The sunset with a parting shaft of gold touched her hair; a whispering breeze carried a message from the roses to her cheek, and she was young—young, the dawn was in her eyes, she seemed to listen to the song of birds, to belong to the flowers that were springing from the earth. She was different altogether from Hannah. A dozen possibilities darted through his mind. His heart beat quicker, his usual ready speech failed him, he stood tugging at his mustache and thinking that he had never seen a girl like this before—but suddenly he was recalled to common-sense.
"Mr. Garratt," Hannah said, her voice was severe and unflinching, "if you want to see the grave of your aunt Amelia, I will take you."
XI
Mr. Vincent started for Australia a week after his visit to London. In the first hours of his sailing Mrs. Vincent and Margaret measured in their hearts every length the ship took onward, while Hannah wondered whether the Lord would let it get safely to its journey's end, and prayed fervently for Jews, Turks, and infidels. For Hannah did not pretend to regret his departure. "It will be good for him to be away," she said to her mother, "and it's as well the place should be left for a bit to those whose hold was on it before he came and will be after he's gone." There was no question of her supremacy after Mr. Vincent departed, and her mother was as wax in her hands.
But it was not only for peace, and because of a vague feeling that she owed Hannah an indefinite reparation for the fact that she had set another man in her father's place, that Mrs. Vincent gave way; it was also because the keen interest she had once taken in the working of the farm had been gradually lulled, even half-forgotten, in her great love for the man she had first seen when middle-age had already overtaken her. There was another reason, too, but it existed unknown to any one, even to herself. Mrs. Vincent had become less active in the last year or two, more silent and thoughtful. Her hair was grayer, the lines on her face were deeper, dull pains beset her sometimes, and a lethargy she could not conquer. She put it down, as those about her did, to the gathering years and the hurrying of time; now and then it struck her that she "wasn't over well, that some day she'd see a doctor," but she dismissed the idea with the conviction that it was nothing, only that she was growing old—the worst disease of all, she thought, since every hour of life was sweet that she spent in the world that held her husband. Oddly enough, she, as well as Hannah, had been almost relieved when he went. It was the right thing for a man to go out and see the world; no women folk should tie him down forever; she even felt a little unselfish pleasure in remembering that it was she who had first proposed it. While he was away she determined to rest well, and sleep away her tiredness and all the uneasiness it brought, so that she might be strong to welcome him back. But after the excitement of getting him ready, and the passionate though undemonstrative farewell, a reaction came. She shut herself up in her room once or twice, so that her tears might not be suspected; or, when she had grown more accustomed to his absence, sat brooding in the living-place or the porch, trying to imagine what he was doing and to picture his surroundings.
"I must be a fool to go on like this at my age," she said to herself; "I wouldn't let the girls know for anything."
For Margaret, her father's going brought all sorts of restrictions and limitations; but her mother was too much wrapped up in her own dreams to perceive it, or to draw closer to her than before, and so to make up for the loss of his companionship. Thus Hannah was free to show the dislike she had always felt and to worry her with petty tyrannies.
"The best parlor will be used by any one who likes till he returns," she promptly announced. "It has been kept apart long enough, as if the whole of the house wasn't fit for those who own it to live in, unless it was sometimes by way of a treat."