Dawn of the Morning
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Title: Dawn of the Morning
Creator: Grace Livingston Hill
Release date: April 7, 2013 [eBook #37698]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/37698
Credits: Produced by Al Haines
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DAWN OF THE MORNING ***
Produced by Al Haines.
Dawn
of the Morning
BY
GRACE LIVINGSTON HILL
AUTHOR OF
MARCIA SCHUYLER, PHOEBE DEANE, ETC.
NEW YORK
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS
Made in the United States of America
COPYRIGHT, 1911
BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
Wings of the Morning
"The morning hangs its signal
Upon the mountain's crest,
While all the sleeping valleys
In silent darkness rest;
From peak to peak it flashes,
It laughs along the sky
That the crowning day is coming, by and by!
We can see the rose of morning,
A glory in the sky,
And that splendor on the hill-tops
O'er all the land shall lie.
Above the generations
The lonely prophets rise,--
The Truth flings dawn and day-star
Within their glowing eyes;
From heart to heart it brightens,
It draweth ever nigh,
Till it crowneth all men thinking, by and by!
The soul hath lifted moments
Above the drift of days,
When life's great meaning breaketh
In sunrise on our ways;
From hour to hour it haunts us,
The vision draweth nigh,
Till it crowneth living, _dying_, by and by!
And in the sunrise standing,
Our kindling hearts confess
That 'no good thing is failure.
No evil thing success!'
From age to age it groweth,
That radiant faith so high,
And its crowning day is coming by and by!"
WILLIAM C. GANNETT
Dawn of the Morning
CHAPTER I
In the year 1824, in a pleasant town located between Schenectady and
Albany, stood the handsome colonial residence of Hamilton Van
Rensselaer. Solemn hedges shut in the family pride and hid the family
sorrow, and about the borders of its spacious gardens, where even the
roses seemed subdued, there played a child. The stately house oppressed
her, and she loved the sombre garden best.
Her only friend in the old house seemed a tall clock that stood on the
stairs and told out the hours in the hopeless tone that was expected of
a clock in such a house, though it often took time to wink pleasantly at
the child as she passed by, and talk off a few seconds and minutes in a
brighter tone.
But the great clock on the staircase ticked awesomely one morning as the
little girl went slowly down to her father's study in response to his
bidding.
She did not want to go. She delayed her steps as much as possible, and
looked up at the kindly old clock for sympathy; but even the round-eyed
sun and the friendly moon that went around on the clock face every day
as regularly as the real sun and moon, and usually appeared to be bowing
and smiling at her, wore solemn expressions, and seemed almost pale
behind their highly painted countenances.
The little girl shuddered as she gave one last look over her shoulder at
them and passed into the dim recesses of the back hall, where the light
came only in weird, half-circular slants from the mullioned window over
the front door. It was dreadful indeed when the jolly sun and moon
looked grave.
She paused before the heavy door of the study and held her breath,
dreading the ordeal that was to come. Then, gathering courage, she
knocked timidly, and heard her father's instant, cold "Come."
With trembling fingers she turned the knob and went in.
There were heavy damask curtains at the windows, reaching to the floor,
caught back with thick silk cords and tassels. They were a deep, sullen
red, and filled the room with oppressive shadows in no wise relieved by
the heavy mahogany furniture upholstered in the same red damask.
Her father sat by his ponderous desk, always littered with papers which
she must not touch.
His sternly handsome face was forbidding. The very beauty of it was
hateful to her. The look on it reminded her of that terrible day, now
nearly three years ago, when he had returned from a journey of several
months abroad in connection with some brilliant literary enterprise, and
had swept her lovely mother out of his life and home, the innocent
victim of long-entertained jealousy and most unfounded suspicion.
The little girl had been too young to understand what it was all about.
When she cried for her she was forbidden even to think of her, and was
told that her mother was unworthy of that name.
The child had declared with angry tears and stampings of her small foot,
that it was not true, that her mother was good and dear and beautiful;
but they had paid no heed to her. The father had sternly commanded
silence and sent her away; and the mother had not returned.
So she had sobbed her heart out in the silence of her own room, where
every object reminded her of the lost mother's touch and voice and
presence, and had gone about the house in a sullen silence unnatural to
childhood, thereby making herself more enemies than friends.
Of her father she was afraid. She shrank into terrified silence
whenever he approached, scarcely answering his questions, and growing
farther away from him every day, until he instinctively knew that she
hated him for her mother's sake.
When a year had passed he procured a divorce without protest from the
innocent but crushed wife, this by aid of a law that often places "Truth
forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne." Not long after,
he brought to his home as his wife a capable, arrogant, self-opinionated
woman, who set herself to rule him and his household as it should be
ruled.
The little girl was called to audience in the gloomy study where sat the
new wife, her eyes filled with hostility toward the other woman's child,
and was told that she must call the lady "Mother."
Then the black eyes that held in their dreamy depths some of the
gunpowder flash of her father's steely ones took fire; the little face
darkened with indignant fury; the small foot came down with fierce
determination on the thick carpet, and the child declared:
"I will _never_ call her mother! She is _not_ my mother! She is a bad
woman, and she has no right here. She cannot be your wife. It is
wicked for a man to have two wives. I know, for I heard Mary Ann and
Betsey say so this morning in the kitchen. My mother is alive yet. She
is at Grandfather's. I heard Betsey say that too. You are a wicked,
cruel man, and I hate you. I will not have you for a father any more.
I will go away and stay with my mother. She is good. _You_ are bad! I
hate you! I hate you! _I hate you_! _And I hate her_!"--pointing
toward the new wife, who sat in horrified condemnation, with two fiery
spots upon her outraged cheeks.
"Jemima!" thundered her father in his angriest tone.
But the little girl turned upon him furiously.
"My name is not Jemima!" she screamed. "I will not let you call me so.
My name is Dawn. My mother called me Dawn. I will not answer when you
call me Jemima."
"Jemima, you may go to your room!" commanded the father, standing up,
white to the lips, to face a will no whit less adamant than his own.
"I will not go until you call me Dawn," she answered, her face turning
white and stern, with sudden singular likeness to her father on its soft
round outlines.
She stood her ground until carried struggling upstairs and locked into
her own room.
Gradually she had cried her fury out, and succumbed to the inevitable,
creeping back as seldom as possible into the life of the house, and
spending the time with her own brooding thoughts and sad plays, far in
the depths of the box-boarded garden, or shut into the quiet of her own
room.
To the new mother she never spoke unless she had to, and never called
her Mother, though there were many struggles to compel her to do so.
She never came when they called her Jemima, nor obeyed a command
prefaced by that name, though she endured in consequence many a whipping
and many a day in bed, fed on bread and water.
"What is the meaning of this strange whim?" demanded the new wife, with
set lips. Her position was none too easy, nor her disposition markedly
that of a saint.
"A bit of her mother's sentimentality," explained the chagrined father.
"She objected to calling the child for my grandmother, Jemima. She
wanted it named for her own mother, and said Jemima was harsh and ugly,
until one day her old minister, who was fully as sentimental as she, if
he was an old man, told her that Jemima meant 'Dawn of the Morning.'
After that she made no further protest. But I had no idea she had
carried her foolishness to this extent, nor taught the child such
notions about her honest and honorable name."
"It won't take long to get them out of her head," prophesied the
new-comer, with the sparkle of combat in her eye. Yet it was now nearly
three years since the little girl had seen or heard from her mother, and
she still refused to answer to the name of Jemima. The step-mother had
fallen into the habit of saying "you" when she wanted anything done.
Of the events which preceded her father's summons this morning, Dawn
knew nothing.
Three days before he had received an urgent message from his former
wife's father, stating that his daughter was dead, and demanding an
immediate interview. It was couched in such language that, being the
man he was, he could not refuse to comply.
He answered the summons immediately, going by horseback a hard six-hours
ride that he might catch an earlier stage than he could otherwise have
done. He was the kind of man that always did what he felt to be his
duty, no matter how unpleasant it might be. It was the only thing that
saved his severity from being a vice. His father-in-law had laid this
journey upon him as a duty, and though he had no definite idea of the
reason for this sudden demand, he went at once.
No one but his Maker can penetrate the soul of a man like Hamilton Van
Rensselaer to know what were his thoughts as he walked up the
rose-bordered path to the fine old brick house, which a few years before
he had trod with his beautiful young bride leaning upon his arm.
With grave ceremony, the old servant opened the door into the stately
front room where most of Van Rensselaer's courting had been done, and
left him alone in the dim light that sifted through partly drawn shades.
He stood a moment within the shadowed room, a sense of the past sweeping
over him with oppressive force, like a power that might not be resisted.
Then as his eyes grew accustomed to the half-darkness, he started, for
there before him was a coffin!
His father-in-law's message had not led him to expect to see his former
wife. He had gathered from the letter that she might have been dead
some weeks, and that the matter to be discussed was of business, though
probably painfully connected with the one who was gone.
While the news of her death had given him a shock which he had not
anticipated, he had yet had time in his long journey to grow accustomed
to the thought of it. But he was in no wise prepared to meet the sight
of her lying there in her last sleep, so still and white.
Strangely moved, he stepped nearer, not understanding why he felt thus
toward one whom he firmly believed had made utter wreck of his life.
She lay in a simple white gown like the one she used to wear when he
first knew her. In her hand was one white rose. It might have come
from her wedding bouquet. The soft fragrance of it floated up and smote
him with keen and unexpected pain. The rose had reached where a sword
could not have penetrated.
Death had kindly erased the deep lines of suffering from Mary
Montgomery's beautiful face, and told no tales of the broken heart; but
to see what he had once loved, pure and lovely as it used to be, with no
trace of the havoc he had wrought upon it, spoke louder to the
conscience of the man than a sorrowful face could have done; for then he
might have turned from her with a hardened heart, saying it was all her
own fault and she had got only what she deserved. But to see her thus
was as if God's finger had touched her and exonerated her from all
blame. The sight shook the very foundations of his belief in her
disgrace.
He was filled with conflicting emotions. He had not supposed that he
could feel this way, for he had thought that his love for Mary was dead;
yet it had raised its dishonored head and given him one piercing look,
while it had seemed to say to his heart, "You are too late! You are too
late!"
The sound of footsteps coming down the hall recalled him to himself. It
came to him that this was what he had been brought here for, this
dramatic effect of Mary's death, perhaps for revenge, perhaps to try to
make him acknowledge that he had been in the wrong.
He stiffened visibly and turned toward the door. His heart, so
accustomed to the hardening process, grew adamant again, and he was
ready with a haughty word to greet the father, but the dignity of the
white-haired man who entered the room held him in check.
Mr. Montgomery went over to the window, merely giving his visitor a
grave bow in passing, and pushed up the heavy shades. The sunlight
burst joyously in upon the solemnity of the room, unhindered by the
sheer muslin curtains, and flung its golden glory about the sweet face
in the coffin, making a halo of light above the soft, dark waves of
hair.
The younger man's eyes were drawn irresistibly to look at her once more,
and the sight startled him more than ever, for now she seemed like a
crowned saint, whose irreproachable life was too sacred for him to come
near.
The old man came over and stood in the pathway of light from the window,
though not so as to hinder its falling on the dead face, and turned
toward his former son-in-law.
Then and not till then did the visitor notice that the old man held in
his arms a beautiful boy between two and three years old.
Proudly the grandfather stood with the chubby arm around his neck and
the dimpled fingers patting his cheek. The sunlight fell in a broad
illumination over the head and face of the child, kindling into flame
the masses of tumbled curls which showed the same rich mahogany tint
that had always made Hamilton Van Rensselaer's head a distinguished mark
in any company. The baby's eyes were a wonderful gray, which even now
held flashes of steel--albeit flashes of fun and not of passion. As the
man looked, they mirrored back his own startlingly. In the round baby
cheeks were two dimples strikingly placed, the counterpart of two that
daring Nature had triflingly set in the otherwise stern countenance of
the man. The likeness was marvellous.
In sheer astonishment the man gazed at the child, and then as he looked
the baby frowned, and he saw his own face in miniature, identical even
to the sternness which was the prevailing expression of his countenance.
Suddenly the man felt that he stood before God and was being judged and
rebuked for his treatment of the dead. The awful remorse that stung his
soul burst forth in a single sentence which was wrung from him by an
unseen force:
"Why did you never tell me?"
He flashed the rebuke at the old man, but the dark eyes under the heavy
white brows only looked at him the more steadily and did not flinch, as
if they would tell him to look to himself for an answer to his question.
The steady gaze did its work. It was the Nemesis before which his pride
and self-esteem fell. His glance went from the righteous face of the
old man to the pure and beautiful eyes of the boy, now frowning with
disapproval, and he dropped into a chair with a groan.
"I have been wrong!" he said, and bowed his head, the last atom of his
pride rent away from him. There beside the dead, great scorching tears
of bitterness found their way to his eyes, washing away the scales of
blind conceit, and bringing clearer vision. Mary Montgomery was
vindicated in the eyes of the man who had wronged her.
But the baby frowned and cried softly:
"Hush, bad man! You go away! You wake my pitty muvver! She's 's'eep!"
The strong man shrank from the child's words as from a blow, and looked
up with almost a pleading on his usually cold face. But the old man
watched him sternly.
"Yes, it is enough. You may go. There is nothing more to be said. Now
you understand. This is why I sent for you. It was her right."
"But," said the stricken man, and looked toward the sleeping one in the
coffin, "may I not wait until----"
"You have no right," the old man answered sternly, and the young man
turned away with a strange wild feeling tearing his throat like a sob.
"No, I have no right."
Then with a sudden movement he turned toward the child as if he would
claim something there, but the baby hid his face and clung to his
grandfather's neck.
"I have no right," he said again. One last look he gave the sweet dead
face, as though he would ask forgiveness, then turned and went
unsteadily from the room.
The old father followed him silently, as though to complete some
ceremony, and, closing the door softly behind him, spoke a few words of
explanation, facts that had they been brought forth sooner might have
made all things different. It was Mary's wish that no word should be
spoken in her vindication while she lived. If her husband could not
trust what she had told him when he first came home, it mattered not to
her what he believed. The hope of her life was crushed. But now that
she was beyond further pain, and for the boy's sake, her father had sent
for him that he might know these things before the wife he had wronged
was laid to rest.
Then Van Rensselaer felt himself dismissed, and with one last look at
the huddled figure of his little son, who still kept his face hid, he
went down the path again, his pride utterly crushed, his life a broken
thing.
After him echoed the sound of a baby's voice, "Go away, bad man!" and
then the great oak door closed quickly behind him for the last time.
He trod the streets of the village as in a nightmare, and knew not that
there were those in his way who would have tarred and feathered him if
it had not been for love of the honored dead and her family. Straight
into the country he walked, to the next village, and knew not how far he
had come. There he hired a horse and rode to the next stage route, and
so, resting not even at night, he came to his home. But ever on the way
he had been attended by a vision, on the left a sweet-faced figure in a
coffin, with one white rose whose perfume stifled him, and on the right
by a bright-haired boy with eyes that pierced his very soul. And
whether on horseback or by stage, in the company of others or alone in a
dreary woodland road, they were there on either hand, and he knew they
would be so while life for him should last.
He reached home in the gray of a morning that was to become a gray day,
and sent up word that his little daughter should come down to his study
when her early tasks were finished.
He had not said a word to his wife as yet, though she had suspected
where he was going when he told her that Mary Montgomery was dead. It
lifted a great load from her shoulders to know that the other wife was
no longer living. She had been going about these three days with almost
a smile upon her hard countenance, and the little girl had had no easy
time of it with her father away.
It was very still in the study after Dawn sat down in the
straight-backed chair opposite her father. She could hear the old clock
tick solemnly, slowly. It said, "Poor-child! Poor-child! Poor-child!
Poor-child!" until the tears began to smart in her eyes.
Her father sat with his elbow on the desk, and his handsome head bowed
upon his hand. He did not raise his head when she entered. She began
to wonder if he was asleep, and her heart beat with awe and dread.
Nothing good had ever come to her out of these interviews in the study.
Perhaps he was going to send her away, too, as he had sent her mother.
Her little face hardened. Well, she would be glad to go. What if he
should send her to her mother! Oh, that would be joy!--but he never
would.
She was a beautiful child as she sat there palpitating with fear and
hope. Her face was like her mother's, fair, with wild-rose color, and
eyes that were dark and dreamy, always looking out with longing and
appeal. Her hair, like her father's only in its tendency to curl, was
fine and dark, and fell about the little troubled face. It had been the
cause of many a contention between her and her step-mother, who wished
to plait it smoothly into braids, which she considered the only neat way
for a child's hair to be arranged. Failing in that, she had tried to
cut it off, but the child had defended her curls so fiercely that they
had finally let her alone. It was wonderful what care the little girl
took of them herself, for it was no small task to keep such a head of
hair well brushed. But Dawn could remember how her mother loved her
curls, and she clung to them. When she lifted the dark lashes there was
a light in her eyes that made one think of the dawn of day. Such eyes
had her mother.
At last Dawn looked up tremulously to her father, and he spoke. He did
not look toward her, however, and his voice was cold and reserved.
"I have sent for you, my daughter--"
Dawn was glad he did not use the hateful name "Jemima."
"--to tell you that your mother was a good woman."
"Of course," said the child, with rising color. "I knew that all the
time. Why did you ever say she wasn't?"
"There was a terrible mistake made." The father's voice was shaken. It
gave Dawn a curious feeling.
"Who made the mistake?" she asked gravely.
The room was very still while this arrow found its way into the father's
heart.
"I did." His voice sounded hoarse. The little girl felt almost sorry
for him.
"Oh! Then you will bring her right back to us again and send this other
woman away, won't you?"
"Child, your mother is dead!"
Dawn's face went as white as death, and she sprang to her feet, clasping
her hands in horror.
"Then you have killed her!" she screamed. "You have killed her! My
beautiful mother!" and with a wild cry she flung herself upon the floor
and broke into a passion of tears.
The strong man writhed in anguish as his little child set the mark of
Cain upon his forehead.
The outcry brought the step-mother, but neither noticed her as she
entered and demanded the reason for this scene. She tried to pick the
child up from the floor, but Dawn only beat her off with kicks and
screams, and they finally went away and left her weeping there upon the
floor. Her father took his hat and walked out into the woods. There he
stayed for hours, while the wife went about with set lips and a glint in
her eye that boded no good for the child.
Finally the sobs grew less and less frequent, and the old clock in the
hall could again be heard in her ears, as she sobbed herself slowly to
sleep: "Poor-child! Poor-child! Poor-child! Poor-child!"
It was after this that they sent her away to school.
CHAPTER II
Her father placed her on a Hudson River steamer in charge of the
captain, whom he knew, and in company with two other little girls, who
were returning to the school of Friend Isaac and Friend Ruth after a
short vacation.
Dawn, attired in the grave Quaker garb of the school, leaned over the
rail of the deck, inconsequently swinging by its ribbons her long gray
pocket containing a hundred dollars wherewith to pay her entrance fee
and provide necessities, and watched her unloved father walk away from
the landing.
"Thee and thou and thy long pocket!" called out a saucy deck-hand to the
three little girls, and Dawn turned with an angry flash in her eyes to
take up the work of facing the world single-handed.
She did not drop the pocket into the water, nor fall overboard, but bore
herself discreetly all through the journey, and made her entrance into
the new life demurely, save for the independent stand she took upon her
arrival:
"My name is Dawn Van Rensselaer, and my mother wishes me to wear my
curls just as they are."
Her two fellow-travellers had given her cause to believe that there
would be an immediate raid made upon her precious curls, and her
determined spirit decided to make a stand at the start, and not to give
in for anything. The quiet remark created almost a panic for a brief
moment, coming thus unexpectedly into the decorous order of the place.
Friend Ruth caught her breath, and two faint pink spots appeared in her
smooth cheeks.
"Thee will wear thy hair smoothly plaited, child, as the others do,
unless it be cut close," she said decidedly, laying her thin pink lips
smoothly together over even teeth. "Thee will write to thy mother that
it is our custom here to allow nothing frivolous or worldly in the dress
of our pupils."
