The Light That Failed

Twenty-five – thirty-five – a man’s in his prime then, they say – forty-five – a middle-aged man just entering politics – fifty-five – “died at the comparatively early age of fifty-five,” according to the newspapers. Bah! How these Christians funk death! Sixty-five – we’re only getting on in years. Seventy-five is just possible, though. Great hell, cat O! fifty years more of solitary confinement in the dark! You’ll die, and Beeton will die, and Torp will die, and Mai – everybody else will die, but I shall be alive and kicking with nothing to do. I’m very sorry for myself. I should like some one else to be sorry for me. Evidently I’m not going mad before I die, but the pain’s just as bad as ever. Some day when you’re vivisected, cat O! they’ll tie you down on a little table and cut you open – but don’t be afraid; they’ll take precious good care that you don’t die. You’ll live, and you’ll be very sorry then that you weren’t sorry for me. Perhaps Torp will come back or… I wish I could go to Torp and the Nilghai, even though I were in their way.’

Pussy left the room before the speech was ended, and Alf, as he entered, found Dick addressing the empty hearth-rug.

‘There’s a letter for you, sir,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you’d like me to read it.’

‘Lend it to me for a minute and I’ll tell you.’

The outstretched hand shook just a little and the voice was not over-steady. It was within the limits of human possibility that – that was no letter from Maisie. He knew the heft of three closed envelopes only too well. It was a foolish hope that the girl should write to him, for he did not realise that there is a wrong which admits of no reparation though the evildoer may with tears and the heart’s best love strive to mend all. It is best to forget that wrong whether it be caused or endured, since it is as remediless as bad work once put forward.

‘Read it, then,’ said Dick, and Alf began intoning according to the rules of the Board School – ‘"I could have given you love, I could have given you loyalty, such as you never dreamed of. Do you suppose I cared what you were? But you chose to whistle everything down the wind for nothing. My only excuse for you is that you are so young.” ‘That’s all,’ he said, returning the paper to be dropped into the fire.

‘What was in the letter?’ asked Mrs. Beeton, when Alf returned.

‘I don’t know. I think it was a circular or a tract about not whistlin’ at everything when you’re young.’

‘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 path 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 Dick would have appreciated. The situation adjusted itself by eye. Bessie had won, and Mrs. Beeton returned to cook muffins 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 muffins 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 muffins 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 assure 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-class public-house one may become a real lady at ten minutes’ notice.

Her eyes fell on Dick 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 Dick, rubbing his hands.

‘Tell us all about your bar successes, Bessie, and the way you live now.’

‘Never mind that. I’m quite respectable, as you’d see by looking at me.

You don’t seem to live too well. What made you go blind that sudden? Why isn’t there any one to look after you?’

Dick was too thankful for the sound of her voice to resent the tone of it.

‘I was cut across the head a long time ago, and that ruined my eyes. I don’t suppose anybody thinks it worth while to look after me any more.

Why should they? – and Mr. Beeton really does everything I want.’

‘Don’t you know any gentlemen and ladies, then, while you was – well?’

‘A few, but I don’t care to have them looking at me.’

‘I suppose that’s why you’ve growed a beard. Take it off, it don’t become you.’

‘Good gracious, child, do you imagine that I think of what becomes of me these days?’

‘You ought. Get that taken off before I come here again. I suppose I can come, can’t I?’

‘I’d be only too grateful if you did. I don’t think I treated you very well in the old days. I used to make you angry.’

‘Very angry, you did.’

‘I’m sorry for it, then. Come and see me when you can and as often as you can. God knows, there isn’t a soul in the world to take that trouble except you and Mr. Beeton.’

‘A lot of trouble he’s taking and she too.’ This with a toss of the head.

‘They’ve let you do anyhow and they haven’t done anything for you. I’ve only to look and see that much. I’ll come, and I’ll be glad to come, but you must go and be shaved, and you must get some other clothes – those ones aren’t fit to be seen.’

‘I have heaps somewhere,’ he said helplessly.

‘I know you have. Tell Mr. Beeton to give you a new suit and I’ll brush it and keep it clean. You may be as blind as a barn-door, Mr. Heldar, but it doesn’t excuse you looking like a sweep.’

‘Do I look like a sweep, then?’

‘Oh, I’m sorry for you. I’m that sorry for you!’ she cried impulsively, and took Dick’s hands. Mechanically, he lowered his head as if to kiss – she was the only woman who had taken pity on him, and he was not too proud for a little pity now. She stood up to go.

‘Nothing o’ that kind till you look more like a gentleman. It’s quite easy when you get shaved, and some clothes.’

He could hear her drawing on her gloves and rose to say good-bye. She passed behind him, kissed him audaciously on the back of the neck, and ran away as swiftly as on the day when she had destroyed the Melancolia.

‘To think of me kissing Mr. Heldar,’ she said to herself, ‘after all he’s done to me and all! Well, I’m sorry for him, and if he was shaved he wouldn’t be so bad to look at, but… Oh them Beetons, how shameful they’ve treated him! I know Beeton’s wearing his shirt on his back to-day just as well as if I’d aired it. To-morrow, I’ll see… I wonder if he has much of his own. It might be worth more than the bar – I wouldn’t have to do any work – and just as respectable as if no one knew.’

Dick was not grateful to Bessie for her parting gift. He was acutely conscious of it in the nape of his neck throughout the night, but it seemed, among very many other things, to enforce the wisdom of getting shaved.

He was shaved accordingly in the morning, and felt the better for it. A fresh suit of clothes, white linen, and the knowledge that some one in the world said that she took an interest in his personal appearance made him carry himself almost upright; for the brain was relieved for a while from thinking of Maisie, who, under other circumstances, might have given that kiss and a million others.

