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 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.
Antony Dart examined it critically
Antony Dart examined it critically
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—tomorrow—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. Tomorrow 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 flag pavement. When he had been in the pawnbroker’s shop he had taken the gold from his purse and thrust it carelessly into his waistcoat pocket, thinking that it would be easy to reach when he chose to give it to one beggar or another, if he should see some wretch who would be the better for it. Some movement he had made in bending had caused a sovereign to slip out and it had fallen upon the stones.
He did not intend to pick it up, but in the moment in which he stood looking down at it he heard close to him a shuffling movement. What he had thought a bundle of rags or rubbish covered with sacking—some tramp’s deserted or forgotten belongings—was stirring. It was alive, and as he bent to look at it the sacking divided itself, and a small head, covered with a shock of brilliant red hair, thrust itself out, a shrewd, small face turning to look up at him slyly with deep-set black eyes.
It was a human girl creature about twelve years old.
“Are yer goin’ to do it?” she said in a hoarse, street-strained voice. “Yer would be a fool if yer did—with as much as that on yer.”
She pointed with a reddened, chapped, and dirty hand at the sovereign.
“Pick it up,” he said. “You may have it.”
Her wild shuffle forward was an actual leap. The hand made a snatching clutch at the coin. She was evidently afraid that he was either not in earnest or would repent. The next second she was on her feet and ready for flight.
“Stop,” he said; “I’ve got more to give away.”
She hesitated—not believing him, yet feeling it madness to lose a chance.
“More!” she gasped. Then she drew nearer to him, and a singular change came upon her face. It was a change which made her look oddly human.
“Gawd, mister!” she said. “Yer can give away a quid like it was nothin’—an’ yer’ve got more—an’ yer goin’ to do that—jes cos yer ‘ad a bit too much lars night an’ there’s a fog this mornin’! You take it straight from me—don’t yer do it. I give yer that tip for the suvrink.”
She was, for her years, so ugly and so ancient, and hardened in voice and skin and manner that she fascinated him. Not that a man who has no Tomorrow in view is likely to be particularly conscious of mental processes. He was done for, but he stood and stared at her. What part of the Power moving the scheme of the universe stood near and thrust him on in the path designed he did not know then—perhaps never did. He was still holding on to the thing in his pocket, but he spoke to her again.
“What do you mean?” he asked glumly.
She sidled nearer, her sharp eyes on his face.
“I bin watchin’ yer,” she said. “I sat down and pulled the sack over me ‘ead to breathe inside it an’ get a bit warm. An’ I see yer come. I knowed wot yer was after, I did. I watched yer through a ‘ole in me sack. I wasn’t goin’ to call a copper. I shouldn’t want ter be stopped meself if I made up me mind. I seed a gal dragged out las’ week an’ it’d a broke yer ‘art to see ‘er tear ‘er clothes an’ scream. Wot business ‘ad they preventin’ ‘er goin’ off quiet? I wouldn’t ‘a’ stopped yer—but w’en the quid fell, that made it different.”
“I—” he said, feeling the foolishness of the statement, but making it, nevertheless, “I am ill.”
“Course yer ill. It’s yer ‘ead. Come along er me an’ get a cup er cawfee at a stand, an’ buck up. If yer’ve give me that quid straight—wish-yer-may-die—I’ll go with yer an’ get a cup myself. I ain’t ‘ad a bite since yesterday—an’ ‘t wa’n’t nothin’ but a slice o’ polony sossidge I found on a dust-‘eap. Come on, mister.”
She pulled his coat with her cracked hand. He glanced down at it mechanically,