第88章

After two or three days of unseasonable and depressing warmth, with lowering but not rainy sky, I woke this morning to find the land covered with a dense mist.There was no daybreak, and, till long after the due hour, no light save a pale, sad glimmer at the window;now, at mid-day, I begin dimly to descry gaunt shapes of trees, whilst a haunting drip, drip on the garden soil tells me that the vapour has begun to condense, and will pass in rain.But for my fire, I should be in indifferent spirits on such a day as this; the flame sings and leaps, and its red beauty is reflected in the window-glass.I cannot give my thoughts to reading; if I sat unoccupied, they would brood with melancholy fixedness on I know not what.Better to betake myself to the old mechanic exercise of the pen, which cheats my sense of time wasted.

I think of fogs in London, fogs of murky yellow or of sheer black, such as have often made all work impossible to me, and held me, a sort of dyspeptic owl, in moping and blinking idleness.On such a day, I remember, I once found myself at an end both of coal and of lamp-oil, with no money to purchase either; all I could do was to go to bed, meaning to lie there till the sky once more became visible.

But a second day found the fog dense as ever.I rose in darkness; Istood at the window of my garret, and saw that the street was illumined as at night, lamps and shop-fronts perfectly visible, with folk going about their business.The fog, in fact, had risen, but still hung above the house-tops, impermeable by any heavenly beam.

My solitude being no longer endurable, I went out, and walked the town for hours.When I returned, it was with a few coins which permitted me to buy warmth and light.I had sold to a second-hand bookseller a volume which I prized, and was so much the poorer for the money in my pocket.

Years after that, I recall another black morning.As usual at such times, I was suffering from a bad cold.After a sleepless night, Ifell into a torpor, which held me unconscious for an hour or two.

Hideous cries aroused me; sitting up in the dark, I heard men going along the street, roaring news of a hanging that had just taken place."Execution of Mrs."--I forget the name of the murderess.

"Scene on the scaffold!" It was a little after nine o'clock; the enterprising paper had promptly got out its gibbet edition.Amorning of midwinter, roofs and ways covered with soot-grimed snow under the ghastly fog-pall; and, whilst I lay there in my bed, that woman had been led out and hanged--hanged.I thought with horror of the possibility that I might sicken and die in that wilderness of houses, nothing above me but "a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours." Overcome with dread, I rose and bestirred myself.Blinds drawn, lamp lit, and by a blazing fire, I tried to make believe that it was kindly night.