Dawn went back to the Golden Swan that evening tired but triumphant.
She had had a most successful session of school, and she knew it. She
felt the victor's blood running wildly through her veins, and longed to
have the minister know how well she had succeeded.
The teaching part had not troubled her in the least. Fresh from
school-books, blest with a love of study and a gift for imparting
knowledge, she entered into the work with a zest. The problem of
discipline, which had bade fair in the morning to shipwreck her hopes,
had resolved itself into a very simple matter since she had conquered
the school leader. It puzzled her a little to know just how she had
done it, and why he had succumbed so easily, yet she felt a pleasant
elation in recognizing the power she had over him. As she lay in her
little room, after the candle was out that night, she pondered it, and
resolved to try to help Daniel to be a fine fellow. Perhaps some day he
would grow to be something like Charles. He never could be as fine and
noble, of course, for he was a rough boy, uncultured and ignorant; but
he had nice eyes, and he might develop good qualities if he were helped.
Dawn would have been horrified if she could have known that instead of
loafing with the men at the grocery, where he usually spent his
evenings, Daniel was at that moment standing in the dark of the kitchen
porch of his home, behind the cool morning-glory vines, looking out at
the stars and thinking with wonder of the delight it had been to have
her soft hands strike his face, and her dainty personality flash down
upon him, even in her beautiful wrath.
Daniel Butterworth was only a boy yet, but new thoughts were stirring in
his heart, and an absorbing admiration for her had entered into his soul
to stay. Hitherto he had been a big, good-natured, rollicking animal.
His mind had been upon either fun or practical matters, never upon
books. He had not been taught to think. His surroundings had been
rough, easy-going, and practical. Nothing beautiful had ever touched
him before, yet his soul had responded quickly now that it had come, and
in one brief day Daniel seemed to have grown beyond his seventeen years
and to have come suddenly face to face with manhood.
And the cause of his sudden awakening had been the new teacher's hands,
so small and soft, and yet so strong. As he thought about them, they
seemed to have been made of finer stuff than most women's hands; to have
been tinted like the inner leaf of a half-blown rose, and to have borne
a subtle perfume upon his senses. How he could have seen their color
when the "rose-leaves" were smiting stinging blows upon his closed eyes,
he did not stop to reason. He leaned his face against a great
morning-glory leaf in the darkness, and its coolness against his fevered
cheeks reminded him of her hands, and thrilled him in a way he did not
understand. He looked up at the stars, between the strings on which the
morning-glories twined, and wondered at himself, and thrilled again with
a solemn joy. But all he knew was that he liked the new teacher, and
meant to study hard, if that would please her, and that he would lick
any boy that dared molest her or disturb her gentle rule. So much the
little hands had accomplished in their first quick, decisive battle.
Then Daniel kicked off his boots noisily and tiptoed up the creaking
stairs to his attic chamber, to make his mother think he had been at the
village store, as usual. Not for the world would he have her know he had
spent the evening among the kitchen morning-glories, thinking about a
girl! And she a schoolmarm at that! He blushed deeply in the darkness
at the thought.
After that first day of getting acquainted with her scholars, and
finding out who were in the various classes, Dawn fashioned her school
on the model of Friend Ruth's as nearly as was consistent with existing
circumstances. The rules she laid down were stricter than the village
school had ever known before, and went more into detail. A code of
ethics was gradually formed among the scholars, who followed the lead of
Daniel Butterworth and succumbed to the leadership of the new teacher.
Her beauty and her youth combined to make both boys and girls fall
victims to her charm. They fairly worshipped at her shrine, and went
long pilgrimages after berries or rare flowers and ferns, that they
might be rewarded with the flash of gratitude in her lovely eyes. They
suffered torments in refraining from their usual mischief, that they
might escape the flash of steel from those same eyes, for once that was
felt, they had no desire to re-experience it. It became the fashion to
treat her as a sort of queen, and Dawn was very gracious to her
subjects, though always masterful. She smiled upon their offerings
impartially, even upon Bug Higginson's small sister's donation of
moistly withered dandelions. Yet when she discovered some deviation
from the laws she had laid down, she was severity itself, almost flying
into a passion with them, outraged goodness in her eyes, and impulsive
intensity in her every motion. At such times she seemed to have a
special gift of speech, coming directly to the point and saying the
things that would most cut the culprit.
