PROLOGUE
THE MAN WHO WROTE IN THE TOWER
BOOK THE FIRST — THE COMET
I. DUST IN THE SHADOWS
II. NETTIE
III. THE REVOLVER
IV. WAR
V. THE PURSUIT OF THE TWO LOVERS
BOOK THE SECOND — THE GREEN VAPORS
I. THE CHANGE
II. THE AWAKENING
III. THE CABINET COUNCIL
BOOK THE THIRD — THE NEW WORLD
I. LOVE AFTER THE CHANGE
II. MY MOTHER’S LAST DAYS
III. BELTANE AND NEW YEAR’S EVE
EPILOGUE
THE WINDOW OF THE TOWER
PROLOGUE
THE MAN WHO WROTE IN THE TOWER
I saw a gray-haired man, a figure of hale age, sitting at a desk and
writing.
He seemed to be in a room in a tower, very high, so that through the
tall window on his left one perceived only distances, a remote horizon
of sea, a headland and that vague haze and glitter in the sunset that
many miles away marks a city. All the appointments of this room were
orderly and beautiful, and in some subtle quality, in this small
difference and that, new to me and strange. They were in no fashion I
could name, and the simple costume the man wore suggested neither
period nor country. It might, I thought, be the Happy Future, or
Utopia, or the Land of Simple Dreams; an errant mote of memory, Henry
James’s phrase and story of “The Great Good Place,” twinkled across my
mind, and passed and left no light.
The man I saw wrote with a thing like a fountain pen, a modern touch
that prohibited any historical retrospection, and as he finished each
sheet, writing in an easy flowing hand, he added it to a growing pile
upon a graceful little table under the window. His last done sheets lay
loose, partly covering others that were clipped together into
fascicles.
Clearly he was unaware of my presence, and I stood waiting until his
pen should come to a pause. Old as he certainly was he wrote with a
steady hand. . . .
I discovered that a concave speculum hung slantingly high over his
head; a movement in this caught my attention sharply, and I looked up
to see, distorted and made fantastic but bright and beautifully
colored, the magnified, reflected, evasive rendering of a palace, of a
terrace, of the vista of a great roadway with many people, people
exaggerated, impossible-looking because of the curvature of the mirror,
going to and fro. I turned my head quickly that I might see more
clearly through the window behind me, but it was too high for me to
survey this nearer scene directly, and after a momentary pause I came
back to that distorting mirror again.
But now the writer was leaning back in his chair. He put down his pen
and sighed the half resentful sigh—“ah! you, work, you! how you gratify
and tire me!”—of a man who has been writing to his satisfaction.
“What is this place,” I asked, “and who are you?”
He looked around with the quick movement of surprise.
“What is this place?” I repeated, “and where am I?”
He regarded me steadfastly for a moment under his wrinkled brows, and
then his expression softened to a smile. He pointed to a chair beside
the table. “I am writing,” he said.
“About this?”
“About the change.”
I sat down. It was a very comfortable chair, and well placed under the
light.
“If you would like to read—” he said.