‘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 voice when she spoke.
‘How long have you been like this?’ she said wrathfully, as though the blindness were some fault of the housemaids.
‘How?’
‘As you are.’
‘The day after you went away with the check, almost as soon as my picture was finished; I hardly saw her alive.’
‘Then they’ve been cheating you ever since, that’s all. I know their nice little ways.’
A woman may love one man and despise another, but on general feminine principles she will do her best to save the man she despises from being defrauded. Her loved one can look to himself, but the other man, being obviously an idiot, needs protection.
‘I don’t think Mr. Beeton cheats much,’ said Dick. Bessie was flouncing up and down the room, and he was conscious of a keen sense of enjoyment as he heard the swish of her skirts and the light step between.
‘Tea and muffins,’ she said shortly, when the ring at the bell was answered; ‘two teaspoonfuls and one over for the pot. I don’t want the old teapot that was here when I used to come. It don’t draw. Get another.’
The housemaid went away scandalised, and Dick chuckled. Then he began to cough as Bessie banged up and down the studio disturbing the dust.
‘What are you trying to do?’
‘Put things straight. This is like unfurnished lodgings. How could you let it go so?’
‘How could I help it? Dust away.’
She dusted furiously, and in the midst of all the pother entered Mrs. Beeton. Her husband on his return had explained the situation, winding up with the peculiarly felicitous proverb, ‘Do unto others as you would be done by.’ She had descended to put into her place the person who demanded muffins and an uncracked teapot as though she had a right to both.
‘Muffins ready yet?’ said Bess, still dusting. She was no longer a drab of the streets but a young lady who, thanks to Dick’s check, had paid her premium and was entitled to pull beer-handles with the best. Being neatly dressed in black she did not hesitate to face Mrs. Beeton, and there passed between the two women certain regards that