In the autumn, the driving rain drummed on his sailcloth suit saturated almost to the stiffness of sheet-iron, with its surface flowing with water.  When the weather was too bad, he retreated under the tiny porch, and, standing close against the door, looked at his spade left planted in the middle of the yard.  The ground was so much dug up all over, that as the season advanced it turned to a quagmire.  When it froze hard, he was disconsolate.  What would Harry say?  And as he could not have so much of Bessie’s company at that time of the year, the roars of old Carvil, that came muffled through the closed windows, calling her indoors, exasperated him greatly.

“Why don’t that extravagant fellow get you a servant?” he asked impatiently one mild afternoon.  She had thrown something over her head to run out for a while.

“I don’t know,” said the pale Bessie, wearily, staring away with her heavy-lidded, grey, and unexpectant glance.  There were always smudgy shadows under her eyes, and she did not seem able to see any change or any end to her life.

“You wait till you get married, my dear,” said her only friend, drawing closer to the fence.  “Harry will get you one.”

His hopeful craze seemed to mock her own want of hope with so bitter an aptness that in her nervous irritation she could have screamed at him outright.  But she only said in self-mockery, and speaking to him as though he had been sane, “Why, Captain Hagberd, your son may not even want to look at me.”

He flung his head back and laughed his throaty affected cackle of anger.

“What!  That boy?  Not want to look at the only sensible girl for miles around?  What do you think I am here for, my dear—­my dear—­my dear? . . .  What?  You wait.  You just wait.  You’ll see to-morrow.  I’ll soon—­”

“Bessie!  Bessie!  Bessie!” howled old Carvil inside.  “Bessie!—­my pipe!” That fat blind man had given himself up to a very lust of laziness.  He would not lift his hand to reach for the things she took care to leave at his very elbow.  He would not move a limb; he would not rise from his chair, he would not put one foot before another, in that parlour (where he knew his way as well as if he had his sight), without calling her to his side and hanging all his atrocious weight on her shoulder.  He would not eat one single mouthful of food without her close attendance.  He had made himself helpless beyond his affliction, to enslave her better.  She stood still for a moment, setting her teeth in the dusk, then turned and walked slowly indoors.

Captain Hagberd went back to his spade.  The shouting in Carvil’s cottage stopped, and after a while the window of the parlour downstairs was lit up.  A man coming from the end of the street with a firm leisurely step passed on, but seemed to have caught sight of Captain Hagberd, because he turned back a pace or two.  A cold white light lingered in the western sky.  The man leaned over the gate in an interested manner.