Thomas had been busy redding himself up, and turned towards her a tanned but shining face. He was still in his working clothes, but he had shaved, and slipped his jacket over his rolled-up sleeves. There was health in the clean lines of his jaw and the warm colours of his skin, and kindness and honesty in his tranquil eyes. Only his mouth, firmly-cut and set, showed that he could be obstinate if driven too far. This was a man who saw one road at a time, and when once he was set on it could not turn aside. Agnes had known that face when it was dogged and harsh, heard passion and bitterness in the slow, deep voice, seen tortured and angry strength in the broad, slow form. But that was long ago, of course, before she had come to her senses and seen clear. To-night, Thomas’s face shone as much with pleasure as with soap. Everything was an occasion for his smile, the slowly-broadening smile which thought before it came. He smiled as he turned instinctively towards the stair. He had not yet ceased to watch for her coming in. Often and often he had seen her in his mind before she was really there in front of his eyes. Now, as he watched, he saw her soft, blue gown paint itself clear on the dusk beyond the door.
The sun was in the kitchen, too, but in far greater power, because of the wider windows and the open porch, that was like some arching cave with a golden tide at the flood. Almost everything in the kitchen was new, and everything was scrubbed and polished as it had been upstairs. The dresser was as white as when the timber first yielded to the saw. The plates in the pot-rail were so many circular mirrors in the sun. And everything spoke of new housekeeping and newly-wedded pride. The legs of the table were shapely and smooth, unworn by the marks of large or little boots, unscarred by the clawings of generations of cats. There was an arm-chair to the side of the flashing fender and the modern range, an expensive-looking chair, with its castors shining and whole, its covers unfaded and its padding plump. The grandfather’s clock had not yet settled to his corner place. Behind the warming-pan with its flat gold face, there was never a mark on the pale-coloured wall.
Out in the little garden the box hedges and borders looked almost black, making the roses between them a warmer, deeper red, and whitening the white rose over the cavern that was the porch. Beside the parlour window a tall yew stood up, clipped like Cleopatra’s needle and as straight. The little garden had peculiarly the air of refuge and close, set as it was between the desolation of the sands and the lesser and different desolation of the marsh. The marsh was lonely, of course, but Nature was always there, growing her grass and plants and flowers, her acorns and cones fashioning into trees, her thorn hedges throwing up every year their close and towering screens; and, after Nature, man, with his cattle and thin ploughs, his barns and shippons, his clustered chimney-stacks. But out on the sand there were only sand and lost shells, and the goalless footprints of flown birds. It was enemy ground, where neither blown seed nor human hearth might take hold. The marsh had a peace of its own as well as its fear; but out on the sands there was only fear.
One window in the kitchen pretended to itself that there was neither sand nor fear. It looked across the square fields to the higher land behind the marsh, over tall hedges thick with rose to sloping meadowland and woods. Up in the sky was a climbing, high-hung road, and below it a hidden village with a seeking spire. On the marsh between the straight hedges all the roads ran straight.... It was to this window that Agnes crossed to look out.
“Hadn’t you best be getting off?” she enquired, pressing her face against the pane. “It’ll never do to be hanging about and miss your time. He’ll likely think he’s not wanted if you’re a bit behind.”
“Nay, there’s no call to be off yet,” Thomas replied tranquilly, without offering to move. “We’ll catch a sight on ’em on t’road, long afore they’re here.” He settled his jacket leisurely, looking at himself in the little kitchen glass, mottled and cracked in its worn mahogany frame. It looked old and strange on the new face of the wall—almost the only thing in the kitchen that wasn’t new. “’Twas half-past six, wasn’t it, they said? It wants a bit to that yet.”
“What was it you went and settled wi’ Bob, after all?”
“I was to meet ’em at meader gate so as to give the old man an arm. It’s over rough riding up for him, I doubt. He’ll be best on his feet by a deal.”
“Ay, old bones can’t abide being rumbled about. I shouldn’t wonder but he’s a bit shaky after his ride, so you mun be sure to be there on the tick.... Eh, well, we’ll have him as right as a bobbin afore so long!”
“It’ll take a while, will that!” Thomas frowned. Staring, he saw the face in the glass grow older and rather grim. “He’s been going downhill sharp, lately, has the old chap. Last time I was at the cottage he give me a fair fright. It was a bad job his having to gang to Marget an’ Bob.”