The Dawn of A To morrow

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THE DAWN OF A TO-MORROW
By FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT

I

There are always two ways of
looking at a thing, frequently
there are six or seven; but two ways
of looking at a London fog are quite
enough. When it is thick and yellow
in the streets and stings a man's
throat and lungs as he breathes it, an
awakening in the early morning is
either an unearthly and grewsome,
or a mysteriously enclosing, secluding,
and comfortable thing. If one
awakens in a healthy body, and with
a clear brain rested by normal sleep
and retaining memories of a normally
agreeable yesterday, one may lie watching
the housemaid building the fire;
and after she has swept the hearth
and put things in order, lie watching
the flames of the blazing and crackling
wood catch the coals and set them
blazing also, and dancing merrily and
filling corners with a glow; and in so
lying and realizing that leaping light
and warmth and a soft bed are good
things, one may turn over on one's
back, stretching arms and legs
luxuriously, drawing deep breaths and
smiling at a knowledge of the fog
outside which makes half-past eight
o'clock on a December morning as
dark as twelve o'clock on a December
night. Under such conditions
the soft, thick, yellow gloom has its
picturesque and even humorous aspect.
One feels enclosed by it at once
fantastically and cosily, and is inclined
to revel in imaginings of the picture
outside, its Rembrandt lights and
orange yellows, the halos about the
street-lamps, the illumination of shop-
windows, the flare of torches stuck
up over coster barrows and coffee-
stands, the shadows on the faces of
the men and women selling and buying
beside them. Refreshed by sleep
and comfort and surrounded by light,
warmth, and good cheer, it is easy to
face the day, to confront going out
into the fog and feeling a sort of
pleasure in its mysteries. This is one
way of looking at it, but only one.

The other way is marked by enormous
differences.

A man--he had given his name
to the people of the house as Antony
Dart--awakened in a third-story
bedroom in a lodging-house in a poor
street in London, and as his consciousness
returned to him, its slow and
reluctant movings confronted the
second point of view--marked by
enormous differences. He had not
slept two consecutive hours through
the night, and when he had slept he
had been tormented by dreary dreams,
which were more full of misery because
of their elusive vagueness, which
kept his tortured brain on a wearying
strain of effort to reach some definite
understanding of them. Yet when
he awakened the consciousness of
being again alive was an awful thing.
If the dreams could have faded into
blankness and all have passed with
the passing of the night, how he
could have thanked whatever gods
there be! Only not to awake--
only not to awake! But he had
awakened.

The clock struck nine as he did
so, consequently he knew the hour.
The lodging-house slavey had aroused
him by coming to light the fire. She
had set her candle on the hearth and
done her work as stealthily as possible,
but he had been disturbed,
though he had made a desperate effort
to struggle back into sleep. That
was no use--no use. He was awake
and he was in the midst of it all again.
Without the sense of luxurious comfort
he opened his eyes and turned
upon his back, throwing out his arms
flatly, so that he lay as in the form
of a cross, in heavy weariness and
anguish. For months he had awakened
each morning after such a night
and had so lain like a crucified thing.

As he watched the painful flickering
of the damp and smoking wood and
coal he remembered this and thought
that there had been a lifetime of such
awakenings, not knowing that the
morbidness of a fagged brain blotted
out the memory of more normal days
and told him fantastic lies which were
but a hundredth part truth. He could
see only the hundredth part truth, and
it assumed proportions so huge that
he could see nothing else. In such
a state the human brain is an infernal
machine and its workings can only be
conquered if the mortal thing which
lives with it--day and night, night
and day--has learned to separate its
controllable from its seemingly
uncontrollable atoms, and can silence
its clamor on its way to madness.

