"But those songs you've been playing," said Beverley, "they've been published?"
"Yes, those three. But they are the only ones."
"And didn't they sell?"
"Hardly at all. You see, a song doesn't sell unless somebody well known sings it. And people promise to sing them, and then don't keep their word. You can't depend on what they say."
"Give me their names," said Beverley, "and I'll go round to-morrow and shoot the whole lot. But can't you do anything?"
"Only keep on keeping on."
"I wish," he said, "that any time you're feeling blue about things you would come up and pour out the poison on me. It's no good bottling it up. Come up and tell me about it, and you'll feel ever so much better. Or let me come down. Any time things aren't going right just knock on the ceiling."
She laughed.
"Don't rub it in," pleaded Beverley. "It isn't fair. There's nobody so sensitive as a reformed floor-knocker. You will come up or let me come down, won't you? Whenever I have that sad, depressed feeling, I go out and kill a policeman. But you wouldn't care for that. So the only thing for you to do is to knock on the ceiling. Then I'll come charging down and see if there's anything I can do to help."
"You'll be sorry you ever said this."
"I won't," he said stoutly.
"If you really mean it, it would be a relief," she admitted. "Sometimes I'd give all the money I'm ever likely to make for someone to shriek my grievances at. I always think it must have been so nice for the people in the old novels, when they used to say: 'Sit down and I will tell you the story of my life.' Mustn't it have been heavenly?"
"Well," said Beverley, rising, "you know where I am if I'm wanted. Right up there where the knocking came from."
"Knocking?" said Annette. "I remember no knocking."
"Would you mind shaking hands?" said Beverley.
A particularly maddening hour with one of her pupils drove her up the very next day. Her pupils were at once her salvation and her despair. They gave her the means of supporting life, but they made life hardly worth supporting. Some of them were learning the piano. Others thought they sang. All had solid ivory skulls. There was about a teaspoonful of grey matter distributed among the entire squad, and the pupil Annette had been teaching that afternoon had come in at the tail-end of the division.
In the studio with Beverley she found Reginald Sellers, standing in a critical attitude before the easel. She was not very fond of him. He was a long, offensive, patronising person, with a moustache that looked like a smear of char coal, and a habit of addressing her as "Ah, little one!"
Beverley looked up.
"Have you brought your hatchet, Miss Brougham? If you have, you're just in time to join in the massacre of the innocents. Sellers has been smiting my child and cat hip and thigh. Look at his eye. There! Did you see it flash then? He's on the warpath again."
"My dear Beverley," said Sellers, rather stiffly, "I am merely endeavouring to give you my idea of the picture's defects. I am sorry if my criticism has to be a little harsh."
"Go right on," said Beverley, cordially. "Don't mind me; it's all for my good."
"Well, in a word, then, it is lifeless. Neither the child nor the cat lives."
He stepped back a pace and made a frame of his hands.
"The cat now," he said. "It is-how shall I put it? It has no-no-er-"
"That kind of cat wouldn't," said Beverley. "It isn't that breed."
"I think it's a dear cat," said Annette. She felt her temper, always quick, getting the better of her. She knew just how incompetent Sellers was, and it irritated her beyond endurance to see Beverley's good- humoured acceptance of his patronage.
"At any rate," said Beverley, with a grin, "you both seem to recognise that it is a cat. You're solid on that point, and that's something, seeing I'm only a beginner."
"I know, my dear fellow; I know," said Sellers, graciously. "You mustn't let my criticism discourage you. Don't think that your work lacks promise. Far from it. I am sure that in time you will do very well indeed. Quite well."
A cold glitter might have been observed in Annette's eyes.
"Mr. Sellers," she said, smoothly, "had to work very hard himself before he reached his present position. You know his work, of course?"
For the first time Beverley seemed somewhat confused.
"I-er-why-" he began.
"Oh, but of course you do," she went on, sweetly. "It's in all the magazines."
Beverley looked at the great man with admiration, and saw that he had flushed uncomfortably. He put this down to the modesty of genius.
"In the advertisement pages," said Annette. "Mr. Sellers drew that picture of the Waukeesy Shoe and the Restawhile Settee and the tin of sardines in the Little Gem Sardine advertisement. He is very good at still life."
There was a tense silence. Beverley could almost hear the voice of the referee uttering the count.
"Miss Brougham," said Sellers at last, spitting out the words, "has confined herself to the purely commercial side of my work. There is another."
"Why, of course there is. You sold a landscape for five pounds only eight months ago, didn't you? And another three months before that."
It was enough. Sellers bowed stiffly and stalked from the room.
Beverley picked up a duster and began slowly to sweep the floor with it.
"What are you doing?" demanded Annette, in a choking voice.
"The fragments of the wretched man," whispered Beverley. "They must be swept up and decently interred. You certainly have got the punch, Miss Brougham."
He dropped the duster with a startled exclamation, for Annette had suddenly burst into a flood of tears. With her face buried in her hands she sat in her chair and sobbed desperately.
"Good Lord!" said Beverley, blankly.
"I'm a cat! I'm a beast! I hate myself!"
"Good Lord!" said Beverley, blankly.
"I'm a pig! I'm a fiend!"
"Good Lord!" said Beverley, blankly.
"We're all struggling and trying to get on and having hard luck, and instead of doing what I can to help, I go and t-t-taunt him with not being able to sell his pictures! I'm not fit to live! Oh!"
"Good Lord!" said Beverley, blankly.
A series of gulping sobs followed, diminishing by degrees into silence. Presently she looked up and smiled, a moist and pathetic smile.
"I'm sorry," she said, "for being so stupid. But he was so horrid and patronising to you, I couldn't help scratching. I believe I'm the worst cat in London."
"No, this is," said Beverley, pointing to the canvas. "At least, according to the late Sellers. But, I say, tell me, isn't the deceased a great artist, then? He came curveting in here with his chest out and started to slate my masterpiece, so I naturally said, 'What-ho! 'Tis a genius!' Isn't he!"
"He can't sell his pictures anywhere. He lives on the little he can get from illustrating advertisements. And I t-taunt-"
"Please!" said Beverley, apprehensively.
She recovered herself with a gulp.
"I can't help it," she said, miserably. "I rubbed it in. Oh, it was hateful of me! But I was all on edge from teaching one of my awful pupils, and when he started to patronise you-"
She blinked.
"Poor devil!" said Beverley. "I never guessed. Good Lord!"
Annette rose.
"I must go and tell him I'm sorry," she said. "He'll snub me horribly, but I must."
She went out. Beverley lit a pipe and stood at the window looking thoughtfully down into the street.
It is a good rule in life never to apologise. The right sort of people do not want apologies, and the wrong sort take a mean advantage of them. Sellers belonged to the latter class. When Annette, meek, penitent, with all her claws sheathed, came to him and grovelled he forgave her with a repulsive magnanimity which in a less subdued mood would have stung her to renewed pugnacity. As it was, she allowed herself to be forgiven, and retired with a dismal conviction that from now on he would be more insufferable than ever.
Her surmise proved absolutely correct. His visits to the new-comer's studio began again, and Beverley's picture, now nearing completion, came in for criticism enough to have filled a volume. The good humour with which he received it amazed Annette. She had no proprietary interest in the painting beyond what she acquired from a growing regard for its parent (which disturbed her a good deal when she had time to think of it); but there were moments when only the recollection of her remorse for her previous outbreak kept her from rending the critic. Beverley, however, appeared to have no artistic sensitiveness whatsoever. When Sellers savaged the cat in a manner which should have brought the S.P.C.A. down upon him, Beverley merely beamed. His long-sufferingness was beyond Annette's comprehension.