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.