Dawn of the Morning Part 2

"I did." His voice sounded hoa.r.s.e. 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 pa.s.sion 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. G.o.d 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 pa.s.sed 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 cla.s.ses 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 gra.s.shopper 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 fas.h.i.+on 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 embarra.s.sment 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?"