One glance at the cool gray eye of her oppressor decided Dawn to hide in
her heart forever the fact that the mother whose wish she was flaunting
was no more in this world, nor longer had the legal right to express her
wishes concerning her child. With ready wits she argued the matter:
"But it isn't worldly. God made my curls, and it is just as bad to
plait them up and take out the curl as it would be to go to work and
curl them on an iron if they were straight. My curls are n't frivolous,
and I take care of them myself. My mother loves them, and I must do as
she says."
Friend Ruth looked at the determined little face set in its frame of
dark curls, and hesitated. She was not used to logic from a child, yet
there seemed to be reason in the words. Besides, Friend Ruth was a
great advocate of honor to parents. It was a complicated question. She
decided to temporize.
"I will speak to Friend Isaac about the matter, but thee will have to
wear them in a net. It is untidy to have curls tumbling about thy
face."
That was the end of the matter. Dawn wore her curls without further
question, albeit in a plain, dark net. Though outwardly the little girl
was docile, except upon occasion, Friend Ruth learned to avoid any
crossing of swords with the young logician, for she nearly always got
the worst of it.
Dawn took to learning as a bird to the air, having inherited her
father's brilliant mind and taste for letters, combined with her
mother's keen insight and wide perceptive faculties. Her lessons were
always easily and perfectly learned, and she looked with contempt upon
the plodders who could not get time from their tasks for the fun which
she was always ready to lead.
The pranks she played were many. On one occasion she led an expedition
of the entire school in a slide down a newly made straw-stack, thereby
damaging its geometrical shape and necessitating several hours' work by
the farmhands. As a punishment, she was remanded to the garden alone to
write a composition on the beauties of Nature. It began:
A great green worm come cameing down the populo tree with great
tribusence.
Friend Ruth read the finished composition with the dismay of a hen which
has a duck on its hands, and handed it over to Friend Isaac.
"The child has an original mind, and is going to be a brilliant woman,"
he remarked gravely.
"Yes, Isaac, but thee will not tell her so," said Friend Ruth quickly.
Six years had passed since Dawn, a child of ten, had come to the school,
and she had never gone home. It had been her own wish, and for once her
father and stepmother were willing to accede to her. To both, the sight
of her and the thought of her were painful. Her father had visited her
every year and brought with him a full supply of the modest wardrobe
that the school allowed, and Dawn had money to meet all her necessary
expenses. She lived a sort of triple life--one in the world of her
studies, in which she sometimes took deep delight, often going far ahead
of her classes because she wanted to see what came next; one in the
world of play, where she was leader in all sorts of mischief, getting
the older ones into endless difficulties with the teachers, and
protecting the little ones, even to her own detriment at times; the
third life was lived alone in the fields or the woods, where she might
sit quietly and look up into the blue sky, listening to the music of the
winds and the birds or the sad chirp of a cricket, taking a little
grasshopper into her confidence, talking to a friendly squirrel on the
maple bough overhead--here was where she really lived. On the walls of
her memory were hung strange, sad pictures of the past. Always on such
occasions the mother all in white, with starry eyes, hovered over her,
and seemed to listen to the wild longing that beat in her young heart,
and to pour a benediction upon her.
She could not think of her father except sadly or bitterly, and so as
much as possible she put him out of her thoughts. By degrees, as she
came to see on his annual visits how old and careworn he was grown, how
haunted and haggard were his eyes, she grew to pity him, but never to
love, for her mother had been her idol, and he had killed her mother.
That the girl could not forget, though as she grew older she felt with a
kind of spiritual instinct that she must forgive. She felt it was his
own blindness and stupidity that had done it, and that he was suffering
some measure of punishment for his deed. She never actually put these
thoughts before her in so many words. They were rather a sort of
growing undertone of consciousness in her, as her mental and spiritual
faculties developed.
In one year more she would be through with the school course. For some
time she had been dreading the thought, and wondering what would come to
her next? If she might go somewhere and "teach school,"--but she felt
certain her father would never allow that. He was proud and held ideas
about woman's sphere. Though she could scarcely be said to know him
well, still she felt without asking that he would never consent.
Sometimes she even entertained vague thoughts of running away when she
should be through school, for the idea of dwelling under her father's
roof again, under control of the woman who had usurped her mother's
place, she could not abide.
It was therefore with trepidation that she received a message in the
school-room one morning, bidding her come to the parlor to meet her
father. The fair face flushed and the brow darkened with trouble. It
was not the usual time for her father's annual visit. Did it mean that
he was going to take her away from the school? Her young heart beat to
the old tune of the friendly clock at home as she went to answer the
summons: "Poor-child! Poor-child! Poor-child! Poor-child!"
But in the square, plain parlor, with its hair-cloth furniture, its gray
paper window-shades, and its neutral-tinted ingrain carpet, there sat
two men with Friend Ruth, instead of one.
Her father looked older than ever before. His hair was silvering about
the edges, though he was still what would have been called a young man.
The stranger was younger, yet with an old look about his eyes, as if
they had been living longer than the rest of his face.
Dawn paused in the doorway and looked from one to the other. She had
put up her hand as she reached the door, and drawn from her head the net
which held her beautiful curls in leash. They fell about her lovely
face in the fashion of the day. They were grown long and thick, but
still kept their baby softness and fineness of texture. She made a
charming picture standing thus with the door-latch in her hand,
hesitating almost shyly, though she was not unduly shy. Even in her
Quaker garb, with the sheer folds of the snowy kerchief about her neck,
she looked an unusually beautiful girl. The young stranger saw and took
notice as he rose to receive the impersonal introduction that her father
gave.
The girl looked at them both gravely, with an alert watchfulness. Of
the stare of open admiration with which the stranger regarded her, she
seemed not even to be aware, though Friend Ruth noticed it with
disapproval.
Dawn took the chair to which Friend Ruth motioned her, at some distance
from the young man, and sat demurely waiting, her eyes wide with
apprehension. Her father asked about her conduct and standing in the
school, but no flush of embarrassment came to the face of the watching
girl, though Friend Ruth gave unwonted praise of the past year's work.
At another time it would have astonished and pleased her, but now she
felt it was a mere preliminary to the real object of her father's visit.
As soon as there came a break in the conversation, the stranger took a
part, admiring the location of the school, and saying he would be glad
if he might look about the place, as he had a friend who wished to send
his daughter away to school somewhere, and it would be a pleasure to be
able to speak in detail of this delightful spot. Was there a view of
the Hudson from this point? Indeed! Perhaps the young lady would be so
kind as to show it to him?
Friend Ruth hesitated, but the father waved a command to his daughter.
Frowning, she arose to obey. She felt the whole thing was a subterfuge
to get her from the room while the real object of her father's
unexpected visit was divulged.
She led the way through the wide hall, out to the pillared veranda, and
down the sloping lawn to the bluff which overlooked the river, where
plied a steamer on its silver course. Apathetically she pointed out the
places of interest. She scarcely heard her companion's eager attempts
at conversation. He noted the absent look in her dark eyes.
"You do not like it here?" he asked, letting his tone become gentle, in
coaxing confidence.
"Oh, yes," she answered quickly, with a flit of trouble across her face.
"At least, I think I do. I do not care to go away."
"Not to your beautiful home?" he asked insinuatingly. "And your mother?"
he added, his eyes narrowing to observe her expression more closely.
"She is not my mother," answered the girl coldly, and became at once
reserved, as if she were sorry for having spoken so plainly.
"Oh, I beg your pardon! I did not know," murmured the stranger, making
mental note of her change of expression.
Suddenly her eyes flashed wide upon him, and she dashed a question out
with a way that compelled an answer:
"Has my father come to take me home, do you know?"
"Oh, no, not at all," answered the young man suavely. He was delighted
to have found this key to her thoughts. It led just where he desired.
"We are merely taking a business trip together, and your father stopped
off to see how things were going with you. I am sure I am delighted
that he did, for it has given me great pleasure to meet you."
"Why?" asked the girl, lifting relieved eyes to his face in mild
astonishment.
He gave a half-embarrassed laugh at this frank way of meeting him.
"Now, surely, you do not need to ask me that," he said, looking down at
her meaningly, his eyes gazing into the innocent ones in open and
intimate admiration. "You must know how beautiful you are!"
With a startled expression, she searched his face, and then, not finding
it pleasant, turned away with a look resembling her father in its
sternness.
"I don't think that is a nice way for a man to talk to a girl," she said
in a displeased tone. "I am too big to be spoken to in that way. I am
past sixteen, and shall be done school next year."
He dropped the offending manner at once, and begged her pardon, pleading
that her father had talked of her as a child. He asked also that she
would let him be her friend, for he felt that they would be congenial,
and all the more that she was growing into womanhood.
Her gravity did not relax, however, and her eyes searched his face
suspiciously.
"I think we would better go into the house," she said soberly. "Friend
Ruth will not like my staying out so long, and I must see my father
again."
"But will you be my friend?" he insisted, as they turned their steps
toward the house.
"How could we be friends? You are not in the school, and I never go
away. Besides, I don't see what would be the use."
"Don't you like me at all?" he asked, putting on the tone which had
turned many a girl's head.
"Why, I don't know you even a little bit. How could I like you?
Besides, why should I?" answered Dawn frankly.
"You are deliriously plain-spoken."
She caught her lip between her teeth in a vexed way. Why would he
persist in talking to her as if she were a child?
"There, now I have vexed you again," he said, pretending to be much
dismayed, "but indeed you misunderstand me. I do not look upon you as a
child at all. Many a girl is married at your age, and you will soon be
a lovely woman. I want you for my friend. Are you not willing?"
"I don't know," said the girl bluntly, looking troubled. "I should have
to think about it, and I don't see why I should. I shall be here a
whole year yet, and I shall never see you. I wish I could stay here
always," she ended passionately. "I never want to go home."
"Perhaps you will not need to go there," he said insinuatingly,
wondering how it was she was so different from other girls. She did not
seem to understand coquetry. Her eyes met his now in mild question.
"You may marry and have a home of your own," he answered her unspoken
question. A startled expression came into her eyes.
"Oh, no," she said quickly; "I don't think that will ever happen. I
don't want that to happen;" and she drew away from him as if the thought
frightened her. "Married people are not happy."
"Nonsense!" said the young man gayly. He had planted the seed in what
looked like fallow ground, and perhaps one day it would blossom for him.
"There are plenty of happy married people. I've a good old father and
mother who just worship each other. They've been happy as clams all
their lives, and I know a great many more.
"My father and mother were not happy," said Dawn gravely. "Friend Ruth
and Friend Isaac do not seem to be very happy either, though of course
this isn't a real home. But they are never cross," she added in
conscientious explanation.
"If you were married, you could have a real home of your own, and have
things just as you wanted them," the young man remarked cunningly.
"That would be nice," said the girl thoughtfully. "I should like that
part, but I think I would like it better without being married. There
are father and Friend Ruth looking for us. Let us hurry."
"But you have not told me whether you will let me be your friend," he
said, detaining her under a great elm tree, and looking off toward the
river, as if he were still watching the steamer. "If you will let me be
your friend, I will get permission to come and see you now and then, and
I will bring you a box of sweets. You will like that, won't you? All
girls are fond of sweets."
"I don't know," answered Dawn slowly, looking at him with troubled eyes,
and wondering why it was that his eyes reminded her of a fish.
"The other girls would like the sweets," he suggested.
"Could I give them away?" she asked with a flash of interest.
"You may do anything you like with them," he responded eagerly. "So it
is all settled, then, and I may be your friend?"
"I don't know," said Dawn again. "I suppose it will have to be as
father and Friend Ruth say."
"No need to consult them in the matter. Leave that to me. All I want
is your consent. Remember I am going to visit you next month and bring
you something nice."
But by this time the others had reached them.
"Charming view, Mr. Van Rensselaer. I had no idea you could see New
York so plainly from this point," said the young man.
Dawn stepped over and stood beside Friend Ruth, looking thoughtfully
down the river. She would like the box of confections well enough, for
not many sweets were allowed at the school and they could have a treat
down in the woods, beside the brook. But somehow she had a vague
uneasiness about this friendship. She did not like the stranger's face.
Her father and the other man went away after the noonday meal. The
stranger's name, she learned, was Harrington Winthrop, and that he was
interested in a business enterprise with her father. The matter passed
entirely from her mind, only, after that, when she sat alone to brood
over her life, a new dream took the place of the old. Always there was
a lovely home all her own, with comfortable chairs and plenty of books,
and thin, sprigged china, such as had been her mother's. In this home
she was sole mistress. Day by day she dreamed out the pretty rooms, and
dwelt in them, and even occasionally let her imagination people them.
The image of her beautiful mother hovered about that home and stayed,
but there came into it no one to annoy or disturb.
When the two men settled themselves in the stage that night, the younger
began to talk:
"Do you know you have a very beautiful daughter, Mr. Van Rensselaer?"
The father started from the reverie into which he had fallen. The look
of the moonlight was reminding him of a night over sixteen years ago,
when he and Mary had taken this same stage trip. Strange he could not
get away from the thought of it. Ah, yes! it had been the look of his
daughter that had brought back Mary's face, for the girl was grown to be
the image of her mother, save for a certain sad flitting of severity.
In the moonlight outside the coach he seemed to see again the sweet face
in the coffin, and he compared it with the warm living face of the girl
whom he had been to see that day. He knew that between his daughter and
him was an impenetrable barrier that could never be removed, and the
thought of it pierced his soul as it never had before. A great yearning
and pity for his motherless, fatherless girl had come into his cold,
empty heart as he had watched her move silently about. But ever present
was the thought that he had no right--no right in her either, no matter
how much he might try. No one would have suspected him of such
feelings. He hid them deep under his grim and brilliant exterior,
sternly self-contained in any situation. But now, in the half-darkness,
a new thought came into his mind, and he started and gave his attention
to the words of his companion.
"Is she your only child?"
The question made him start again. There was a long pause, so long that
Harrington Winthrop thought he had not been heard; then a husky voice
answered out of the shadows of the coach:
"No, there was another--a little boy. He died soon after his mother."
Outside in the moonlight, the vision of a ruddy-haired boy rode in a
wreath of mist. The words were the man's acknowledgment to the two who
ever attended him now through life. He did not wish to give his
confidence to this business companion.
"Ah! Then this beautiful young woman will likely be sole heir to the
Van Rensselaer estate," said the young man to himself, rejoicing
inwardly at the ease with which he was obtaining information.
There was silence in the coach while Winthrop pondered the great
discovery he had made, and how he should act upon it.
But the elder man was lost in gloomy thoughts. He had a vague feeling
that Mary, out there in the moonlight with her bright-haired boy, would
hold him to account for the little girl she had loved and lost in life.
A sudden glimpse into the future had been given him, partly by the young
man's words, partly by the beauty of Dawn herself. She was blossoming
into womanhood, and with that change would come new perplexities. She
could not stay always at the school. Where in the world was there a
place for his child? More and more he saw that the woman whom in the
fierceness of his wrath he had selected to take the place of mother to
the girl was both unable and unwilling to do so. He shrank from the
time when his daughter would have to come home. As he thought of it, it
seemed an impossible situation to have her there; it would be almost
like having Mary in the flesh to live with them, with reproachful eyes
ever upon their smallest acts. At that moment it came to him that he
was enduring the torments of a lost soul, his conscience having sat in
judgment and condemned him.
The stage-coach rumbled on, stopping now and again through the night for
a change of horses, and the two who sat within its gloomy depths said
little to each other, yet slept not, for one was musing on the evil of
the past and its results, while the other was plotting evil for the
future.
CHAPTER III
Harrington Winthrop kept his promise about the sweets. Five times
during the winter that followed his first visit with Mr. Van Rensselaer,
he invented some excuse to visit Dawn.
The first time he came, he found her in the maple grove behind the
pasture, with a group of other girls, all decked in autumn leaves and
playing out some story that Dawn had read.
He persuaded her to walk a little way into the woods with him; and when
he came to take his leave asked for a kiss, but Dawn sprang away from
him in sudden panic:
"No," she said sharply; "I have never kissed anybody but my mother."
Then, fearing she had been impolite in view of his gift, she added:
"We don't kiss people here at this school. It isn't the custom."
And she knew so little of the customs of the world that the incident
passed without further apprehension on her part, or understanding of the
young man's meaning.
"That's all right, my dear," he said pleasantly. "But don't forget
about the house. I'm going to tell you all about it next time I come.
You still want a home of your very own, don't you?"
"Why, of course," said Dawn; "but I can't see how you can know anything
about it, or care. What have you to do with it?" And then with sudden
alarm, "Has my father been talking to you about any such thing?"
"No, indeed! Your father does not even know I am interested in you. I
care for my own sake. Didn't I tell you that I liked you the minute I
saw you? And I'm just as interested in this future home of yours as you
are."
"I'm sure I can't see why," said Dawn, perplexed, yet trying to be
polite.
"Suppose you think about it hard, dear, and see if you can find out why
I care. Just think it all over, everything I have said, and then if you
are still in doubt go and look in the looking-glass and keep on
thinking, and I'm sure you'll find out by the time I come back. I'm
coming soon again, and I want you to be watching for me every day. I'll
bring you something nice next time, besides another box of sweets."
Dawn tried to smile, but felt uncomfortable. She murmured her thanks
again, and turned uneasily toward the woods and her companions, and he
deemed it prudent to leave her without further ado.
Back in the woods, the girls were making merry with her confections, and
had nothing but praise for the handsome stranger who had brought them;
but all through the eager questions and merry jibes Dawn was silent and
thoughtful.
"Where are your thoughts, Dawn?" said Desire Hathaway. "Has the stranger
stolen them away to pay for his goodies?"
"She looks as if he had asked her to marry him, and she didn't know
whether to say yes or to wait for somebody else," laughed Matilda Hale,
a new-comer among them, and older than the rest.
"I guess he kissed her good-by," chimed in silly Polly Phelps, who
aspired to be Matilda's shadow. "I peeked through the bushes and saw
him bending over her."
Amid the thoughtless laugh that rose, Dawn stood defiant, the crimson
leaping into her cheeks, the steel into her eyes. For an instant she
looked as if she would turn upon the offending Matilda and tear her to
pieces. Then a sudden revelation came to her: this, this was what the
handsome stranger had meant!
Instantly the light of anger died out of her face, and a gentle dignity
took its place. Her little clenched hands relaxed, the tenseness of the
graceful body softened, and she turned toward the offender with a
haughty condescension:
"Matilda, we don't talk in that way here," she said, and the laughter
died out of the faces of her companions and left instead amazement and
admiration. They had seen Dawn angry before, and had not expected the
affair to end so amicably. They felt it showed a marvellous
self-control, and left her mistress of the situation. Matilda bit her
lip in a vexed way and tossed her head. She felt she had lost prestige
by the little incident, and Dawn was still the recognized leader of the
school. It was not a pleasant thought to the older girl.
Dawn turned and walked slowly away from them all, out of the woods, down
through the meadow, where grazed her quiet friends, the sheep. She
still carried her gentle dignity, and none of the girls spoke until she
was out of sight behind the group of chestnuts at the corner of the
meadow.
Then Desire Hathaway voiced the general feeling:
"Isn't she just like a queen?"
"Oh, if you want to look at it that way!" sneered Matilda, with another
toss of her head. "There are a good many kinds of queens, you know. I
must say, I thought she looked like a pretty wicked one for a minute or
two. She would have enjoyed tearing my eyes out if she had dared."
"Dared!" cried Desire. "You don't know her. She will dare anything
that she thinks is worth while. I thought it was just splendid, the way
she controlled herself."
"Oh, well, just as you think, of course," shrugged Matilda. "Come on,
Polly; let's go finish our sewing."
Dawn stumbled on blindly in the pasture, trying to take in the appalling
thought that _perhaps_ the young man wanted to marry her!
Tears of indignation welled into her eyes, but she brushed them angrily
aside. Why was life so dreadful, she wondered. Why did men exist to
break women's hearts?--for she never doubted that the married state was
one of heart-break. Such had been the lesson burned deep into her soul
by suffering. A home of her own had been a sweet thought, but the
serpent had entered her Eden, and she cared no more to stay there.
