Yes! She stopped, her head critically on one side, her heart becoming more tolerant of the many changes. This looked a good house, a house that a lady might live in: she was full of these commonplace expressions that smack of the housekeeper’s room.
Lights in every window, jealously drawn blinds. It looked like a house where they dined late, where, about this time, the maids were tripping to the bedroom doors with cans of hot water. The house had all the appearance of a good house—a gentleman’s, as distinct from a yeoman’s, so she thought, beginning to be satisfied and then remembering that it made no difference to her now. She went round the house stealthily, like a gypsy woman with a basket of cheap lace. The dog bounded out of the kennel, then wagged his tail when she went close and he recognized her. She went round, went past the woodstack. As she passed, a sandy rat, whose young family lived in the shelter of the fagots, ran timidly over her foot.
She reached at last the back door. It stood open; she had always grumbled at the maids, in vain, because they would have the back door open. Everything around the door was much the same, the modern spirit had not affected the back of the house. There was the pig-tub waiting to be carried to the stye, there was the ash-heap, the other heap of broken crockery and old iron. There were the rain-water tubs lurking in the angles of the house, their green paint turning blue. She looked up at the sky and found that the mist had risen, that the mellow moon was full on her head.
She saw everything. Her eyes stretched away into the garden, through the entrance-arch of which she saw the glittering glass of the greenhouse which Jethro had bought to please her.
She stood close to the wall, her wet shoulder pressing the thick branches of the vine, all black and damp and with loose rough bark. There were busy movements inside in both the kitchens, a subdued cluttering of feet, a comforting rattle of china. The warmth and smell of the fire puffed out. There was a band of amber light, shaming the cold moon. It fell across the pig-tub and the ash-heap, running straight from the open door and losing itself in the hedge, which was being grubbed. Jethro was evidently in the grip of some frenzy of renewal and refurbishing.
The voices came from the kitchen. One was the voice of Nettie, that girl Edred used to kiss and squeeze on the sly in his hateful animal way. There were a couple of strange voices. The predominant smell was that of apples bubbling in sugar. And then at last, as she stood shrinking by the wall and undecided what to do, she heard Gainah’s voice. It said, in the old acid shrew’s tone:
“I’ll have ’em made int’n apple-stucklin.”
She curled her lip, remembering those stodgy apple-pasties of Gainah’s which Jethro had eaten with such relish. If they were still eating apple-stucklins—such a name!—the improvements were only external after all. Gainah’s voice, Gainah’s charge to the new cook, gave her courage. Jethro had not yet taken a wife; no young wife would endure Gainah’s rule.
He hadn’t a wife. She would walk straight into the house; the garden-door was always unbolted until well after dusk. She would go into the house through the garden-door and walk through the dining-room. If he were not there she would look into his little room, where he kept papers, guns, his boots, his bicycle even, when he chose.
It was a new surprise to find herself in a porch—so the dining-room no longer opened direct into the garden! That was another improvement.