Lamplight moving now—­a cart coming down.  Mavis, peering out, saw that it was old Mr. Bates again, in a gig this time, going home to his pretty little farm two miles off on the Hadleigh Road.  Fancy his being still at it so late, only finishing the day’s work long after so many younger men had done.  Mr. Bates was reputed rich—­a highly respected person; but the sorrow of his old age was a bad, bad son.  Richard Bates raced, and habitually ran after women—­that is, when he possessed the use of his legs and was able to run.  But he was a heavy drinker, and it was no unusual thing for the helpers at the Roebuck stables to have to get out a conveyance at closing time and drive Richard, speechless, motionless, to Vine-Pits Farm.  He never went to the Gauntlet, but always to the Roebuck—­beginning the evening in the hotel billiard-room, trying to swagger it out at pool with the solicitor and the doctor, then drifting to the stable bar, and finishing the evening there, or outside in the open yard.  One could imagine the feelings of the old father, waiting up all alone, knowing from experience what the sound of wheels implied after ten o’clock.  Will said once that he believed Mr. Bates was glad Mrs. Bates hadn’t been spared to see it.

And Mavis, moving at last from the window, thought that she was not the only sad inhabitant of Rodchurch.  There is a cruel lot of sorrow in most people’s lives.

IX

The second week of the fortnight was passing much quicker than the first week.  By a most happy inspiration Mavis had hit upon a means of filling the dull empty time.  On Tuesday morning she told Mary that they would turn the master’s absence to good account by giving the house an unseasonal but complete spring cleaning, and ever since then they had both been hard at work.

The work gave exercise as well as occupation; it furnished a ready excuse for declining to go over and see Mrs. Petherick or to allow a visit from her; and, moreover, it had a satisfactory calming effect on one’s nerves.  While Mavis was reviewing pots and pans, standing on the high step-ladder to unhook muslin curtains, and, most of all, while she was going through her husband’s winter underclothes in search of moths, it seemed to her that she was not only retaining but strengthening her hold on all these inanimate friends, and that they themselves were eloquently though dumbly protesting against the mere idea of forcible separation.  When she sat down, hot and tired, in the midst of shrouded masses of furniture, to enjoy a picnic meal that Mary had set out on the one unoccupied corner of a crowded table, she was able to eat with hearty appetite; and yet, no matter how tired she might be by the end of the day, she could not sleep properly at night.

If she slept, a dream of trouble woke her.  As she lay awake her trouble sometimes seemed greater than ever.  It was as though the spring cleaning, which by day proved mentally beneficial, became deleterious during these long night watches.  The neater, the cleaner, the brighter she made her home, the more terrible must be a sentence of perpetual banishment.