The next time Winthrop came it was openly, with a message from her
father. All through the interview, which lasted for an hour, and was
prolonged over the noonday meal, Dawn sat stiffly on the other side of
Friend Ruth, watching the fishy eyes of the stranger and listening to
his fulsome flatteries of the place, her small hands folded decorously,
but her young heart beating painfully under the sheer folds of the
'kerchief.
On his fourth visit he bore a private letter from her father to Friend
Ruth, and wore an air of assurance which made the girl's heart sink with
nameless foreboding. Not even the praises of the girls for her handsome
lover, their open envy of her future lot, or their merry taunts, could
rouse her from a gravity which had begun to settle upon her.
This time Friend Ruth seemed to look upon the visitor in a different
light. Not only was Dawn allowed to talk with him alone, but she was
sent out with him for a walk in the woods.
Reluctantly she obeyed, frightened, she knew not why.
Harrington Winthrop had a winning way with him, and he was determined to
win this proud, beautiful girl. Also, he was wise in the ways of the
world, he did not force any undue attention upon her, but confined his
conversation to telling her about the beautiful home he had seen.
Rightly guessing that there was still much of the child about her, he
went on to picture the house in detail, not hesitating to embellish it
at will where his memory failed.
There was a garden with a fountain, and there should be flowers, all in
profusion. There were clipped hedges, gravel paths, an arbor in a shady
place, where she might bring her book or sewing, and where the sunshine
would peer through the branches just enough to scatter gold about the
leafy way.
In spite of her prejudices, she was interested. She could not help it.
The longing for a real home of her own was great.
Then came the most difficult part of his task, which was to reconcile
her to himself.
Skilfully he led the conversation about till he himself was the
subject--his life since he had become a man and gone out into the world.
Pathetically he talked of his own loneliness, until he touched the
maternal chord in her nature and made her feel sorry for him. He opened
up for her gaze depths of sympathy, tenderness, and pathos, which were
purely imaginary and wholly impossible to his own nature. He launched
into details of his own feelings which were the inspiration of the
moment, because he saw they touched her. He told her how he had often
been lonely almost to desperation, and how he had many and many a time
pictured a home of his own, with a lovely wife at its head. The girl
winced at the name "wife," but he went steadily on trying to take the
strangeness out of the word, trying to touch her heart and fire her
tenderness; for he rightly read the possibilities of love in the
beautiful face, and it put him on his mettle to make it bloom for him.
He succeeded so far as to make her conscience sharply reprove her for
the dislike she had for him. Of course if he had been lonely, too, and
had had a care for her loneliness, it was a different matter. Perhaps,
after all, they had something in common, and he would not be such a
dreadful addition to the home she had longed for. At least, she had no
right to shut him out of a dream that he held in common with her, and
she tried to put aside her own feelings and look at him fairly.
So they walked the deeper into the woods, and while she did not say much
in reply to his eloquent words, she did not seem actively opposed. He
let his voice grow more and more tender, though he did not trouble her
with words of love. He let a care for her become apparent: as they
walked over the rough growth in the woods, he held the branches aside
for her, and helped her over a log, and once across the stones of a
little brook, touching her hand and arm deferentially. It did not
appeal to Dawn in the way he hoped that it would, nor awaken any
tenderness for him, but she let him lead her along a path which, had she
been alone, she would have cleared at a bound, and counted an easy
thing.
When he parted from her that evening to take the night boat, he gave her
shrinking fingers a slight pressure in token of the understanding
between them, and Dawn understood it as the sealing of a kind of
unspoken contract.
After that Dawn was not surprised to receive a letter from her father in
which he spoke of the young man's desire to make her his wife, and
formally gave his consent. It never seemed to occur to him that the girl
might have any question about the matter. A dull kind of rebellion rose
in her breast and smouldered there as she read her father's letter; yet
she accepted his arrangements for her life, because it seemed the only
way out from a home that could never be a happy one for her; and because
it offered a spot that might be called her own, and a possible
opportunity to live out some of her childish dreams.
When Harrington Winthrop came again, she no longer yielded to her inward
shrinking from him, but took him as she took hard tasks that she did not
like but that were inevitable; and he, finding her unresisting, was
careful not to do anything to mar the pleasant understanding between
them. Meantime, he congratulated himself constantly upon the ease with
which he had possessed himself of a promised wife whose private fortune
would be no small one.
CHAPTER IV
Dawn settled into a gravity that was premature. She counted every day
of her precious school year, as if it had been a priceless treasure that
was slipping from her.
There were times when she roused to her old self again, and plunged
madly into fun, leading her companions into wild amusements that they
would never have originated by themselves. Then again she would sober
down, and they could get her to say very little. It began to be
whispered about that she was to be married when she had finished school,
and the girls all looked at her with a kind of envying awe.
Thus the winter passed and the spring came on, the spring that was to be
her last at school. The first few days of warm weather she spent
exploring old haunts, watching for the spring blossoms, and reverently
touching the green moss, hunting anemones, hepaticas, and violets. Then,
as if she could stand her own thoughts no longer, she suddenly proposed
the acting of another play. It was the first since that time in the
autumn when Harrington Winthrop broke in upon them, and they had never
been able to induce her to finish it. Now she selected another one that
seemed to her to have the very heart of spring and life bound up in it.
She got it out of an old book which had been her mother's--"Tales of
William Shakespeare," by name. It was not used as a text-book in the
excellent school of Friend Ruth and Friend Isaac, and the child had
always kept it safely hidden.
The play she had selected had many elves and sprites of the air in it.
Dawn drilled her willing subjects, and rehearsed them, until at last she
felt they were ready for the final presentation.
The scene of the play was to be on the sloping hillside just above the
meadow, where the maples on the hill were flanked by a thicket of
elderberry bushes that did double duty of background, and screen for the
dressing-rooms.
The audience of girls was seated in breathless silence, augmented by a
group of kindly cows and stupid sheep, who stood in patient rows and
waited mildly for any tender bites or chance blossoms of cowslips the
girls might put between the bars of the fence. Now and then, as the
play went on, they lifted calm eyes of bewilderment over the turbulent
scenes in the mimic play-house, or out of their placid world of
monotonous duty, wondered whatever the children could be at now.
It chanced that day that Harrington Winthrop was passing, and, most
unexpectedly, he had with him his younger brother, who was on his way
back to Harvard College, after a brief visit home to see his mother, who
had been ill.
Charles Winthrop had met his elder brother in the coach, and had
boyishly insisted on accompanying him when he stopped on what he
professed was a friendly errand at this school. Charles had long been
separated from his brother, and wanted to talk over old days and ask
many questions, for Harrington had been away from home most of the time
for nearly ten years and had travelled in the West and the South a great
deal, which seemed a charmed country to the younger man.
Now Harrington had not been anxious for company on this visit, but he
could not well shake his brother off without arousing suspicions,
therefore as they neared the school he told him that he was about to
visit the girl whom he expected in a few months to make his wife.
Charles in his hearty boyish way congratulated him and expressed a
desire to see the girl who was his brother's choice.
They were told at the house that Dawn was out with the other girls in
the meadows, and so went in search of her. They arrived on the scene
just as the closing act was about to begin.
The little company of players stood out bravely in costumes designed
entirely by Dawn. The outfit of the school was far too sombre to play
any part in the gaiety of the occasion. An occasional patchwork quilt
had been pressed into service, and one or two gray or scarlet blankets,
but most of the players were dressed in white literally covered with
flowers or green leaves.
The two young men skirted the foot of the hill and came upon the scene
just when Dawn, as queen of the air, attended by her sprites and nymphs,
came into view with a gentle, gliding run learned surely from the birds,
for nowhere else could such grace be found. She was clad in white
drapery of homespun linen, one of her own mother's finest sheets. It
was drawn about her slender form, over her shoulders, in a fashion all
her own, though graceful as any Greek goddess. Her white throat and
round white arms were bare, the long, dark curls had been set free, and
about her brow was a wreath of exquisite crab-apple blossoms, whose
delicate tinting matched the rose of her cheeks. About her throat, arms,
wrists, and ankles--for her feet were bare--were close-fitting chains of
the same blossoms. Here and there the white drapery of her garment,
which fell half way from the knee to the ankle, was fastened with a
spray of blossoms. It was a daring costume for a Quaker-reared maiden
to don, and she knew it, but she expected no eyes to look upon her save
her companions and the friendly cattle. She stood poised on the green
slope, holding in her hands and high above her head a soft scarf of
white--an old curtain which she had saved from the rag-bag and wet and
stretched in the sun till it was soft and pliable. She had mended it,
and fastened the darns with blossoms, and edged it also with blossoms
plucked close from the stem and sewed down in a fine flat border.
Behind her came her maidens, their garments sewed over with maple
leaves, tender and green and fluttering. They were crowned and wreathed
also with maple leaves, and made a beautiful setting for Dawn's delicate
beauty.
Then down the hillside they came, the maidens with festoons of leaves
fastened together by their stems, which they held aloft as their leader
held her scarf. They sang a strange, sweet song that had in it the
wildness of the thrush's song, the sweetness of the robin's.
It was Dawn who had composed the melody, and taught it to them. She had
learned it from the birds, and interpreted old Shakespeare's words.
They sang it as the zephyrs sing.
The little audience sat with bated breath; the old cows chewed their cud
thoughtfully, one with soft eyes heaved a long, clover-scented sigh,
marvelling on the ways of the world. The two strangers stood entranced
and astonished; but the heart of one of them thrilled with a strange new
joy.
Charles Winthrop saw only the beautiful face of Dawn Van Rensselaer.
All the rest were but a setting for her. He seemed to know instantly as
he looked that there was no other girl in the world like this. He knew
not who she might be, but he looked at her as if his spirit were calling
to hers across the meadow-land that separated them. Then suddenly, half
poised as she was, in the very midst of her song, Dawn became aware of
his presence and stopped. She met his gaze, and, without her own
volition, it seemed, her eyes were shining and smiling to meet his
smile. It was just a fleeting instant that they gazed thus, and then
the joy went out of the girl's face, and a frightened look took its
place. She had seen the other man standing beside him, and he was
frowning.
Harrington Winthrop had caught the look on his brother's face, and its
answer in the face of the girl upon whom he had set his seal of
possession, and an unreasoning anger had taken possession of him. This
girl had looked at Charles as Harrington had never been able to make her
look at him, not even since she had in a tacit way consented to marry
him.
"This is foolish child's play!" he said in a vexed tone to his brother.
"Let us go back to the house and wait until she has returned."
"Oh, no, let us stay!" said Charles. "This is beautiful! Exquisite! At
least, if you must go, let me stay. I wish to see the finish."
"I wish you to go," said Harrington, and there was something in his
brother's voice that reminded Charles of the days when he used to be
ordered back from following on a fishing or swimming expedition. He
looked at his brother's angry face, and then back to the beautiful girl
on the hillside. But the light had gone out of her eyes. The song had
died on her lips. There was no sparkling smile now. Instead, there was
an angry, steel-like flash in the eyes. She held the fluttering scarf
in front of her now, in long loose folds covering her feet and ankles,
and as the two men turned and gazed at her her head went up proudly,
even as the queen of the air might have raised her head. One hand went
up in quick command, pointing straight at the two young men, and in
quite the phrase of the play she had been acting she spoke:
"Hence, strange spirits!" she cried. "Hence! Begone! Ye have no right
amongst us, being unbidden. 'Go, I tell ye! Go, or I, the queen of the
air, will bring evil upon ye! Go, ye have angered me!"
Dawn had made Shakespeare so much her constant companion that the
language came easily to her. She picked up phrases here and there and
strung them together without hesitation. Her anger helped her on, and
her splendid command of herself had a strange effect upon her audience.
The other girls listened in open-mouthed wonder that Dawn should dare to
speak before these strangers and not be covered with confusion. Almost
they thought it was part of the play. But the two to whom she spoke
turned and obeyed her command, the one because he was angry and wished
to get his brother away, the other because there had been a certain
appeal in her lovely eyes which had reached his soul and made him bow in
reverence to her command. Then all at once, as he turned away, he knew
that she was the girl whom his brother intended to make his wife, and a
great sadness and sense of a loss came over him.
There was mutiny in her eyes as Dawn came back to the house a little
later, and greeted her lover with a haughty manner. He had managed it
that Charles should sit alone in the gray parlor and wait while he met
the girl out in the entrance to the orchard and walked away with her to
a sheltered place overlooking the river. There was no hint of the queen
of the air in her demure dress, the well-sheathed curls, the small
prunella slippers that peered from under the deep hem of her gray gown,
but her bearing was queenly as she waited for him to speak. He saw that
he was treading on dangerous ground.
"Do you really like such childish play?" he asked a trifle
contemptuously.
"You had no right to come there!" she flashed. "If you did not like it,
you should have gone away."
He was disconcerted. He did not wish to anger her, for he had come for
another purpose.
"Well, never mind. If you enjoyed yourself, I suppose it does not
matter whether I liked it or not. Let us talk of something else. Your
play-days are almost over. You will soon begin to live real life."
She looked at him and felt that she came near to hating him. A sudden,
unspeakable terror seized her. She let him talk on about the house they
were to have, and tried to remember that he was lonesome and wanted a
home as badly as she did, but somehow she felt nothing but fear and
dislike. So, though she walked by his side, she heard little of what he
said, only saying when he asked if she wished this or that: "I suppose
so. I suppose it will be as you like."
As they came back to the house again, she asked him suddenly:
"Who was the young man with you?"
The frown came into his face again.
"Why do you ask?" he asked sharply.
"He did not feel the way you did about us out there on the hill."
"How do you know?" He watched her keenly, but her face told him
nothing.
"I saw it in his eyes," she said quietly, and without more words went
into the house and up to her room.
Dawn stood at the little window of her room and watched the two men go
down the path from the door. Through the small panes her eyes followed
them until they were out of sight, and her heart swelled with thoughts
strange and new and fearful. How could she go and live with this man
who had frowned at her innocent happiness? Would he not be worse than
the woman who had taken her dear mother's place? And how could he be so
cruel as to look at her in that way? It was the look she remembered on
her father's face the day he sent her mother away. It was the cruelty of
men. Perhaps they could not help it. Perhaps God made them so. But
that other one had been different. He had understood and smiled. Her
heart leaped out toward him as she remembered his look.
Was it because he was young, she wondered, that he had understood? He
had seemed far younger than his companion, yet there had been something
fine and manly in his face, in the broadness of his shoulders, and the
set of his head, as he walked down the path, away from the house.
Perhaps when he was older he would grow that way to, and not understand
any more.
She sighed and dropped her face against the glass, and, now that they
were out of sight, the haughty look melted into tears.
CHAPTER V
The day that Dawn left school to go back to her home was one long agony
to her.
All the other girls were happy in the thought of home-going, some of
them looking forward to returning for another year, others to entering
into a bright girlhood filled with gaieties. But to Dawn it meant going
into the gray of a looming fate where never again would she be happy,
never again free.
Ever since the day of the play when she had seen her future husband
frown, she had looked forward to her marriage with terror.
He had not come after that, but instead wrote her long letters full of
plans about the house, _their house_, that they were to occupy
_together_. The letters impressed that thought most deeply and made the
whole hateful to her. It grew to seem that it was _his_ house, and she
would be his prisoner in it. Yet somehow he had succeeded in impressing
her with the feeling that she was pledged to him in sacred honor, and
that it would be a dreadful thing to break a tie like that. This was
made stronger by her father's letters, which now grew more frequent, as
if he sought to atone to his motherless child for the wrong he had done
her.
Just the day before her home-going there came one of these letters, in
which he told her that everything had been prepared for her marriage to
take place within a week after her arrival. He told her of the
trousseau which his wife had prepared for her, which was as elaborate
and complete as such an outfit could be for one of her station in life.
He also spoke about the dignity of her origin, and with unwonted
elaboration commended her judgment in selecting so old and so fine a
family as that of the house of Winthrop with which to ally herself. He
added that it would have pleased her mother's family, and that Mr.
Winthrop was one of his oldest and most valued friends.
Somehow that letter seemed to Dawn to put the seal of finality upon her
fate. There was no turning back now. Just as her father used to compel
her to go upstairs alone when he discovered that she was afraid of the
dark, so she felt that if he once discovered her dislike for her future
husband he would but hasten the marriage, and be in league with her
husband against her always.
When the time came to leave the school, she clung with such fervor about
the neck of the impassive Friend Ruth that the astonished lady almost
lost her breath, and a strange wild thrill went through her unmotherly
bosom, as of something that might have been and was lost. She looked
earnestly down into the beautiful face of the girl who had so often
defied her rules, and saw an appeal in those lovely eyes to which she
would most certainly have responded had she understood, for she was a
good woman and always sought to do her best.
But the boat left at once, and clinging arms had perforce to be removed.
Once on the deck with the others, Dawn looked back at Friend Ruth as
impassively as always, though the usually calm face of the woman
searched her out with troubled glance, still wondering what had come
over her wild young pupil. Somehow, as she watched the steamer plough
away until Dawn was a mere blur with the others, Friend Ruth could not
help being glad that the beautiful dark curls had never been cut.
The day was perfect, and the scenery along the Palisades had never
looked more beautiful, yet Dawn saw nothing of it. She sat by the rail
looking gloomily down into the water, and a curious fancy seized her
that she would like to float out there on the water forever and get away
from life. Then she began to consider the possibility of running away.
It was not the first time this thought had entered her mind. The week
before she left the school, she had thought of it seriously, and even
planned the route, but always at night there had come that fearful dream
of her future husband following her, and bringing her home to a
life-long punishment.
She had almost got her courage up to the point of deciding to disappear
in the crowd at Albany, and so elude the people with whom she was
expected to journey to her home, when, to her dismay, she looked down at
the landing-place where they were stopping, a few miles below Albany,
and saw her father coming on board the boat. He had not expected to be
able to meet her and had written that she was to come with acquaintances
of his. Her heart stood still in panic, and for a moment she looked
wildly at the rail of the steamer, as if she might climb over and
escape. Then in a moment her father had seen her and stood beside her.
He stooped and kissed her forehead coldly, almost shyly. This startled
her, too, for he had not kissed her since the days before her mother was
sent away, and a strange, sharp pain went through her heart, a pang of
things that might have been. She looked up in wonder. She did not know
how like her dead mother she had grown.
But the stern face was cold as ever, and his voice conveyed no smallest
part of the emotion he felt at sight of her lovely face.
He talked to her gravely of her school life, and then he went on to
speak of the Winthrop family, and to tell her in detail bits of its
history calculated to make her understand its importance.
Dawn listened with growing alarm at the thought of all that would be
expected of her. Yet not a breath of her trouble did she allow her
father to see. It might have made a difference if she could have known
how her father's heart was aching with the anguish of his great mistake,
and perhaps if the father could have known the breaking of the young
heart it might have melted the coldness of his reserve and brought some
sympathy to the surface. But they could not see, and the agony went on.
Dawn walked sadly, reluctantly, into the unloved, unloving home. As the
days dragged by, she grew to have a haunted look, and the rose flush on
her sweet round cheek faded to a marble white, while under her eyes were
dark circles.
Her father saw the look, but knew not what it meant. Yet it pierced his
soul, for it was the same look that her mother had worn in her coffin,
and he was the readier to have the marriage hastened, both for her sake
and his own, for he realized she was not happy here in the home where
there was so much to remind her of what had passed. He felt she never
would forgive him, and that her only hope was to be happily married.
Winthrop had so represented her feelings to him that he had taken it for
granted she was only too eager to go to a home of her own.
The house had been bought--at least, the father supposed so--not knowing
that but a small payment had been made, with a promise to pay the
balance soon after the marriage. The young man had laid his plans
nicely, and meant to profess that some investment of his had failed,
making it impossible for him to make the final payments, and that he had
disliked to postpone the marriage or to tell of his predicament, feeling
sure that he would have the money by the time the payment was due.
