It was Charles who had come up the stairs. He had grown impatient of
the delay, and come in search of his wife. He paused before his
mother's door and listened to hear the pleasant voices of the two who
were most dear to him. He had pictured them getting acquainted with
each other, and he meant to walk in and say that the time was up and he
must not be kept out any longer. He listened, but he heard nothing. He
waited a moment longer, but still the silence. What could it mean?
He tapped gently at the door, and called, "Mother, may I come in?" His
mother gave a cold assent. She had not yet recovered from the shock she
had received.
"Why, where is Dawn?" he asked, pausing on the threshold and looking
about the room, as if expecting to find her in hiding, just to tease
him, perhaps.
"If you wish to come in, please have the goodness to close the door
after you, Charles," said his mother severely. "You are in danger of
forgetting everybody else in your sudden and extraordinary infatuation."
The joyous spirit of the young man came down to earth with a thud, and
he closed the door and stood looking at his mother blankly, as if to try
to fathom the look in her face.
"Your wife left me some minutes ago," his mother answered the question
which his eyes repeated. She spoke haughtily, as if the offence had
been partly his. "She did not seem to enjoy my company."
"Mother!" said Charles, aghast at his mother's tone even more than at
her words.
"Oh, yes, '_Mother_'!" she repeated, angered anew at the reproach in his
tone. "I suppose it will be that from now on. She left the room
declaring her intention of also leaving my house. I suppose by this
time she has seen the impossibility of that, but you will find you have
married no angel, I can tell you. Whatever possessed you, I cannot
understand. Such a little spitfire! You should have seen her great
eyes flash."
"Mother, what had you been saying to her?" Charles tried to speak
gently. He saw that here was something that needed careful handling.
He blamed himself inwardly that he had not had more forethought than to
prevent a meeting between the two while his mother was still wrought up
over his brother Harrington.
"What had _I_ been saying to _her_? Indeed, Charles, you forget
yourself! You would better ask what had _she_ been saying to _me_." In
her indignation, Madam Winthrop rose on one elbow and faced her son. "I
had been most kind and patient and forgiving. I had made up my mind for
your sake to put everything by, and I sent for her to tell her so. I
told her I would forgive her all she had done to spoil your brother's
life and yours----"
"Mother! You never told her that!"
Charles towered above the little woman in the bed, every inch of his
manhood roused in honest indignation.
"I certainly did," said the mother, her own anger rising anew. "I
explained the whole matter to her, and told her I would forgive her
entirely. And then just because I suggested some things she might do to
help you who are so young and inexperienced, and who had so generously
given up all your own ambitions just to save her from a few hours'
mortification, she got very angry. She turned perfectly white, and her
eyes looked like two devils. You wouldn't have known your pretty little
angel if you had seen her. I will admit, of course, that she is pretty,
but 'handsome is that handsome does' is a very true adage. You will find
it out yet. She was most insulting--told me that I was lying, or words
to that effect--and then she got off the most extraordinary yarn about
not knowing she had married you. I told her she must know I couldn't
believe such a story as that, and, now that I think it over, I don't see
how she can be quite right in her mind. Perhaps Harrington had suspected
as much and took this way of getting out of a most unfortunate union,
and you were so blind that you just jumped in head-foremost, without
ever waiting to make an inquiry----"
"Mother, stop!" Charles's face was white, and his voice was trembling
with suppressed horror. "Remember you are talking about my wife!"
"Yes, your wife!" exclaimed his mother, beginning to cry. "That's the
way it goes. A child forgets all his mother has ever done, the minute
he sees a pretty, silly face."
Then she sat up with sudden resolution.
"Well, _take_ your wife and go _out of my house_, then, if you and she
are going to combine against me, and dictate to me how I shall talk!"
Then with a moan she threw herself back upon her pillows and lost
consciousness again.
Charles stood looking down miserably at her for an instant, his mind in
such a whirl of emotions that he scarcely knew which was strongest.
Then, with a remembrance of Dawn, he turned, half-distracted, and pulled
the bell-cord that hung by the head of his mother's bed. These fainting
spells were frequent and not alarming, he knew. Stepping to the head of
the stairs, he called:
"Betty, tell Aunt Martha to come to Mother at once. She has fainted
again."
He waited only to hear Aunt Martha's quick, excited step upon the stair,
and then he went to find Dawn.
Opening the door of the sitting-room, it startled him to feel the
emptiness that pervaded the place. He had expected to find Dawn weeping
in the big chair, or perhaps huddled upon the bed. That would have been
Betty's way. He had often acted as comforter to Betty during her
childish woes. Even in his anger and trouble, he was thrilling at the
thought of how he would comfort Dawn, his own little girl. He was the
only one in all the world now to whom she had a right to look for
comfort.
He strode through the rooms hurriedly, looking in every possible place
for her, and unwilling to accept the conclusion his mind had instantly
jumped to, that she was not there at all.
