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.