Once behind a stump fence in the woods she came upon a row of her boys
placidly smoking corn-cob pipes, in imitation of the village loafers--or
of their respected fathers, each of whom had threatened dire things to
his offspring if he was ever caught at the practice. Her horror and
disgust quickly blazed into words, until every boy wished that a hole
would open in the ground wide enough to swallow him for a little while.
Dawn had no convictions or principles about the matter. She was moved
by an innate dislike of the practice, intensified by the fact that
Harrington Winthrop had once smoked in her company while walking with
her in the woods, and had never even asked permission. The smell of
tobacco smoke ever after gave her a sickening sense of dislike.
The boys threw their pipes away, and Daniel Butterworth, rising from the
root of the tree on which he had been seated, commanded:
"Fellers, if she don't like it, we quit! D'ye understand? We quit
entirely. I'll thrash any boy that breaks the rule."
The pipes were thrown away, and seven boys with very red cheeks and
downcast eyes entered school a trifle late that noon and sheepishly
slunk to their desks.
The next morning Daniel Butterworth was found tacking up on the
blackboard a clipping from a newspaper, in which was set forth how a
certain Eliphalet Howe, a guest at the Tremont House in Boston, had been
arrested for breaking the law which declared that there should be no
smoking on the streets. The said Eliphalet had been found guilty and
fined twenty-five dollars for the offense, though he had pleaded in
defense that the sidewalk where he stood to smoke was in front of the
Tremont House, and that therefore, as he was on the premises of the
house where he was stopping, he was not breaking the law.
At recess the scholars filed solemnly around and read the item, and
looked with awe at Daniel, who read the papers and knew so much about
affairs. Dawn smiled to herself to see how Daniel was helping her.
But Dawn knew nothing of the thrashings her champion gave to the smokers
whose habits were not easily broken up, nor how they were forced to find
other quarters for their secret meetings, or scatter by themselves in
hiding to pursue the practice. Public opinion had turned, and it was no
longer popular to do anything the teacher disliked. Daniel was even
known to send two boys home one day as they entered the school yard,
because they smelled of smoke and he had told them the teacher did not
like it.
It was not to be supposed that in so large a school everything would
always be pleasant and easy, nor that the scholars would always be
angels. They had their noisy days, and their mischievous days, and
their stupid days, and now and then Dawn felt disheartened and
discouraged. But matters were made far easier for her than she perhaps
fully realized, because of Daniel Butterworth and his devotion to her.
Dawn was grateful to the boy, and in return for his championship she let
him carry her books home, walking a little way behind with some of his
devoted boy followers, while she was escorted by an eager group of
little girls.
At first there was a sort of jealousy of her among the older girls, who
were inclined to toss their heads, and whisper among themselves that she
was no older than they, so why should she put on so many airs? They
suspected her of taking the attention of the boys away from them; but as
the days went by, and Dawn entered into her work with enthusiasm,
planning debates and plays and readings for them, and making even the
dullest lessons glow with interest because she really seemed to like
them herself, opposition melted away and they succumbed to her charm.
For one so young and inexperienced, it was wonderful what she could do
with those girls and boys. The parents began to talk about it, the
minister saw it with gratification, and pleased himself by thinking his
child might have been like that if she had lived. Presently the whole
town was proud to own her as a kind of public institution, like the
doctor and the minister.
There were a few old ladies who shook their heads and wondered how it
was that she had come so far, from that wicked city of New York, to
teach their school, without there being a single relative in the
vicinity. The village seamstress, with half a dozen pins in one corner
of her mouth, would talk about it wherever she went to work, and say,
"What I'd like to know is, who knows anything about her? What is she?
Why doesn't she tell about herself?"