Naturally, his wife's fortune would suffice to pay for the house, which
of course she would not let go then. If the house was not exactly what
he had described to the little school-girl, certainly it was large
enough and showy enough to make up for the lack of some of the things
which had seemed important to her; and he had taken care that it should
be so far from the home of her father that the latter could keep no eye
on his son-in-law's business affairs. If all went well, he intended to
have his wife's fortune in his own hands before their first year of
married life should have passed. After that it would not matter to him
whether the girl was pleased with her home or not. She could no longer
help herself.
But of all this the father suspected nothing.
Dawn took no interest in her clothes. The step-mother was chagrined
that after all her efforts Dawn was not pleased.
"I should think you might show a little gratitude, after all the trouble
I've taken," Mrs. Van Rensselaer snapped angrily.
Dawn turned wide eyes of astonishment upon her.
"For what?" she asked. "I didn't want the things. I supposed you did it
to please father."
"Didn't want them!" exclaimed her step-mother. "And how would you expect
to get married without them?"
"I don't want to be married!" said Dawn desperately, and then closed her
lips tightly, with a frightened look toward the door. She had not meant
to let any one know that. The words had come of themselves out of her
weary heart.
"Well, upon my word! You're the queerest girl! Any other girl in the
world would be in high feather over your chances; but you always were
the stubbornest, most contrary creature that ever drew breath. Whatever
did you say you'd get married for if you didn't want to?"
"I don't think I ever did," said the girl sadly. "It just came in spite
of me."
"That's all foolishness. Don't talk such things to me. No girl has to
be married unless she chooses, and I'll warrant you had your hand in it
from the start. Besides, it's too late to talk of such things now. It
wouldn't be honorable to draw back now, after he's got the house bought
and all."
"I know it," said Dawn miserably, and stood looking out the window
blindly, swallowing hard to keep back the tears. She felt that she must
have reached the limit of her endurance when she would let her
step-mother see her state of mind.
Mrs. Van Rensselaer eyed her keenly, suspiciously. At last she ventured
another question.
"Have you got any other beau in your head, Jemima?" she said. "Because
if you have, you'd better put him out pretty suddenly. If your father
should find it out, he would--I don't know what he would do. He would
certainly punish you well, big girl as you are. Is that what's the
matter? Answer me! Have you got another beau?"
Dawn looked up with great angry, flashing eyes, horror changing into
contempt.
"I have never even thought of such a dreadful thing!" she said, with a
withering look, and swept haughtily from the room. But on the way
upstairs the color crept slowly into her cheeks, and her eyes drooped
half-ashamed. Was there? Yes, there was some one else enshrined within
her heart, some one whose face had smiled in sympathy just once, and
toward whom she felt as she had never felt to any human being save her
mother. Of course he was nothing to her but the vision of a moment, and
never, never, could he be called by the hateful word her stepmother had
used, that detestable word "beau." It seemed to the poor, tried child
as if she could almost kill any one who used that word.
After that, Dawn endured her misery in secret, speaking not at all,
unless spoken to. The older woman looked at her curiously, almost
nervously, sometimes, as if the girl were half uncanny. She was glad in
her heart that the day of the wedding was close at hand, for if she knew
anything about signs, that girl was on the verge of throwing over a fine
marriage, and then they would have her on their hands for years,
perhaps. Mrs. Van Rensselaer had suffered not a little for her share in
the tragedy of these lives with which she had bound up her own, and was
not willing to endure more. She shut her thin lips and determined to
watch the girl carefully and prevent if possible any slip between cup
and lip.
Meantime, with ever-growing dread, Dawn counted the hours, and watched
sleepless through the long nights, now calling on her dead mother for
help, now praying to be saved in some way from the nameless fear which,
try as she would, she could not shake off. The family relatives on both
sides were gathering and starting, some on long journeys, to attend the
wedding.
CHAPTER VI
Charles Winthrop had written his family that matters which he wished to
complete would detain him at the college for a few weeks, and begged his
father to make his excuses at the wedding. He had an instinctive
feeling that Harrington would not care, as well as an inexplicable
aversion to being a witness at the wedding ceremony of his elder brother
and the girl who had burst upon his vision that afternoon and seemed to
open a new world to him.
He had long ago put by the strange, sweet sense of having discovered in
her a familiar friend--one who fitted into his longings and his ideals
as though he had always been waiting for her. He called the thought a
foolish sentimentality, and, in view of the relation in which she was
soon to be placed to him, he tried to be as matter-of-fact as possible
with regard to her. He sent several pleasant brotherly messages--which
never reached her--through the medium of Harrington. He tried to accept
the thought of a new sister as a delightful thing, and always he
regarded her beauty and grace with the utmost reverence. The father,
while feeling that Charles's absence was almost a discourtesy to his
brother, nevertheless gave reluctant consent.
Then, a few days before the wedding, there came over Charles an
overwhelming feeling that he must go. All his former arguments in favor
of remaining away seemed as water. He felt as if the eyes and the smile
of the girl he had seen upon the hillside called him imperatively. Try
as he would to tell himself that with his present feelings it was
foolish, even dangerous, for him to go near her, and that his brother
was already a little jealous owing to the look that had passed between
them, it made no difference; he felt that he must go, and go he did.
Without waiting to do more than throw a few necessities into a valise,
he took the first stage-coach that started from Boston. All through the
long journey his heart beat wildly with the thought that he was to meet
her. He was ashamed of the feeling. Yet in vain he told himself that
it was wrong; that he ought to go back. Once he flung himself out of
the coach at a station where they were taking on fresh horses,
determined to return to Boston, and then madly climbed up to the seat
with the driver just as the coach started again. After that he grimly
faced the matter, asking himself if it were not better to go on after
all, meet his new sister-in-law on a common, every-day basis, and get
this nonsense out of his head forever. Then he tried to sleep and
forget, but her face and her smile haunted him, and there seemed to be
an appeal in her eyes that called him to her aid.
When he presented himself at his father's door in the early morning of
the day before the wedding, his face was gray with combat, yet in his
eyes was the light of a noble resolve. In spite of all his reasoning,
he could not help the feeling that he had come because he was needed,
but he was here, and there was a duty connected with it which he felt
strong to do. It was therefore not a surprise to him when his father
met him with eager welcome and a grave face.
"My son, you have come just when I needed you most," he said as he drew
the young man inside the library door. And then Charles noticed that his
father seemed suddenly aged and heavy with sorrow. He knew it was
nothing connected with the immediate family of the household, for they
had all welcomed him with eager clamor and delight.
"Sit down, Charles."
His father was fastening the door against intrusion, and the young man's
heart stood still with apprehension.
Mr. Winthrop turned and looked in his son's face with feverishly bright
eyes that showed their lack of sleep. Then he seated himself in the
arm-chair before the desk, drawing Charles's chair close, that he might
speak in lowered tones.
"Something terrible has occurred, Charles. Your mother does not know
yet. The blow has fallen so suddenly that I find myself unable to
believe it is true. I am dazed. I can scarcely think. Charles, your
only brother, my son----" The old man paused, and with a sudden
contraction of his heart Charles noticed that there were tears coursing
down his father's wrinkled cheeks. The voice quavered and went on:
"Our first-born has been guilty of a great wrong. It is best to face
the truth, my boy. Harrington has committed a crime. I don't see how
it can be thought otherwise by any honest person. I am trying to look
at the facts, but even as I speak the words I cannot realize that they
are true of one of our family."
Charles waited, his eyes fixed upon the old man's face, and a great
indignation growing within him toward the brother who could dare bring
dishonor upon such a father!
Mr. Winthrop bowed his head upon his hand for a moment, as though he
could not bear to reveal the whole truth. Then he roused himself as one
who has need of haste.
"Charles, your brother already has a wife and two little children, yet
he was proposing to wed another woman. He has dared to court and win an
innocent young girl, and to hoodwink her honorable father. And the
worst of it is that he meant to carry it out and marry her! Oh the
shame of it! We are disgraced, Charles! We are all disgraced!" With a
low groan the father buried his face in his hands and bowed himself upon
the desk.
The heart of the young man grew hot. A great desire for vengeance was
surging over him. He arose excitedly from his chair.
"Harrington has done this, father!"
The words burst from his lips more like a judgment pronounced than like
a question or a statement of fact. It was as if the acknowledgment of
his brother's sin were a kind of climax in his thought of that brother,
whom he had been all these years attempting to idealize, as a boy so
often idealizes an elder brother. The words bore with them, too, the
recognition of all the pain and disappointment and perplexity of many
things throughout the years. Charles's finer nature suddenly revolted in
disgust from all that he saw his brother to be.
He stood splendidly indignant, above the bowed head of his father, a
picture of fine, strong manhood, ready to avenge the rights of insulted
womanhood. There before him arose a vision obscuring the walls of the
book-lined library--the vision of a girl, fresh, fair, lovely, with eyes
alight, cheeks aglow, floating hair, and fluttering white drapery,
garlanded in pink and white blossoms that filled the air with the breath
of a spring morning. It blazed upon him with clearness and beauty, and
veiled by no hindering sense of wrong. With a great heart throb of joy,
he recognized that she no longer belonged to his brother.
The thought had scarcely thrilled his senses before he was ashamed of
it. How could he think of joy or anything else in the midst of the
shame and trouble that had fallen upon them all? And most of all upon
the beautiful girl, who would bear the heaviest burden.
True, there was another side to the matter, a side in which she might be
thankful that Harrington's true character had been discovered before
things had gone further; but there was mortification, and disgrace
inevitable. Then, it was to be presumed that she had loved Harrington,
or why should she be about to marry him? Poor child! His heart stood
still in pity as he realized what the sin of his brother would mean to
her.
These thoughts went swiftly through his mind as he stood beside his
father. It seemed to him that in the instant of the elder man's silence
he reviewed the whole catastrophe in its various phases and lived
through years of experience and knowledge. Then his father's trembling
voice took up the story again:
"Yes, Harrington did that!" They were Charles's own words, but somehow,
on his father's tongue, they spoke a new pathos, and again the young man
saw another side to the whole terrible matter. Harrington was the
oldest son, adored of his mother. Though he had been gone from home for
years, he had yet remained her idol until it had seemed his every virtue
had grown to perfection, while all his faults were utterly forgotten.
During his visits, which had been few and far between, the whole family
had put itself out of its routine, and hung upon his wishes. His
stories had been listened to with the deference due to one older and
wiser than any of them could ever hope to be. His wishes had been law,
his opinions gospel truth. Charles recalled how his mother had always
called together the entire family to listen to the reading to one of
Harrington's rare epistles, demanding a solemnity and attention second
only to that required at family worship. These letters always ended
with a description of some new enterprise in which he was deeply
involved, and which required large sums of money. His father and mother
had always managed to send him something to "help out" at such times,
and made no secret of it, rather rejoicing that they were able to do so.
Charles knew that his father owned large and valuable tracts of land,
and was well off; yet it had not always been convenient to send
Harrington large sums of money, and often the family luxuries and
pleasures had been somewhat curtailed in consequence. All such
sacrifices had been cheerfully made for the family idol, by himself as
well as by his three sisters, his maiden aunt, and his father and
mother.
At this critical moment it occurred to Charles to wonder if his father
had ever received any interest from these many sums of money which he
from time to time had put into Harrington's business schemes.
Then his father's voice drowned all other thoughts:
"I do not know how to tell your poor mother!" The trembling tones were
almost unrecognizable to the son. "She ought to know at once. We must
plan what to do. The Van Rensselaers must be told."
He bowed his head with another groan.
The son sat down and endeavored to get a better grasp of the situation.
"Since when have you known this, Father?" he asked keenly.
"Last night. Mother had gone to bed, and I did not disturb her. I felt
I must think it all out--what to do--before I told them; but I cannot
see my way any clearer. It is a most infamous thing to have happened in
a respectable family. Charles, I'm sorry to have to say it, but I'm
afraid your brother is a--a--a--_scoundrel_!"
The old gentleman's face was red and excited as he brought forth the
awful utterance. It was the thought which had been growing in his mind
all through the long night watch, but he had not been willing to
acknowledge it. He arose now and began to pace the room.
"He certainly is, if this is true, Father," said the son. frowning.
"But are you quite sure it is not some miserable blackmailing scheme?
Such stories are often trumped up at the last minute to get money out of
respectable people. I've heard of it in Boston. It is rare, of course,
but it could happen. I cannot think Harrington would do such an awful
thing."
"Son, it is all too true," said the old man sadly. "Do you remember
William McCord? You know he was my trusted farm-hand for years, and I
have kept in touch with him by letter ever since he went out West to
take up a claim on gold land. Well, it was he that brought me the
terrible news. He came last evening, after mother and the girls had
gone upstairs. He did not want to see them and have them question him
till he had told me all. He brought letters and proofs from
Harrington's wife and the minister who married them, and, moreover, he
was an eye-witness to the fact that Harrington lived in the West with
his wife and two children. You yourself know that William McCord could
not tell a lie."
"No," assented Charles; "never."
"Harrington's wife is a good, respectable woman, though not very well
educated. She is the daughter of a Virginia man who went out there to
hunt for gold. He died a couple of years ago, and now the daughter and
her children have no one to look after them. It seems Harrington has
neglected them for the past three years, only coming home once in six
months, and giving them very little money. He has told them a story of
hard luck.
"The wife is desperate now. She has been ill, and needs many things for
herself and the children. At last she learned of Harrington's intended
marriage through William, whose sister had written him the home news.
"She sold what few possessions she had and brought the proceeds to
William, begging him to come on here and find out if the story was true.
William refused to take her money, but started at once, at his own
expense, and came straight to me with the story. Just think of it,
Charles! Our grandchildren actually cold and hungry and almost
naked--our own flesh and blood! Your nephew and niece, Charles."
The younger man frowned. He had very little sympathy at present to
expend upon any possible nephews and nieces. He was thinking of a
lovely girl with eyes like stars. What were cold and hunger compared to
her plight?
"Where is my brother?" The boy looked older than he had ever seemed to
his father as he asked the question.
"I do not know. He has always told us to write to an address in New
York, but often he has not answered our letters for weeks. I am afraid
there is still more to be told than we know. McCord tells me he was
under some sort of a cloud financially out there--some trouble about
shares in a gold mine. I'm afraid he has been speculating. He has
borrowed a great deal of money from me at one time and another, but he
has always told me that he was doing nicely and that some day I should
have a handsome return for all I had put in. But if that is the case,
why should he have dared to involve a sweet and innocent young girl in
it all? Why should he dare do so dreadful a thing!--unless he is under
the impression that his first wife is dead. I cannot think that my boy
would do this thing!"
The father's head dropped upon his breast, but the brother stood erect
with flashing eyes.
"I see it all clearly, Father. He is marrying this girl for her money.
He needs money for some of his schemes, and he is afraid to ask you for
any more, lest you suspect something. He told me once that she was very
rich. I think you are right: my brother is a scoundrel!"
The father groaned aloud.
"But, Father, what are you going to do about it? Have you sent word to
Mr. Van Rensselaer? The wedding is set for to-morrow morning. There
will be scarcely time to stop the guests from coming."
Outside the window, wheels could be heard on the gravel, as the old
coachman drove the family carriage up to the front steps. Pompey, the
stable boy, followed, driving the mare in the carryall.
Almost simultaneously came the hurry of ladies' feet down the staircase,
and the swish of silken skirts. Betty and Cordelia and Madeleine rushed
through the hall and climbed into the carryall, with soft excitement and
gentle laughter. This wedding journey was a great event, and they had
talked of nothing else for weeks.
"Come, Charles. Come, Father, aren't you ready?" called Betty. "It is
high time we started. Mother is all dressed, and Aunt Martha is just
tying her bonnet. Charles, Mother wants you to ride in the carriage with
her this morning; but you are to change off with us by-and-by, so we'll
all have a good look at you."
The father caught his breath and looked helplessly at his son. "I did
not realize it was getting so late," he murmured. "Of course the
journey must be stopped."
"Of course, Father," agreed Charles decidedly. "Go quickly and tell
Mother all about it. I will tell the girls and Aunt Martha," he added.
With a look as though he were going to his death, the older man hurried
up the stairs to his wife, and Charles went out to the piazza. The two
servants stood grinning happily, feeling the overflow of the festive
occasion. Charles could not reveal his secret there.
"Come into the house, a minute, girls. I've something to tell you."
"Indeed, no, Charles!" said Cordelia emphatically. "I will not climb out
over the wheels again. I nearly ruined my pelisse getting in. It is
very dusty. And I have covered myself all nicely for the journey.
Won't it keep?"
"Cordelia, you must come," said the young man imperiously, and stalked
into the house, uncertain whether they would follow him.
In a moment Betty appeared roguishly in the parlor door, whither Charles
had gone.
"They won't come, Charles," she said. "It's no use. If you had news of
an earthquake or a new railroad, they wouldn't stir. Nothing weighs
against one's wedding garments, and Cordelia has taken special pains."
But Charles did not respond to Betty's nonsense in his usual merry way.
"Betty, listen," he said gravely. "An awful thing has happened."
"Is Harrington dead?" asked Betty, with wide, frightened eyes and
blanched face.
"No, but he might better be, Betty. He has a wife and two little
children out West, and he has deserted them to marry again."
Betty did not scream nor exclaim, "How dreadful!" Instead, she sat down
quickly in the first chair at hand.
After an instant's silence, she said in her matter-of-fact way:
"Then there won't be any wedding, of course! And what will that poor
girl do? Has anybody thought about her? Somehow, I'm not surprised.
I've always secretly thought Harrington was selfish. It's like him
never to think how he would make other people suffer. His letters
always put Father and Mother in hot water. Have they told her yet,
Charles? Oh, I wish I could go and help comfort her! I can't think of
anything more mortifying for her."
"Betty, it is good that she will be saved from anything worse. It is
good to have it found out beforehand."
"Oh, yes, of course; but she won't think of that. With all the wedding
guests coming, how can she have time to be thankful that she is saved
from marrying a selfish, bad man? Charles, it is a shame! Somebody
ought to be at hand to step in and take Harrington's place. If I were a
man, I'd throw myself at her feet and offer to marry her. Say, Charles,
why don't you do it yourself?" declared Betty romantically.
The heart of the young man leaped up with a great bound, and a flood of
color went over his face and neck. But the parlor was darkened, and,
moreover, the girls in the carryall were diligently calling; so Betty
vanished to impart the news, and Charles was alone for the moment, with
a new thought, which almost took his breath from him.
Then down the oaken staircase, with soft, lady-like, but decided rustle,
came Madam Winthrop.
Behind her, nervous, protesting, came her husband's anxious footsteps.
"But, Mother, really, it won't do. We couldn't go, you know, under the
circumstances."
"Don't say another word, Mr. Winthrop," Charles heard his mother's most
majestic voice. "I intend to go, and there is no need of further talk.
Depend upon it, Harrington will be able fully to explain all this
impossible story when he arrives, and it is not for his family to lose
faith in him."
"But, Mother, you don't understand," protested her husband, still
hastening after her and putting out a detaining hand.
"Indeed, I do understand," said the woman's voice coldly. "I understand
that my boy is being persecuted. It is you, apparently, who do not
understand. I am his mother, and I intend to stand by him, and not let
a breath of this wretched scandal touch him. The wedding will go on as
planned, of course, and what would the world think if his family were
not present? How could you possibly explain your absence except by
bringing out these most unfatherly suspicions? No, Mr. Winthrop, there
is all the more need of haste, that we may forestall any of these wicked
rumors. Let us start at once."
"But, Janet----"
"No! You needn't 'But Janet' me. I don't wish to hear another word.
I'm going, no matter what you say, and so are Martha and the girls. You
can stay at home if you like, I suppose. You are a man, and, of course,
will do as you please. I will explain your absence the best way I can.
But I'm going! Come, Martha; we will get into the back seat!"
Charles stepped out of the darkened parlor and intercepted his mother.
"Mother, really, you're making a mistake. You have not stopped to think
what you are going into. It won't do for you and the girls to go. I
will go with father----"
But the imperious lady shook her son's hand from her arm as though it
had been a viper.
