measure.  Rawdon was, of course, the hub upon which I went round—­Rawdon and the Rawdonesque employer and the injustice of “wages slavery” and all the immediate conditions of that industrial blind alley up which it seemed our lives were thrust.  But ever and again I glanced at other things.  Nettie was always there in the background of my mind, regarding me enigmatically.  It was part of my pose to Parload that I had a romantic love-affair somewhere away beyond the sphere of our intercourse, and that note gave a Byronic resonance to many of the nonsensical things I produced for his astonishment.

I will not weary you with too detailed an account of the talk of a foolish youth who was also distressed and unhappy, and whose voice was balm for the humiliations that smarted in his eyes.  Indeed, now in many particulars I cannot disentangle this harangue of which I tell from many of the things I may have said in other talks to Parload.  For example, I forget if it was then or before or afterwards that, as it were by accident, I let out what might be taken as an admission that I was addicted to drugs.

“You shouldn’t do that,” said Parload, suddenly.  “It won’t do to poison your brains with that.”

My brains, my eloquence, were to be very important assets to our party in the coming revolution. . . .

But one thing does clearly belong to this particular conversation I am recalling.  When I started out it was quite settled in the back of my mind that I must not leave Rawdon’s.  I simply wanted to abuse my employer to Parload.  But I talked myself quite out of touch with all the cogent reasons there were for sticking to my place, and I got home that night irrevocably committed to a spirited—­not to say a defiant—­policy with my employer.

“I can’t stand Rawdon’s much longer,” I said to Parload by way of a flourish.

“There’s hard times coming,” said Parload.

“Next winter.”

“Sooner.  The Americans have been overproducing, and they mean to dump.  The iron trade is going to have convulsions.”

“I don’t care.  Pot-banks are steady.”

“With a corner in borax?  No.  I’ve heard—­”

“What have you heard?”

“Office secrets.  But it’s no secret there’s trouble coming to potters.  There’s been borrowing and speculation.  The masters don’t stick to one business as they used to do.  I can tell that much.  Half the valley may be ‘playing’ before two months are out.”  Parload delivered himself of this unusually long speech in his most pithy and weighty manner.

“Playing” was our local euphemism for a time when there was no work and no money for a man, a time of stagnation and dreary hungry loafing day after day.  Such interludes seemed in those days a necessary consequence of industrial organization.

“You’d better stick to Rawdon’s,” said Parload.

“Ugh,” said I, affecting a noble disgust.

“There’ll be trouble,” said Parload.

“Who cares?” said I.  “Let there be trouble—­the more the better.  This system has got to end, sooner or later.  These capitalists with their speculation and corners and trusts make things go from bad to worse.  Why should I cower in Rawdon’s office, like a frightened dog, while hunger walks the streets?  Hunger is the master revolutionary.  When he comes we ought to turn out and salute him.  Anyway, I’m going to do so now.”

“That’s all very well,” began Parload.

“I’m tired of it,” I said.  “I want to come to grips with all these Rawdons.  I think perhaps if I was hungry and savage I could talk to hungry men—­”

“There’s your mother,” said Parload, in his slow judicial way.

That was a difficulty.

I got over it by a rhetorical turn.  “Why should one sacrifice the future of the world—­why should one even sacrifice one’s own future—­because one’s mother is totally destitute of imagination?”