The Dawn of a To-morrow | Page 7

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