Dawn of the Morning

Livingston Hill Grace

Description

For romance readers who are looking for stories that are a little tamer than the racy tomes that tend to dominate bookshelves today, Grace Livingston Hill's body of work is a welcome respite. In Dawn of the Morning, plucky heroine Dawn Rensselaer finds herself stuck in an arranged engagement that will relegate her to a life of misery. Will she ever be able to break free and find true love?

Sujets

• Romance

Informations

• Publié par: The Floating Press
• Date de parution: 01 août 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781776527601
• Langue: English

Extrait

DAWN OF THE MORNING
* * *
GRACE LIVINGSTON HILL
 
*
Dawn of the Morning First published in 1911 ISBN 978-1-77652-760-1 © 2013 The Floating Press and its licensors. All rights reserved. While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike. Visit www.thefloatingpress.com
Contents
*
Wings of the Morning Chapter I Chapter II Chapter III Chapter IV Chapter V Chapter VI Chapter VII Chapter VIII Chapter IX Chapter X Chapter XI Chapter XII Chapter XIII Chapter XIV Chapter XV Chapter XVI Chapter XVII Chapter XVIII Chapter XIX Chapter XX Chapter XXI Chapter XXII Chapter XXIII Chapter XXIV Chapter XXV Chapter XXVI Chapter XXVII Chapter XXVIII
Wings of the Morning
*
"The morning hangs its signal Upon the mountain's crest, While all the sleeping valleys In silent darkness rest; From peak to peak it flashes, It laughs along the sky That the crowning day is coming, by and by! We can see the rose of morning, A glory in the sky, And that splendor on the hill-tops O'er all the land shall lie. Above the generations The lonely prophets rise,— The Truth flings dawn and day-star Within their glowing eyes; From heart to heart it brightens, It draweth ever nigh, Till it crowneth all men thinking, by and by! The soul hath lifted moments Above the drift of days, When life's great meaning breaketh In sunrise on our ways; From hour to hour it haunts us, The vision draweth nigh, Till it crowneth living, dying , by and by! And in the sunrise standing, Our kindling hearts confess That 'no good thing is failure. No evil thing success!' From age to age it groweth, That radiant faith so high, And its crowning day is coming by and by!"
WILLIAM C. GANNETT
Chapter I
*
In the year 1824, in a pleasant town located between Schenectady andAlbany, stood the handsome colonial residence of Hamilton VanRensselaer. Solemn hedges shut in the family pride and hid the familysorrow, and about the borders of its spacious gardens, where even theroses seemed subdued, there played a child. The stately house oppressedher, and she loved the sombre garden best.
Her only friend in the old house seemed a tall clock that stood on thestairs and told out the hours in the hopeless tone that was expected ofa clock in such a house, though it often took time to wink pleasantly atthe child as she passed by, and talk off a few seconds and minutes in abrighter tone.
But the great clock on the staircase ticked awesomely one morning as thelittle girl went slowly down to her father's study in response to hisbidding.
She did not want to go. She delayed her steps as much as possible, andlooked up at the kindly old clock for sympathy; but even the round-eyedsun and the friendly moon that went around on the clock face every dayas regularly as the real sun and moon, and usually appeared to be bowingand smiling at her, wore solemn expressions, and seemed almost palebehind their highly painted countenances.
The little girl shuddered as she gave one last look over her shoulder atthem and passed into the dim recesses of the back hall, where the lightcame only in weird, half-circular slants from the mullioned window overthe front door. It was dreadful indeed when the jolly sun and moonlooked grave.
She paused before the heavy door of the study and held her breath,dreading the ordeal that was to come. Then, gathering courage, sheknocked timidly, and heard her father's instant, cold "Come."
With trembling fingers she turned the knob and went in.
There were heavy damask curtains at the windows, reaching to the floor,caught back with thick silk cords and tassels. They were a deep, sullenred, and filled the room with oppressive shadows in no wise relieved bythe heavy mahogany furniture upholstered in the same red damask.
Her father sat by his ponderous desk, always littered with papers whichshe must not touch.
His sternly handsome face was forbidding. The very beauty of it washateful to her. The look on it reminded her of that terrible day, nownearly three years ago, when he had returned from a journey of severalmonths abroad in connection with some brilliant literary enterprise, andhad swept her lovely mother out of his life and home, the innocentvictim of long-entertained jealousy and most unfounded suspicion.
The little girl had been too young to understand what it was all about.When she cried for her she was forbidden even to think of her, and wastold that her mother was unworthy of that name.
