CHAPTER IV

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 amus.e.m.e.nts 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 pa.s.sed 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 rehea.r.s.ed 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 pa.s.sing, 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 G.o.ddess. 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 G.o.d 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 gla.s.s, and, now that they were out of sight, the haughty look melted into tears.

CHAPTER V