The Dawn of a To-morrow by Frances Hodgson Burnett (good story books to read TXT) 📖

a court, and the man wheeled with a hoarse, baffled curse. The place had no outlet.

“Hell!” was all the creature said.

Dart took him by his greasy collar. Even the brief rush had left him feeling like a living thing—which was a new sensation.

“Give it up,” he ordered.

The thief looked at him with a half-laugh and obeyed, as if he felt the uselessness of a struggle. He was not more than twenty-five years old, and his eyes were cavernous with want. He had the face of a man who might have belonged to a better class. When he had uttered the exclamation invoking the infernal regions he had not dropped the aspirate.

“I ‘m as hungry as she is,” he raved.

“Hungry enough to rob a child beggar?” said Dart.

“Hungry enough to rob a starving old woman—or a baby,” with a defiant snort. “Wolf hungry— tiger hungry—hungry enough to cut throats.”

He whirled himself loose and leaned his body against the wall, turning his face toward it. Suddenly he made a choking sound and began to sob.

“Hell!” he choked. “I ‘ll give it up! I ‘ll give it up!”

What a figure—what a figure, as he swung against the blackened wall, his scarecrow clothes hanging on him, their once decent material making their pinning together of buttonless places, their looseness and rents showing dirty linen, more abject than any other squalor could have made them. Antony Dart’s blood, still running warm and well, was doing its normal work among the brain-cells which had stirred so evilly through the night. When he had seized the fellow by the collar, his hand had left his pocket. He thrust it into another pocket and drew out some silver.

“Go and get yourself some food,” he said. “As much as you can eat. Then go and wait for me at the place they call Apple Blossom Court. I don’t know where it is, but I am going there. I want to hear how you came to this. Will you come?”

The thief lurched away from the wall and toward him. He stared up into his eyes through the fog. The tears had smeared his cheekbones.

“God!” he said. “Will I come? Look and see if I’ll come.” Dart looked.

“Yes, you ‘ll come,” he answered, and he gave him the money. “I ‘m going back to the coffee-stand.”

The thief stood staring after him as he went out of the court. Dart was speaking to himself.

“I don’t know why I did it,” he said. “But the thing had to be done.”

In the street he turned into he came upon the robbed girl, running, panting, and crying. She uttered a shout and flung herself upon him, clutching his coat.

“Gawd!” she sobbed hysterically, “I thort I’d lost yer! I thort I’d lost all of it, I did! Strewth! I ‘m glad I’ve found yer—” and she stopped, choking with her sobs and sniffs, rubbing her face in her sack.

“Here is your sovereign,” Dart said, handing it to her.

She dropped the corner of the sack and looked up with a queer laugh.

“Did yer find a copper? Did yer give him in charge?”

“No,” answered Dart. “He was worse off than you. He was starving. I took this from him; but I gave him some money and told him to meet us at Apple Blossom Court.”

She stopped short and drew back a pace to stare up at him.

“Well,” she gave forth, “y’ ARE a queer one!”

And yet in the amazement on her face he perceived a remote dawning of an understanding of the meaning of the thing he had done.

He had spoken like a man in a dream. He felt like a man in a dream, being led in the thick mist from place to place. He was led back to the coffee-stand, where now Barney, the proprietor, was pouring out coffee for a hoarse-voiced coster girl with a draggled feather in her hat, who greeted their arrival hilariously.

“Hello, Glad!” she cried out. “Got yer suvrink back?”

Glad—it seemed to be the creature’s wild name—nodded, but held close to her companion’s side, clutching his coat.

“Let’s go in there an’ change it,” she said, nodding toward a small pork and ham shop near by. “An’ then yer can take care of it for me.”

“What did she call you?” Antony Dart asked her as they went.

“Glad. Don’t know as I ever ‘ad a nime o’ me own, but a little cove as went once to the pantermine told me about a young lady as was Fairy Queen an’ ‘er name was Gladys Beverly St. John, so I called mesself that. No one never said it all at onct— they don’t never say nothin’ but Glad. I’m glad enough this mornin’,” chuckling again, ” ‘avin’ the luck to come up with you, mister. Never had luck like it ‘afore.”

They went into the pork and ham shop and changed the sovereign. There was cooked food in the windows— roast pork and boiled ham and corned beef. She bought slices of pork and beef, and of suet-pudding with a few currants sprinkled through it.

“Will yer ‘elp me to carry it?” she inquired. “I ‘ll ‘ave to get a few pen’worth o’ coal an’ wood an’ a screw o’ tea an’ sugar. My wig, wot a feed me an’ Polly ‘ll ‘ave!”

As they returned to the coffee-stand she broke more than once into a hop of glee. Barney had changed his mind concerning her. A solid sovereign which must be changed and a companion whose shabby gentility was absolute grandeur when compared with his present surroundings made a difference.

She received her mug of coffee and thick slice of bread and dripping with a grin, and swallowed the hot sweet liquid down in ecstatic gulps.