Antony Dart had not learned this
thing and the clamor had had its
hideous way with him. Physicians
would have given a name to his
mental and physical condition. He
had heard these names often--applied
to men the strain of whose lives had
been like the strain of his own, and
had left them as it had left him--
jaded, joyless, breaking things. Some
of them had been broken and had
died or were dragging out bruised and
tormented days in their own homes
or in mad-houses. He always shuddered
when he heard their names,
and rebelled with sick fear against
the mere mention of them. They
had worked as he had worked, they
had been stricken with the delirium
of accumulation--accumulation--
as he had been. They had been
caught in the rush and swirl of the
great maelstrom, and had been borne
round and round in it, until having
grasped every coveted thing tossing
upon its circling waters, they
themselves had been flung upon the shore
with both hands full, the rocks about
them strewn with rich possessions,
while they lay prostrate and gazed
at all life had brought with dull,
hopeless, anguished eyes. He knew
--if the worst came to the worst--
what would be said of him, because
he had heard it said of others. "He
worked too hard--he worked too
hard." He was sick of hearing it.
What was wrong with the world--
what was wrong with man, as Man
--if work could break him like this?
If one believed in Deity, the living
creature It breathed into being must
be a perfect thing--not one to be
wearied, sickened, tortured by the
life Its breathing had created. A
mere man would disdain to build
a thing so poor and incomplete.
A mere human engineer who constructed
an engine whose workings
were perpetually at fault--which
went wrong when called upon to
do the labor it was made for--who
would not scoff at it and cast it aside
as a piece of worthless bungling?

"Something is wrong," he mut-
tered, lying flat upon his cross and
staring at the yellow haze which
had crept through crannies in window-
sashes into the room. "Someone
is wrong. Is it I--or You?"

His thin lips drew themselves
back against his teeth in a mirthless
smile which was like a grin.

"Yes," he said. "I am pretty
far gone. I am beginning to talk to
myself about God. Bryan did it just
before he was taken to Dr. Hewletts'
place and cut his throat."

He had not led a specially evil
life; he had not broken laws, but
the subject of Deity was not one
which his scheme of existence had
included. When it had haunted
him of late he had felt it an untoward
and morbid sign. The thing
had drawn him--drawn him; he
had complained against it, he had
argued, sometimes he knew--shuddering--
that he had raved. Something
had seemed to stand aside and
watch his being and his thinking.
Something which filled the universe
had seemed to wait, and to have
waited through all the eternal ages,
to see what he--one man--would
do. At times a great appalled wonder
had swept over him at his realization
that he had never known or
thought of it before. It had been
there always--through all the ages
that had passed. And sometimes--
once or twice--the thought had in
some unspeakable, untranslatable way
brought him a moment's calm.

But at other times he had said to
himself--with a shivering soul cowering
within him--that this was only
part of it all and was a beginning,
perhaps, of religious monomania.

During the last week he had
known what he was going to do--
he had made up his mind. This
abject horror through which others
had let themselves be dragged to
madness or death he would not
endure. The end should come quickly,
and no one should be smitten aghast
by seeing or knowing how it came.
In the crowded shabbier streets of
London there were lodging-houses
where one, by taking precautions,
could end his life in such a manner
as would blot him out of any world
where such a man as himself had been
known. A pistol, properly managed,
would obliterate resemblance to any
human thing. Months ago through
chance talk he had heard how it
could be done--and done quickly.
He could leave a misleading letter.
He had planned what it should be--
the story it should tell of a
disheartened mediocre venturer of his
poor all returning bankrupt and
humiliated from Australia, ending
existence in such pennilessness that
the parish must give him a pauper's
grave. What did it matter where a
man lay, so that he slept--slept--
slept? Surely with one's brains
scattered one would sleep soundly
anywhere.

He had come to the house the
night before, dressed shabbily with
the pitiable respectability of a
defeated man. He had entered
droopingly with bent shoulders and
hopeless hang of head. In his own
sphere he was a man who held himself
well. He had let fall a few
dispirited sentences when he had
engaged his back room from the
woman of the house, and she had
recognized him as one of the luckless.
In fact, she had hesitated a
moment before his unreliable look
until he had taken out money from
his pocket and paid his rent for a
week in advance. She would have
that at least for her trouble, he had
said to himself. He should not occupy
the room after to-morrow. In
his own home some days would pass
before his household began to make
inquiries. He had told his servants
that he was going over to Paris for a
change. He would be safe and deep
in his pauper's grave a week before
they asked each other why they did
not hear from him. All was in
order. One of the mocking agonies
was that living was done for. He
had ceased to live. Work, pleasure,
sun, moon, and stars had lost their
meaning. He stood and looked at
the most radiant loveliness of land
and sky and sea and felt nothing.
Success brought greater wealth each
day without stirring a pulse of
pleasure, even in triumph. There
was nothing left but the awful days
and awful nights to which he knew
physicians could give their scientific
name, but had no healing for. He
had gone far enough. He would go
no farther. To-morrow it would
have been over long hours. And
there would have been no public
declaiming over the humiliating
pitifulness of his end. And what did it
matter?