But in spite of all, Dawn walked calmly back and forth to her school,
and managed the scholars with a degree of dignity and skill that would
have done credit to a far older teacher. The whole town gradually began
to love her. It was a nine days' wonder that Daniel Butterworth had
been so changed by her influence. His mother never could get done
thanking the new teacher, sometimes with tears running down her cheeks.
Often she would send to her by Daniel a paper of fresh doughnuts or a
soft ginger-bread, or even a juicy apple-pie, as a token of her
thankfulness.
Dawn was "boarding round," and the days she spent at the Butterworths'
comfortable, weather-beaten old farmhouse were one continual jubilee for
the family, and a season of triumph for the teacher. The best dishes
and the finest table-cloth were got out, and a fire was built in the
solemn front room. There, after the supper, which was composed of all
the nicest things Mrs. Butterworth knew how to concoct, the family would
gather around the teacher to listen while she talked or read to them.
And Dawn, because she wanted to help Daniel, and also because she
thoroughly enjoyed the admiration and attention she was receiving,
entered into it all, and hunted out stories to read to them, and finally
gave them a taste of Shakespeare, which she read with remarkable
understanding and dramatic power, considering that she had never had any
interpreter but herself.
A new world was opened to the house of Butterworth. Even the old farmer
sat open-mouthed and listened, watching the wonderful change of
expression on the beautiful girlish face.
There were flowers in a tumbler on the dinner-table, stiffly arranged by
Daniel's oldest sister, Rachel. Daniel wet and combed his tawny hair
before he came to meals. It was unusual, and the smaller children
noticed and followed suit.
It was one day when Dawn sat at the table, talking and laughing and
making them all forget the common-placeness of life, with her cheeks as
red as the late pink aster tucked in among her curls, that Daniel's
mother noticed with a heart of satisfaction the look on her boy's face.
That Daniel should take to a girl like that was all and more than her
mother heart could wish. And why not? Were not the Butterworths well
off? Was not their farm the largest and most flourishing in the whole
country? True, they had not painted their house in a long time, and
didn't go in much for fancy dressing, but that was easily changed; and
the barns had always been kept in fine repair, which was a good test of
prosperity. Thus Mrs. Butterworth meditated in the watches of the night,
but she never mentioned the matter, even to the boy's father, for John
was "turrible easy upset of an idea, an' it was just as well to let
things take their own way, 'long's it was sech a good way for once."
But Dawn had no idea that any such notion had entered the good woman's
head, and enjoyed her stay at the Butterworths' heartily, going on to
the next place with regret.
There were places where boarding round was not altogether agreeable;
where the rooms were small and cold and had to be shared with younger
members of the family; where the blankets were thin, or the feather-beds
odorous; where the morning's ham sizzling in the spider on the kitchen
stove below came up through wide cracks in unappetizing smoke; where the
master of the house was gruff, and her welcome was grudgingly given.
Many a night she cried herself to sleep in these places, and wondered
why she had been born to suffer so, and to be so lonely.
The thought of Charles, and of the day of her wedding, was growing to be
like a dim and misty dream. She still hugged it to her heart, as a most
precious treasure, but day by day it was becoming more unreal to her.
However, take it all in all, Dawn was perhaps happier than she had been
since she was a tiny child with her mother. She was interested in her
work, enjoyed the companionship of many of the children, and was pleased
to feel that she was independent and self-supporting. Of her own
private fortune she never thought. She had been told that there was
money left to her by her mother's father, but it made little impression,
and she had never cared to ask how much. It was just a part of the
world she had left behind her when she ran away in her attempt to undo
mischief she had never meant to do. She kept herself much more strictly
than Friend Ruth had ever succeeded in doing, feeling as she did her
responsibility, now that she was a real teacher. But she allowed
herself many a playtime as the winter drew on and the snow-falls made
coasting and skating possible. There was a hill behind the school-house
where at noon she coasted with her scholars, shouting and laughing with
the rest. Each boy strove to have the honor of her company upon his
sled, but she distributed her favors impartially.