"Charles, you forget yourself!" she said. "It is not for you to tell
your mother she is making a mistake. You must not think that because
you have been to college you can therefore teach your mother how to
conduct her affairs. Stand out of my way, and then follow me to the
carriage. You are displeasing me greatly. It would have been better for
you to remain in Boston than to come here to talk to your mother in this
way."
The majestic lady marched on her way to the carriage, followed by her
frightened sister-in-law, who scuttled after her tearfully, not knowing
which to dread the most, her sister-in-law's tyranny, the wrath of her
brother, or the scorn of her nephew. The habit of her life had been
always to follow the stronger nature. In this case it was Madam
Winthrop.
Father and son stood looking on helplessly. Then the father called:
"Well, Janet, if you must go, leave the girls at home with Martha."
The aunt drew back timidly from the carriage-step she was approaching.
"Get in at once, Martha!" commanded Madam Winthrop, already established
in the back seat of the coach. "We have no time to waste. Girls, you
may drive on ahead until we reach the cross-roads. Elizabeth, your
conduct is unseemly for such a joyous occasion. What will the neighbors
think to see your flushed, excited face? Wipe your eyes and pull down
your veil. Drive on, Cordelia, and see that Elizabeth's conduct is more
decorous."
She waved the carryall on, and Cordelia and Madeleine, awed and
half-frightened, obeyed, while excitable Betty strove to put by the
signs of her perturbation until she was out of her mother's sight. In
brief whispers she had succeeded in conveying to her sisters a slight
knowledge of what had occurred.
The old coachman and the stable boy stood wondering by and marvelled
that the wedding had gone to Madam's head. They had seen her in these
imperious moods, but had not thought this an occasion for one. Some one
must have displeased her very much, for her to get in a towering rage on
the day before her eldest son's wedding.
"Now, Mr. Winthrop, we are ready, if you and Charles will take your
seats."
Father and son looked at each other in dismay.
"I guess there's nothing for it but to get in, Father. Perhaps you can
bring her to her senses on the way, and I can drive back with her, or
they can stop at an inn, while we go on. It really won't do to delay,
for we have a duty to the Van Rensselaers."
"You are right, Charles. We must go. Perhaps, as you say, we can
persuade Mother on the way. I am dubious, however. She is very set in
her way."
"Mr. Winthrop, you will need only to get your hat," called his wife from
the coach. "I have had your portmanteau and Charles's fastened on
behind. Your things are all here. Your hat is lying on the hall
table."
With a sigh of submission, the strong man obediently got his hat and
took his place on the front seat of the coach, while Charles indignantly
swung himself up beside his father. Then the family started for the
wedding that was not to be.
CHAPTER VII
The long journey was anything but what it had promised to be when it was
anticipated. The carryall containing the three girls headed the
procession. They were talking in subdued and frightened tones,
Madeleine and Cordelia endeavoring to find out from Betty more than the
child really knew. When she could not satisfy their curiosity and
anxiety with facts, she supplied them with running comments on human
nature and her elder brother in particular. Now and again they pulled
her up sharply with: "Betty, be still!" or "I am ashamed of you
Elizabeth. You jump to conclusions. I am sure there must be some
explanation. Charles was very wrong to tell you until he had made sure
about it. You see Mother does not believe the story, or she would never
go."
"Mother wouldn't believe Harrington had done wrong if she saw him do
it," declared Betty irreverently.
"Now, Betty! How you talk! One would think you didn't love
Harrington."
"Well, I don't very much, and that's a fact," shrugged Betty. "Charles
is worth two of him. Harrington always hushes me up when he comes home,
and talks as if I were a baby yet. Besides, he is selfish. Look how he
wouldn't take me to Harriet Howegate's corn-husking when he was home the
last time, just because he was too lazy to change his clothes! I don't
see why I should love him if I don't, just because he happens to belong
to the same family. I'm sure he can't love us much, or he wouldn't have
gone off so long ago and stayed away from us so much."
"Why, Betty!" said Madeleine, shocked. "He had to go and earn his
living and make a man's way in the world."
"No, he didn't. He could have stayed at home and gone into business
with Father, as Father wanted him to. I haven't a bit of patience with
Harrington."
"I'm sure, Betty, that's a very shocking way to talk about your own
brother, and Mother would highly disapprove!" said Madeleine.
"If I were you, I should keep still, Betty," advised Cordelia.
Betty pouted, and a solemn silence settled upon the three as the old
gray horse plodded sleepily over the road. The occupants of the coach
were by no means at ease. Aunt Martha sat shrivelled in the back seat,
with the ready tears coursing silently down her cheeks. She had heard
enough of what her brother had told his wife, to be filled with gloomy
apprehensions. Aunt Martha was always sure of the worst.
Madam Winthrop sat severely silent, with her delicate, cameo features
held high. Her keen blue eyes never wavered, nor did her firm, thin
lips quiver. Apparently, she had not one misgiving, and her only regret
seemed to be that the rest of the family had taken leave of their
senses. She looked straight in front of her, ignoring the sad gray head
of her husband, and the yellow curls of the strong young son with whom
she was offended. They would all see their mistake soon enough, and
meantime she was giving them a bit of a lesson not to doubt the idol of
her heart. To do her justice, she firmly believed she was right, and
was amazed that her husband had taken the attitude he had. Of course
Harrington would not do such a dreadful thing. Such things did not
happen in real life. It was out of the question. She dismissed the
subject with that, and fell to going over her own arrangements and the
wardrobe of the family, with satisfaction.
The sound of the horses' hoofs on the old corduroy road, and the husky
crickets by the wayside, beat a funeral dirge for the heart of the
Father in the front seat. His countenance was heavy, and now and again
he brought forth an audible sigh.
The lugubrious attitude of her family annoyed Madam Winthrop. She
turned to her sister-in-law sharply.
"For pity's sake, Martha, do stop snivelling! One would think you were
going to a funeral instead of to a wedding. I must say I don't think
you honor your nephew very much, showing such distrust in him. Do wipe
your eyes and sit up. If you go on this way, you won't be able to come
to the ceremony to-morrow morning, and you know how that will annoy
Harrington. I must say, Mr. Winthrop, you are acting in a very strange
manner, for the father of such a son."
She always called him Mr. Winthrop when he had offended her. At other
times it was "Father."
Her husband turned in the seat and faced her solemnly. "Janet," he said
sadly, "it's no use for you to try to blind yourself to the truth.
You'll only have it harder to bear in the end. You might as well
understand the awful truth that our boy Harrington has committed a great
sin, and we ought to be thankful that it was discovered before any more
harm was done. You don't seem to see what a task we've got before us to
tell that father and his innocent young daughter that the man in whom
they trusted, our son, has played them false."
"Now, Mr. Winthrop, I don't want to hear another word of such talk. You
must be beside yourself!" Madam Winthrop half arose in her seat and
cried out shrilly: "Stop it, I say! Don't you dare say such words in my
presence again! If you do, I shall get right out of this carriage and
walk! _Walk_, I tell you! And what will the servants think of you
then? You will find out your mistake in due time, of course, and be
ashamed of yourself. Until then I must ask you not to speak to me on
the subject. No, Charles, don't you dare to interfere between me and
your Father again. I have had enough of your disrespect for one day.
Just keep absolutely quiet until you can speak in a proper way. I
simply will not stand such talk."
She sat up with dignity, and spoke to them both as if they were naughty
children. Her husband looked into her eyes sadly for a moment, and then
turned deliberately back to his horses. He knew by former experience
that it was well nigh impossible to convince his wife of anything
against her will. Well, she would have to go on and take the
consequences of her stubbornness. There was no other way. And perhaps
it was as well, for, with her excitable nature, there was no telling
what state it might throw her into, once she realized the truth about
her idolized son. She might lose consciousness and have to be carried
back, and so perhaps delay them. His first duty now was to tell the sad
truth to his old friend Van Rensselaer and his poor daughter. Every
step that the horses took made him shrink more and more from the task
before him. It seemed that his shame and disgrace were being burnt into
his soul with a red hot iron. He kept thinking how he should tell his
story to his host when he reached his journey's end, and the horses'
hoofs beat out the dirge of a funeral; while keeping pace behind, with
decorous bearing, rode the two old servants, pondering what had cast a
shadow over the gay party they had hoped to escort.
As the young man in the front seat of the coach sat and frowned at the
shining chestnut backs of the horses, he was conning over and over a
thought that his sister had put into his heart, and each time it ran
like sweet fire along his veins, until it began to seem a possibility,
and fairly took his breath away.
The day was wonderful. The air was fine and rare, the sky clear, with
not a fleck of cloud to mar the blue--a blue that fairly called
attention to itself as being bluer than ever before. But not one of all
that little company of wedding-goers saw it.
The foliage everywhere was washed fresh for the occasion by a shower
that had passed in the night. Diamonds strung themselves from
grass-blade to grass-blade, and begemmed even the mullein stalks. Late
dandelions flared and gleamed, shy sweet-brier smiled here and there by
the roadside in delicate pink cups, inviting the bees. The birds in the
trees were singing everywhere, and the sweet winds lifted branches and
played a subdued accompaniment. To the soul of the young man, their
music came in happy harmonies, and, while he was not conscious of it,
little by little they began to play him a kind of wedding march, the
joyous melody of his thoughts, now glad, now fearful, yet ever growing
sweeter and more sure of the victorious climax.
He grew presently unconscious of the inharmony behind him: of Aunt
Martha and her efforts not to "sniff"; of his mother's disapproval; and
of his father's heavy heart. He thought only of the girl whom he had
seen upon the hillside, and the smile her eyes had given him as they met
his. Every time he thought upon it now his heart-beats quickened. All
the pent-up flood of emotion that she had set going that spring
afternoon upon the Hudson hillside, and that he had fought bravely all
these weeks, and thought he had conquered, came now upon him with the
power of stored-up energy and swept over his being in a flood-tide of
gladness.
In vain he shamed himself for such unseemly joy when his only brother
was in disgrace. In vain he told himself that the girl-bride would be
plunged into grief when her bridegroom turned out to be no bridegroom at
all. Still his heart would catch the faint melody of the wedding-march
those birds and winds and branches were breathing, and would go singing
along with a new gladness.
The morning was a silent one for the whole party. Even the coachman
checked Pompey's levity when a robin chased a chipmunk across a distant
path, and the old darkey snapped him up sharply when he ventured a
question or a wonder about "Marsa" and "Missus."
But while each held to his own thoughts, and the horses sped willingly
over the miles, in the heart of the young man in the front seat was
growing a steady purpose.
About noon they stopped at an inn to dine, and give the horses a brief
respite.
Madam Winthrop would not lie down, as they urged her, nor would she
permit her husband or her son to talk with her concerning the forbidden
theme. She kept the three girls with her also, that nothing might be
said to them to prejudice them against their brother.
Aunt Martha, however, unable to bear up longer under the scornful
scrutiny of her sister-in-law, was glad to take refuge on the high
four-poster bed that the landlady put at her service, and weep a few
consoling tears into the homespun linen pillow-slip. Aunt Martha was by
no means sure that all was well with the boy whom she adored, though she
acknowledged to herself that he had his weaknesses. Had she not seen
those very weaknesses from babyhood upward, and helped many times to
hide them from his blind mother and adoring sisters? Her fearful soul
accepted the possibility of his sin, yet loved him in spite of it all.
She resented the thought that public opinion would be against Harrington
if he had done this thing, and, could she have had her way, would have
had public opinion changed to suit his special need. She felt in her
secret soul that prodigies like Harrington should not be expected to
follow the laws like ordinary mortals.
Madam Winthrop sat bolt upright in a wooden chair, and eyed her three
daughters suspiciously. Now and then she made a remark about their
conduct at the wedding, and they acquiesced meekly. They had learned
never to dispute with their mother when she was in her present mood.
Charles and his father wandered by common consent into the woods
near-by. It was the son who spoke first.
"Father, I've been thinking all the morning about what you said of
her--Miss Van Rensselaer." He spoke the name shyly, reverently, and his
heart throbbed painfully. He felt himself very young and presumptuous.
The bright color glowed in his face. "It will be terrible for her." He
breathed the words as if they hurt him.
"Yes," assented the father; "I cannot get her out of my mind, the poor
innocent child! Think of Betty, Charles. Suppose it was Betty."
The young man frowned.
"Father, did you ever see her?"
"No," said the older man, wondering at his son's vehemence. "Did you?"
"Yes, I saw her once, when I met Harrington on my way to Boston. I
stopped off with him at the school where she was being educated, and we
saw her. She is beautiful, Father, beautiful, and very young. She
looked as if she could not stand a thing like this, as if it might crush
her. Don't you think we ought to do something for her, to make it
easier? Isn't it our place? I mean--say, Father, in the Bible, you
know, when the older brother died, or failed in any way, the younger
brother had to take up the obligation. Do you understand what I mean,
Father? Do you think I could? I mean, do you think she would let me?
It wouldn't be so public and mortifying, you know, and I think girls
care a great deal about that. Betty would, I'm sure."
The father looked up in astonishment.
"What do you mean, Charles? Do you mean you would marry her?"
"Why, yes, Father, that's what I meant. What do you think of it?"
The boy in him came to the front for an instant and looked out of his
eyes, though he shrank from the blunt way the older man had of stating
facts.
His father eyed him keenly.
"But you're only a boy, Charles, and you're not through college yet.
How could you marry?"
"I'm past twenty-one," boasted the boy, and vanished into the man. A
graver look came out upon his face.
"I could leave college, if it were necessary, or I could go on and
finish. I could work part of the time and take care of her." The last
words he breathed gently, reverently, like a benediction.
The father stopped in the wooded path and grasped his son's hand.
"Boy, you've got good stuff in you! I'm proud of you," he said, lifting
his head triumphantly. "If only your brother had been like that!" Then
he bowed his head in bitter thought.
But the young man's thoughts were not on Harrington now. He grasped his
father's hand, and waited impatiently for further words from him.
"Well, Father?"
The old man lifted his head.
"But, Boy, you do not know her. You have seen her only once. You can't
spoil your own life that way."
A flood of color went over the younger face, and into his eyes came a
depth of earnestness that showed his father that the man had awakened in
his son. He was no longer a boy.
"Father, I do not need to know her. I love her already. I have loved
her ever since I saw her. That was why I did not want to come to the
wedding. I felt that I could not bear it."
The kindly older gaze searched the fine young face tenderly, but the
lover's eyes looked back at him and wavered not.
"Is it so, Son?"--the words were grave. "Then God pity you--and bless
you," he added, with an upward look. "I am afraid there is no easy way
ahead of you. Yet I am proud to call you my son."
After this they walked on silently through the woods, over a pathway of
flecked gold, where the sunlight sifted through the leafy branches. No
sound came to interrupt the silence beyond the whisking of a squirrel or
the flirt of a bird's wings in the branches.
The dinner-bell pealed forth from the inn, and they turned quietly to
retrace their steps. They were almost in sight of the house before
either spoke. Then the father said:
"Son, she does not know you. Have you any idea how she will take all
this?"
"None at all, Father." It was spoken humbly.
"What is your idea? Have you made any plans?"
"Not yet--only, that I shall tell her at once, if I may, and let her
decide. If she is willing, the wedding may go on as planned."
A light came into the older man's face, though he looked troubled.
"Well said, Charles! Perhaps you may succeed. But I fear, I fear.
Nevertheless, your noble action helps me to hold up my head and look her
father in the eye. If I have one son who is a scoundrel, at least I
have one who is not, and who is willing to face his brother's
obligations."
They went in then and sat down to a dinner of which both were able to
partake more enjoyably than either had supposed possible.
"Charles, isn't there going to be an awful time when we get there?"
whispered Betty, as they passed out to the carriages.
"I hope not, Betty," said Charles, with a solemn light in his eyes that
made the girl wonder.
Charles took his seat beside his father with hopefulness, and all that
long afternoon the music of nature rang on; but now to both men the
dirge was almost lost in the swelling and sounding of the wedding march.
CHAPTER VIII
All the afternoon, Madam Winthrop had steadily refused to converse about
her oldest son. The party were nearing the edge of the town where the
Van Rensselaers lived.
Twice Charles had endeavored to bring his mother's mind to the subject,
and once his father had said: "Now, Mother, it is absolutely necessary
that you put aside your attitude and let me tell you all about this
matter." But to all advances she was adamant.
"I shall never allow you to say such wicked things about my son,"
declared the old lady, rising from her seat and attempting to get out of
the coach. They were compelled to give it up and trust to developments.
The stars were coming out when they entered the village streets. The
father called to his daughters to wait a moment, and he stopped the
coach horses. Turning around in his seat, he faced his wife.
"Janet," said he, and his voice was firm as when he was a young man, "it
is best that the family stop at the inn while Charles and I go on to the
house and make the family acquainted with the truth. I wish you and
Martha and the girls to stop here and wait until our return."
The old lady looked ahead impatiently, as if she did not see her
husband.
"I shall do nothing of the kind, Mr. Winthrop," she said. "You may as
well save time by driving on."
The anger was rising in the old gentleman's face. He had been defied
for years and had borne it with fortitude and a measure of amusement.
He had always felt that he could assert himself when he chose. But now
he had chosen, and apparently he had been mistaken all these years. His
wife would not obey. It was mortifying, and especially before his son
and his sister. He turned sharply to Martha, sitting frightened and
meek in the dark corner of the coach.
"Martha, get out," he commanded in a tone she had never disobeyed.
Martha proceeded to obey hastily.
"Don't you do any such foolish thing, Martha Winthrop. You stay right
where you are. I won't have any scenes," said Madam Winthrop.
Martha paused and put her mitted hand on her heart.
"Martha, this is my carriage, and you are my sister, and I tell you to
get out."
Martha had not heard that voice from her brother's lips for forty years.
She got out.
"Pompey, Caesar"--to the two negroes who drove up at that moment--"see
that the ladies are cared for in the inn until our return. Attend to
the other carriage, and tell the young ladies it is my wish that they
remain in the inn parlor until I come back."
With grave dignity, the master of the situation guided his horse past
the carryall and down the dim evening street. Madam Winthrop sat
amazed, with two red spots on her cheeks.
"It seems to me, Mr. Winthrop," she said coldly, when they had gone some
distance, "that you are carrying things with a pretty high hand. If I
had known that such traits would ever develop in you, I am sure I should
never have left the shelter of my father's house."
Her husband made no reply.
As the coach drew up before the fine old house, Mr. Van Rensselaer came
out to greet the arrivals. Madam Winthrop sat up with grave dignity,
and allowed him to hand her down and escort her into the house.
Mrs. Van Rensselaer met her with nervous ceremony in the wide hall and
took her into the stately parlor. Once there, the lady looked about her
as if in search of some one, scarcely noticing her hostess.
"Where is my son?" she asked. "I supposed he would be here. Will you
tell Harrington that his mother wishes to see him at once? It is most
important."
"Your son has not yet arrived," said the other woman, watching her
jealously. "We do not expect him until the morning train."
She mentioned the train with an air of pride, for the new railroad was a
matter of vast importance to the little city. A few miles of railroad
was a wonderful distinction in a land where railroads had just begun to
be. But the guest had no recognition for such things.
"Not here yet? I supposed of course he would have arrived. Then, if it
is convenient, I will go directly to my room, as I am very much
worn-out. No, thank you. I could not eat a mouthful to-night. You may
send me a cup of tea if you please."
Dawn had fled in a panic far into the depths of the garden. Crouched
behind the tall, clipped hedges, her heart beating wildly, she listened,
while frightened tears stood in her eyes. If she had dared, if she had
known where to go, she would have fled out into the dark, unknown world
at that moment, so did her heart revolt at the thought of her marriage.
She listened. The night was very sweet with roses and honeysuckles and
faint waft of mignonette all about her, mingled with the breath of
heliotrope. But only the night sounds came to her--the plaintive
cricket monotonously playing his part in the symphony of the evening;
the tree-toads shrilly piping here and there, with the bass of a frog in
the mill-pond just below the hill; the screech-owl coming in with his
obligato; the murmur of the brook in the ravine not far away; and the
sighing of the night-wind over all.