The child had declared with angry tears and stampings of her small foot,that it was not true, that her mother was good and dear and beautiful;but they had paid no heed to her. The father had sternly commandedsilence and sent her away; and the mother had not returned.
So she had sobbed her heart out in the silence of her own room, whereevery object reminded her of the lost mother's touch and voice andpresence, and had gone about the house in a sullen silence unnatural tochildhood, thereby making herself more enemies than friends.
Of her father she was afraid. She shrank into terrified silencewhenever he approached, scarcely answering his questions, and growingfarther away from him every day, until he instinctively knew that shehated him for her mother's sake.
When a year had passed he procured a divorce without protest from theinnocent but crushed wife, this by aid of a law that often places "Truthforever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne." Not long after,he brought to his home as his wife a capable, arrogant, self-opinionatedwoman, who set herself to rule him and his household as it should beruled.
The little girl was called to audience in the gloomy study where sat thenew wife, her eyes filled with hostility toward the other woman's child,and was told that she must call the lady "Mother."
Then the black eyes that held in their dreamy depths some of thegunpowder flash of her father's steely ones took fire; the little facedarkened with indignant fury; the small foot came down with fiercedetermination on the thick carpet, and the child declared:
"I will never call her mother! She is not my mother! She is a badwoman, and she has no right here. She cannot be your wife. It iswicked for a man to have two wives. I know, for I heard Mary Ann andBetsey say so this morning in the kitchen. My mother is alive yet. Sheis at Grandfather's. I heard Betsey say that too. You are a wicked,cruel man, and I hate you. I will not have you for a father any more.I will go away and stay with my mother. She is good. You are bad! Ihate you! I hate you! I hate you ! And I hate her !"—pointingtoward the new wife, who sat in horrified condemnation, with two fieryspots upon her outraged cheeks.
"Jemima!" thundered her father in his angriest tone.
But the little girl turned upon him furiously.
"My name is not Jemima!" she screamed. "I will not let you call me so.My name is Dawn. My mother called me Dawn. I will not answer when youcall me Jemima."
"Jemima, you may go to your room!" commanded the father, standing up,white to the lips, to face a will no whit less adamant than his own.
"I will not go until you call me Dawn," she answered, her face turningwhite and stern, with sudden singular likeness to her father on its softround outlines.
She stood her ground until carried struggling upstairs and locked intoher own room.
Gradually she had cried her fury out, and succumbed to the inevitable,creeping back as seldom as possible into the life of the house, andspending the time with her own brooding thoughts and sad plays, far inthe depths of the box-boarded garden, or shut into the quiet of her ownroom.
To the new mother she never spoke unless she had to, and never calledher Mother, though there were many struggles to compel her to do so.She never came when they called her Jemima, nor obeyed a commandprefaced by that name, though she endured in consequence many a whippingand many a day in bed, fed on bread and water.
"What is the meaning of this strange whim?" demanded the new wife, withset lips. Her position was none too easy, nor her disposition markedlythat of a saint.
"A bit of her mother's sentimentality," explained the chagrined father."She objected to calling the child for my grandmother, Jemima. Shewanted it named for her own mother, and said Jemima was harsh and ugly,until one day her old minister, who was fully as sentimental as she, ifhe was an old man, told her that Jemima meant 'Dawn of the Morning.'After that she made no further protest. But I had no idea she hadcarried her foolishness to this extent, nor taught the child suchnotions about her honest and honorable name."
"It won't take long to get them out of her head," prophesied thenew-comer, with the sparkle of combat in her eye. Yet it was now nearlythree years since the little girl had seen or heard from her mother, andshe still refused to answer to the name of Jemima. The step-mother hadfallen into the habit of saying "you" when she wanted anything done.
Of the events which preceded her father's summons this morning, Dawnknew nothing.
Three days before he had received an urgent message from his formerwife's father, stating that his daughter was dead, and demanding animmediate interview. It was couched in such language that, being theman he was, he could not refuse to comply.
He answered the summons immediately, going by horseback a hard six-hoursride that he might catch an earlier stage than he could otherwise havedone. He was the kind of man that always did what he felt to be hisduty, no matter how unpleasant it might be. It was the only thing thatsaved his severity from be