The Dawn of a To-morrow, Frances Hodgson Burnett [easy to read books for adults list txt] 📗

seats in a circle—and the fire threw up flame and made a glow in the fog hanging in the black hole of a room.

It was Glad who set the battered kettle on and when it boiled made tea. The other two watched her, being under her spell. She handed out slices of bread and sausage and pudding on bits of paper. Polly fed with tremulous haste; Glad herself with rejoicing and exulting in flavors. Antony Dart ate bread and meat as he had eaten the bread and dripping at the stall—accepting his normal hunger as part of the dream.

Suddenly Glad paused in the midst of a huge bite.

“Mister,” she said, “p’raps that cove’s waitin’ fer yer. Let’s ‘ave ‘im in. I’ll go and fetch ‘im.”

She was getting up, but Dart was on his feet first.

“I must go,” he said. “He is expecting me and—”

“Aw,” said Glad, “lemme go along o’ yer, mister—jest to show there’s no ill feelin’.”

“Very well,” he answered.

It was she who led, and he who followed. At the door she stopped and looked round with a grin.

“Keep up the fire, Polly,” she threw back. “Ain’t it warm and cheerful? It’ll do the cove good to see it.”

She led the way down the black, unsafe stairway. She always led.

Outside the fog had thickened again, but she went through it as if she could see her way.

At the entrance to the court the thief was standing, leaning against the wall with fevered, unhopeful waiting in his eyes. He moved miserably when he saw the girl, and she called out to reassure him.

“I ain’t up to no ‘arm,” she said; “I on’y come with the gent.”

Antony Dart spoke to him.

“Did you get food?”

The man shook his head.

“I turned faint after you left me, and when I came to I was afraid I might miss you,” he answered. “I daren’t lose my chance. I bought some bread and stuffed it in my pocket. I’ve been eating it while I’ve stood here.”

“Come back with us,” said Dart. “We are in a place where we have some food.”

He spoke mechanically, and was aware that he did so. He was a pawn pushed about upon the board of this day’s life.

“Come on,” said the girl. “Yer can get enough to last fer three days.”

She guided them back through the fog until they entered the murky doorway again. Then she almost ran up the staircase to the room they had left.

When the door opened the thief fell back a pace as before an unex-pected thing. It was the flare of firelight which struck upon his eyes. He passed his hand over them.

“A fire!” he said. “I haven’t seen one for a week. Coming out of the blackness it gives a man a start.”

Improvident joy gleamed in Glad’s eyes.

“We ‘ll be warm onct,” she chuckled, “if we ain’t never warm agaen.”

She drew her circle about the hearth again. The thief took the place next to her and she handed out food to him—a big slice of meat, bread, a thick slice of pudding.

“Fill yerself up,” she said. “Then ye’ll feel like yer can talk.”

The man tried to eat his food with decorum, some recollection of the habits of better days restraining him, but starved nature was too much for him. His hands shook, his eyes filled, his teeth tore. The rest of the circle tried not to look at him. Glad and Polly occupied themselves with their own food.

Antony Dart gazed at the fire. Here he sat warming himself in a loft with a beggar, a thief, and a helpless thing of the street. He had come out to buy a pistol—its weight still hung in his overcoat pocket— and he had reached this place of whose existence he had an hour ago not dreamed. Each step which had led him had seemed a simple, inevitable thing, for which he had apparently been responsible, but which he knew—yes, somehow he KNEW—he had of his own volition neither planned nor meant. Yet here he sat —a part of the lives of the beggar, the thief, and the poor thing of the street. What did it mean?

“Tell me,” he said to the thief, “how you came here.”

By this time the young fellow had fed himself and looked less like a wolf. It was to be seen now that he had blue-gray eyes which were dreamy and young.

“I have always been inventing things,” he said a little huskily. “I did it when I was a child. I always seemed to see there might be a way of doing a thing better—getting more power. When other boys were playing games I was sitting in corners trying to build models out of wire and string, and old boxes and tin cans. I often thought I saw the way to things, but I was always too poor to get what was needed to work them out. Twice I heard of men making great names and for tunes because they had been able to finish what I could have finished if I had had a few pounds. It used to drive me mad and break my heart.” His hands clenched themselves and his huskiness grew thicker. “There was a man,” catching his breath, “who leaped to the top of the ladder and set the whole world talking and writing—and I had done the thing FIRST—I swear I had! It was all clear in my brain, and I was half mad with joy over it, but I could not afford to work it out. He could, so to the end of time it will be HIS.” He struck his fist upon his knee.

“Aw!” The deep little drawl was a groan from Glad.

“I got a place in an office at last. I worked hard, and they began to trust me. I—had a new idea. It was a big one. I needed money to work it out. I—I remembered what had happened before. I felt like a poor fellow running a race for his life. I KNEW I could pay back ten times—a hundred times—what I took.”