“Ain’t I in luck?” she said, handing her mug back when it was empty. “Gi’ me another, Barney.”

Antony Dart drank coffee also and ate bread and dripping. The coffee was hot and the bread and dripping, dashed with salt, quite eatable. He had needed food and felt the better for it.

“Come on, mister,” said Glad, when their meal was ended. “I want to get back to Polly, an’ there ‘s coal and bread and things to buy.”

She hurried him along, breaking her pace with hops at intervals. She darted into dirty shops and brought out things screwed up in paper. She went last into a cellar and returned carrying a small sack of coal over her shoulders.

“Bought sack an’ all,” she said elatedly. “A sack ‘s a good thing to ‘ave.”

“Let me carry it for you,” said Antony Dart

“Spile yer coat,” with her sidelong upward glance.

“I don’t care,” he answered. “I don’t care a damn.”

The final expletive was totally unnecessary, but it meant a thing he did not say. Whatsoever was thrusting him this way and that, speaking through his speech, leading him to do things he had not dreamed of doing, should have its will with him. He had been fastened to the skirts of this beggar imp and he would go on to the end and do what was to be done this day. It was part of the dream.

The sack of coal was over his shoulder when they turned into Apple Blossom Court. It would have been a black hole on a sunny day, and now it was like Hades, lit grimly by a gas-jet or two, small and flickering, with the orange haze about them. Filthy, flagging, murky doorways, broken steps and broken windows stuffed with rags, and the smell of the sewers let loose had Apple Blossom Court.

Glad, with the wealth of the pork and ham shop and other riches in her arms, entered a repellent doorway in a spirit of great good cheer and Dart followed her. Past a room where a drunken woman lay sleeping with her head on a table, a child pulling at her dress and crying, up a stairway with broken balusters and breaking steps, through a landing, upstairs again, and up still farther until they reached the top. Glad stopped before a door and shook the handle, crying out:

” ‘S only me, Polly. You can open it.” She added to Dart in an undertone: “She ‘as to keep it locked. No knowin’ who’d want to get in. Polly,” shaking the door-handle again, “Polly ‘s only me.”

The door opened slowly. On the other side of it stood a girl with a dimpled round face which was quite pale; under one of her childishly vacant blue eyes was a discoloration, and her curly fair hair was tucked up on the top of her head in a knot. As she took in the fact of Antony Dart’s presence her chin began to quiver.

“I ain’t fit to—to see no one,” she stammered pitifully. “Why did you, Glad—why did you?”

“Ain’t no ‘arm in ‘IM,” said Glad. ” ‘E’s one o’ the friendly ones. ‘E give me a suvrink. Look wot I’ve got,” hopping about as she showed her parcels.

“You need not be afraid of me,” Antony Dart said. He paused a second, staring at her, and suddenly added, “Poor little wretch!”

Her look was so scared and uncertain a thing that he walked away from her and threw the sack of coal on the hearth. A small grate with broken bars hung loosely in the fireplace, a battered tin kettle tilted drunkenly near it. A mattress, from the holes in whose ticking straw bulged, lay on the floor in a corner, with some old sacks thrown over it. Glad had, without doubt, borrowed her shoulder covering from the collection. The garret was as cold as the grave, and almost as dark; the fog hung in it thickly. There were crevices enough through which it could penetrate.

Antony Dart knelt down on the hearth and drew matches from his pocket.

“We ought to have brought some paper,” he said.

Glad ran forward.

“Wot a gent ye are!” she cried. “Y’ ain’t never goin’ to light it?”

“Yes.”

She ran back to the rickety table and collected the scraps of paper which had held her purchases. They were small, but useful.

“That wot was round the sausage an’ the puddin’s greasy,” she exulted.

Polly hung over the table and trembled at the sight of meat and bread. Plainly, she did not understand what was happening. The greased paper set light to the wood, and the wood to the coal. All three flared and blazed with a sound of cheerful crackling. The blaze threw out its glow as finely as if it had been set alight to warm a better place. The wonder of a fire is like the wonder of a soul. This one changed the murk and gloom to brightness, and the deadly damp and cold to warmth. It drew the girl Polly from the table despite her fears. She turned involuntarily, made two steps toward it, and stood gazing while its light played on her face. Glad whirled and ran to the hearth.

“Ye’ve put on a lot,” she cried; “but, oh, my Gawd, don’t it warm yer! Come on, Polly—come on.”

She dragged out a wooden stool, an empty soap-box, and bundled the sacks into a heap to be sat upon. She swept the things from the table and set them in their paper wrappings on the floor.

“Let’s all sit down close to it— close,” she said, “an’ get warm an’ eat, an’ eat.”

She was the leaven which leavened the lump of their humanity. What this leaven is—who has found out? But she—little rat of the gutter— was formed of it, and her mere pure animal joy in the temporary animal comfort of the moment stirred and uplifted them from their depths.

III

They drew near and sat upon the substitutes for