“That depends on how you behave.”
Bessie behaved beautifully. Only it was difficult at the end of a sitting to bid her go out into the gray streets. She very much preferred the studio and a big chair by the stove, with some socks in her lap as an excuse for delay. Then Torpenhow would come in, and Bessie would be moved to tell strange and wonderful stories of her past, and still stranger ones of her present improved circumstances. She would make them tea as though she had a right to make it; and once or twice on these occasions Dick caught Torpenhow’s eyes fixed on the trim little figure, and because Bessie’s flittings about the room made Dick ardently long for Maisie, he realised whither Torpenhow’s thoughts were tending. And Bessie was exceedingly careful of the condition of Torpenhow’s linen. She spoke very little to him, but sometimes they talked together on the landing.
“I was a great fool,” Dick said to himself. “I know what red firelight looks like when a man’s tramping through a strange town; and ours is a lonely, selfish sort of life at the best. I wonder Maisie doesn’t feel that sometimes. But I can’t order Bessie away. That’s the worst of beginning things. One never knows where they stop.”
One evening, after a sitting prolonged to the last limit of the light, Dick was roused from a nap by a broken voice in Torpenhow’s room. He jumped to his feet. “Now what ought I to do? It looks foolish to go in.—Oh, bless you, Binkie!” The little terrier thrust Torpenhow’s door open with his nose and came out to take possession of Dick’s chair. The door swung wide unheeded, and Dick across the landing could see Bessie in the half-light making her little supplication to Torpenhow. She was kneeling by his side, and her hands were clasped across his knee.
“I know,—I know,” she said thickly. “’Tisn’t right o’ me to do this, but I can’t help it; and you were so kind,—so kind; and you never took any notice o’ me. And I’ve mended all your things so carefully,—I did. Oh, please, ’tisn’t as if I was asking you to marry me. I wouldn’t think of it.
But you—couldn’t you take and live with me till Miss Right comes along? I’m only Miss Wrong, I know, but I’d work my hands to the bare bone for you. And I’m not ugly to look at. Say you will!”
Dick hardly recognised Torpenhow’s voice in reply—“But look here. It’s no use. I’m liable to be ordered off anywhere at a minute’s notice if a war breaks out. At a minute’s notice—dear.”
“What does that matter? Until you go, then. Until you go. ’Tisn’t much I’m asking, and—you don’t know how good I can cook.” She had put an arm round his neck and was drawing his head down.
“Until—I—go, then.”
“Torp,” said Dick, across the landing. He could hardly steady his voice.