He even pushed aside the curtains and stepped out upon first the front
balcony and then the side one, thinking that she had taken refuge there
from intrusion by Betty or the other girls. But there was no sign of
her recent step, and in the darkness the tall grass down below on the
terrace told no tales of a little crushed place where her bundle had
fallen and where her feet had rested lightly when she dropped. Next
morning, before any one would think to look, the grass would be standing
tall as ever, and they would never know how she went.
Stepping back into the room again, Charles at once saw the writing on
the sheet of paper lying on the desk. When he had read it, he caught it
hastily in his hand as if it could give him some clue to her
whereabouts, and started down the stairs and out of the front door to
find her. He knew only one thing then, and that was that he must find
her and bring her back before any one else discovered her flight. She
could not be far away yet. Charles hurried out into the darkness. The
family were attending to the mother, who had recovered consciousness.
He could hear her moaning, and a sudden bitterness came over his soul,
that her blindness and selfishness should make them all so much trouble.
He had never thought of her in any but a gentle, loving way before, and
it shocked his spirit to have to think differently now; but his
indignation at her treatment of his young and blameless wife was roused
beyond his present control.
He searched the grounds and garden carefully, going over every possible
hiding-place twice. As he did so, he reflected that she could not have
known where to go to hide, and he felt sure he would find her in a
minute or two. The minutes grew into thirty, and he had found no trace
of her. He went down the street quite a distance in one direction, only
to be sure she would have chosen the other, and to hurry back. An hour
passed with no trace of her, and then he began systematically to go over
the grounds again, calling her name softly; but a screech owl mocked
him, and the night wind only echoed back his voice emptily.
Once he drew near the house and under the balcony where Dawn had
escaped. He heard his sister calling him, "Charles, Charles! Mother
wants you!" and his heart grew bitter. Then Betty's head came out of
the window, and she called again:
"Charles, where are you and Dawn? Mother has been moaning and crying
for half an hour. She wants you, and nothing else will stop her but the
sight of you."
Then, out of the darkness, Charles answered his sister, and the tone of
his voice frightened her:
"Betty, I cannot come. There is something more important than even
Mother just now. I'm sorry for Mother, but I'm afraid it's all her
fault. She has been saying things to Dawn, and Dawn has gone!"
"Gone!" Betty's horrified voice seemed like a fresh recognition of the
awful truth that his young wife was beyond his easy reach, and a
dreadful foreboding entered his soul.
"Oh, Charles!" Betty gasped. "But she can't be gone. Her things are
here, aren't they? Wait--I'll look."
Betty disappeared, and in a moment more her white, scared face
reappeared on the balcony, and she was holding a candle high above her
head.
"No, they are not there. I've even looked in the closet, thinking she
might have hung them up. Her bonnet and mantle were on the bed before
supper, but they are gone from the room. I found her gloves,
though--one on the bed, and one on the floor. Here they are." She
tossed them to him as if they were an important clue, and Charles caught
at them as if they were something most precious.
"What shall we do?" she asked. "Hadn't I better call Father? We ought
to find her at once, poor little thing! She'll be frightened out in the
night all alone. How could Mother! But then she was so upset with
Harrington, I don't believe she understood things fully, do you?"
But Charles had no time to listen to Betty's sympathetic chatter. His
heart was wrung with the thought of the girl he loved out in the night
alone, afraid perhaps of the unknown perils about her. He must hurry to
her aid.
"Yes, tell Father to come to the front door, quick! There's no time to
lose. And, Betty, don't rouse the neighbors. Let's keep this quiet."
"Of course," said his little sister. "How fortunate they don't know yet
that it was you who was married." Then Betty flew to call her father,
telling him excitedly all the way to the front door what had happened.
"Poor child! Poor child!" said the father tenderly, as he listened to
the tale. "And poor Mother, too; she just didn't understand."
Charles made no response. He did not feel like pitying his mother yet.
"What do you think I had better do, Father?" he asked. "I've gone
everywhere about the place; and down the road a good way in each
direction."
"She will have started home, I suppose--it is a girl's natural refuge,"
said the old man thoughtfully. "There's only one road if you don't take
the train. She wouldn't likely go all that way around."
"But, Father, she doesn't know the way. It was all quite new to her."
"Oh, that's easy. She will ask, and of course anybody will direct her.
She's probably asked somebody quite near the house here. If you only
knew whom, you could easily trace her, but, as you say, it's best not to
say anything about it, for it would get out to the neighbors. We'll
soon trace her. There are only two ways by which she could reach the
main stage-road. You go down to the stable and saddle the two sorrel
mares. The blacks are tired with the long drive to-day, so you'd better
take the sorrels. The men are all gone to bed by this time, so you'll
have to do it yourself. You take one horse and go the road by the
sawmill, and I'll take the other and go around by Applebee's farm, and
then if she should have taken it into her head to go back by the way you
came, I couldn't miss her, for she couldn't have gone further than that
by this time. Had she any money with her?"
"I don't know," answered Charles miserably.
"Cheer up, lad, we'll find her inside of two hours, never fear. Hurry
up, and I'll be with you in half a minute."
Five minutes later, the two horses and their riders parted company at
the cross corners, and started on the search.