‘Let us consider,’ said he, after lunch. ‘The girl can’t care, and it’s a toss-up whether she comes again or not, but if money can buy her to look after me she shall be bought. Nobody else in the world would take the trouble, and I can make it worth her while. She’s a child of the gutter holding brevet rank as a barmaid; so she shall have everything she wants if she’ll only come and talk and look after me.’ He rubbed his newly shorn chin and began to perplex himself with the thought of her not coming. ‘I suppose I did look rather a sweep,’ he went on. ‘I had no reason to look otherwise. I knew things dropped on my clothes, but it didn’t matter. It would be cruel if she didn’t come. She must. Maisie came once, and that was enough for her. She was quite right. She had something to work for. This creature has only beer-handles to pull, unless she has deluded some young man into keeping company with her.

Fancy being cheated for the sake of a counter-jumper! We’re falling pretty low.’

Something cried aloud within him: – This will hurt more than anything that has gone before. It will recall and remind and suggest and tantalise, and in the end drive you mad.

‘I know it, I know it!’ Dick cried, clenching his hands despairingly; ‘but, good heavens! is a poor blind beggar never to get anything out of his life except three meals a day and a greasy waistcoat? I wish she’d come.’

Early in the afternoon time she came, because there was no young man in her life just then, and she thought of material advantages which would allow her to be idle for the rest of her days.

‘I shouldn’t have known you,’ she said approvingly. ‘You look as you used to look – a gentleman that was proud of himself.’

‘Don’t you think I deserve another kiss, then?’ said Dick, flushing a little.

‘Maybe – but you won’t get it yet. Sit down and let’s see what I can do for you. I’m certain sure Mr. Beeton cheats you, now that you can’t go through the housekeeping books every month. Isn’t that true?’

‘You’d better come and housekeep for me then, Bessie.’

‘Couldn’t do it in these chambers – you know that as well as I do.’

‘I know, but we might go somewhere else, if you thought it worth your while.’

‘I’d try to look after you, anyhow; but I shouldn’t care to have to work for both of us.’ This was tentative.

Dick laughed.

‘Do you remember where I used to keep my bank-book?’ said he. ‘Torp took it to be balanced just before he went away. Look and see.’

‘It was generally under the tobacco-jar. Ah!’

‘Well?’

‘Oh! Four thousand two hundred and ten pounds nine shillings and a penny! Oh my!’

‘You can have the penny. That’s not bad for one year’s work. Is that and a hundred and twenty pounds a year good enough?’

The idleness and the pretty clothes were almost within her reach now, but she must, by being housewifely, show that she deserved them.

‘Yes; but you’d have to move, and if we took an inventory, I think we’d find that Mr. Beeton has been prigging little things out of the rooms here and there. They don’t look as full as they used.’

‘Never mind, we’ll let him have them. The only thing I’m particularly anxious to take away is that picture I used you for – when you used to swear at me. We’ll pull out of this place, Bess, and get away as far as ever we can.’

‘Oh yes,’ she said uneasily.

‘I don’t know where I can go to get away from myself, but I’ll try, and you shall have all the pretty frocks that you care for. You’ll like that.

Give me that kiss now, Bess. Ye gods! it’s good to put one’s arm round a woman’s waist again.’

Then came the fulfilment of the prophecy within the brain. If his arm were thus round Maisie’s waist and a kiss had just been given and taken between them, – why then… He pressed the girl more closely to himself because the pain whipped him. She was wondering how to explain a little accident to the Melancolia. At any rate, if this man really desired the solace of her company – and certainly he would relapse into his original slough if she withdrew it – he would not be more than just a little vexed.

It would be delightful at least to see what would happen, and by her teachings it was good for a man to stand in certain awe of his companion.

She laughed nervously, and slipped out of his reach.

‘I shouldn’t worrit about that picture if I was you,’ she began, in the hope of turning his attention.

‘It’s at the back of all my canvases somewhere. Find it, Bess; you know it as well as I do.’

‘I know – but – ’

‘But what? You’ve wit enough to manage the sale of it to a dealer.

Women haggle much better than men. It might be a matter of eight or nine hundred pounds to – to us. I simply didn’t like to think about it for a long time. It was mixed up with my life so. – But we’ll cover up our tracks and get rid of everything, eh? Make a fresh start from the beginning, Bess.’

Then she began to repent very much indeed, because she knew the value of money. Still, it was probable that the blind man was overestimating the value of his work. Gentlemen, she knew, were absurdly particular about their things. She giggled as a nervous housemaid giggles when she tries to explain the breakage of a pipe.

‘I’m very sorry, but you remember I was – I was angry with you before Mr. Torpenhow went away?’

‘You were very angry, child; and on my word I think you had some right to be.’

‘Then I – but aren’t you sure Mr. Torpenhow didn’t tell you?’

‘Tell me what? Good gracious, what are you making such a fuss about when you might just as well be giving me another kiss?’

He was beginning to learn, not for the first time in his experience, that kissing is a cumulative poison. The more you get of it, the more you want.

Bessie gave the kiss promptly, whispering, as she did so, ‘I was so angry I rubbed out that picture with the turpentine. You aren’t angry, are you?’

‘What? Say that again.’ The man’s hand had closed on her wrist.

‘I rubbed it out with turps and the knife,’ faltered Bessie. ‘I thought you’d only have to do it over again. You did do it over again, didn’t you? Oh, let go of my wrist; you’re hurting me.’

‘Isn’t there anything left of the thing?’

‘N’nothing that looks like anything. I’m sorry – I didn’t know you’d take on about it; I only meant to do it in fun. You aren’t going to hit me?’

‘Hit you! No! Let’s think.’

He did not relax his hold upon her wrist but stood staring at the carpet.