A sudden hush seemed to have come over the house, with only the faint
echo of voices. Oh, if there were but a place in the world where she
might slip away and never be found! It would be terrible to leave them
that way, with the wedding all prepared, but she would not care what she
did if only she might get away from it all.
The coach had been sent to the stables, and the gentlemen were closeted
with Mr. Van Rensselaer in his library, the room made memorable to Dawn
by so many sorrowful scenes. It was right and fitting that the
revelation should be made within the sombre walls where had been enacted
so many tragedies connected with the little girl.
What passed within that door no one knew exactly, save the three who
took part in the low-voiced conversation. The lady of the house sat in
gloomy mortification within her stately parlor, reviewing with vexed
mind the recent interview between herself and the mother of the
bridegroom. Mrs. Van Rensselaer decided that the other woman was a most
unpleasant person, with whom she wished to have as little to do as
possible in future. It was well that she and her step-daughter had
little in common, if this was the kind of family she was marrying into.
The low tones in the library went on. The lady of the house did not
like the idea of being shut out.
What could they be talking about? How very strange! Had something
happened to the bridegroom? They looked so solemn when they came in.
Mrs. Van Rensselaer caught her breath at the thought. It would be
nothing short of a catastrophe to have the girl-bride on her hands, if
the wedding were to be delayed for any reason. The child was almost
beside herself now with excitement and nervousness. It was positively
uncanny to have her around. She was making herself sick, one could see
that at a glance, even if one didn't love her very much. Of course she
would settle down and be all right after she was married. Girls always
did. This girl was particularly headstrong, and it was as well that her
prospective husband was older than herself, and would be able to control
her wild fancies and put her through wise discipline. Mrs. Van
Rensselaer was one of those who think all women save themselves need
discipline.
While she meditated, Dawn flitted in at the front door noiselessly and
stole up the stair like a wraith, her white dress flashing by the parlor
before her step-mother could sense what it was.
The woman started angrily. It was one of the things about the girl that
vexed her, this stealing softly by and giving no warning that she was
near. Her step-mother named it "slyness."
In a moment more the library door opened and her name was called.
She went into the hall with an attitude that said plainly she felt
insulted by the way things were going.
"Where is Jemima?" asked her husband, and she saw by his face that
something unusual had happened. His look was that he had worn the day
he came home from seeing his dead wife. Jemima indeed! Why did he not
consult her first? She bustled up to the door.
"Jemima has gone to her room," she said decidedly. "By this time she has
retired. It would be better not to disturb her. She has been very
nervous and excited all day."
To the two guests inside the library, the protest sounded like loving
solicitation. Perhaps the woman meant it should. She had been wont to
show her interest thus before Dawn's father, and seldom let him know her
true feeling toward the girl.
Mr. Van Rensselaer's severe brow did not relax. He was used to having
life thicken around him in hard experiences, both for himself and for
those who were dependent upon him.
"It will be necessary for her to know to-night, I think, Maria," he
said. "Sit down and I will give you the facts. It may be best for you
to tell her, after all."
With the injured importance of one who feels she should have been told
at the first, Mrs. Van Rensselaer sat down upon the extreme edge of a
stiff chair, grudgingly, not to seem too eager to be told.
"Maria, Mr. Winthrop has kindly come to inform us of a most unfortunate
state of things relating to the young man who was to have married Jemima
to-morrow morning."
Mrs. Van Rensselaer held her breath, and her face actually blanched with
the vision of the future. "Was to have married!" Then something had
occurred to stop it. Her premonitions had been correct. Well, she
would do something to get that whimsical minx out of her house, any way.
Her husband needn't think she was to live her lifetime out in the same
house with that girl. She set her lips together hard in a thin line of
defence.
"I realize that the whole thing is painful in the extreme to my friend,
Mr. Winthrop, so it is not necessary for us to discuss the matter at
length. It is sufficient for you and my daughter to know that it has
been discovered by Mr. Winthrop that his son Harrington is already
married to a woman who is still living, and who is the mother of his two
children. The situation is most embarrassing on both sides, and it will
be necessary for my daughter to understand it at once."
There was a quick, eager movement of the young man on the other side of
the big desk, but no one noticed him. Mrs. Van Rensselaer was perhaps
the only one in the room whose heart was not wrung with the anguish of
the moment.
"A most unpleasant state of things, Mr. Winthrop," she said sharply,
turning to the elder guest.
The old man bowed his head in assent, too overcome to reply.
"But one for which Mr. Winthrop and his family are in no wise to blame,
of course," said Mr. Van Rensselaer quickly.
"I suppose not," said his wife dryly, in a tone which implied that there
was more than one way of looking at the matter.
"The first thing is to tell Jemima," said her father.
"I'm sure I don't in the least see why," responded his wife. "The first
thing is to plan what is to be done. Jemima is far better off asleep
until we arrange it all. She will make a fuss, of course. Girls always
make a fuss, whatever happens."
Charles eyed the woman indignantly, the color rising in his face.
"But, Mr. Van Rensselaer, I----" he began eagerly.
"Yes, certainly, Mr. Winthrop; I am coming to that. There is another
matter, Maria, that slightly changes the affair. This young man, Mr.
Charles Winthrop, has most thoughtfully offered a suggestion which may
help us out of the dilemma in which we are all placed."
Mrs. Van Rensselaer turned toward him sharply, and saw that he was good
to look upon.
"Well?" she said dryly, as her husband hesitated.
"If Miss Van Rensselaer is willing," put in Charles shyly, with wistful
eyes and a smile that would have melted any but a woman with a heart
made of pig iron.
Mrs. Van Rensselaer pursed her lips at the "Miss" applied to Jemima, and
thought in her heart she would see that "Miss Van Rensselaer" was
willing for anything that, would help them out of this most embarrassing
situation.
"Mr. Winthrop has offered his hand to my daughter," went on the father,
dropping his eyes and getting out the sentence stiffly. It was all
painful to him. Somehow, in the last few minutes, it had come to him
that she who had been Mary Montgomery would think he had bungled her
daughter's life most terribly. He was shaken with the thought. It had
been a relief to think that the girl was to be happily married. But
now!
"He proposes to marry her himself, to-morrow morning, at the hour
appointed for the other marriage," went on Mr. Van Rensselaer.
"With her consent, of course," put in Charles.
"Very commendable, I'm sure," commented Mrs. Van Rensselaer, while she
did some rapid thinking.
Here was her chance. The girl must marry this young man, whether she
would or no. All those relatives who were coming to-morrow should not
have a chance to scoff at her proud arrangements. The step-mother
desired that they should all see how well she had done for the girl who
was not her own. Besides, he was a goodly youth, full as handsome as
the other man, and of the same family. What was there to object to?
The girl might even be pleased, though there was no forecasting that.
Such a queer girl would probably do the opposite from what was expected
of her. The matter with her was that she was too young to know what she
did want, and in the present circumstances it was best for her that some
one else should decide her fate. She--Mrs. Van Rensselaer--would decide
it. She would take matters into her own hands and see that all went the
way it should go. Meantime, she picked at a bit of thread on her
immaculate gown, and, to make time for thought, murmured again:
"Most commendable, I'm sure."
Charles's face lighted with hope. He was ready to fall upon the
cold-looking lady's neck and embrace her, if that would hasten matters.
He thought she looked more pleasing than when he had first seen her.
"I think, Mr. Van Rensselaer, you would do well to leave this matter in
my hands now. As you say, it is a very delicate situation, and one that
must be handled most carefully. I will go to Jemima at once and talk
with her. I must break the news gently----"
"Of course, of course--the poor lamb!" murmured the kind old father of
the reprobate bridegroom.
"She is very nervous and quite unstrung with the day's preparation,"
went on the step-mother, the more to work her will upon the feelings of
those present.
"Of course, of course--poor child! Don't distress her any more than is
necessary, I beg. It is dreadful for her, dreadful!"
"But it isn't quite as if she had never seen me," put in Charles
wistfully. "Tell her I have loved her from the very first sight I had
of her----"
The woman turned the chilly search-light of her eyes upon the young
man's ardent face, and a sense of foreboding passed over him. Poor
soul, she was only wondering what it must be like to have some one talk
in that way about one. Still, she was keen to see an advantage, and
knew it would help her in the task she had set herself to get rid of her
step-daughter.
"Whatever you think best, Maria," assented Dawn's father wearily. He
was glad, after all, not to have to tell the girl. He had come to fear
her eyes, which were like her mother's, and her temper, which was his
own.
"Of course, of course," said old Mr. Winthrop.
Dawn's father bowed once more his assent. In his heart he heard again
the words: "You have no right. You have no right!" Would the sin of his
youth never be expiated by sorrow?
Mrs. Van Rensselaer arose.
"I will go up and talk with her," she said coolly, as though it were
quite an ordinary matter under discussion.
"You will ask her to come down and let me talk to her?" asked Charles,
following her into the hall. "I think perhaps I can make her see it
better than any one else."
The woman looked him over, frowning. This ardent youth was going to be
hard to control. She must be wary or he would upset all her plans, as
well as his own.
"I will see what is best," she answered coldly. "Remember she has
retired, and this will be a great shock to her. It would be better for
you to give her a little time to recover and to think it over. Leave it
to me. I will do my best for you."
She tried to smile, but conveyed rather an expression of arrogance than
of anything else.
"Of course." The young man drew back thoughtfully. "Do not hurry her."
She passed up the stairs, and Charles wandered out the front door and
into the moonlit garden. He stood and listened to the harmony of sound
and looked up reverently toward a chamber window where glimmered a
candle-light. He wondered if even now she was listening to his message,
and his heart was lifted high with hope.
CHAPTER IX
When Mrs. Van Rensselaer came down stairs a half-hour later she found
Charles in the parlor anxiously awaiting her coming. Her face was bland
and encouraging. She tried to smile, though smiles were foreign to her
nature.
"Well," she said, seating herself and signing to the young man to take a
chair opposite her, "she is naturally very much shocked."
"Of course she would be," said Charles, somewhat sadly, and waited.
"I think, as I said, it will take her a few hours to become adjusted to
the new state of things, and it would not be well for you to see her
to-night. There will be plenty of time in the morning. The hour was
set late, so that all the relatives could arrive, you know. She will
undoubtedly accept your proposal, but you must give her a little time."
"You think she will?" asked the young man, brightening. "Oh, that is
good! Certainly I can wait until morning. Poor little girl, it must be
very hard for her!"
A hard glitter in his hostess's eye did not encourage conversation along
these lines, and he soon excused himself to go and meet his father, who
had gone to the inn to see that the rest of the family were comfortable
for the night.
The household settled to quiet at last, but it was like the sullen
silence before a storm.
A heavy burden had fallen upon Mr. Van Rensselaer. He seemed to be
arraigned before his first wife's searching eyes, for the trouble that
had befallen their child. He could not get away from the vision of her
dead face.
His wife spent the night in feverish planning for the morning, a
fiendish determination in her heart to be rid of her step-daughter, no
matter to what she had to resort in order to compass it.
Mr. Winthrop had leisure now to think upon his oldest son, and the sin
which he had been about to commit, and tears trickled down his cheeks as
he watched through the long hours of the night. His wife vouchsafed him
no word or look. To all appearances, she was asleep, but no one ever
knew what struggles were going on within her soul. Perhaps she was
holding herself in abeyance for the coming of the beloved son who would
explain all.
In the spacious chamber assigned to him, Charles spent much of the night
in a vision with a white-robed girl upon a hillside, and his waking
visions and those sleeping were so blended that he was scarce aware when
starlight merged into morning, and he heard the birds twitter in the
branches near his window.
Of all that household, only Dawn slept. Her heart, bowed with its
burden of apprehension, had reached the limit of endurance, and the long
lashes lay still upon the white cheeks, while her soul ceased from its
troubling for a little while.
She awoke with a start of painful realization, while yet the first
crimson streak of morning lay in the east. Its rosy light reminded her
of the day, and what it was to mean for her. With a sound that was like
both a sob and a prayer, she rose quickly, and, slipping on the little
white gown she had worn the evening before, nor stopping to do more than
brush out the mass of curls, she hastened stealthily down the stairs
and, taking care to close the door behind her that her escape should not
be noticed, went out into the garden. She would slip back quietly,
before the guests were astir, she told herself. She wanted one more
hour to herself in the dewy garden, before life shut her in forever from
freedom and her girlhood.
Five minutes later, her step-mother, in dressing-gown and slippers,
crossed the hall hastily and pushed open the girl's door. She had
fallen asleep toward morning, and had slept later than she had intended.
But she had her plans carefully laid, and determined to settle the
girl's part before any one was up.
At that same instant, Charles, whose heart was alive for the
possibilities of the new day, stepped out on the balcony in front of his
window, and with easy agility swung himself over the railing and dropped
to the terrace beneath. He was too impatient to sleep longer, and felt
that somehow he would be nearer his heart's desire if he got out into
the dewy morning world.
He walked slowly down the carefully tended paths, into the garden,
stopping to notice a bird's note here, the glint of dew-drops over the
lawn, the newly opened flowers in the beds of poppies, bachelor buttons,
foxglove, asters, and sweet-peas. A great thorny branch that must have
evaded the gardener's careful training reached out as if to catch his
attention, and there upon its tip was a spray of delicate buds, just
half blown, exquisite as an angel's wings, and with the warm glow of the
sunrise in the sheathlike, curling petals. Were they white or pink or
yellow? A warm white, living and tender, like a maiden's cheek. He
reached for the spray and cut it off, feeling sure he could make his
peace with the mistress of the house when he confessed his theft. He
stood a moment looking at the beautiful roses, one almost full blown,
the other two just curling apart, like a baby trying to waken. He drank
in their fragrance in a long, deep breath, and then, thinking his
fanciful thoughts of the girl to whom he had given his heart so freely
before he yet knew her, he walked slowly on to the little arbor hid
among the yew trees.
Mrs. Van Rensselaer stood in the doorway of Dawn's room, aghast,
scarcely able to believe her eyes. Yes, the girl was gone. Where? was
her instant thought. Perhaps she had fled, and would make them more
trouble. A great fear clutched at the woman's heart lest she had made a
terrible mistake by not talking the matter over with her step-daughter
the night before, and making her understand what she was to do. Now,
perhaps, it would be found out by them all, and by her husband in
particular, that she had not yet told the girl anything. Mrs. Van
Rensselaer had a decided fear of her husband. Their wills had never
really clashed so far, but for some years she had had a feeling that if
they ever did, he would be terrible. She shrank back with a wild
heating of her heart, and looked about the shadowy hall as if she
expected to find the girl lurking there. Then her stern common-sense
came to the surface, and she went boldly into the room and made a
systematic search. It did not take but a minute to make sure that Dawn
was not there, and that wherever she was she had taken nothing with her,
save the clothes she had worn the evening before. It suddenly occurred
to the step-mother that she ought to have gone into the room before
retiring last night and made sure that her charge was there; but so sure
had she been that she had heard Dawn come in, it had not occurred to her
to do it. Besides, where could the girl go? She was very likely
maundering about that dull old garden she had haunted ever since her
return from school.
With that, Mrs. Van Rensselaer looked out of the window, just in time to
catch sight of her young guest cutting the roses. With keen
apprehension, she saw what might be about to happen, and knew that
instant action was the only thing that could prevent a catastrophe.
Regardless of dressing-gown and slippers, and of the night-cap which
concealed her scant twist of hair, she descended the stairs, strode out
the front door and down the garden path, coming in sight of the young
man just as he turned the corner of the yew hedge into the walk that led
into the green arbor.
Charles stopped suddenly, for there sat Dawn in her little white gown,
with her head bowed upon her arms, on the rustic table, and her wealth
of dark curls covering her. Her young frame shook with sobbing, yet so
quietly did she weep that he had not heard her.
Her ear, alert with apprehension, caught the sound of his foot upon the
gravel, and she raised her head as suddenly as he had stopped.
She looked at him with frightened eyes, out of which the tears had fled
down her white cheeks. The face was full of anguish, yet sweet and
pitiful withal, framed in its ripple of dark hair.
One instant she looked at him as if he were a vision from whence she
could not tell, then that great light grew in her eyes, as he had seen
it on the hillside, and before he knew what he was doing he had smiled.
Then the light in her eyes grew into an answering smile and lit up her
whole beautiful, sorrowful face. It was like a rainbow in the pale dawn
of the morning, that smile, with the tear-drops still upon her lashes.
"Jemima, what on earth!" broke in the harsh voice of her step-mother.
"You certainly do take the craziest notions! You out here in that rig
at this time in the morning! I guess you didn't count on company rising
early, too. And your hair not combed either! I certainly am mortified.
Run in quick and get tidied up. There's plenty to do this morning,
without mooning in the garden. You'll excuse her"--to the guest. "She
had no idea any one else would be out here so early."
The smile had gone from the girl's face, and instead the fright had come
back at sound of her tormentor's jangling voice. She looked down at her
little rumpled frock, put back her hair with trembling hand, and a flood
of sweet, shamed color came into the white face, just as the sun burst
up behind the hedge and touched the green with rosy morning brightness.
Without a word in reply, she turned to go, but her eyes met those of
Charles with a pleading that went to his heart, and his eyes answered
unspeakable things, of which neither knew the meaning, though each felt
the strange joy they brought.
As he stood back to let her pass, he held out to her the spray of lovely
rosebuds, and without a word she took them and went swiftly on into the
house. Not a word had passed between them, yet each felt that something
wonderful had happened.
Dawn looked neither to right nor to left, fearing lest she should see
some one less welcome, and so she fled to her room, with the sound of
her step-mother's clanging voice, uttering some commonplaces about the
morning and the garden, floating to her in indistinct waves.
"You will let me see her now just as soon as she is ready to come down?"
Charles asked eagerly at the door.
"I will talk with her at once, and let you know what she says," answered
the vexed lady evasively. She was all out of breath and flurried with
the anxiety lest she had been too late. It had been a narrow escape.
She did not like to begin an important day like this with being
flustered. Besides, she had become conscious of her night-cap, the ugly
lines of her dressing-gown, the flop-flop of her slippers. A long wisp
of hair had escaped from her cap and was tickling her nose, as she
ascended the stairs with as much dignity as the circumstances and her
slippers allowed, in full sight of the ardent lover.
"Well, Jemima Van Rensselaer, I hope you're satisfied!" she flared out,
as soon as she was inside the girl's door. "What on earth took you out
in the wet at this unearthly hour? And on your wedding day, too! I
should think you'd be ashamed! I declare I shall be glad to my soul
when this day's over and I can wash my hands of the responsibility of
you. If your father knew the freaks and fancies and the queer actions
of you I'm not sure what he wouldn't do to you! Now, look here! Sit
down. I want to talk to you."
But Dawn had flung herself upon her bed in a paroxysm of tears, and was
smothering her wild sobs in the pillow. She did not hear a word.
Nor could threats nor protests, nor even a thorough shaking, bring her
out of it until the tears had wept themselves out. But finally she lay
quiet and white upon the bed, and even the hard-hearted woman who did
not love her was stirred to a sort of pity for the abject woe that was
upon her face.
"Say, look here, Jemima"--even the hated name brought forth no sign from
the girl--"now put away all this foolishness. Girls always feel kind of
queer at getting married and making a change in life. I did, myself."
Dawn wondered indifferently if her step-mother had ever been a girl.
She certainly had not been one when she married Dawn's father.
"You'll feel all right once you get in your own home and have things the
way you want them around you."
Dawn shuddered. She would have _him_ around her.
"Now, do get up and wash your face. A bride oughtn't to look as if she
was just getting over the measles. Besides, you'll be wanted pretty
soon to go downstairs----"
"Oh!" Dawn involuntarily put her hand over her heart. "Must I go down
and see all those dreadful people? Couldn't I just stay here
till--till--till it's time?"
Now, this was exactly what Mrs. Van Rensselaer wanted her to say, and,
moreover, had been counting upon. If Dawn had assented to going down,
her step-mother would have found some excuse for keeping her upstairs.
But she did not wish the girl to know it, so she assumed a look of mild
disapproval.