It was only when she went home with "Bug" Higginson, to spend her week,
and discovered to her dismay where he got his nickname, that her heart
failed her entirely, and she felt she had met with something she could
not bear. However, that experience did not last forever and Dawn went
cheerily on her way, brightening the whole town with her presence,
which, now that she was set free from the confines and oppression that
had always been about her, seemed to grow and glow with a beautiful
inner life.
The school-children were not the only ones who admired the new teacher,
and sought her society. There was not a young man in town who did not
gaze after her as she went down the street, and wish himself a scholar
again in the old red school-house.
About Christmas time, a new annoyance loomed up and threatened to spoil
Dawn's bright prospects. Suddenly, without warning, the youngest of the
selectmen, Silas Dobson, took a violent interest in the school. He
would drop in at all hours, and stay the session out, taking occasion to
walk home with the teacher, if possible.
Daniel, who had never presumed to walk beside her alone, frowned heavily
and grew almost morose as the thing was repeated.
Dawn was very polite and a little frightened at first. It spoiled the
cosy feeling of her school to have visitors. The presence of this
particular selectman stirred up the latent mischief in the scholars. As
his visits were repeated, the teacher was filled with a growing
consternation.
Silas was a long, thin man about thirty years old, a widower with five
children, and an angular mother, who kept them in order. He was the
editor of the village paper, and as a literary man he claimed that he
felt a deep responsibility toward the school. Daniel heard him say this
one day, and told the boys he'd knock Silas's responsibility into a
cocked hat if he bothered the teacher much more.
Daniel's opportunity arrived one night when there was a quilting bee out
the old turnpike road, and everybody was invited to the supper. The
quilting began in the afternoon, and Dawn closed school early, so that
she and the older girls might attend. The young men were coming to
supper, and they were all to ride home in the moonlight.
With her thimble in her pocket and her eyes shining, Dawn hurried off
from the school-house in company with the older girls who could sew.
They looked back once to wave their hands toward the group of boys who
lingered wistfully behind, keeping watch of them. The older boys were
to come to the quilting bee later, but they felt--some of them--that the
afternoon was a long blank in spite of good skating and the
half-holiday. Somehow, the coming of the new teacher had made them more
anxious to have the girls along and to have a good time all together.
But they consoled themselves with the anticipation of the evening. The
teacher had promised to ride home with them, and they were planning a
big sleigh-load, all huddled happily on the straw, with songs and
shoutings and a good time generally. Dawn was looking forward to the
ride as much as any of them.
But Silas Dobson had other plans. He brought his own horse and cutter,
and, having arranged that his mother should return home with a neighbor,
he himself planned to monopolize the teacher. To this end, soon after
supper he edged over to where she sat among the girls, and conferred the
honor of his company upon her for the ride home; at least, that was the
impression he gave as he told her that he wished her to go home with
him.
"Oh, thank you," said Dawn politely, "but I've already promised to go
with my pupils. Daniel Butterworth is to bring a big sleigh, and we are
all going home together."
Silas's face darkened and his back stiffened.
"That will be quite uncomfortable for you," he said decidedly, as if it
were not to be thought of. Dawn wondered why it was that people were
always taking her affairs out of her hands so confidently, without
asking her leave. But she was no longer the child she had been at home
or school. She was feeling the strength of independence. She sat up
with dignity.
"Oh, I shall enjoy it," she answered, sparkling at the thought.
"My cutter is here, and you'd better go with me," said Silas. "I'll
speak to Dan about it and make it all right, so he won't expect you."
"Oh, please don't do that!" cried Dawn anxiously. (Why was it he
reminded her so much of Harrington Winthrop?) "I promised Daniel and
the children. I wouldn't disappoint them for anything. Thank you just
the same."
Some one else came up then, and Silas turned away, but Dawn watched him
uneasily. From the look on his face, one would have thought she had
accepted his attention with delight. He did not act like a man who had
received a rebuff.
Later, when Dan drove his horses with a flourish to the old horse-block
in front of the house, Silas was waiting for him.
