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

Glad’s eyes stared into hers, they became mysteriously, almost awesomely, astonishing also.

“Is it?” she breathed in a hushed voice.

“Yes, Lor’, yes! When yer get up in the mornin’ you just stand still an’ ARST it. `Speak, Lord,’ ses you; `speak, Lord—’ “

“Thy servant ‘eareth,” ended Glad’s hushed speech. “Blimme, but I ‘m goin’ to try it!”

Perhaps the brain of her saw it still as an incantation, perhaps the soul of her, called up strangely out of the dark and still newborn and blind and vague, saw it vaguely and half blindly as something else.

Dart was wondering which of these things were true.

“We’ve never been expectin’ nothin’ that’s good,” said Miss Montaubyn. “We ‘re allus expectin’ the other. Who isn’t? I was allus expectin’ rheumatiz an’ ‘unger an’ cold an’ starvin’ old age. Wot was you lookin’ for?” to Dart.

He looked down on the floor and answered heavily.

“Failing brain—failing life— despair—death!”

“None of ‘em ‘s comin’—if yer don’t call ‘em. Stand still an’ listen for the other. It’s the other that’s TRUE.”

She was without doubt amazing. She chirped like a bird singing on a bough, rejoicing in token of the shining of the sun.

“It’s wot yer can work on— this,” said Glad. “The curick— ‘e’s a good sort an’ no’ ‘arm in ‘im —but ‘e ses: `Trouble an’ ‘unger is ter teach yer ter submit. Accidents an’ coughs as tears yer lungs is sent you to prepare yer for ‘eaven. If yer loves ‘Im as sends ‘em, yer ‘ll go there.’ ` ‘Ave yer ever bin?’ ses I. ` ‘Ave yer ever saw anyone that’s bin? ‘Ave yer ever saw anyone that’s saw anyone that’s bin?’ `No,’ ‘e ses. `Don’t, me girl, don’t!’ `Garn,’ I ses; `tell me somethin’ as ‘ll do me some good afore I’m dead! ‘Eaven’s too far off.’ “

“The kingdom of ‘eaven is at ‘and,” said Miss Montaubyn. “Bless yer, yes, just ‘ere.”

Antony Dart glanced round the room. It was a strange place. But something WAS here. Magic, was it? Frenzy—dreams—what?

He heard from below a sudden murmur and crying out in the street. Miss Montaubyn heard it and stopped in her sewing, holding her needle and thread extended.

Glad heard it and sprang to her feet.

“Somethin ‘s ‘appened,” she cried out. “Someone ‘s ‘urt.”

She was out of the room in a breath’s space. She stood outside listening a few seconds and darted back to the open door, speaking through it. They could hear below commotion, exclamations, the wail of a child.

“Somethin ‘s ‘appened to Bet!” she cried out again. “I can ‘ear the child.”

She was gone and flying down the staircase; Antony Dart and Miss Montaubyn rose together. The tumult was increasing; people were running about in the court, and it was plain a crowd was forming by the magic which calls up crowds as from nowhere about the door. The child’s screams rose shrill above the noise. It was no small thing which had occurred.

“I must go,” said Miss Montaubyn, limping away from her table. “P’raps I can ‘elp. P’raps you can ‘elp, too,” as he followed her.

They were met by Glad at the threshold. She had shot back to them, panting.

“She was blind drunk,” she said, “an’ she went out to get more. She tried to cross the street an’ fell under a car. She’ll be dead in five minits. I’m goin’ for the biby.”

Dart saw Miss Montaubyn step back into her room. He turned involuntarily to look at her.

She stood still a second—so still that it seemed as if she was not drawing mortal breath. Her astonishing, expectant eyes closed themselves, and yet in closing spoke expectancy still.

“Speak, Lord,” she said softly, but as if she spoke to Something whose nearness to her was such that her hand might have touched it. “Speak, Lord, thy servant ‘eareth.”

Antony Dart almost felt his hair rise. He quaked as she came near, her poor clothes brushing against him. He drew back to let her pass first, and followed her leading.

The court was filled with men, women, and children, who surged about the doorway, talking, crying, and protesting against each other’s crowding. Dart caught a glimpse of a policeman fighting his way through with a doctor. A dishevelled woman with a child at her dirty, bare breast had got in and was talking loudly.

“Just outside the court it was,” she proclaimed, “an’ I saw it. If she’d bin ‘erself it couldn’t ‘ave ‘appened. `No time for ‘osspitles,’ ses I. She’s not twenty breaths to dror; let ‘er die in ‘er own bed, pore thing!” And both she and her baby breaking into wails at one and the same time, other women, some hysteric, some maudlin with gin, joined them in a terrified outburst.

“Get out, you women,” commanded the doctor, who had forced his way across the threshold. “Send them away, officer,” to the policeman.

There were others to turn out of the room itself, which was crowded with morbid or terrified creatures, all making for confusion. Glad had seized the child and was forcing her way out into such air as there was outside.

The bed—a strange and loathly thing—stood by the empty, rusty fireplace. Drunken Bet lay on it, a bundle of clothing over which the doctor bent for but a few minutes before he turned away.

