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Publié par	Pub One Info
Date de parution	27 septembre 2010
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9782819927020
Langue	English

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THE DAWN OF
A TO-MORROW
By
FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT
ILLUSTRATED
Charles Scribner's Sons
New York
1906
ILLUSTRATIONS
From drawings in color by F. C. Yohn
Something made him turn and go with her(Frontispiece)
Antony Dart examined it critically
The girl held out her hand cautiously— the piece ofgold lying upon its palm
“God! ” he cried. “Will I come? ”
“I'm alive! I'm alive! ” she cried out
“Speak, Lord, thy servant 'eareth”
“There— is— no— death. ”
“And a few hours ago you were on the point of— ”
THE DAWN OF A TO-MORROW
I
There are always two ways of looking at a thing,frequently there are six or seven; but two ways of looking at aLondon fog are quite enough. When it is thick and yellow in thestreets and stings a man's throat and lungs as he breathes it, anawakening in the early morning is either an unearthly and grewsome,or a mysteriously enclosing, secluding, and comfortable thing. Ifone awakens in a healthy body, and with a clear brain rested bynormal sleep and retaining memories of a normally agreeableyesterday, one may lie watching the housemaid building the fire;and after she has swept the hearth and put things in order, liewatching the flames of the blazing and crackling wood catch thecoals and set them blazing also, and dancing merrily and fillingcorners with a glow; and in so lying and realizing that leapinglight and warmth and a soft bed are good things, one may turn overon one's back, stretching arms and legs luxuriously, drawing deepbreaths and smiling at a knowledge of the fog outside which makeshalf-past eight o'clock on a December morning as dark as twelveo'clock on a December night. Under such conditions the soft, thick,yellow gloom has its picturesque and even humorous aspect. Onefeels enclosed by it at once fantastically and cosily, and isinclined to revel in imaginings of the picture outside, itsRembrandt lights and orange yellows, the halos about thestreet-lamps, the illumination of shop-windows, the flare oftorches stuck up over coster barrows and coffee-stands, the shadowson the faces of the men and women selling and buying beside them.Refreshed by sleep and comfort and surrounded by light, warmth, andgood cheer, it is easy to face the day, to confront going out intothe fog and feeling a sort of pleasure in its mysteries. This isone 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 thehouse as Antony Dart— awakened in a third-story bedroom in alodging-house in a poor street in London, and as his consciousnessreturned to him, its slow and reluctant movings confronted thesecond point of view— marked by enormous differences. He had notslept two consecutive hours through the night, and when he hadslept he had been tormented by dreary dreams, which were more fullof misery because of their elusive vagueness, which kept histortured brain on a wearying strain of effort to reach somedefinite understanding of them. Yet when he awakened theconsciousness of being again alive was an awful thing. If thedreams could have faded into blankness and all have passed with thepassing of the night, how he could have thanked whatever gods therebe! Only not to awake— only not to awake! But he had awakened.
The clock struck nine as he did so, consequently heknew the hour. The lodging-house slavey had aroused him by comingto light the fire. She had set her candle on the hearth and doneher 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 itall again. Without the sense of luxurious comfort he opened hiseyes and turned upon his back, throwing out his arms flatly, sothat he lay as in the form of a cross, in heavy weariness andanguish. For months he had awakened each morning after such a nightand had so lain like a crucified thing.
As he watched the painful flickering of the damp andsmoking wood and coal he remembered this and thought that there hadbeen a lifetime of such awakenings, not knowing that the morbidnessof a fagged brain blotted out the memory of more normal days andtold him fantastic lies which were but a hundredth part truth. Hecould see only the hundredth part truth, and it assumed proportionsso huge that he could see nothing else. In such a state the humanbrain is an infernal machine and its workings can only be conqueredif the mortal thing which lives with it— day and night, night andday— has learned to separate its controllable from its seeminglyuncontrollable atoms, and can silence its clamor on its way tomadness.