"You needn't wait for Miss Montgomery, Dan," said the selectman in a
patronizing tone. "She's going with me."
"She's not any such a thing," growled Dan. "She promised us she'd go in
our team."
"Yes, she was afraid you'd be disappointed, but I told her I'd make it
right with you," said Silas, in a soothing tone. "Hurry, now, and load
up and drive out of the way. Don't you see the other folks are waiting?
You wouldn't stand in the way of a lady's comfort, would you, especially
when she doesn't want to go with you?"
Dan glared at his adversary in speechless wrath for an instant, while
the girls and boys were climbing in, then gave a cut to his horses with
the whip and drove the long sleigh with its merry load out into the
white mist of the moonlit road and round a curve to the fence, where he
flung the reins to another boy, telling him to wait and keep quiet. Then
he stole back around the house and stood in the shadow of a great
wood-pile, near enough to hear all that went on, but not to be seen.
The guests merrily trooped forth in the path of candle-light that shone
from the open house door, and Dawn's musical laugh rang over them all;
but when she came out to the horse-block and saw Silas standing alone
beside his cutter, she drew back and looked around in dismay.
"Why, where is Daniel?" she asked anxiously. "They told me he wanted me
to come now."
"Daniel has gone," said Silas pleasantly. "I explained to him how much
more comfortable it would be for you in my sleigh, and, besides, he was
crowded as it was. He hadn't room enough for you. Just get right in,
and I'll show you what my mare can do in getting you over the snow."
"Daniel is gone!" Dawn echoed in a troubled voice. "Oh, no, thank
you"--drawing back timidly and looking toward the door. "I will see if
Mrs. Butterworth is inside yet. I can go with her. I will not trouble
you."
But Silas was not to be thus set aside.
"Don't think of such a thing," he commanded. "Just get right in." He
reached out to grasp her arm and detain her from her purpose, but just
as he touched the sleeve of her coat his arm was grasped from behind,
and a skilful thrust of Daniel Butterworth's long arm sent him spinning
backward into a big snowbank.
When Silas Dobson arose, disconcerted and spluttering, from the
snow-bank, Dawn had vanished, whisked around the wood-pile in a jiffy by
Daniel, lifted for an instant in his strong arms, carried across a broad
expanse of unbroken snow, and tucked neatly into the sleigh among the
girls and boys.
The whole sleigh-load had divined Dan's purpose, and they kept silent
until she was safe among them, and Dan in the front seat had gathered up
his reins again. Then they gave a united shout which rang through the
moonlit air and struck sharply on the ears of the disconcerted Silas as
he climbed hastily into his lone sleigh and turned his horse's head in
the opposite direction.
The next time Silas Dobson came to visit the school he stayed after
hours and said he wished to talk with the teacher.
With lowering brow, Daniel lingered in the back of the room,
phenomenally busy with his books. Dawn cast a frightened look around,
and her eyes rested on him with appeal. His eyes seemed to give back
comfortable assurance of help as he sat down with a thump and began to
figure vigorously at a sum he had not finished in the arithmetic class.
Silas eyed his youthful enemy, and finally requested that he be sent
home, as he wished to have a little private conversation.
"Oh!" laughed Dawn, loud enough for Daniel to hear. "Daniel has to stay
to-night to finish his sums. It would not do for me to let him go. I
might lose my school if I did not act fairly, you know."
Daniel figured away vigorously, putting down any numerals that entered
his head. There was a warm feeling around his heart. It was as
exhilarating as scoring a point in a ball-game. He was apparently deaf
to what was going on about him, and frowned over his sum in feigned
perplexity.
"Sit down, Mr. Dobson," went on Dawn, summoning all her dignity. "We
can talk with entire freedom here. Daniel is busy and will not notice."
She spoke in a low, distant tone, and seated herself at the desk.
"I'm one of the principal selectman," frowned Dobson, as he sat down at
her bidding. "You needn't be afraid to send him home."
"It isn't in the least necessary," said Dawn, thankful to Daniel from
the depths of her heart for his presence.