How thick the fog was outside--
thick enough for a man to lose himself
in it. The yellow mist which
had crept in under the doors and
through the crevices of the window-
sashes gave a ghostly look to the
room--a ghastly, abnormal look, he
said to himself. The fire was
smouldering instead of blazing. But
what did it matter? He was going
out. He had not bought the pistol
last night--like a fool. Somehow
his brain had been so tired and
crowded that he had forgotten.

"Forgotten." He mentally
repeated the word as he got out of bed.
By this time to-morrow he should
have forgotten everything. THIS
TIME TO-MORROW. His mind repeated
that also, as he began to dress
himself. Where should he be? Should
he be anywhere? Suppose he
awakened again--to something as
bad as this? How did a man get
out of his body? After the crash
and shock what happened? Did one
find oneself standing beside the Thing
and looking down at it? It would
not be a good thing to stand and
look down on--even for that which
had deserted it. But having torn
oneself loose from it and its devilish
aches and pains, one would not care
--one would see how little it all
mattered. Anything else must be
better than this--the thing for
which there was a scientific name
but no healing. He had taken all
the drugs, he had obeyed all the
medical orders, and here he was after
that last hell of a night--dressing
himself in a back bedroom of a
cheap lodging-house to go out and
buy a pistol in this damned fog.

He laughed at the last phrase of
his thought, the laugh which was a
mirthless grin.

"I am thinking of it as if I was
afraid of taking cold," he said.
"And to-morrow--!"

There would be no To-morrow.
To-morrows were at an end. No
more nights--no more days--no
more morrows.

He finished dressing, putting on
his discriminatingly chosen shabby-
genteel clothes with a care for the
effect he intended them to produce.
The collar and cuffs of his shirt were
frayed and yellow, and he fastened his
collar with a pin and tied his worn
necktie carelessly. His overcoat was
beginning to wear a greenish shade
and look threadbare, so was his hat.
When his toilet was complete he
looked at himself in the cracked and
hazy glass, bending forward to
scrutinize his unshaven face under the
shadow of the dingy hat.

"It is all right," he muttered.
"It is not far to the pawnshop
where I saw it."

The stillness of the room as he
turned to go out was uncanny. As
it was a back room, there was no
street below from which could arise
sounds of passing vehicles, and the
thickness of the fog muffled such
sound as might have floated from the
front. He stopped half-way to the
door, not knowing why, and listened.
To what--for what? The silence
seemed to spread through all the
house--out into the streets--
through all London--through all
the world, and he to stand in the
midst of it, a man on the way to
Death--with no To-morrow.

What did it mean? It seemed to
mean something. The world
withdrawn--life withdrawn--sound
withdrawn--breath withdrawn. He
stood and waited. Perhaps this
was one of the symptoms of the
morbid thing for which there was
that name. If so he had better get
away quickly and have it over, lest
he be found wandering about not
knowing--not knowing. But now
he knew--the Silence. He waited
--waited and tried to hear, as if
something was calling him--calling
without sound. It returned to him
--the thought of That which had
waited through all the ages to see
what he--one man--would do.
He had never exactly pitied himself
before--he did not know that he
pitied himself now, but he was a
man going to his death, and a light,
cold sweat broke out on him and
it seemed as if it was not he who
did it, but some other--he flung
out his arms and cried aloud words
he had not known he was going to
speak.

"Lord! Lord! What shall I do
to be saved?"

But the Silence gave no answer.
It was the Silence still.

And after standing a few moments
panting, his arms fell and his head
dropped, and turning the handle of
the door, he went out to buy the
pistol.

II

As he went down the narrow staircase,
covered with its dingy and
threadbare carpet, he found the
house so full of dirty yellow haze
that he realized that the fog must be
of the extraordinary ones which are
remembered in after-years as abnormal
specimens of their kind. He
recalled that there had been one of
the sort three years before, and that
traffic and business had been almost
entirely stopped by it, that accidents
had happened in the streets, and that
people having lost their way had
wandered about turning corners until
they found themselves far from their
intended destinations and obliged to
take refuge in hotels or the houses of
hospitable strangers. Curious incidents
had occurred and odd stories
were told by those who had felt
themselves obliged by circumstances
to go out into the baffling gloom.
He guessed that something of a like
nature had fallen upon the town
again. The gas-light on the landings
and in the melancholy hall
burned feebly--so feebly that one
got but a vague view of the rickety
hat-stand and the shabby overcoats
and head-gear hanging upon it. It
was well for him that he had but
a corner or so to turn before he
reached the pawnshop in whose
window he had seen the pistol he
intended to buy.