Antony Dart, standing near the door, heard Miss Montaubyn speak to him in a whisper.

“May I go to ‘er?” and the doctor nodded.

She limped lightly forward and her small face was white, but expectant still. What could she expect now—O Lord, what?

An extraordinary thing happened. An abnormal silence fell. The owners of such faces as on stretched necks caught sight of her seemed in a flash to communicate with others in the crowd.

“Jinny Montaubyn!” someone whispered. And “Jinny Montaubyn” was passed along, leaving an awed stirring in its wake. Those whom the pressure outside had crushed against the wall near the window in a passionate hurry, breathed on and rubbed the panes that they might lay their faces to them. One tore out the rags stuffed in a broken place and listened breathlessly.

Jinny Montaubyn was kneeling down and laying her small old hand on the muddied forehead. She held it there a second or so and spoke in a voice whose low clearness brought back at once to Dart the voice in which she had spoken to the Something upstairs.

“Bet,” she said, “Bet.” And then more soft still and yet more clear, “Bet, my dear.”

It seemed incredible, but it was a fact. Slowly the lids of the woman’s eyes lifted and the pupils fixed themselves on Jinny Montaubyn, who leaned still closer and spoke again.

” ‘T ain’t true,” she said. “Not this. ‘T ain’t TRUE. There IS NO DEATH,” slow and soft, but passionately distinct. “THERE—IS—NO—DEATH.”

The muscles of the woman’s face twisted it into a rueful smile. The three words she dragged out were so faint that perhaps none but Dart’s strained ears heard them.

“Wot—price—ME?”

The soul of her was loosening fast and straining away, but Jinny Montaubyn followed it.

“THERE—IS—NO—DEATH,” and her low voice had the tone of a slender silver trumpet. “In a minit yer ‘ll know—in a minit. Lord,” lifting her expectant face, “show her the wye.”

Mysteriously the clouds were clearing from the sodden face—mysteriously. Miss Montaubyn watched them as they were swept away! A minute—two minutes—and they were gone. Then she rose noiselessly and stood looking down, speaking quite simply as if to herself.

“Ah,” she breathed, “she DOES know now—fer sure an’ certain.”

Then Antony Dart, turning slightly, realized that a man who had entered the house and been standing near him, breathing with light quickness, since the moment Miss Montaubyn had knelt, was plainly the person Glad had called the “curick,” and that he had bowed his head and covered his eyes with a hand which trembled.

He was a young man with an eager soul, and his work in Apple Blossom Court and places like it had torn him many ways. Religious conventions established through centuries of custom had not prepared him for life among the submerged. He had struggled and been appalled, he had wrestled in prayer and felt himself unanswered, and in repentance of the feeling had scourged himself with thorns. Miss Montaubyn, returning from the hospital, had filled him at first with horror and protest.

“But who knows—who knows?” he said to Dart, as they stood and talked together afterward, “Faith as a little child. That is literally hers. And I was shocked by it—and tried to destroy it, until I suddenly saw what I was doing. I was—in my cloddish egotism—trying to show her that she was irreverent BECAUSE she could believe what in my soul I do not, though I dare not admit so much even to myself. She took from some strange passing visitor to her tortured bedside what was to her a revelation. She heard it first as a child hears a story of magic. When she came out of the hospital, she told it as if it was one. I—I—” he bit his lips and moistened them, “argued with her and reproached her. Christ the Merciful, forgive me! She sat in her squalid little room with her magic—sometimes in the dark—sometimes without fire, and she clung to it, and loved it and asked it to help her, as a child asks its father for bread. When she was answered—and God forgive me again for doubting that the simple good that came to her WAS an answer —when any small help came to her, she was a radiant thing, and without a shadow of doubt in her eyes told me of it as proof—proof that she had been heard. When things went wrong for a day and the fire was out again and the room dark, she said, `I ‘aven’t kept near enough—I ‘aven’t trusted TRUE. It will be gave me soon,’ and when once at such a time I said to her, `We must learn to say, Thy will be done,’ she smiled up at me like a happy baby and answered:

`Thy will be done on earth AS IT IS IN ‘EAVEN. Lor’, there’s no cold there, nor no ‘unger nor no cryin’ nor pain. That’s the way the will is done in ‘eaven. That’s wot I arst for all day long—for it to be done on earth as it is in ‘eaven.’ What could I say? Could I tell her that the will of the Deity on the earth he created was only the will to do evil—to give pain—to crush the creature made in His own image. What else do we mean when we say under all horror and agony that befalls, `It is God’s will—God’s will be done.’ Base unbeliever though I am, I could not speak the words. Oh, she has something we have not. Her poor, little misspent life has changed itself into a shining thing, though it shines and glows only in this hideous place. She herself does not know of its shining. But Drunken Bet would stagger up to her room and ask to be told what she called her `pantermine’ stories. I have seen her there sitting listening—listening with strange quiet on her and dull yearning in her sodden eyes. So would other and worse women go to her, and I, who had struggled with them, could see that she had reached some remote longing in their beings which I had never touched. In time the seed would have stirred to life—it is beginning to stir even now. During the months since she came back to the court—though they have laughed at her—both men and women have begun to see her as a creature weirdly set apart. Most of them