Silas Dobson lowered his voice and, drawing gradually nearer to the
teacher, launched into a flowery paragraph which he had prepared and
rehearsed before his mirror. It contained phases about Miss Montgomery's
starry eyes, raven locks, pearly teeth, and rosy cheeks, and was
calculated to convey his admiration in a delicate editorial manner.
Noting the drooping eyelashes, and deepened color of the girl before
him, he proceeded from this preamble to make her understand that his
interest in the school had not been altogether for the school's sake,
and that he was offering her honorable attentions, which, if all went
well, would mean a proposal of marriage later.
If he could have seen the steel flash under the drooping eyelashes, he
would not have gone on to impress her with the value of such an offer,
nor told its advantages in half so complacent a tone.
As usual, Dawn had control of herself in this unpleasant crisis, and
while his words filled her with dismay and repulsion her tone was cool,
low, deliberate:
"I have no doubt you mean to be kind, Mr. Dobson----" she began.
"Not at all, not at all, it is my pleasure and my will," he interrupted
effusively.
"But," she went on, ignoring his interruption, "I have no desire for
attention from any one, and will have to ask you to excuse me from
accepting it."
He looked at her in astonishment, and thought she must be coquetting;
but his most earnest solicitations failed to get anything further from
her than the fact that she would rather not receive his attentions.
"Do you know," he asked angrily, "that I am a man of importance in this
town? I have influence enough with the selectmen to take this school
away from you if I choose. Take care how you treat me!"
"I suppose there are schools in other places, then," answered Dawn
coolly, looking him in the eye now, though she felt every fibre of her
being in a tremor.
"Are you aware, Miss Montgomery, that I am an editor, and that a very
slight word from my pen would go abroad through the land and ruin your
reputation so that you could not get any school anywhere?"
"I cannot see why you should want to do such an unkind thing as that,
after what you have said about liking me, but if you do, you need not
stop on my account. I can find something else to do. I certainly could
never have anything more to do with a man that threatened such things."
"I did not say I would do any such thing, Miss Montgomery," began Silas,
eager now to retract his angry words. "I was merely trying to show you
what risks you were taking in talking to me as you did. I mean well by
you, and I think you ought to appreciate it. If I were to offer these
attentions to any other girl in the village, she would feel flattered."
"Daniel"--Dawn's voice rang clear and without a trace of the excitement
she was under--"if you need help with those sums now, I can give it.
Bring them up here, please."
Daniel lost no time in getting to his feet and gathering up his
scattered papers, but the selectman arose in protest and put out his
hand toward the teacher.
"Don't call that boy up here yet," he commanded, and dared to lay his
hand upon the girl's arm as he did so, bringing his smug countenance
quite near, that he might speak so the approaching boy would not hear.
But the words on his lips were never uttered. Without an instant's
hesitation, Dawn sprang away from him, crying, "Don't you dare to touch
me, sir!" and with catlike agility Daniel glided up the aisle and struck
the selectman full in the face. Silas reeled backward off the platform,
and staggered ignominiously against the wall, clutching at the
blackboard rail for support, his hat rolling at his feet, and his
general appearance undignified, to say the least. Daniel stood in a
combative attitude, looking at him contemptuously. He would have
enjoyed nothing better than to give Silas Dobson a good thrashing.
"You shall answer for this, you young rascal," threatened Silas, shaking
his fist at Daniel, as he recovered his balance and began to brush the
chalk dust from his best coat. "This is the second offense, remember!"
Silas was no match for Daniel in a fight, and he knew it.
"All right," said Daniel, unconcerned. "We'll see who does the
answering, but don't you dare touch Teacher again, d'ye hear?"
"I shall have a talk with Mr. Butterworth, who is also a selectman, and
with the minister," said Dawn, with dignity. "If they wish me to give
up the school, I will do so, and thus save you the trouble of doing what
you have threatened, Mr. Dobson."
"You make a great mistake, Miss Montgomery," said Silas, thoroughly
alarmed now. "I have no desire to have you give up the school."