“You took money?” said Dart.

The thief’s head dropped.

“No. I was caught when I was taking it. I wasn’t sharp enough. Someone came in and saw me, and there was a crazy row. I was sent to prison. There was no more trying after that. It’s nearly two years since, and I’ve been hanging about the streets and falling lower and lower. I’ve run miles panting after cabs with luggage in them and not had strength to carry in the boxes when they stopped. I’ve starved and slept out of doors. But the thing I wanted to work out is in my mind all the time—like some machine tearing round. It wants to be finished. It never will be. That’s all.”

Glad was leaning forward staring at him, her roughened hands with the smeared cracks on them clasped round her knees.

“Things ‘AS to be finished,” she said. “They finish theirselves.”

“How do you know?” Dart turned on her.

“Dunno ‘OW I know—but I do. When things begin they finish. It’s like a wheel rollin’ down an ‘ill.” Her sharp eyes fixed themselves on Dart’s. “All of us ‘ll finish somethin’— ‘cos we’ve begun. You will —Polly will—‘e will—I will.” She stopped with a sudden sheepish chuckle and dropped her forehead on her knees, giggling. “Dunno wot I ‘m talking about,” she said, “but it’s true.”

Dart began to understand that it was. And he also saw that this ragged thing who knew nothing whatever, looked out on the world with the eyes of a seer, though she was ignorant of the meaning of her own knowledge. It was a weird thing. He turned to the girl Polly.

“Tell me how you came here,” he said.

He spoke in a low voice and gently. He did not want to frighten her, but he wanted to know how SHE had begun. When she lifted her childish eyes to his, her chin began to shake. For some reason she did not question his right to ask what he would. She answered him meekly, as her fingers fumbled with the stuff of her dress.

“I lived in the country with my mother,” she said. “We was very happy together. In the spring there was primroses and—and lambs. I —can’t abide to look at the sheep in the park these days. They remind me so. There was a girl in the village got a place in town and came back and told us all about it. It made me silly. I wanted to come here, too. I—I came—” She put her arm over her face and began to sob.

“She can’t tell you,” said Glad. “There was a swell in the ‘ouse made love to her. She used to carry up coals to ‘is parlor an’ ‘e talked to ‘er. ‘E ‘ad a wye with ‘im—”

Polly broke into a smothered wail.

“Oh, I did love him so—I did!” she cried. “I’d have let him walk over me. I’d have let him kill me.”

” ‘E nearly did it,” said Glad.

” ‘E went away sudden an’ she ‘s never ‘eard word of ‘im since.”

From under Polly’s face-hiding arm came broken words.

“I couldn’t tell my mother. I did not know how. I was too frightened and ashamed. Now it’s too late. I shall never see my mother again, and it seems as if all the lambs and primroses in the world was dead. Oh, they’re dead—they’re dead— and I wish I was, too!”

Glad’s eyes winked rapidly and she gave a hoarse little cough to clear her throat. Her arms still clasping her knees, she hitched herself closer to the girl and gave her a nudge with her elbow.

“Buck up, Polly,” she said, “we ain’t none of us finished yet. Look at us now—sittin’ by our own fire with bread and puddin’ inside us— an’ think wot we was this mornin’. Who knows wot we ‘ll ‘ave this time to-morrer.”

Then she stopped and looked with a wide grin at Antony Dart.

“Ow did I come ‘ere?” she said.

“Yes,” he answered, “how did you come here?”

“I dunno,” she said; “I was ‘ere first thing I remember. I lived with a old woman in another ‘ouse in the court. One mornin’ when I woke up she was dead. Sometimes I’ve begged an’ sold matches. Sometimes I’ve took care of women’s children or ‘elped ‘em when they ‘ad to lie up. I’ve seen a lot—but I like to see a lot. ‘Ope I’ll see a lot more afore I’m done. I’m used to bein’ ‘ungry an’ cold, an’ all that, but—but I allers like to see what’s comin’ to-morrer. There’s allers somethin’ else to-morrer. That’s all about ME,” and she chuckled again.

Dart picked up some fresh sticks and threw them on the fire. There was some fine crackling and a new flame leaped up.

“If you could do what you liked,” he said, “what would you like to do?”

Her chuckle became an outright laugh.

“If I ‘ad ten pounds?” she asked, evidently prepared to adjust herself in imagination to any form of un-looked-for good luck.

“If you had more?”

His tone made the thief lift his head to look at him.

“If I ‘ad a wand like the one Jem told me was in the pantermine?”

“Yes,” he answered.

She sat and stared at the fire a few moments, and then began to speak in a low luxuriating voice.

“I’d get a better room,” she said, revelling. “There ‘s one in the next ‘ouse. I’d ‘ave a few sticks o’ furnisher in it—a bed an’ a chair or two. I’d get some warm petticuts an’ a shawl an’ a ‘at—with a ostrich feather