"It's very queer for you not to want to meet your mother-in-law and
father-in-law, and all your new sisters----"
Dawn shuddered more violently, and clasped her hands quickly over her
eyes, as if to shut out the unpleasant vision of her new kindred.
"Oh, no, no, please!" she besought, looking up at her step-mother with
more earnest pleading than she had ever shown her before.
"Well"--grimly--"I suppose it can be managed, but you'll want to have a
talk with him that's so soon to be your husband----"
"Oh, no, no!" cried Dawn wildly. "I do not want to see him. I cannot
talk with him now. I could never, never, go through that awful ceremony
afterward if I were to see him now. I should run away or something. I'm
sure I should. I don't want to see anybody until I have to."
"He'll think it very strange. I don't see how I can explain it. He's
very anxious to talk to you. He sent you a message last night, but you
were asleep."
So that was what the knock had meant! Dawn was glad she had not
answered it.
"Oh, please, please," she said, clasping her hands in the attitude of
pleading, "couldn't you just explain to him that I'm a very silly girl,
but I should like just these last few minutes to myself. Tell him that
if he has any message, please to tell it to you, and to let me be by
myself now. Tell him he doesn't know how a girl feels when she is going
to stop being a girl. Tell him, please, that if he has any sympathy for
me at all, he won't ask to see me now. It is only a little while, and I
want it to myself."
Her great pleading eyes met Mrs. Van Rensselaer's cold gaze, and her
whole slender figure took an attitude of intense wistfulness. The elder
woman, cold and unloving as she was, could not but acknowledge that the
girl was very beautiful. Her heart might have been touched more had it
not been for the gnawing thought that this child's mother had been the
canker-worm which had blighted the step-mother's whole life.
She turned grimly from the girl, well content that her plans were coming
out as she desired, yet not entirely comfortable in mind or conscience.
Almost she determined to risk telling the girl everything, yet dared
not, lest she utterly refuse to be married even at this late hour.
"Well, I suppose you must have your own way. You always have," she said
grimly.
Dawn wondered when.
"I'll do my best to explain your state of mind," continued Mrs. Van
Rensselaer, "though I'm sure I don't know how he'll take it. It's my
opinion he isn't going to have a bed of roses through life, being a
husband to you, any way, and I suppose he may as well begin to learn."
With which unsympathetic remark, she went heavily out of the girl's
room, and into her own, where she speedily got herself into her wedding
garments. A red spot burned in either sallow cheek, but her mouth wore
the line of victory. So far she had carried out her schemes well.
CHAPTER X
At breakfast time, as the other guests were coming downstairs, Mrs. Van
Rensselaer beckoned Charles inside the dining-room door, and gave him
his message in a low tone.
"It will be all right, Mr. Winthrop. Your offer will be accepted
gratefully, but she asks you to be kind enough to leave her to herself
until the time for the ceremony. She is so much shaken by this whole
thing that she is afraid to talk about it, lest it will unnerve her.
She says she does not need to talk it over, that you are very kind, and
if you have any message, you can send it by me after breakfast."
"Thank you, thank you!" said Charles, his face bright with the joy of
knowing that his strange suit had been successful. He was disappointed,
of course, not to see the girl at once, but it would not be long before
she was his wife, and he could talk with her as much as he pleased.
After all, there was something wonderful in her trusting him enough to
marry him, when she had seen him but twice. Had she, perhaps, had the
same feeling about him that he had about her? Had that been the
explanation of the light in her eyes?
These thoughts played a happy trill in his heart as he greeted his
father and mother and seated himself at the table. All through the
meal, he was planning the message he would send to his beloved.
When her step-mother had left the room, Dawn had fastened the door
securely against all intrusion. She was determined to have to herself
what little time was left.
On the couch, under her window was spread the beautiful frock which her
step-mother had prepared for her to wear. It was of white satin, rich
and elaborate, and encrusted with much beautiful lace, which had been in
her father's family for years, and was yellow with age. It was
traditional that all the brides of the house had worn these rare laces.
Dawn hated the frock and the lace. She would much rather have worn a
simple muslin of her own mother, but as the marriage was not to her
taste, why should her dress be, either? What mattered it? Let them all
have their way with her.
Mrs. Van Rensselaer had taken much pride in preparing the beautiful
garments, but Dawn knew why. She knew that it was for others to look
upon, so that they would praise the step-mother for having been so good
to the child who had been thrust upon her care under circumstances
which, to put it mildly, were unpleasant. It spoke of no loving
kindness toward her.
And so Dawn did not go over to the couch, as many another girl might
have done, to examine again the filmy hand-embroidered garments, the
silk stockings, and the dainty satin slippers, sewed over with
seed-pearls that were also an heirloom in the family. They meant to her
nothing but signs of her coming bondage.
Instead, she went to the little three-legged mahogany stand, where she
had placed in a tall pitcher her spray of rosebuds. She bent over to
take in their delicate fragrance, and the eyes of him who had given them
to her seemed to be looking into her soul again, as twice they had
looked before.
It was a strange thing--and she thought of it afterward many times--that
she did not yet know who he was, and had never stopped to question. It
had not even occurred to her to wonder if he were a relative or only a
friend, or how he came to be in her home. She accepted him as she would
have accepted a respite in some quiet place for her fevered spirit, or
the visit of an angel with a message of strength from heaven. She had a
vague feeling that if he had come before things might have been
different.
She knelt beside the stand and let her hot cheek rest against a cool
bud; she touched her lips to another, and then laid the roses on her
eyelids. It seemed almost like a pitying human hand upon her spirit,
and comforted her tired heart. She felt that she was growing old, very,
very old, in these last few hours, to meet the requirements of her
wedding day, and the touch of the buds seemed to steady and help her, as
her mother's hand and lips might have done.
By and by she would have to get up and put on those fine garments lying
over there in the morning sunlight, and go downstairs, for them all to
stare at her misery; but now she would forget it all for a little while,
and just think of her new-found friend, who had looked at her with such
a wonderful smile--a smile in which there seemed no place for
fault-finding or sternness or grim solemnity--the things which had
seemed to make up the main part of her girlhood life.
Meantime, Mr. Winthrop and his host had gone to meet the train, upon
which the expectant bridegroom would arrive.
As they neared the tavern that served as a station for the new railroad,
they saw an old man, a woman, and two little children sitting upon a
settle on the front stoop. The man arose and came a step or two toward
them, and Mr. Winthrop saw that it was William McCord.
He seemed embarrassed and he spoke apologetically:
"Mr. Winthrop, sir, I don't jest know what you'll think about me bein'
here--I don't, and I'm sorry's I can be about it; but, you see, I knowed
Harrington pretty well. I knowed he might find a way to smooth it all
over and pull the wool over your eyes, and I'd passed my word I'd come
here with her and stop the marriage, if so be it turned out you couldn't
or wouldn't feel called upon to do so. I didn't count on your comin'
down to the train. You see, we ben watchin' every train sence yesterday,
to make sure he didn't get away to the house without our seein' him.
That poor girl there ain't et scarce a mouthful sence she started from
home--only just a drop o' coffee now an' then--and she ain't slep'
neither. She's jest keepin' alive to hunt him up and try to persuade
him to come home to her an' the children. You see, I had to let her
come. I couldn't say no. She was up here day 'fore yesterday, when I
come to see you. She didn't want I should tell you, because she ain't
got the clo'es and fixin's she'd like to hev you see her in, but she was
determined to come----"
He paused and looked back toward the bench where the woman and the
children sat.
Mr. Winthrop's face had taken on a look of distress as he recognized
William McCord. He turned to his companion and explained in a low tone,
"This is the man who brought me the evidence."
Mr. Van Rensselaer regarded the man with keen eyes, and decided at once
that any word from a man with such a face was as good as an affidavit.
When William looked toward the woman her worn face flamed crimson, then
turned deadly white again. She must have been unusually pretty not so
very many years ago, but sorrow, toil and poverty had left their
ineradicable marks upon her face and stripped her of all claim to beauty
now. Her dress was plain, and as neat as could be expected under the
circumstances. Her roughened hair showed an attempt to put it into
order, and her eyes looked as though she had not slept for many nights.
In spite of her shrinking, there was a dignity about her. The bony hand
that held the youngest child wore a wedding ring, now much too large for
the finger.
The oldest child, a girl apparently of five, had yellow hair and rather
bold blue eyes that reminded Mr. Winthrop startlingly of his eldest
son's when he was a small boy. The youngest, a sallow, sickly boy,
looked like his mother.
The kindly face of Mr. Winthrop was overspread with trouble, but he
grasped the humbler man's hand warmly:
"That's all right, William," he said heartily. "I suppose she felt she
must come, and there's no harm done. Only, for our friend Mr. Van
Rensselaer's sake, keep the matter as quiet as possible."
"Certainly, certainly, Mr. Winthrop, and thank you, sir," said the old
man gratefully.
Then he looked questioningly toward the woman, and took a step in her
direction.
"Alberty, this here is his father," said William McCord and withdrew
hastily.
Mr. Van Rensselaer at once engaged him in earnest conversation, giving
the other man opportunity to talk with his unknown daughter-in-law
without being observed.
The woman looked up abashed into the kindly eyes bent upon her. Yet she
felt the right was on her side, and she had no need to quail before any
one.
"It has given me great sorrow, madam, to learn of my son's behavior," he
began. "It is particularly distressing to us because he is our first
born, and deeply loved by us." He paused, overcome by his emotion, and
the dry-eyed woman, who looked as if she had long ago shed all the tears
she had to shed, glanced up wonderingly and said in a voice that
betrayed her lack of culture:
"Yes, that's one trouble with him: folks always like him too well. He
thinks he can do anything he wants, and it won't make no diff'runce.
But he can't go no further with me. I've jest made up my mind to take a
stand, even ef I have to go to that rich girl and show her them
childern."
The father in him almost shuddered at the vernacular. Of what could
Harrington have been thinking when he married this woman--Harrington,
who had been brought up amid the refinements of life, and been almost
too sensitive to unpleasant things? It was the old story of a pretty
face, and a boy far from home and acquaintances, with no one to advise,
and no danger of being found out.
"I used to like him a lot myself," went on the tired voice, "an' I might
even yet ef he'd behave himself and stay home, an' pervide good fer us
like he used to." There was a pleasant drawl to her tone, like a weary
child's. The father's heart was touched.
"Has my son sent you money during his absences?" The question had to be
asked, but it cut the old gentleman to the heart to speak the words.
She turned dull eyes on him.
"Never a cent! He always said he was havin' a hard time to get money
enough to keep goin', business was so bad, but I look notice he was
dressed up good and smart every time he come home, which wa'n't often."
She sighed as if it did not matter much.
"I could stand it all," she began again in her monotonous tone, "but I
can't stand him gettin' married again. It ain't right, and it ain't the
law, an' I knew ef I didn't stop it, nobody would, so I come on."
"That was right," sighed the old gentleman, fumbling in his pocket,
"perfectly right. Here, I want you to take this with you."
He handed her a roll of bills, but she drew back, a red spot coming in
either sallow cheek.
"I ain't an object of charity, thank you. I put a mortgage on pap's
shack to git the money to come out here, but when I get back I've got
plenty of work, an' I can pay it off in a year or so."
"This is not charity," said the disconcerted old gentleman. "This
belongs to you. I often lend Harrington money, and sometimes give him
some, and this was to be given to him. I think it is safer with you.
He can work for his own after this, and I will see that all I should
have given him comes to your hands. I have your address. Take it for
the children. I guess I have a right to give something to my own
grandchildren," he said with a great stretch of his pride, looking down
at the two forlorn little specimens of childhood hiding, half
frightened, behind their mother's skirts.
The woman melted at once, the first warm tinge of life springing into
her eyes at the mention of her children as his relatives.
"Oh, if you put it that way, I'll take it o' course. It ain't no fault
of theirs that their father don't do right by me, and they do need a
sight of things I can't manage to get anyhow. Last winter Harry was
sick for four months--he's named after his pa, Harry is." She pushed
his hair fondly out of his eyes, and, moistening her fingers at her
lips, rubbed vigorously at a black streak on Harry's nose, at which he
as vigorously protested.
But the train was near at hand. Even then the distant rumble of its
wheels could be heard.
Mr. Van Rensselaer and William McCord drew near, the latter with an
attitude of deferential expectancy.
"Mr. Winthrop," said his host, "would it not be well to let your son's
wife meet him first?"
The old father bowed. He saw at once the wisdom of this.
"I'd like ye to stand where ye could get a glimpse of his face when he
first catches sight o' his wife. It will be a better proof that I've
told ye the truth than all the words I've said to ye," whispered
William.
"I have never doubted your word, William," said the father sadly.
With much shouting and blowing of the trumpet, the morning train
lumbered in, and the passengers began rapidly to emerge. There were
loud talk, and tooting of the horn, and a clatter of machinery, as the
fireman jumped down and attended to some detail of the engine's
mechanism. Some said he did this to show off before the gaping crowd,
who had not yet grown used to the fact that a machine could draw a
number of loaded carriages through the country, without the aid of
horses.
The two old gentlemen had rapidly withdrawn into a secluded place, by a
wide-spreading apple-tree.
CHAPTER XI
One of the first to get out of the carriages was Harrington Winthrop. A
high stock held his chin well tilted in the air, his gray trousers were
immaculate, and his coat fitted about his slender waist as trimly as any
lady's. He wore a high gray beaver hat and carried a shiny new
portmanteau. Altogether, he looked quite a dandy, and the eyes of his
waiting wife filled with a light of pride even while her heart quaked.
Only an instant she paused to watch him. He was making straight for the
Van Rensselaer carriage, which stood not far away, and which he supposed
had been sent to bring him to the house. He walked with an importance
and pride that any one might see. He did not take note of any one on
the platform, though he was conscious that many were watching him.
Then, suddenly, the woman with the two little children clinging to her
skirts, stepped in his way. The little girl looked up into his face
with bold blue eyes, and cried out: "It's my pa! It's my pa! Oh,
doesn't he look pretty?"
The two men standing close together under the apple-tree were near
enough to hear the child's cry, and many bystanders turned and looked at
the fine gentleman beset by the poor-looking woman and children.
Harrington Winthrop turned his elegant self about with a start and found
himself face to face with the worn shadow of the woman who for a time
had been his plaything, and whom he had tossed aside as easily and as
carelessly as if she had been a doll.
The start, the pallor, the quick, furtive side-glance, all told their
tale to the watchers, without other need of words. Then anger surged
into young Winthrop's face, and he cried out:
"Stand back, you vagabonds! What have I to do with you? Get out of my
way, woman! There is a carriage waiting for me."
But the woman stood her ground, with grim determination, great red waves
of restrained anger marking her face and forehead, as if he had struck
her with his words. She looked up at him. She had planned it all for
so many hours, and now she was calm in this terrible crisis. It would
not do to make a public disturbance. Neither for his sake nor for her
own, did she wish to have people see or hear, if it could be avoided, so
she had schooled herself to be self-controlled.
"Harrington," she said, speaking low and rapidly, "I'm your wife, and
you know it. I've come to keep you from an awful sin, and I will do it.
You can't forgit me an' the children, and marry a rich girl. It would
be wicked. But I've fixed it so you can't do it, any way. If you'll
come off quiet with me now, I won't say a word to disgrace you here
where I s'pose folks knows you; but if you try to git away from me, I'll
tell the whole world who I be, an' prove it too!"
Now, if the young man had known that there were those watching who knew
his story he would have been more careful, but his casual glance about
the platform had given him no hint of any but the villagers, few of whom
he knew even slightly. Yet his wife's face and voice were such that he
thought it the part of wisdom to temporize; so he dropped his angry
manner and spoke in a low tone. But it happened that the two witnesses
under the apple-tree had also, by common consent, moved toward him. With
William McCord in their rear, they came and stood quite close to
Harrington, and though he did not see them, every word that he spoke was
audible.
"Look here, Alberta, what in the name of common sense are you doing up
here? Isn't it hard enough for me to have to work and scrape and do all
in my power to get my business going again, so that I can come home to
you and the children and keep you in the way you ought to be kept,
without having you come traipsing around here in such clothes as that?
Don't you know you'd ruin my business if anybody thought you belonged to
me? Everybody thinks I'm a successful business man, and they must think
so or I'm lost and shall never come back to you. Here, take this money.
A man just paid me a bill that he has been owing me for two years, and I
needed the money to help me in a new deal, but as you are here you'll
have to have it to get home with. Now, run along back, and take good
care of the children till I come home a rich man. Then we'll live like
folks. And what is all this nonsense you are talking about my marrying
a rich girl? How ever could you get such an idea? Why, I couldn't
marry anybody as long as you are my wife. You must have heard some
foolish gossip. Take it quick and run along, or people will be looking
and talking, and I shall be ruined."
The thin hand of the wife went out to the money he offered her, but
instead of taking it, she struck it into the air, and it fell scattering
in every direction. Suddenly the young man became aware of the nearness
of others, and, looking up, he saw in quick succession his father, Mr.
Van Rensselaer, and William McCord!
He knew at once that they had heard every word he had spoken to his
wife, even before their condemning eyes had searched his soul. The
presence of William McCord made it plain to him that they had known the
story before his arrival, and he realized instantly that he had given
the final testimony against himself.
It was too late to turn back and deny knowledge of the woman. There
stood his father's former farm manager, who had lived in the Western
town where Harrington had married his wife. That McCord would ever come
East again and bring back tales against him had not occurred to the
careless young scapegrace. McCord was a quiet, silent man, who went
about his own business, and seldom, if ever, wrote letters. Young
Winthrop had never given an uneasy thought to him, but now he stood and
looked at him in growing dismay.
Turning, Harrington met his father's passionate, loving reproach, his
wife's bitter hopelessness, and the scorn of the man he had hoped soon
to call his father-in-law.
The voice of Mr. Winthrop broke out in bitterness: "Oh, my son, my son!"
and the father's kind face was turned away. He was weeping.
This kind of reproach had ever angered Harrington Winthrop beyond all
endurance. It seethed over his frightened, fretted spirit now like acid
in a wound. The voice of the trainman cried out, "All aboard!" the
trumpet sounded, and the wheels moved. The fireman jumped on, board.
Then Harrington Winthrop grasped his portmanteau, pushed aside his
frightened children, who were eagerly gathering up the scattered money,
and sprang into a vacant carriage. His game was up and he knew it.
With a wild cry, the wife caught up her little boy, and, dragging her
little girl, rushed after him. A couple of men standing by pushed her
up into the carriage with her husband, which happened to be occupied by
no one else. Before he had time to turn about and notice what had
happened, the train was going rapidly on its way, and the reunited
family had ample opportunity to discuss their situation. Harrington
Winthrop had completed the last link in the chain of evidence against
him: he had fled.
Mr. Van Rensselaer stood looking after the vanishing train with
satisfaction. He had watched the changing expressions on the face of
the young man who had expected to become the husband of his only
daughter: the cruelty, the craven fear, the hate, and the utter
selfishness of the man! Suppose his daughter had stood where that poor
wife had stood, and begged of him to come home to her and care for her!
What an escape!
The daughter who had been the object of so little of his thought or care
had suddenly become dear to him. Mary's daughter, the child of his real
love! He saw how utterly selfish and unfatherly had been his whole
action with regard to her; how almost criminal in his self-absorption.
There had come, too, a revelation from the sight of that poor,
hollow-eyed, deserted wife, a revelation of what his treatment of his
own wife, Mary, had been. He was stung with a remorse such as he had
not known before.
As William McCord watched the departing train, he might have been said
fairly to glow with contentment over the way things had come out. Not
that he felt that matters would be materially improved for the poor
broken-hearted woman who was making her last frantic effort to get back
what she had lost. But he was justified, fully justified, in the eyes
of his benefactor. He could now with a clear conscience take his way
back to his claim in western Mississippi, and feel that he had done his
duty.
As for Mr. Winthrop, he was filled with horror. His son's face had been
a revelation to him. Until now it had been impossible for him to
conceive that Harrington had done this wrong. Underneath all his
conviction of the truth of William McCord's story, there had still been
a lingering hope that in some way the beloved son would explain things
satisfactorily.