"Well, I guess you better not have," said Daniel threateningly--"not
unless you want a good coat of tar and feathers." There was a look of
wrath in the boy's blue eyes that boded no good for the discomfited
selectman.
"You have not understood me," repeated Silas lamely, glaring with
helpless anger at Daniel, and then casting a wistful appeal at the
teacher.
But Dawn had taken up the arithmetic, and was figuring rapidly. She
only raised her head to say coldly, "Good afternoon, Mr. Dobson. You
will do me a favor if you won't come to visit the school any more. You
hinder my work, and I do not like it." Then she turned to Daniel and
began to explain the sum.
"You have not understood me," murmured Silas again.
"I guess you've been understood all right," said Daniel grimly over his
shoulder.
With a last angry glare at Dawn's protector, and a threat he would never
dare to carry out, Silas Dobson took himself off the scene of action.
The next week there appeared a prominent editorial about the public
school and its brilliant young teacher, who was doing so much for the
youth of the village, and should be encouraged in every way by the
parents.
Daniel read it to a group of the boys in the school yard, and then cut
it out with his penknife and pinned it to the blackboard, as an
expression of the sentiments of the whole school.
After that little episode, there was a closer bond than ever between
Daniel and his teacher. They never talked it over, nor even mentioned
it, except that Dawn, as Silas's footsteps died away that afternoon, had
put her little hand on the boy's rough one for just an instant, and
said:
"Thank you so much, Daniel. I do not know what I should have done if
you had not stayed."
Daniel had turned away with a sudden feeling as if he was going to
choke, while the blood in his heart pounded up into his face. But aloud
he only said in a bashful tone:
"Aw, that's nothin'. He needs a good lickin', an' I'd like to be the
one to give it to him."
Afterward, Dawn wondered that she had dared to speak as she had to Silas
Dobson, a selectman, and the editor of the paper. And if she had it in
her to do so now, how was it that she had allowed Harrington Winthrop to
lead her on to a hated marriage, when she might have easily stopped it
by being decided? Had her brief months of independence given her
courage? It seemed strange to her now that she had been so afraid to
tell her father what she felt about it until matters had gone so far
that it was almost impossible to stop it. Her heart burned within her
sometimes to go back and tell Harrington Winthrop just what she felt
about him. She had been weak, she decided, terribly weak, in yielding
in the beginning to her desire for a home of her own, and for freedom
from any possibility of having to stay in the house with her father's
wife. Yet, were not all women weak and helpless sometimes, when it came
to a testing of their strength against men? Her mother had not been
able to cope with her father's will. It was all a mixed-up world, and
full of trouble. She turned on her scanty corn-husk pillow and wished
for the dawn of a day that would have no sorrow.
Just why it was that her experience with Silas Dobson made the thought
of Charles and her marriage so much more vivid than before, Dawn could
not understand, and she thought about it a great deal in the watches of
the night, when she should have been sleeping. A new phase of her
position was forced upon her: she was in a measure deceiving other
people about herself. Silas Dobson, disagreeable as he was, had no idea
that his attentions were an insult to her because she was already
married. Of course she could refuse to accept attentions from any one,
but if Silas Dobson had been a pleasant and agreeable man, it might have
been difficult to explain to him without telling him the truth why she
could not ride nor walk with him. It was all a terrible problem, and
night after night she cried herself to sleep.
Sometimes she stayed in unpleasant quarters, where she had perhaps to
climb a ladder, and share the loft above the lean-to kitchen with two of
the small children of the family. Often the cracks would be so wide
that the snow would blow in, drift across her bed, and even blow into
her face. Then as she dropped off to sleep, lulled by the roar of the
wind outside, she would wish that the snow might come softly and cover
her out of sight, that she might sleep forever.
