In the Days of the Comet

Next day I came home to Clayton.

The new strange brightness of the world was all the brighter there, for the host of dark distressful memories, of darkened childhood, toilsome youth, embittered adolescence that wove about the place for me.  It seemed to me that I saw morning there for the first time.  No chimneys smoked that day, no furnaces were burning, the people were busy with other things.  The clear strong sun, the sparkle in the dustless air, made a strange gaiety in the narrow streets.  I passed a number of smiling people coming home from the public breakfasts that were given in the Town Hall until better things could be arranged, and happened on Parload among them.  “You were right about that comet,” I sang out at the sight of him; and he came toward me and clasped my hand.

“What are people doing here?” said I.

“They’re sending us food from outside,” he said, “and we’re going to level all these slums—­and shift into tents on to the moors;” and he began to tell me of many things that were being arranged, the Midland land committees had got to work with remarkable celerity and directness of purpose, and the redistribution of population was already in its broad outlines planned.  He was working at an improvised college of engineering.  Until schemes of work were made out, almost every one was going to school again to get as much technical training as they could against the demands of the huge enterprise of reconstruction that was now beginning.

He walked with me to my door, and there I met old Pettigrew coming down the steps.  He looked dusty and tired, but his eye was brighter than it used to be, and he carried in a rather unaccustomed manner, a workman’s tool basket.

“How’s the rheumatism, Mr. Pettigrew?” I asked.

“Dietary,” said old Pettigrew, “can work wonders. . . .”  He looked me in the eye.  “These houses,” he said, “will have to come down, I suppose, and our notions of property must undergo very considerable revision—­in the light of reason; but meanwhile I’ve been doing something to patch that disgraceful roof of mine!  To think that I could have dodged and evaded-—-”

He raised a deprecatory hand, drew down the loose corners of his ample mouth, and shook his old head.

“The past is past, Mr. Pettigrew.”

“Your poor dear mother!  So good and honest a woman!  So simple and kind and forgiving!  To think of it!  My dear young man!”—­he said it manfully—­“I’m ashamed.”

“The whole world blushed at dawn the other day, Mr. Pettigrew,” I said, “and did it very prettily.  That’s over now.  God knows, who is not ashamed of all that came before last Tuesday.”

I held out a forgiving hand, naively forgetful that in this place I was a thief, and he took it and went his way, shaking his head and repeating he was ashamed, but I think a little comforted.

The door opened and my poor old mother’s face, marvelously cleaned, appeared.  “Ah, Willie, boy!  You.  You!”

I ran up the steps to her, for I feared she might fall.

How she clung to me in the passage, the dear woman! . . .

But first she shut the front door.  The old habit of respect for my unaccountable temper still swayed her.  “Ah deary!” she said, “ah deary!  But you were sorely tried,” and kept her face close to my shoulder, lest she should offend me by the sight of the tears that welled within her.

She made a sort of gulping noise and was quiet for a while, holding me very tightly to her heart with her worn, long hands . . .

She thanked me presently for my telegram, and I put my arm about her and drew her into the living room.

“It’s all well with me, mother dear,” I said, “and the dark times are over—­are done with for ever, mother.”

Whereupon she had courage and gave way and sobbed aloud, none chiding her.

She had not let me know she could still weep for five grimy years. . . .