Dawn of the Morning

by Grace Livingston Hill

It was too late to turn back and deny knowledge of the woman. There stood his father's former farm manager, who had lived in the Western town where Harrington had married his wife. That McCord would ever come East again and bring back tales against him had not occurred to the careless young scapegrace. McCord was a quiet, silent man, who went about his own business, and seldom, if ever, wrote letters. Young Winthrop had never given an uneasy thought to him, but now he stood and looked at him in growing dismay.

Turning, Harrington met his father's passionate, loving reproach, his wife's bitter hopelessness, and the scorn of the man he had hoped soon to call his father-in-law.

The voice of Mr. Winthrop broke out in bitterness: "Oh, my son, my son!" and the father's kind face was turned away. He was weeping.

This kind of reproach had ever angered Harrington Winthrop beyond all endurance. It seethed over his frightened, fretted spirit now like acid in a wound. The voice of the trainman cried out, "All aboard!" the trumpet sounded, and the wheels moved. The fireman jumped on, board. Then Harrington Winthrop grasped his portmanteau, pushed aside his frightened children, who were eagerly gathering up the scattered money, and sprang into a vacant carriage. His game was up and he knew it.

With a wild cry, the wife caught up her little boy, and, dragging her little girl, rushed after him. A couple of men standing by pushed her up into the carriage with her husband, which happened to be occupied by no one else. Before he had time to turn about and notice what had happened, the train was going rapidly on its way, and the reunited family had ample opportunity to discuss their situation. Harrington Winthrop had completed the last link in the chain of evidence against him: he had fled.

Mr. Van Rensselaer stood looking after the vanishing train with satisfaction. He had watched the changing expressions on the face of the young man who had expected to become the husband of his only daughter: the cruelty, the craven fear, the hate, and the utter selfishness of the man! Suppose his daughter had stood where that poor wife had stood, and begged of him to come home to her and care for her! What an escape!

The daughter who had been the object of so little of his thought or care had suddenly become dear to him. Mary's daughter, the child of his real love! He saw how utterly selfish and unfatherly had been his whole action with regard to her; how almost criminal in his self-absorption. There had come, too, a revelation from the sight of that poor, hollow-eyed, deserted wife, a revelation of what his treatment of his own wife, Mary, had been. He was stung with a remorse such as he had not known before.

As William McCord watched the departing train, he might have been said fairly to glow with contentment over the way things had come out. Not that he felt that matters would be materially improved for the poor broken-hearted woman who was making her last frantic effort to get back what she had lost. But he was justified, fully justified, in the eyes of his benefactor. He could now with a clear conscience take his way back to his claim in western Mississippi, and feel that he had done his duty.

As for Mr. Winthrop, he was filled with horror. His son's face had been a revelation to him. Until now it had been impossible for him to conceive that Harrington had done this wrong. Underneath all his conviction of the truth of William McCord's story, there had still been a lingering hope that in some way the beloved son would explain things satisfactorily.

Mr. Winthrop now realized that he had never really known his boy at all. The old father gazed after the train in the dim distance, saw it round a curve and vanish from his sight, then turned and walked with bowed head away from them all. He felt that such sorrow was too heavy for him.