At other times, the thought of Charles brought a great longing to see
him, and to hear his voice whisper, "My darling," once more, as he had
that night when they stood for one blissful moment together in their
room, before Betty called them. Then Dawn would go over all the
happenings of the evening: the scene at the supper table, and every
syllable that Madam Winthrop had uttered, up to the awful moment when
the mother had hurled her accusations, and the truth had burst upon the
young bride's heart in all its nakedness: that she was married out of
generosity! Bitterness toward this woman was changing slowly into
understanding. How was the mother to blame for what she had said? It
was all true, except that she, Dawn, had not known it, and was therefore
not to blame.
Then she began to wonder how it was that she could have been so
deceived. She could not blame her mother-in-law for doubting her word,
for would not she also doubt that a girl could be married to a man and
think he was some other? Whose fault had it been? Not Charles's, for
he had fully vindicated himself. She would sooner doubt herself than
him. Could her father have known about it? Could he have wished her to
be married to one whom she did not know, without even telling her? It
was believable that he might have thought it of little importance to
her, if he, her father, willed it so; yet while often treating her as if
she were a chattel, without will of her own, he had ever been perfectly
frank with her. She felt that he would have informed her of the change
of bridegrooms, and not merely carried out his wishes without announcing
it to her. She could scarcely believe he could think it would not
matter to her. But after careful thought she was inclined to lay the
deception at her stepmother's door, and she was not long in fathoming
the true reason for it. Mrs. Van Rensselaer knew her unhappy state of
mind, and probably feared that Dawn would rebel against being married.
To have her remain at home was the worst possible thing that could
happen to her step-mother, Dawn knew, for from childhood she had been
hated by the woman who had taken her outraged mother's place. It was
all quite plain--all but one thing: how had Harrington Winthrop been
turned aside from his purpose of marrying her? Had he done it of
himself, or had her father found out something about him that he did not
like, or had Charles managed it for her? And where was Harrington?
Would she ever meet him again? The thought took such hold upon her that
it visited her in dreams and made her cry out in alarm as she sought to
hide from his pursuing phantom.
After her experience with Silas Dobson, Daniel was ever vigilant,
attending her to and from school, albeit seldom alone with her. He
seemed to be entirely willing that his favorite followers should share
his privileges of her company; and often there were several tiny girls,
or older ones, in the triumphal procession going to and from the red
school-house, taking "teacher" home. Daniel showed himself a gentle
giant toward the little ones, too, picking them up when they fell down,
wiping off the mud, and carrying them if they were tired. Dawn saw him
daily growing more manly and kindly, and she felt proud of him.
Perhaps, some day, he might become something like Charles, though never
quite so cultured, for he lacked the refined home training. But she
realized more and more that he was a good boy and a great comfort to
her. As for herself, she felt years older than he, and far beyond him in
experience. She never dreamed how it was with him toward her. If she
had, she might have given up in despair, and cried out that there was
nothing good for her in the world.
So Daniel continued to guard her, and to watch the movements of Silas
Dobson as a cat watches a mouse. If Silas had wished, he would have had
no opportunity to repeat his troublesome attentions, for whenever he
found himself in the neighborhood of where the teacher happened to be
boarding, he was likely to notice Daniel in the immediate foreground.
So the long winter went pleasantly by. There were husking bees,
quiltings, singing-school, and Lyceum nights. Dawn became a prominent
participant at all. In singing-school, no voice was so clear as hers,
and she could take the high notes to the envy of every other soprano in
the village. At the Lyceum her readings were more popular than any
others.
In spite of her frequent loneliness, and her feeling of being cast off
by all who should naturally protect her--though it was her own fault, of
course, that she had run away, and she blamed no one--Dawn had never
been quite so happy in her life. Her hours were pleasantly employed,
she had friends who admired her, and she might do as she pleased. It
opened a wide and interesting life before her. If only there had not
been that ache as of something lost, that memory of her one beautiful
day of love, which remained as a haunting vision, she would have felt
herself blest beyond most girls. But all the time there was that sense
of something wrong, that could not be set right; of a great mistake that
might not ever be mended.
And then, one morning when a hint of spring was in the air, and the snow
was all gone save lingering patches in dark corners and in shady
hollows, and the sunshine was making everybody feel glad, she came face
to face with Harrington Winthrop!