cheese—roused me at last out of a hag-rid
sleep to face despair. I was a soul lost amidst desolations and
shame, dishonored, evilly treated, hopeless. I raged against the
God I denied, and cursed him as I lay.
And it was in the nature of my fever, which was indeed only half
fatigue and illness, and the rest the disorder of passionate youth,
that Nettie, a strangely distorted Nettie, should come through the
brief dreams that marked the exhaustions of that vigil, to dominate
my misery. I was sensible, with an exaggerated distinctness, of
the intensity of her physical charm for me, of her every grace and
beauty; she took to herself the whole gamut of desire in me and
the whole gamut of pride. She, bodily, was my lost honor. It was
not only loss but disgrace to lose her. She stood for life and all
that was denied; she mocked me as a creature of failure and defeat.
My spirit raised itself towards her, and then the bruise upon my
jaw glowed with a dull heat, and I rolled in the mud again before
my rivals.
There were times when something near madness took me, and I gnashed
my teeth and dug my nails into my hands and ceased to curse and cry
out only by reason of the insufficiency of words. And once towards
dawn I got out of bed, and sat by my looking-glass with my revolver
loaded in my hand. I stood up at last and put it carefully in my
drawer and locked it—out of reach of any gusty impulse. After
that I slept for a little while.
Such nights were nothing rare and strange in that old order of the
world. Never a city, never a night the whole year round, but amidst
those who slept were those who waked, plumbing the deeps of wrath
and misery. Countless thousands there were so ill, so troubled,
they agonize near to the very border-line of madness, each
one the center of a universe darkened and lost. . .
The next day I spent in gloomy lethargy.
I had intended to go to Checkshill that day, but my bruised ankle
was too swollen for that to be possible. I sat indoors in the
ill-lit downstairs kitchen, with my foot bandaged, and mused darkly
and read. My dear old mother waited on me, and her brown eyes watched
me and wondered at my black silences, my frowning preoccupations.
I had not told her how it was my ankle came to be bruised and my
clothes muddy. She had brushed my clothes in the morning before I
got up.
Ah well! Mothers are not treated in that way now. That I suppose
must console me. I wonder how far you will be able to picture that
dark, grimy, untidy room, with its bare deal table, its tattered
wall paper, the saucepans and kettle on the narrow, cheap, but
by no means economical range, the ashes under the fireplace, the
rust-spotted steel fender on which my bandaged feet rested; I wonder
how near you can come to seeing the scowling pale-faced hobbledehoy
I was, unshaven and collarless, in the Windsor chair, and the little
timid, dirty, devoted old woman who hovered about me with
love peering out from her puckered eyelids. . .
When she went out to buy some vegetables in the middle of the
morning she got me a half-penny journal. It was just such a one as
these upon my desk, only that the copy I read was damp from the
press, and these are so dry and brittle, they crack if I touch
them. I have a copy of the actual issue I read that morning; it
was a paper called emphatically the New Paper, but everybody bought
it and everybody called it the "yell." It was full that morning of
stupendous news and still more stupendous headlines, so stupendous
that for a little while I was roused from my egotistical broodings
to wider interests. For it seemed that Germany and England were on
the brink of war.
Of all the monstrous irrational phenomena of the former time, war
was certainly the most strikingly insane. In reality it was probably
far less mischievous than such quieter evil as, for example, the
general acquiescence in the private ownership of land, but its evil
consequences showed so plainly that even in those days of
sleep to face despair. I was a soul lost amidst desolations and
shame, dishonored, evilly treated, hopeless. I raged against the
God I denied, and cursed him as I lay.
And it was in the nature of my fever, which was indeed only half
fatigue and illness, and the rest the disorder of passionate youth,
that Nettie, a strangely distorted Nettie, should come through the
brief dreams that marked the exhaustions of that vigil, to dominate
my misery. I was sensible, with an exaggerated distinctness, of
the intensity of her physical charm for me, of her every grace and
beauty; she took to herself the whole gamut of desire in me and
the whole gamut of pride. She, bodily, was my lost honor. It was
not only loss but disgrace to lose her. She stood for life and all
that was denied; she mocked me as a creature of failure and defeat.
My spirit raised itself towards her, and then the bruise upon my
jaw glowed with a dull heat, and I rolled in the mud again before
my rivals.
There were times when something near madness took me, and I gnashed
my teeth and dug my nails into my hands and ceased to curse and cry
out only by reason of the insufficiency of words. And once towards
dawn I got out of bed, and sat by my looking-glass with my revolver
loaded in my hand. I stood up at last and put it carefully in my
drawer and locked it—out of reach of any gusty impulse. After
that I slept for a little while.
Such nights were nothing rare and strange in that old order of the
world. Never a city, never a night the whole year round, but amidst
those who slept were those who waked, plumbing the deeps of wrath
and misery. Countless thousands there were so ill, so troubled,
they agonize near to the very border-line of madness, each
one the center of a universe darkened and lost. . .
The next day I spent in gloomy lethargy.
I had intended to go to Checkshill that day, but my bruised ankle
was too swollen for that to be possible. I sat indoors in the
ill-lit downstairs kitchen, with my foot bandaged, and mused darkly
and read. My dear old mother waited on me, and her brown eyes watched
me and wondered at my black silences, my frowning preoccupations.
I had not told her how it was my ankle came to be bruised and my
clothes muddy. She had brushed my clothes in the morning before I
got up.
Ah well! Mothers are not treated in that way now. That I suppose
must console me. I wonder how far you will be able to picture that
dark, grimy, untidy room, with its bare deal table, its tattered
wall paper, the saucepans and kettle on the narrow, cheap, but
by no means economical range, the ashes under the fireplace, the
rust-spotted steel fender on which my bandaged feet rested; I wonder
how near you can come to seeing the scowling pale-faced hobbledehoy
I was, unshaven and collarless, in the Windsor chair, and the little
timid, dirty, devoted old woman who hovered about me with
love peering out from her puckered eyelids. . .
When she went out to buy some vegetables in the middle of the
morning she got me a half-penny journal. It was just such a one as
these upon my desk, only that the copy I read was damp from the
press, and these are so dry and brittle, they crack if I touch
them. I have a copy of the actual issue I read that morning; it
was a paper called emphatically the New Paper, but everybody bought
it and everybody called it the "yell." It was full that morning of
stupendous news and still more stupendous headlines, so stupendous
that for a little while I was roused from my egotistical broodings
to wider interests. For it seemed that Germany and England were on
the brink of war.
Of all the monstrous irrational phenomena of the former time, war
was certainly the most strikingly insane. In reality it was probably
far less mischievous than such quieter evil as, for example, the
general acquiescence in the private ownership of land, but its evil
consequences showed so plainly that even in those days of
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