Mr. Winthrop now realized that he had never really known his boy at all.
The old father gazed after the train in the dim distance, saw it round a
curve and vanish from his sight, then turned and walked with bowed head
away from them all. He felt that such sorrow was too heavy for him.
CHAPTER XII
Dawn was already dressed for the wedding.
Her step-mother surveyed her with a kind of grim pride. The shimmering
satin fitted the slim, girlish form to perfection, and the yellow lace
set off the pink and cream complexion. It was a beautiful frock, and
all who saw it would be sure to say so.
There had been some contention about the arrangement of the girl's hair.
Dawn wanted to be married with her curls down her back, as she had
always worn them, but her step-mother was firm. That could not be. If
her hair had been only long enough to reach to her shoulders, it would
not have seemed so absurd, for many young women wore their short
ringlets all about the neck. But Dawn's hair fell far below her waist
in rich, abundant curls. It was out of the question for her to be
married looking so like a child.
The argument had waxed hot, and at one point Dawn had declared that she
would not be married at all unless she could wear her hair as she had
always worn it. Finally her step-mother threatened to go for the girl's
father to settle the dispute. Dawn's face was white, and she turned
away to hide her emotion. Then in a strange, hard voice she said:
"I will put it up if it must be."
After all, what did that or anything else matter? Certainly not enough
to invoke her father's wrath upon her at this most trying moment of her
life.
She drew the mass of beautiful curls up on her head, fastening them with
a large tortoise-shell comb which had been her mother's and was
treasured by the young girl. The ends of the curls fell in a little
shower over the back of the comb, making a lovely effect. The
step-mother thought it far too careless and mussy-looking, and frowned
at the sweet, artistic head, but Dawn gave it a pat here and there and
would have no more to say about it. With her own hands, she arranged
the filmy veil. She would not have her step-mother's assistance. Mrs.
Van Rensselaer stood by, watching the quick, assured way in which the
young bride draped the delicate fabric. The elder woman was half
jealous of the girl's deftness.
"Put on your gloves, and you'll do very nicely, though I must say I'd
rather see your hair smooth for once. But the veil hides the
frowsiness. Now, is there anything you'd like to know about what you've
got to do?"
Dawn looked at her step-mother in horror.
"I haven't got to do anything, have I?" There was genuine distress in
her voice. She had been so absorbed in the great thought of the result
of this act that the ceremony itself, about which so many girls worry,
had not entered into her mind in the least.
"Well," said Mrs. Van Rensselaer--there was satisfaction in her voice,
for Dawn was unconsciously making it easier for her than she had dared
to hope--"there isn't much, of course. Nothing but to keep your eyes
down and walk in and say yes. It's all very simple. The main thing is
never to look up. It is counted very bad manners to look up. A bride
who raises her eyes during the ceremony, or before, is called very bold
and--and immodest!"
The step-mother's voice sounded queer to herself, and she picked at an
invisible thread on her sleeve. This was the first out-and-out bald lie
she had ever told in her life, though she had made many a misleading
statement; but that, of course, to a woman with a conscience, was a very
different thing. This woman thought she had a conscience, and she was
excusing her present action on the ground of necessity, and the
circumstances. "She's getting a far better husband every way, anyhow,
and it isn't as if she was much attached to the other man. One can see
she was afraid of him. I'm really doing her a service, and she'll thank
me when she finds it out." This was what she told her conscience now,
and went on with her advice to Dawn.
"You want to walk downstairs very slowly, with your eyes on the hem of
your frock. You mustn't look up for anything."
"I'm sure I don't know what I should want to look up for," said Dawn
coldly. "I'd much rather look down. I'm glad it's quite polite to do
so."
"That's right," commended her step-mother, with unusual alacrity. "And
it won't do a bit of harm to keep it up some afterward too, at least,
till you get out to the dining-room, and then you can look into your
plate a good deal. People will only think you are shy and modest, and
say nice things about you for it."
"I don't care what people think," observed the girl. "Is that all?"
"Oh, there'll be things he'll ask you--the minister, you know. The
regular service. He'll say a lot of things, and then ask you, 'Do you
thus promise?' And then you say, 'Yes,' or you can just nod your head."
"But suppose I don't like to promise those things? Won't he marry me?"
The girl asked the question sharply, as if she saw a possibility of
escape somewhere; but the older woman was so relieved that her task had
been performed that she took little notice of the question.
"Oh, yes," she answered carelessly, thinking the girl was anxious about
saying her part at the right time. "If you don't get it in, he'll go
right on, any way, and it'll soon be over. You know Doctor Parker is
very deaf, and he wouldn't know whether you said yes or no. Now, if
there isn't anything else, I'll go down, for I hear more carriages
coming, and I'll be needed. You're sure you don't want to see _him_
before the ceremony."
"No," said Dawn, turning away from her with a quick gasp of her breath.
Oh, if she need never see him, how happy she would be!
"Well, then, I'll go down. You be all ready when I call you to come.
Now, mind you don't once raise your eyes until the ceremony is over and
you are out in the dining-room. Above all things, don't look up at your
husband even then. Nobody should see you look at each other. It makes
them think you are foolish and silly."
"I shall certainly not look at him," said Dawn with white lips.
Then the step-mother went out of the room.
Dawn fastened the door and went quickly over to the stand, where the
roses had been unnoticed by Mrs. Van Rensselaer. Had she seen them, it
would have been like her to throw them out of the window, lest the water
should upset on the white satin frock.
The girl bent over and breathed in their fragrance again, and then,
carefully drying the stem on a towel, she slipped them up under her veil
and fastened them upon her breast with a little pearl pin that had
belonged to her mother. She went to her glass and viewed the effect
through her veil, with a white, wan smile at the buds nestling among the
beautiful lace. She would have one thing as she wanted it, any way: if
she must be married, she would wear the flowers that had been given to
her with a smile by somebody that understood. This was the last time
she would have the right to wear another man's flowers. After to-day
she would belong to her husband, but until she did she would wear the
only flowers that had ever meant anything to her.
Then she closed her eyes and tried to get her spirit calmed, but she
felt like one of those old queens in a tower that they used to study
about at school: who was soon to go out and have her head cut off with
the guillotine.
A few minutes later Mr. Winthrop again ascended the stairs to his wife's
room.
"They want you to come down, Janet," he said gently. "Martha and the
girls have come, and they are all waiting for you."
"I shall not come down until I have had a talk with my son Harrington,"
said that lady decidedly.
"Are you not coming down to the ceremony?" asked her husband. It went
very hard with him to deceive the wife of his youth, but there seemed no
other way to deal with her in the present situation.
"The ceremony?" She arose with alacrity. "What do you mean? Has
Harrington come, and has he explained everything? It has turned out
just as I supposed it would."
She stopped in front of the glass and smoothed her hair. She had
arrayed herself in her best immediately after breakfast.
"I should think it was time an apology was due from you, Mr. Winthrop."
Madam Winthrop stood haughtily in the middle of the room, aware that her
small figure was elegant, and feeling that she had entire command of the
situation. There was a becoming triumph in the brightness of her eyes
and the set of her cameo lips.
"The wedding is to be at once," said her husband gravely, motioning her
to precede him.
"What was Harrington's explanation?" she whispered, eager as any girl,
now that she thought she had come off triumphant.
"There is no time to talk about it now," said her husband, again
motioning her down the stairs.
She had a mind to make another stand before his grave authority, but in
reality she was too much relieved from the awful strain she had been
under during the past twenty-four hours for her to care to hold out
against him longer. She went quietly down the stairs and took the place
Mrs. Van Rensselaer most ungraciously assigned her. There was in that
lady's eye something unquelled which gave the bridegroom's mother some
uneasiness and took her mind from the ceremony, so that she failed to
notice as the little procession passed by her almost immediately, that
Harrington was not a part of it, and that her youngest son occupied the
place of the bridegroom.
It was not until the clear voice rang out in the words, "I do," that
something in the boyish accents made her look up and stretch her neck to
see her son. How strange that Harrington's voice should sound so
exactly like Charles's! But some one was standing so that the
bridegroom's face could not be seen by her.
The little bride, with downcast eyes and palpitating heart, stood
demurely by his side, her cold hands trembling within the gloves her
step-mother had brought from New York for the occasion. One lay upon a
fine black coat-sleeve that had put itself within reaching distance.
She had not put the glove there herself. A hand, a strong, warm hand,
had taken it and put it there, a hand that against her will had sent a
strange thrill through her, and left her faint and frightened. That had
been at the foot of the stairs, and she had walked with it thus down the
room. She had not looked up to see to whom that sleeve belonged. She
believed she knew, and it sent no pleasant thought to her heart. Yet
she had to acknowledge that the arm had steadied her and kept her from
stumbling, and had guided her safely into the vacant spot in front of
the minister.
Dawn did not look beyond the hem of her garments, but kept her long
lashes drooping on her crimson cheeks, a lovely but frightened bride.
She felt keenly the moment the service began, and knew that she was
surrendering forever her liberty and girlhood. Good-by to everything
that she had ever counted happy in this life. No house, no pretty
dishes, no handsome furniture, could ever make up for that now, and her
heart cried out in anguish that she had not vetoed the idea when it was
first proposed to her, before it had gone so far that retraction was
dishonorable.
When the vows were read, and she heard their terrible binding import,
she longed to cry out her horror in a great, echoing, "_No!_" that
should leave no doubt in any mind, and would even penetrate to the good
minister's deaf ears. But her tongue was tied by fear of her father and
his friends, and she dared not lift her voice. Yet she would not speak
to make promises her heart could not echo, and so she stood silent, with
no nod of her head, no breath of a "yes." The minister, after waiting
an instant for the desired assent, passed monotonously and solemnly on
to the end, and pronounced those two, who knew each of the other as
little almost as it was possible for two human beings to know, man and
wife.
During the prayer that followed, Dawn had hard work to keep back the
tears that were struggling to creep out and cool her flushed cheeks; but
the breath of the roses at her breast seemed to steal up and comfort
her, and once, just before the end, a strong hand, warm and gentle, was
placed over her gloved one for just an instant, with a pressure that
seemed to promise help. Yet because she thought it was an unloved hand,
it only made her heart beat the more wildly, and she was glad when the
prayer was ended and the hand was taken away.
They came crowding about her after it was over, in the order of their
rank, stiffly at first and with great formality. The bride still kept
her eyes drooped, barely glancing up at those who took her hand or
kissed her and never once lifting her eyes to the man who stood by her
side. It was the first and only mandate of her step-mother's that she
obeyed to the letter and to the end.
Mrs. Van Rensselaer gave her a cold kiss, and whispered that she was
doing very well; and her father gave her the second kiss she could
remember from him since he had sent her own mother away, and said in a
low tone: "Poor child! I hope you will be happy now!"
She puzzled over that sentence long. Why had he called her "poor
child," and yet seemed so sure by his tone that she had attained a
height upon which happiness was assured? It touched her more than
anything else that he had ever said to her.
Mr. Winthrop bowed low over Dawn's hand and told her he was glad to have
another dear daughter, and Madam Winthrop, coming up from the side away
from the bridegroom, graciously kissed her and called her a sweet child.
Then she turned to meet her son, and stopped aghast, saying, "Charles!
Where is Harrington?"
Now, Dawn might have heard the disturbance and been much enlightened,
and all Mrs. Van Rensselaer's fine plans might have been exposed, if it
had not been that Madeleine and Cordelia stepped up to their new
sister-in-law close behind their mother, while Betty had rushed in and
smothered her with kisses, whispering: "Oh, you darling sister! How I am
going to enjoy you!" The three girls stood gushing and fluttering over
the young bride, so that she did not hear what went on.
For, as it happened, Charles bent low over his mother, so that the
stream of relatives should not hear, and said in a quiet voice:
"Mother dear, congratulate me instead of Harrington. It is I who have
been married. Harrington has just gone away on the train with his wife
and children. Don't feel sorry, little Mother. You would not let us
tell you. Be careful, Mother; people are looking, watching you. Mother!"
But Madam Winthrop said not a word. Instead, her pretty cameo face went
white as death, and she slipped quietly down at the feet of her husband
and son in a blessed unconsciousness. For the sake of herself and all
concerned, it was the best thing she could have done. What might have
happened had she kept her senses, it is not pleasant to contemplate, for
she was a person of strong will and a fiery temper, although cultured
and beloved beyond most women of her day.
They said that the room was close, and she had fainted. They made way
for her and brought fans and ice water, but her husband and her son
quietly carried her from the room, and when Betty suddenly realized that
something was going on, and turned around, they told her that her mother
had fainted. Someone--an angular old maid, with a sarcastic twirl to
her mouth and an unpleasant way of always saying the wrong thing at the
right time--told Dawn she hoped it wasn't a bad omen that her husband
had had to leave her side just when the ceremony was over. This was the
first intimation that the young bride had had that her husband was gone.
She cast a sidewise glance and discovered that there were ladies all
around her. She raised her eyes again, just a little higher, and swept
a wider circle, and finally cast a guarded glance about the entire room,
but could not see the dreaded face. Then she drew a sigh of relief at
this small respite. She heard some one say that he had gone to help his
father take his mother upstairs. Dawn had a wild impulse to fly away
where he could not find her when he returned, but knew she could not.
She would gladly have gone upstairs to wait on the sick mother, if only
he were not there also.
People kept coming around to congratulate her, and saying how sad it was
that Madam Winthrop's strength had given way at just that moment. Betty
stayed close by, and Dawn dared to look at the other girl's sweet
dimpled face, all pink and white, with heavenly blue eyes and golden
hair. They reminded the bride of him whom she had seen in the garden
that morning. It was a pleasant thought, and Dawn continued to watch
Betty, when she was sure her step-mother was not looking at her.
By and by Mrs. Van Rensselaer passed behind her and whispered: "They are
coming downstairs now. Mrs. Winthrop is better. We will go out to the
dining-room, and you must cut the wedding cake, you know. You are doing
very well, only remember what I said: not to look around too much. A
shy bride is the very best kind of bride."
A cold trembling came over the young wife. He was coming back, and a
chill seemed to have crept into the sunny day. She hastily dropped her
eyes, with the strange determination not to look upon her husband until
absolutely compelled to do so. There seemed somehow a fascination to
her in keeping this up as long as possible.
When Charles came down and hastened to her side, she was talking
earnestly with his Aunt Martha, who was telling a pretty little incident
of Charles's babyhood. Dawn had not the faintest conception of who
Charles was, but she nodded and smiled, and Aunt Martha thought her a
sweet child, and took her immediately into her gentle heart. She was
somewhat aghast at the manner in which events had marched into the
family history that day, but she thought it not polite to mention it to
Dawn.
A distant relative of Mr. Van Rensselaer came up just then and murmured
in a disagreeable whisper:
"Your husband is a sight younger than I expected, Jemima! I had been
led to expect he was quite a settled man, a good ten or fifteen years
older'n you, but he's real handsome. You mustn't get proud, child."
Dawn started back as if she had been stung, and became aware at once of
a black-coated figure standing close by her side.
She was grateful to the people who kept talking to her and to him, so
that there would be no chance of his speaking to her, or of her having
to answer him now. She felt it would be more than she could do, and
look at him now she would not, not till she absolutely must. It would
unnerve her to look him in the face and know that she was his wife, and
that he had a right over her from henceforth. Then, all at once, she
heard his voice, and it was not Harrington's at all. A quick glance
assured her it was her friend of the roses. Perhaps, then, Harrington
was still upstairs with his mother. She drew a breath of relief.
A few mouthfuls of the wedding breakfast she managed to swallow, and she
pushed a knife through the great white-coated fruit-cake, black with
spice and all things good, which had been made when Mrs. Van Rensselaer
first heard of the possibility of this marriage, and kept in ripening
ever since. Dawn's step-mother was a fine housekeeper, and knew how to
be ready for emergencies.
It was over at last, and Mrs. Van Rensselaer came to say that it was
time for her to go upstairs and change her frock for the journey. Dawn
had never before followed her step-mother with so much willingness as
now. Her feet fairly kissed the oaken stairs as she mounted; but she
had gone up only three steps when some one came quickly up and, standing
by the stairs, touched her on the shoulder, saying in a voice that sent
a thrill of joy through her:
"We're to go in the train; did you know it?"
Forgetting her vows and her step-mother's warnings, she looked down and
saw that it was the young man of the garden again. Her face lit with a
beautiful smile, and some people down in the hall, who were watching
them, said one to another: "See how much they love each other, the dear
children!" and turned away with a regretful smile and a sigh toward
their own lost youth.
"Oh!" breathed Dawn. "I did not know it, but"--she paused--"I'm so glad
you are going, too!"
In saying this, she had no thought of disloyalty to the man she thought
she had married. It was merely the involuntary expression of her
frightened heart that suddenly saw a rift in the dark cloud.
"Oh, so am I," he smiled. "And I'm glad you wore my roses next your
heart. Put them on again when you come down, won't you?"
"I will," she promised, and let her eyes dwell on him for an instant;
then fled up the stairs as her step-mother called in a voice intended to
be a whisper:
"Jemima, do, for pity's sake, hurry! You will be late for the train,
and then there'll be a great to-do."
Mrs. Van Rensselaer was in hot water lest the girl should learn the true
state of affairs before she got away from the house. It had given the
step-mother no small fright to see Charles talking with the girl over
the railing. She looked at Dawn keenly, but there actually was some look
of interest in the girl's eyes. Mrs. Van Rensselaer drew a sigh of
relief as she hurried about to help the young wife with dressing.
CHAPTER XIII
There were no pleasant memories about the room Dawn occupied for her to
look about upon for the last time, and bid good-by. Long ago Mrs. Van
Rensselaer had cleared away every trace of her predecessor, by
remodelling all the rooms, and taking for her own the large, sunny one
which had been occupied by the child. If there had been memories left
after the overhauling, they would have been made hateful by the new
occupant. Dawn had been away from home so long that during this brief
stay she had been given a guest-room, and now she turned from it without
a glance, if anything, to get away from the place that had witnessed her
deepest grief.
She would have liked to run down into the old garden and get one more
glimpse of her woods, the ravine, the old mill, and the moss-covered
dam, with the babbling brook in the distance, but that of course would
be thought unpardonable; so she walked quietly downstairs, turning over
in her mind the comfort it was that during the journey she was not to be
entirely alone with the man she had married. She did not know where she
was going. She had not cared to inquire which of several houses he had
told her about had finally been purchased. She was going with him as
any thoughtless child might have gone.
If only the step-mother had let what conscience she had guide her, and
had told the girl the truth, many things might have been different. If
allowed to hear the earnest profession of love from Charles Winthrop's
lips, Dawn would undoubtedly have gone to him gladly, out of the shadow
of horror that seemed about to engulf her. A sweet memory of her
wedding morning would have been saved to her, and she would have been
spared much pain. The step-mother might have kept her contented
conscience, too, to the end of her days, and not been tormented with the
thought that she had veered from the righteous path.
But Dawn did not know, and went down the stairs with a heavy heart,
looking for only a brief alleviation of her trouble. She determined
that she would not look at her husband, if possible, until this stranger
was gone.
The little bustle of departure was over at last. They put her into the
carriage, and still Harrington Winthrop had not appeared. She began to
feel her heart beating wildly at the thought that he would soon be
coming to sit beside her. Some one standing on the piazza asked where
Mr. Winthrop had gone, and some one else said that his mother had sent
for him, that she was conscious again and had wished to see him before
he left. Dawn thought they were speaking of Harrington. She wished his
mother would keep him a long time, and then it occurred to her that the
train would go, and the young man with it probably, and she would be
left, after all, to take the journey alone with her husband. Of course
it would have to be alone with him sooner or later, for the rest of her
life, but oh, how she dreaded it!
Then, to her inexpressible relief, Charles came rushing down the stairs,
and some one called out a question about his father:
"Is not Mr. Winthrop going to be able to get away just to the station?"
Dawn again thought they were speaking of Harrington.
"Yes," said Charles; "he will be down in a moment. He told
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