"I must have stepped on something when I was alive and walking about and it has bounced up and hit me. God help it, whatever it is—unless it was all a joke. But I don't know any one who'd take the trouble to play a joke on me—Love and loyalty for nothing. It sounds tempting enough. I wonder whether I have lost anything really?"
Dick considered for a long time but could not remember when or how he had put himself in the way of winning these trifles at a woman's hands.
Still, the letter as touching on matters that he preferred not to think about stung him into a fit of frenzy that lasted for a day and night. When his heart was so full of despair that it would hold no more, body and soul together seemed to be dropping without check through the darkness.
Then came fear of darkness and desperate attempts to reach the light again. But there was no light to be reached. When that agony had left him sweating and breathless, the downward flight would recommence till the gathering torture of it spurred him into another fight as hopeless as the first. Followed some few minutes of sleep in which he dreamed that he saw. Then the procession of events would repeat itself till he was utterly worn out and the brain took up its everlasting consideration of Maisie and might-have-beens.
At the end of everything Mr. Beeton came to his room and volunteered to take him out. "Not marketing this time, but we'll go into the Parks if you like."
"Be damned if I do," quoth Dick. "Keep to the streets and walk up and down. I like to hear the people round me."
This was not altogether true. The blind in the first stages of their infirmity dislike those who can move with a free stride and unlifted arms—but Dick had no earthly desire to go to the Parks. Once and only once since Maisie had shut her door he had gone there under Alf's charge. Alf forgot him and fished for minnows in the Serpentine with some companions. After half an hour's waiting Dick, almost weeping with rage and wrath, caught a passer-by, who introduced him to a friendly policeman, who led him to a four-wheeler opposite the Albert Hall. He never told Mr. Beeton of Alf's forgetfulness, but... this was not the manner in which he was used to walk the Parks aforetime.
"What streets would you like to walk down, then?" said Mr. Beeton, sympathetically. His own ideas of a riotous holiday meant picnicking on the grass of Green Park with his family, and half a dozen paper bags full of food.
"Keep to the river," said Dick, and they kept to the river, and the rush of it was in his ears till they came to Blackfriars Bridge and struck thence on to the Waterloo Road, Mr. Beeton explaining the beauties of the scenery as he went on.
"And walking on the other side of the pavement," said he, "unless I'm much mistaken, is the young woman that used to come to your rooms to be drawed. I never forgets a face and I never remembers a name, except paying tenants, 'o course!"
"Stop her," said Dick. "It's Bessie Broke. Tell her I'd like to speak to her again. Quick, man!"
Mr. Beeton crossed the road under the noses of the omnibuses and arrested Bessie then on her way northward. She recognised him as the man in authority who used to glare at her when she passed up Dick's staircase, and her first impulse was to run.
"Wasn't you Mr. Heldar's model?" said Mr. Beeton, planting himself in front of her. "You was. He's on the other side of the road and he'd like to see you."
"Why?" said Bessie, faintly. She remembered—indeed had never for long forgotten—an affair connected with a newly finished picture.
"Because he has asked me to do so, and because he's most particular blind."
"Drunk?"
"No. 'Orspital blind. He can't see. That's him over there."
Dick was leaning against the parapet of the bridge as Mr. Beeton pointed him out—a stub-bearded, bowed creature wearing a dirty magenta-coloured neckcloth outside an unbrushed coat. There was nothing to fear from such an one. Even if he chased her, Bessie thought, he could not follow far. She crossed over, and Dick's face lighted up. It was long since a woman of any kind had taken the trouble to speak to him.
"I hope you're well, Mr. Heldar?" said Bessie, a little puzzled. Mr. Beeton stood by with the air of an ambassador and breathed responsibly.
"I'm very well indeed, and, by Jove! I'm glad to see—hear you, I mean, Bess. You never thought it worth while to turn up and see us again after you got your money. I don't know why you should. Are you going anywhere in particular just now?"
"I was going for a walk," said Bessie.
"Not the old business?" Dick spoke under his breath.
"Lor, no! I paid my premium"—Bessie was very proud of that word—"for a barmaid, sleeping in, and I'm at the bar now quite respectable. Indeed I am."
Mr. Beeton had no special reason to believe in the loftiness of human nature. Therefore he dissolved himself like a mist and returned to his gas-plugs without a word of apology. Bessie watched the flight with a certain uneasiness; but so long as Dick appeared to be ignorant of the harm that had been done to him...
"It's hard work pulling the beer-handles," she went on, "and they've got one of them penny-in-the-slot cash-machines, so if you get wrong by a penny at the end of the day—but then I don't believe the machinery is right. Do you?"
"I've only seen it work. Mr. Beeton."
"He's gone.
"I'm afraid I must ask you to help me home, then. I'll make it worth your while. You see." The sightless eyes turned towards her and Bessie saw.
"It isn't taking you out of your way?" he said hesitatingly. "I can ask a policeman if it is."
"Not at all. I come on at seven and I'm off at four. That's easy hours."
"Good God!—but I'm on all the time. I wish I had some work to do too. Let's go home, Bess."
He turned and cannoned into a man on the sidewalk, recoiling with an oath. Bessie took his arm and said nothing—as she had said nothing when he had ordered her to turn her face a little more to the light. They walked for some time in silence, the girl steering him deftly through the crowd.
"And where's—where's Mr. Torpenhow?" she inquired at last.
"He has gone away to the desert."
"Where's that?"
Dick pointed to the right. "East—out of the mouth of the river," said he.
"Then west, then south, and then east again, all along the under-side of Europe. Then south again, God knows how far." The explanation did not enlighten Bessie in the least, but she held her tongue and looked to Dick's patch till they came to the chambers.
"We'll have tea and muffins," he said joyously. "I can't tell you, Bessie, how glad I am to find you again. What made you go away so suddenly?"
"I didn't think you'd want me any more," she said, emboldened by his ignorance.
"I didn't, as a matter of fact—but afterwards—At any rate I'm glad you've come. You know the stairs."
So Bessie led him home to his own place—there was no one to hinder—and shut the door of the studio.
"What a mess!" was her first word. "All these things haven't been looked after for months and months."
"No, only weeks, Bess. You can't expect them to care."
"I don't know what you expect them to do. They ought to know what you've paid them for. The dust's just awful. It's all over the easel."
"I don't use it much now."
"All over the pictures and the floor, and all over your coat. I'd like to speak to them housemaids."
"Ring for tea, then." Dick felt his way to the one chair he used by custom.
Bessie saw the action and, as far as in her lay, was touched. But there remained always a keen sense of new-found superiority, and it was in her