Towards Morning

TOWARDS MORNING
BY
I. A. R. WYLIE
AUTHOR OF
"THE SHINING HEIGHTS,"
"THE DAUGHTER OF BRAHMA,"
ETC.

NEW YORK JOHN LANE COMPANY
MCMXVIII

COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY JOHN LANE COMPANY

TOWARDS MORNING

PART I
CHAPTER I
HE awoke violently. In the very midst of his dream he had been shot out of a cannon's mouth straight into consciousness. Yet for a moment he could not remember where he was. He seemed to be clinging to the outer edge of a monster wheel which whirled him through darkness till his brain went sick and giddy. Half-remembered landmarks flew past him. He clutched at them, trying to stay his mad flight. But they slipped through his fingers. The pace was at first too frightful his clutch too feeble. But gradually the wheel began to revolve more quietly. The landmarks settled in their accustomed places. He clung to one of them it was the big majolica stove just opposite and this time his grip held. The wheel jerked and came to a standstill and there was the Herr Amtschreiber Felde in his plush covered chair and the grey early morning light peering at him through the cracks in the closed shutters.
He did not move at first. His body ached all over, but he was glad to sit quiet. Although it was still too dark to see anything clearly, it made him feel more secure to recognise the dim outline of familiar objects the table in the middle of the room, the four chairs drawn up stiffly in place, the plush covered sofa with the carved wooden back, the Venetian mirror shining like a polished shield on the opposite wall, the big majolica stove--
It was the stove which held his attention longest. It explained his dream and he always liked to have things explained. As soon as he had found a natural cause for it, the dream did not trouble him so much. Yet it had been rather terrible. Even now the memory of it held a queer, uncanny fascination. Without being terrified any more, he could still understand why he had been afraid. It had been an unusual dream in so far that nothing had really happened in it. He had been sitting in his chair, close to the warmth, drowsy with fatigue and worry and excitement, and then suddenly he found himself in an empty plain. He was quite alone, but afar off against the horizon loomed a Shape so black and huge that it shut out the light of the sun. Its one red eye watched the Herr Amtschreiber. It brightened and grew dim and brightened again, but it never let go of him. And he sat there, puny and cowering and stark naked and waited. He was not surprised that in spite of his puniness the eye should be so intent upon him. He had a dim but profound knowledge that they were vital to one another that if the eye closed he himself would go out into nothingness and that if he could have turned away his gaze the eye would be extinguished for ever. But he did not want to turn away. That was the odd part of it. Though he knew quite well that the eye would kill him in the end, he was fascinated intoxicated. He felt that in a minute he would jump up and dance and scream and yell unknown blasphemies till he dropped dead.
He, the respectable, respected Herr Amtschreiber felt that he was going to dance stark naked and scream and yell blasphemies. But then mercifully he had wakened just in time. And there he was, in his plush arm-chair, stiff and aching from the embrace of the carved wooden arms, but fully clad, and not even knowing what the blasphemies would have been.
It was nothing but the stove after all. He remembered now that he had gone to sleep staring at the fire glowing fiercely behind the glass covered door. He had sat too close far too close and the heat had given him nightmare. Now the fire was almost out It had a sullen, dying look and the atmosphere of the room was dank and stuffy.
The door opened. A woman came shuffling softly over the parquet flooring and loomed up at the Herr Amtschreiber's side. She carried a funnel-shaped coal scuttle and opening the slot of the stove jerked in the coal with an angry rattle.
The Herr Amtschrieber stirred and stretched himself.
"Has the Herr slept well?" she asked with a singing South German intonation.
"Na es geht." He got up and limped painfully about the room. He had a bad taste in his mouth and his eyes were heavy and sore with unrestful sleep. The woman came over to the window and threw open the shutters and the light snatched the misty grey covers from the furniture and left it stark