The Road to the Dawn
Summary
A jug of rotgut and a half-orphaned girl, mis-tagged by a harried railway clerk, criss-cross fates in a frost-bitten New England hamlet: Bill Hedrick—once the village smithy whose hammer sang like a church bell—now the town’s sotted jest, receives, C.O.D., four-year-old Daisy Lane instead of his nightly anesthesia. The child arrives wrapped in penury, a hand-wrought gold ring (coin-sliver beaten into ivy) dangling from her neck like a relic. Bill, sensing the talisman through dim synapses pickled by rye, pries it loose at the nadir of delirium tremens—only to recognize the very circlet he forged in fire for his lost Mary, now spectral beneath cemetery moss. Recognition detonates; the drunkard’s heart bursts its levee. He boots the whiskey drummer into the snow, swaddles the girl in his reeking coat, and tramps toward a pew-light dawn, footprints stitching a promise across the white.
Synopsis
In a New England village lives Bill Hedrick, the town drunkard. Bill works only enough to procure the four dollars to pay for the jug of liquor which is expressed to him, C.O.D. in the city from which the liquor is shipped, Mary Lane, a widow, still young, but broken by privation, realizing that her end is near, takes her little girl, Daisy, to the express office, consigns her to a close relative and goes quickly away. In a little bag about the child's neck she has placed a little ring, hand-made from a gold coin, and has told the child to allow no one to touch it. At the railway station the tag hastily tied to Daisy's arm comes off, as does that on Bill's jug. The agent, in replacing the tags, switches them, so that in due time Daisy arrives at Bill's address, with $4 charges. Bill attempts to refuse the consignment, but the local agent, not knowing what else to do with the child, bullies Bill into paying the C.O.D. Bill takes the child to his shack and puts her to bed. He discovers the little bag, and by its feel can tell that it contains a ring, but as the child begs that it be let alone, he does not press his investigation. The child falls asleep and Bill, tormented by thirst, wanders about, finally sitting down and watching the child. Her sweetness and innocence stirs memories the he had thought were long ago drowned in drink. The scene dissolves, and the Bill Hedrick of the other days is seen, a handsome young country blacksmith, happy with his sweetheart, Mary. He has hammered from a gold piece a quaint little ring, which he gives her. Their lives seem to promise sunshine, until Bill for the first time shows the effect of drink. A stranger from the city appears, and pays Mary ardent court. Bill takes Mary to a barn dance; he freely samples the hard cider and is soon helplessly drunk. Mary allows the stranger to escort her home and Bill never sees her again. Bill becomes a common drunkard. The scene dissolves and Bill is again seated beside the child. The next day is one of torment to Bill; his craving for liquor making each moment an agony. A whiskey peddler produces a flask and asks Bill it he wishes to buy. Bill has not a cent. The peddler asks if he has not a watch, a ring. Bill remembers the bag about the child's neck; he enters the shack and removes the bag from the neck of the sleeping baby and takes out the ring to recognize it as the one he made for and placed upon the hand of his sweetheart. Under the shock of realization that the sweetheart of his youth was this child's mother, Bill staggers, then suddenly realizes to what depths he has fallen, to steal from a sleeping baby the means to buy the liquor that has blasted two lives. He drives the peddler from the place, gathers the child up and hurries out into the world, taking a road that will lead to better days.
