Chapter 3

The Revolver

"THAT comet is going to hit the earth!"

So said one of the two men who got into the train and settled down.

"Ah!" said the older man.

"They do say that it is made of gas, that comet. We shan't blow up, shall us? . . ."

What did it matter to me?

I was thinking of revenge--revenge against the primary conditions of my being. I was thinking of Nettie and her lover. I was firmly resolved he should not have her--though I had to kill them both to prevent it. I did not care what else might happen, if only that end was insured. All my thwarted passions had turned to rage. I would have accepted eternal torment that night without a seconde thought, to be certain of revenge. A hundred possibilities of action, a hundred story situations, a whirl of violent schemes, chased one another through my shamed, exasperated mind. The sole prospect I could endure was of some gigantic, inexorably cruel vindication of my humiliated self.

And Nettie? I loved Nettie still, but now with the keen, unmeasuring hatred of wounded pride, and baffled, passionate desire.

2

As Ii came down the hill from Clayton Crest--for my shilling and a penny only permitted my travelling by train as far as Two-Mile Stone, and thence I had to walk over the hill--I remember very vividly a little man with a shrill voice who was preaching under a gas-lamp against a hoarding to a thin crowd of Sunday evening loafers. He was a short man, bald, with a little fair curly beard and hair, and watery blue eyes, and he was preaching that the end of the world drew near.

I think that is the first time I heard anyone link the comet with the end of the world. He had got that jumbled up with international politics and prophecies from the Book of Daniel.

I stopped to hear him only for a moment or so. I do not think I should have halted at all but his crowd blocked my path, and the sight of his queer wild expression, the gesture of his upward-pointing finger, held me.

"There is the end of all your Sins and Follies," he bawled. "There! There is the Star of Judgments, the Judgments of the most High God! It is appointed unto all men to die--unto all men to die"--his voice changed to a curious flat chang--"and after death, the Judgment! The Judgment!"

I pushed and threaded my way through the bystanders and went on, and his curious harsh flat voice pursued me. I went on with the thoughts that had occupied me before--where I could buy a revolver, and how I might master its use--and probably I should have forgotten all about him had he not taken a part in the hideous dream that ended the little sleep I had that night. For the most part I lay awake thinking of Nettie and her lover.

Then came three strange days--three days that seem now to have been wholly concentrated upon one business.

This dominant business was the purchase of my revolver. I held