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?”