When he opened the street-door
he saw that the fog was, upon the
whole, perhaps even heavier and
more obscuring, if possible, than the
one so well remembered. He could
not see anything three feet before
him, he could not see with distinctness
anything two feet ahead. The
sensation of stepping forward was
uncertain and mysterious enough to be
almost appalling. A man not
sufficiently cautious might have fallen
into any open hole in his path. Antony
Dart kept as closely as possible
to the sides of the houses. It would
have been easy to walk off the pavement
into the middle of the street
but for the edges of the curb and the
step downward from its level. Traffic
had almost absolutely ceased, though
in the more important streets link-
boys were making efforts to guide
men or four-wheelers slowly along.
The blind feeling of the thing was
rather awful. Though but few
pedestrians were out, Dart found
himself once or twice brushing against
or coming into forcible contact with
men feeling their way about like
himself.

"One turn to the right," he
repeated mentally, "two to the left,
and the place is at the corner of the
other side of the street."

He managed to reach it at last,
but it had been a slow, and therefore,
long journey. All the gas-jets
the little shop owned were lighted,
but even under their flare the articles
in the window--the one or two
once cheaply gaudy dresses and
shawls and men's garments--hung
in the haze like the dreary, dangling
ghosts of things recently executed.
Among watches and forlorn pieces
of old-fashioned jewelry and odds and
ends, the pistol lay against the folds
of a dirty gauze shawl. There it
was. It would have been annoying
if someone else had been beforehand
and had bought it.

Inside the shop more dangling
spectres hung and the place was
almost dark. It was a shabby pawnshop,
and the man lounging behind
the counter was a shabby man with
an unshaven, unamiable face.

"I want to look at that pistol in
the right-hand corner of your window,"
Antony Dart said.

The pawnbroker uttered a sound
something between a half-laugh and
a grunt. He took the weapon from
the window.

Antony Dart examined it critically.
He must make quite sure of
it. He made no further remark.
He felt he had done with speech.

Being told the price asked for the
purchase, he drew out his purse and
took the money from it. After
making the payment he noted that
he still possessed a five-pound note
and some sovereigns. There passed
through his mind a wonder as to
who would spend it. The most
decent thing, perhaps, would be to
give it away. If it was in his room
--to-morrow--the parish would not
bury him, and it would be safer that
the parish should.

He was thinking of this as he
left the shop and began to cross the
street. Because his mind was wandering
he was less watchful. Suddenly
a rubber-tired hansom, moving
without sound, appeared immediately
in his path--the horse's head
loomed up above his own. He made
the inevitable involuntary whirl aside
to move out of the way, the hansom
passed, and turning again, he went
on. His movement had been too
swift to allow of his realizing the
direction in which his turn had been
made. He was wholly unaware that
when he crossed the street he crossed
backward instead of forward. He
turned a corner literally feeling his
way, went on, turned another, and
after walking the length of the street,
suddenly understood that he was in
a strange place and had lost his
bearings.

This was exactly what had happened
to people on the day of the
memorable fog of three years before.
He had heard them talking of such
experiences, and of the curious and
baffling sensations they gave rise to
in the brain. Now he understood
them. He could not be far from
his lodgings, but he felt like a man
who was blind, and who had been
turned out of the path he knew.
He had not the resource of the people
whose stories he had heard. He
would not stop and address anyone.
There could be no certainty as to
whom he might find himself speaking
to. He would speak to no one.
He would wander about until he
came upon some clew. Even if he
came upon none, the fog would
surely lift a little and become a trifle
less dense in course of time. He
drew up the collar of his overcoat,
pulled his hat down over his eyes
and went on--his hand on the thing
he had thrust into a pocket.

He did not find his clew as he
had hoped, and instead of lifting the
fog grew heavier. He found himself
at last no longer striving for any
end, but rambling along mechanically,
feeling like a man in a dream
--a nightmare. Once he recognized
a weird suggestion in the mystery
about him. To-morrow might
one be wandering about aimlessly in
some such haze. He hoped not.

