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As the days went by, Ruth had the inevitable reaction. At first the country brought balm to her tired nerves, and she rested luxuriously, but she had not been at Miss Hathaway's a fortnight before she bitterly regretted the step she had taken. Still there was no going back, for she had given her word, and must stay there until October. The months before her stretched out into a dreary waste.
The work for the first time became dogged, distasteful. Even Thorpe was infected. He, too, wanted more than anything else to drop on the bed in Mrs. Hathaway's boarding house, there to sponge from his mind all colors but the dead gray of rest. There remained but a few things to do. A mile of sacking would carry the drive beyond the influence of freshet water. After that there would be no hurry.
He saw it from where he stood; a mass of pink and white against the turquoise sky, and thought that Miss Thorne would make a charming picture if she stood beneath the tree with the blown petals drifting around her. He lingered upon the vision till Joe spoke again. "Be you goin' up to Miss Hathaway's this mornin'?" "Why, I don't know," Winfield answered somewhat resentfully, "why?"
Hathaway's portmanteau had come, and Mrs. Woods had sent a message, saying that in view of the limited time that Mr. Hathaway would have with his ward, Mrs. Woods would forego her right to keep him at her side at dinner, and yield her place to Yerba. Paul thanked him with a grave inward smile. What if he made his dramatic disclosure to her confidentially over the soup and fish?
He and me eat up what ye left, and I got the money ye left fer me Myra Hathaway's takin' care of it she's got my leetle gal. Yes I seen ye more 'n once. You ain't never seen me folks don't see me as a rule; but I've seen you many a time when ye've stepped by me and I've been layin' hid out; times when I'd starved if it hadn't been for him" and he nodded across the fire to Blakeman.
Saying this, Gertrude led to the street, and the party drove to Shottery, a pretty village a mile away, where is Ann Hathaway's thatched cottage. "Here the beardless William often came," said Gertrude, "and told his love to the English maiden. Ann Hathaway was older than William, she was twenty-six, but they were married, and had three children.
The face itself was a network of delicate, fine wrinkles; but every wrinkle must have been as lovely in God's sight as it was in poor unhappy Susanna Hathaway's.
She contemplated the crayon portraits in the parlour and hoped she was not related to any of them. In the family album she found no woman whom she would have liked for an aunt, but was determined to know the worst. "Is Miss Hathaway's picture here, Hepsey?" she asked. "No'm. Miss Hathaway, she wouldn't have her picter in the parlour, nohow. Some folks does, but Miss Hathaway says't'aint modest."
She's got money, I guess, but she's got furniture in her parlour that's just like what Miss Hathaway's got set away in the attic. We wouldn't use them kind of things, nohow," she added complacently. "Does she live all alone?" "Yes'm. Joe, he does her errands and other folks stops in sometimes, but Miss Ainslie ain't left her front yard for I d' know how long.
Any one who wished to pierce John Hathaway's armor at that period of his life would have had to use a very sharp and pointed arrow, for he was well wadded with the belief that a man has a right to do what he likes. Susanna's shaft was tipped with truth and dipped in the blood of her outraged heart. The stored-up force of silent years went into the speeding of it.