The Dawn of a To-morrow | Page 6

bending forward to scrutinize his unshaven
face under the shadow of the dingy hat.
"It is all right," he muttered. "It is not far to the pawnshop where I saw
it."
The stillness of the room as he turned to go out was uncanny. As it was
a back room, there was no street below from which could arise sounds
of passing vehicles, and the thickness of the fog muffled such sound as
might have floated from the front. He stopped half-way to the door, not
knowing why, and listened. To what--for what? The silence seemed to
spread through all the house--out into the streets-- through all
London--through all the world, and he to stand in the midst of it, a man
on the way to Death--with no To-morrow.

What did it mean? It seemed to mean something. The world
withdrawn--life withdrawn--sound withdrawn--breath withdrawn. He
stood and waited. Perhaps this was one of the symptoms of the morbid
thing for which there was that name. If so he had better get away
quickly and have it over, lest he be found wandering about not
knowing--not knowing. But now he knew--the Silence. He waited
--waited and tried to hear, as if something was calling him--calling
without sound. It returned to him --the thought of That which had
waited through all the ages to see what he--one man--would do. He had
never exactly pitied himself before--he did not know that he pitied
himself now, but he was a man going to his death, and a light, cold
sweat broke out on him and it seemed as if it was not he who did it, but
some other--he flung out his arms and cried aloud words he had not
known he was going to speak.
"Lord! Lord! What shall I do to be saved?"
But the Silence gave no answer. It was the Silence still.
And after standing a few moments panting, his arms fell and his head
dropped, and turning the handle of the door, he went out to buy the
pistol.

II
As he went down the narrow staircase, covered with its dingy and
threadbare carpet, he found the house so full of dirty yellow haze that
he realized that the fog must be of the extraordinary ones which are
remembered in after-years as abnormal specimens of their kind. He
recalled that there had been one of the sort three years before, and that
traffic and business had been almost entirely stopped by it, that
accidents had happened in the streets, and that people having lost their
way had wandered about turning corners until they found themselves
far from their intended destinations and obliged to take refuge in hotels
or the houses of hospitable strangers. Curious incidents had occurred
and odd stories were told by those who had felt themselves obliged by
circumstances to go out into the baffling gloom. He guessed that
something of a like nature had fallen upon the town again. The
gas-light on the landings and in the melancholy hall burned feebly--so
feebly that one got but a vague view of the rickety hat-stand and the
shabby overcoats and head-gear hanging upon it. It was well for him

that he had but a corner or so to turn before he reached the pawnshop in
whose window he had seen the pistol he intended to buy.
When he opened the street-door he saw that the fog was, upon the
whole, perhaps even heavier and more obscuring, if possible, than the
one so well remembered. He could not see anything three feet before
him, he could not see with distinctness anything two feet ahead. The
sensation of stepping forward was uncertain and mysterious enough to
be almost appalling. A man not sufficiently cautious might have fallen
into any open hole in his path. Antony Dart kept as closely as possible
to the sides of the houses. It would have been easy to walk off the
pavement into the middle of the street but for the edges of the curb and
the step downward from its level. Traffic had almost absolutely ceased,
though in the more important streets link- boys were making efforts to
guide men or four-wheelers slowly along. The blind feeling of the thing
was rather awful. Though but few pedestrians were out, Dart found
himself once or twice brushing against or coming into forcible contact
with men feeling their way about like himself.
"One turn to the right," he repeated mentally, "two to the left, and the
place is at the corner of the other side of the street."
He managed to reach it at last, but it had been a slow, and therefore,
long journey. All the gas-jets the little shop owned were lighted, but
even under their flare the articles in the window--the one or two