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 d.i.c.k 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 G.o.d!--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?'

d.i.c.k 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, G.o.d knows how far.' The explanation did not enlighten Bessie in the least, but she held her tongue and looked to d.i.c.k's patch till they came to the chambers.

'We'll have tea and m.u.f.fins,' 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.' d.i.c.k 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 d.i.c.k. 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 m.u.f.fins,' 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 d.i.c.k 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 m.u.f.fins and an uncracked teapot as though she had a right to both.

'm.u.f.fins ready yet?' said Bess, still dusting. She was no longer a drab of the streets but a young lady who, thanks to d.i.c.k's check, had paid her premium and was ent.i.tled to pull beer-handles with the best. Being neatly dressed in black she did not hesitate to face Mrs. Beeton, and there pa.s.sed between the two women certain regards that d.i.c.k would have appreciated. The situation adjusted itself by eye. Bessie had won, and Mrs. Beeton returned to cook m.u.f.fins and make scathing remarks about models, hussies, trollops, and the like, to her husband.

'There's nothing to be got of interfering with him, Liza,' he said.

'Alf, you go along into the street to play. When he isn't crossed he's as kindly as kind, but when he's crossed he's the devil and all. We took too many little things out of his rooms since he was blind to be that particular about what he does. They ain't no objects to a blind man, of course, but if it was to come into court we'd get the sack. Yes, I did introduce him to that girl because I'm a feelin' man myself.'

'Much too feelin'!' Mrs. Beeton slapped the m.u.f.fins into the dish, and thought of comely housemaids long since dismissed on suspicion.

'I ain't ashamed of it, and it isn't for us to judge him hard so long as he pays quiet and regular as he do. I know how to manage young gentlemen, you know how to cook for them, and what I says is, let each stick to his own business and then there won't be any trouble. Take them m.u.f.fins down, Liza, and be sure you have no words with that young woman.

His lot is cruel hard, and if he's crossed he do swear worse than any one I've ever served.'

'That's a little better,' said Bessie, sitting down to the tea. 'You needn't wait, thank you, Mrs. Beeton.'

'I had no intention of doing such, I do a.s.sure you.'

Bessie made no answer whatever. This, she knew, was the way in which real ladies routed their foes, and when one is a barmaid at a first-cla.s.s public-house one may become a real lady at ten minutes'

notice.

Her eyes fell on d.i.c.k opposite her and she was both shocked and displeased. There were droppings of food all down the front of his coat; the mouth under the ragged ill-grown beard drooped sullenly; the forehead was lined and contracted; and on the lean temples the hair was a dusty indeterminate colour that might or might not have been called gray. The utter misery and self-abandonment of the man appealed to her, and at the bottom of her heart lay the wicked feeling that he was humbled and brought low who had once humbled her.

'Oh! it is good to hear you moving about,' said d.i.c.k, rubbing his hands.