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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.
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 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?"
For all my earthly concentration of mind, I could but stare at it for a moment with a vague anticipation that, after all, in some way so strange and glorious an object must have significance, could not possibly be a matter of absolute indifference to the scheme and values of my life. But how? I thought of Parload.
He still seemed reluctant to give up his comet. "Socialism's all right," he said, "but if that thing up there WAS to hit the earth it might matter." "Nothing matters but human beings." "Suppose it killed them all." "Oh," said I, "that's Rot," "I wonder," said Parload, dreadfully divided in his allegiance. He looked at the comet.
I remember quite distinctly, I stood up abruptly, undressed very quickly in the dark, and had hardly touched my pillow again before I was asleep. But how my mother slept that night I do not know. Oddly enough, I do not blame myself for behaving like this to my mother, though my conscience blames me acutely for my arrogance to Parload.
And Parload had spent two hoarded pounds in buying himself a spectroscope, so that he could see for himself, night after night, that mysterious, that stimulating line the unknown line in the green. How many times I wonder did I look at the smudgy, quivering symbol of the unknown things that were rushing upon us out of the inhuman void, before I rebelled?
"Here," said I. "We're on the verge of the biggest lock-out in the history of this countryside; here's distress and hunger coming, here's all the capitalistic competitive system like a wound inflamed, and you spend your time gaping at that damned silly streak of nothing in the sky!" Parload stared at me. "Yes, I do," he said slowly, as though it was a new idea. "Don't I? . . . I wonder why."
"Ah!" said Parload, and the thought seemed to hang about him. "It could only add to the miseries of life," he said irrelevantly, when presently I was discoursing of other things. "What would?" "Collision with a comet. It would only throw things back. It would only make what was left of life more savage than it is at present." "But why should ANYTHING be left of life?" said I. . . .
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.
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