taking in the thought. Then he too bowed his head and groaned.
“And my daughter, my little Kate has done it!” Marcia covered her face with the curtains and her tears fell fast.
David went and stood beside the Squire and touched his arm.
“Don’t!” he said pleadingly. “You could not help it. It was not your fault. Do not take it so to heart!”
“But it is my disgrace. I have brought up a child who could do it. I cannot escape from that. It is the most dishonorable thing a woman can do. And look how she has done it, brought shame upon us all! Here we have a wedding on our hands, and little or no time to do anything! I have lived in honor all my life, and now to be disgraced by my own daughter!”
Marcia shuddered at her father’s agony. She could not bear it longer. With a soft cry she went to him, and nestled her head against his breast unnoticed.
“Father, father, don’t!” she cried.
But her father went on without seeming to see her.
“To be disgraced and deserted and dishonored by my own child! Something must be done. Send the servants! Let the wedding be stopped!”
He looked at Madam and she started toward the door to carry out his bidding, but he recalled her immediately.
“No, stay!” he cried. “It is too late to stop them all. Let them come. Let them be told! Let the disgrace rest upon the one to whom it belongs!”
[pg 55]
Madam stopped in consternation! A wedding without a bride! Yet she knew it was a serious thing to try to dispute with her husband in that mood. She paused to consider.
“Oh, father!” exclaimed Marcia, “we couldn’t! Think of David.”
Her words seemed to touch the right chord, for he turned toward the young man, intense, tender pity in his face.
“Yes, David! We are forgetting David! We must do all we can to make it easier for you. You will be wanting to get away from us as quickly as possible. How can we manage it for you? And where will you go? You will not want to go home just yet?”
He paused, a new agony of the knowledge of David’s part coming to him.
“No, I cannot go home,” said David hopelessly, a look of keen pain darting across his face, “for the house will be all ready for her, and the table set. The friends will be coming in, and we are invited to dinner and tea everywhere. They will all be coming to the house, my friends, to welcome us. No, I cannot go home.” Then he passed his hand over his forehead blindly, and added, in a stupefied tone, “and yet I must—sometime—I must—go—home!”
[pg 56]
CHAPTER V
The room was very still as he spoke. Madam Schuyler forgot the coming guests and the preparations, in consternation over the thought of David and his sorrow. Marcia sobbed softly upon her father’s breast, and her father involuntarily placed his arm about her as he stood in painful thought.
“It is terrible!” he murmured, “terrible! How could she bear to inflict such sorrow! She might have saved us the scorn of all of our friends. David, you must not go back alone. It must not be. You must not bear that. There are lovely girls in plenty elsewhere. Find another one and marry her. Take your bride home with you, and no one in your home need be the wiser. Don’t sorrow for that cruel girl of mine. Give her not the satisfaction of feeling that your life is broken. Take another. Any girl might be proud to go with you for the asking. Had I a dozen other daughters you should have your pick of them, and one should go with you, if you would condescend to choose another from the home where you have been so treacherously dealt with. But I have only this one little girl. She is but a child as yet and cannot compare with what you thought you had. I blame you not if you do not wish to wed another Schuyler, but if you will she is yours. And she is a good girl. David, though she is but a child. Speak up, child, and say if you will make amends for the wrong your sister has done!”
The room was so still one could almost hear the heartbeats. David had raised his head once more and was looking at Marcia. Sad and searching was his gaze, as if he fain would find the features of Kate in her face, yet it seemed to Marcia, as she raised wide tear-filled eyes from her father’s breast where her head still lay, that he saw her not. He was [pg 57] looking beyond her and facing the home-going alone, and the empty life that would follow.
Her thoughts the last few days had matured her wonderfully. She understood and pitied, and her woman-nature longed to give comfort, yet she shrunk from going unasked. It was all terrible, this sudden situation thrust upon her, yet she felt a willing sacrifice if she but felt sure it was his wish.
But David did not seem to know that he must speak. He waited, looking earnestly at her, through her, beyond her, to see if Heaven would grant this small relief to his sufferings. At last Marcia summoned her voice:
“If David wishes I will go.”
She spoke the words solemnly, her eyes lifted slightly above him as if she were speaking to Another One higher than he. It was like an answer to a call from God. It had come to Marcia this way. It seemed to leave her no room for drawing back, if indeed she had wished to do so. Other considerations were not present. There was just the one great desire in her heart to make amends in some measure for the wrong that had been done. She felt almost responsible for it, a family responsibility. She seemed to feel the shame and pain as her father was feeling it. She would step into the empty place that Kate had left and fill it as far as she could. Her only fear was that she was not acceptable, not worthy to fill so high a place. She trembled over it, yet she could not hold back from the high calling. It was so she stood in a kind of sorrowful exaltation waiting for David. Her eyes lowered again, looking at him through the lashes and pleading for recognition. She did not feel that she was pleading for anything for herself, only for the chance to help him.
Her voice had broken the spell. David looked down upon her kindly, a pleasant light of gratitude flashing through the sternness and sorrow in his face. Here was comradeship in trouble, and his voice recognized it as he said:
“Child, you are good to me, and I thank you. I will try [pg 58] to make you happy if you will go with me, and I am sure your going will be a comfort in many ways, but I would not have you go unwillingly.”
There was a dull ache in Marcia’s heart, its cause she could not understand, but she was conscious of a gladness that she was not counted unworthy to be accepted, young though she was, and child though he called her. His tone had been kindness itself, the gentle kindliness that had won her childish sisterly love when first he began to visit her sister. She had that answer of his to remember for many a long day, and to live upon, when questionings and loneliness came upon her. But she raised her face to her father now, and said: “I will go, father!”
The Squire stooped and kissed his little girl for the last time. Perhaps he realized that from this time forth she would be a little girl no longer, and that he would never look into those child-eyes of hers again, unclouded with the sorrows of life, and filled only with the wonder-pictures of a rosy future. She seemed to him and to herself to be renouncing her own life forever, and to be taking up one of sacrificial penitence for her sister’s wrong doing.
