|
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
|
|
