Dawn of the Morning Part 6

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 impa.s.sive 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 impa.s.sively 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 pa.s.sed. 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 pa.s.sed. 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 grat.i.tude, 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, flas.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.sed 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 n.o.ble 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: