“Walls is new-washed, of course, and paint’s new, too. Yon old winder-sash gone——”
“Ay.”
“—new sink in back kitchen ... cupboards ... carpet on t’stairs——”
Agnes made a noise with the pot, and said the tea was mashed and they’d best set to. It was just like Thomas to spoil her pet surprise, but luckily it passed the old man by. He rose to his feet obediently when she spoke, and was set at the table, still in the hated chair. Agnes was telling him he wanted his tea, and he tried to agree with her, knowing that he lied. The light from the west still lay across the room, and blinded and hurt his unaccustomed eyes. He could not see the table as Agnes hoped he might—as she herself saw it with an artist’s pride. For her, every detail stood out on the whiteness of the cloth, coloured and glorified by the clear sun. The light was cool as water on china and polished plate, and rich on yellow butter and the pink surface of the ham. There were creamy scones and a gingerbread cake ... lavender in a vase ... deep crimson jam and eggs with warm brown shells. A white geranium stood on a sill, showing the sky behind it far and blue....
Thomas carved the ham and went on talking about the house. “There’s a deal that’s new above-stairs as well; beds and quilts and suchlike, and a deal besides. You could eat off the floors as easy as yon dish. Missis keeps the place like a new pin.”
“Marget’s nobbut a dirty slut,” Kit said. “Last week I come a terble bang over a pail.”
“Eh, now, but yon was wicked, if you like!” Agnes’s eyes dwelt pityingly upon him as she passed the tea. “She might ha’ finished you,” Thomas added, handing ham.
Kit said he doubted she wouldn’t have troubled if she had, and sat back, staring vacantly at his plate. His face looked worn and white now that the expression of almost venomous hate had died away. Thomas, busily carving, heard the hate in his voice, and again was conscious of a little shock. Kit himself was as puzzled by his vehemence as his son was jarred. Never before had he even thought of Marget in the terms he had used to-day. His tongue, like the rest of his body, had been in jail, and was only now beginning to be loosed. Yet his look was not the look of a man who was brooding on the past. That savage face belonged to a man in an unknown place ... betrayed....
And then he was back in the past, away from Beautiful End, back in the cottage where Marget’s pails lay hoping for his feet. This one had lurked in secret on the stair, and he had come on it hoping, and hurtled into space. Afterwards he and the fiddle sat on the bottom step, shaking and crying together in their pain. Nobody came near them however long they cried, though once the face of a neighbour showed scared beyond the door. Presently he had climbed the stair and gone back again to his room—to dream of his home where pails were kept in place. It was strange that now he was home he should wander away, to shake and pant and cry on the bottom step. It was strange he should long for that room now he was here, wanting that wretchedness beyond this grace....
Marget was in the mind of the others, too, it seemed. “Bob said she was fit to scratch when they come away,” Thomas was busy relating to his wife. “He made sure there’d be a row in the street, but she thought better o’ that. All the same, there was a grand to-do aforehand, so he said!”