Antony Dart had not learned this thing and theclamor had had its hideous way with him. Physicians would havegiven a name to his mental and physical condition. He had heardthese names often— applied to men the strain of whose lives hadbeen like the strain of his own, and had left them as it had lefthim— jaded, joyless, breaking things. Some of them had been brokenand had died or were dragging out bruised and tormented days intheir own homes or in mad-houses. He always shuddered when he heardtheir names, and rebelled with sick fear against the mere mentionof them. They had worked as he had worked, they had been strickenwith 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 graspedevery coveted thing tossing upon its circling waters, theythemselves had been flung upon the shore with both hands full, therocks about them strewn with rich possessions, while they layprostrate and gazed at all life had brought with dull, hopeless,anguished eyes. He knew— if the worst came to the worst— what wouldbe said of him, because he had heard it said of others. “He workedtoo hard— he worked too hard. ” He was sick of hearing it. What waswrong with the world— what was wrong with man, as Man— if workcould break him like this? If one believed in Deity, the livingcreature It breathed into being must be a perfect thing— not one tobe wearied, sickened, tortured by the life Its breathing hadcreated. A mere man would disdain to build a thing so poor andincomplete. A mere human engineer who constructed an engine whoseworkings were perpetually at fault— which went wrong when calledupon to do the labor it was made for— who would not scoff at it andcast it aside as a piece of worthless bungling?
“Something is wrong, ” he muttered, lying flat uponhis cross and staring at the yellow haze which had crept throughcrannies in window-sashes into the room. “Someone is wrong. Is itI— or You? ”
His thin lips drew themselves back against his teethin a mirthless smile which was like a grin.
“Yes, ” he said. “I am pretty far gone. I ambeginning to talk to myself about God. Bryan did it just before hewas taken to Dr. Hewletts' place and cut his throat. ”
He had not led a specially evil life; he had notbroken laws, but the subject of Deity was not one which his schemeof existence had included. When it had haunted him of late he hadfelt it an untoward and morbid sign. The thing had drawn him— drawnhim; he had complained against it, he had argued, sometimes heknew— shuddering— that he had raved. Something had seemed to standaside and watch his being and his thinking. Something which filledthe universe had seemed to wait, and to have waited through all theeternal ages, to see what he— one man— would do. At times a greatappalled wonder had swept over him at his realization that he hadnever 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 hima moment's calm.
But at other times he had said to himself— with ashivering soul cowering within him— that this was only part of itall and was a beginning, perhaps, of religious monomania.
During the last week he had known what he was goingto do— he had made up his mind. This abject horror through whichothers had let themselves be dragged to madness or death he wouldnot endure. The end should come quickly, and no one should besmitten aghast by seeing or knowing how it came. In the crowdedshabbier streets of London there were lodging-houses where one, bytaking precautions, could end his life in such a manner as wouldblot him out of any world where such a man as himself had beenknown. A pistol, properly managed, would obliterate resemblance toany human thing. Months ago through chance talk he had heard how itcould be done— and done quickly. He could leave a misleadingletter. He had planned what it should be— the story it should tellof a disheartened mediocre venturer of his poor all returningbankrupt and humiliated from Australia, ending existence in suchpennilessness that the parish must give him a pauper's grave. Whatdid it matter where a man lay, so that he slept— slept— slept?Surely with one's brains scattered one would sleep soundlyanywhere.
He had come to the house the night before, dressedshabbily with the pitiable respectability of a defeated man. He hadentered droopingly with bent shoulders and hopeless hang of head.In his own sphere he was a man who held himself well. He had letfall a few dispirited sentences when he had engaged his back roomfrom the woman of the house, and she had recognized him as one ofthe luckless. In fact, she had hesitated a moment before hisunreliable look until he had taken out money from his pocket andpaid his rent for a week in advance. She would have that at leastfor her trouble, he had said to himself. He should not occupy theroom after to-morrow. In his own home some days would pass beforehis household began to make inquiries. He had told his servantsthat he was going over to Paris for a change. He would be safe anddeep in his pauper's grave a week before they asked each other whythey did not hear from him. All was in order. One of the moc