Dawn of the Morning

by Grace Livingston Hill

"You lie still," she said in a business-like tone. "I'll get some hot water bottles for your hands and feet, and then I'll call the doctor."

"It isn't worth while for you to stay here and get the cholera," said the woman plaintively. "I'm not going to get over it. I've known it all night. It was coming on yesterday. I tried to straighten up the house, but I was too dizzy and weak. The servants all went away when they heard me say I didn't feel well. There have been several other cases——"

But Dawn did not hear all her step-mother said, for she had hurried down to get a fire started. It was no easy task for her unaccustomed hands to strike the fire from the tinder-box, and after one or two fruitless efforts she decided to waste no more time, but to run to the neighbor's and borrow a kettle of water, at the same time sending a message for the doctor. She was terribly frightened by her step-mother's appearance, and knew she must be very ill indeed. It seemed as if all possible haste was necessary if she would help to save her life.

Upstairs, the sick woman was tossing and moaning. The sudden appearance of the girl who had been the occasion of so much trouble in her life seemed to make the agony all the greater. She knew that she was face to face with death, and now to have the girl she had injured meet her almost on the threshold of the other world, and minister to her, was double torment. If only she could do something to make amends for the wrong she had done, before she left the world and went to meet her just retribution! Her fevered brain tried to think. What was there she could do?

The girl had come, and would probably take the disease and die. Her husband might never know she was here. No one would find it out until she was dead. If only she—Mrs. Van Rensselaer—had some way of letting Charles Winthrop know that his wife had come home. If she could get up and go out into the street and beg some one to take him a message! But her strength was gone, and the agony might come upon her at any moment. She would have to do it at once, or the girl would return and stop her. Could she try?

All her life she had been a woman of iron will. She had made herself and every one except her husband bend to it. She summoned it now. She would try. She would make one supreme effort to right the great wrong of her life. If in the other world to which she knew she was going in a few short hours there was opportunity to meet the husband she had loved as she had loved nothing else on earth besides herself, she would like to tell him that she had tried—that at the last hour she had tried to make some amends.

With the extraordinary strength which mind sometimes gives to body at times of great necessity, as in cases of soldiers mortally wounded fighting to the end, the woman crawled out of the bed and dragged herself over to the desk. Her eyes were bright with her great purpose and blazed like sunken fires. Her gray, thin hair straggled down upon the collar of the old dressing-gown she had put on when first taken sick. She seized her quill pen and a sheet of paper that lay there, and with cramped, shaking hand wrote, "Dawn is here," and signed her name, "Maria Van Rensselaer." The scrawl was almost unreadable, but she dared not try to write it over. She dared not add another word. Her time was short. Her strength already was failing. She had yet to get the message into some one's hands. Perhaps even now she would fail. She crushed the folds together with her cold fingers, wrote "Charles Winthrop" and the address, and then tottered across the room to the door. She almost fell as she reached the stair-landing. The dizzy, blinding blackness that seemed pressing upon her almost overwhelmed her. She felt the pain and torment surging back, but she fought it off and would not yield. This was her last chance to make amends—her last chance. She said it over to herself as she clung to the banisters and got down the stairs clumsily. If Dawn had been in the house, she must have heard her.

It looked like miles to the front gate as the sick woman came out on the piazza, but somehow she got there—a queer, ghastly figure of death, clinging to the gate-post, with a letter and a purse in her hand.

In the distance she saw a negro approaching. He was scuttling along with a frightened gait, as if he wished to hurry through the street. She felt her strength going. If she could only stand up till he reached her! It seemed to her hours before he came to the gate. She had kept back out of sight, instinctively feeling he would be scared away if he saw her.

"Take that to the post office or God will punish you!" she said, in the deep, hoarse voice the disease had given her, and thrust the letter and the purse upon him.