His lodgings were not far from
the Embankment, and he knew at
last that he was wandering along it,
and had reached one of the bridges.
His mood led him to turn in upon
it, and when he reached an embrasure
to stop near it and lean upon the
parapet looking down. He could
not see the water, the fog was too
dense, but he could hear some faint
splashing against stones. He had
taken no food and was rather faint.
What a strange thing it was to feel
faint for want of food--to stand
alone, cut off from every other
human being--everything done for.
No wonder that sometimes, particularly
on such days as these, there
were plunges made from the parapet
--no wonder. He leaned farther
over and strained his eyes to see
some gleam of water through the
yellowness. But it was not to be
done. He was thinking the inevitable
thing, of course; but such a
plunge would not do for him. The
other thing would destroy all traces.

As he drew back he heard
something fall with the solid tinkling
sound of coin on the flag pavement.
When he had been in the pawnbroker's
shop he had taken the gold
from his purse and thrust it carelessly
into his waistcoat pocket, thinking
that it would be easy to reach when
he chose to give it to one beggar
or another, if he should see some
wretch who would be the better for
it. Some movement he had made
in bending had caused a sovereign to
slip out and it had fallen upon the
stones.

He did not intend to pick it up,
but in the moment in which he
stood looking down at it he heard
close to him a shuffling movement.
What he had thought a bundle of
rags or rubbish covered with sacking
--some tramp's deserted or forgotten
belongings--was stirring. It was
alive, and as he bent to look at it the
sacking divided itself, and a small
head, covered with a shock of brilliant
red hair, thrust itself out, a
shrewd, small face turning to look
up at him slyly with deep-set black
eyes.

It was a human girl creature about
twelve years old.

"Are yer goin' to do it?" she
said in a hoarse, street-strained voice.
"Yer would be a fool if yer did--
with as much as that on yer."

She pointed with a reddened,
chapped, and dirty hand at the
sovereign.

"Pick it up," he said. "You may
have it."

Her wild shuffle forward was an
actual leap. The hand made a
snatching clutch at the coin. She
was evidently afraid that he was
either not in earnest or would
repent. The next second she was on
her feet and ready for flight.

"Stop," he said; "I've got more
to give away."

She hesitated--not believing
him, yet feeling it madness to lose a
chance.

"MORE!" she gasped. Then she
drew nearer to him, and a singular
change came upon her face. It was
a change which made her look oddly
human.

"Gawd, mister!" she said. "Yer
can give away a quid like it was
nothin'--an' yer've got more--an'
yer goin' to do THAT--jes cos yer 'ad
a bit too much lars night an' there's
a fog this mornin'! You take it
straight from me--don't yer do it.
I give yer that tip for the suvrink."

She was, for her years, so ugly and
so ancient, and hardened in voice and
skin and manner that she fascinated
him. Not that a man who has no
To-morrow in view is likely to be
particularly conscious of mental
processes. He was done for, but he stood
and stared at her. What part of the
Power moving the scheme of the
universe stood near and thrust him
on in the path designed he did not
know then--perhaps never did. He
was still holding on to the thing in his
pocket, but he spoke to her again.

"What do you mean?" he asked
glumly.

She sidled nearer, her sharp eyes
on his face.

"I bin watchin' yer," she said.
"I sat down and pulled the sack
over me 'ead to breathe inside it an'
get a bit warm. An' I see yer come.
I knowed wot yer was after, I did.
I watched yer through a 'ole in me
sack. I wasn't goin' to call a copper.
I shouldn't want ter be stopped
meself if I made up me mind. I
seed a gal dragged out las' week an'
it'd a broke yer 'art to see 'er tear 'er
clothes an' scream. Wot business
'ad they preventin' 'er goin' off
quiet? I wouldn't 'a' stopped yer
--but w'en the quid fell, that made
it different."

"I--" he said, feeling the foolishness
of the statement, but making
it, nevertheless, "I am ill."

"Course yer ill. It's yer 'ead.
Come along er me an' get a cup er
cawfee at a stand, an' buck up. If
yer've give me that quid straight--
wish-yer-may-die--I'll go with yer
an' get a cup myself. I ain't 'ad a bite
since yesterday--an' 't wa'n't nothin'
but a slice o' polony sossidge I found
on a dust-'eap. Come on, mister."

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