The career of Beauty Darling

Chapter I

T HE Spring had come, even in the London suburbs.

All along the road from Wimbledon into Merton the scraps of hedges had broken into leaf, and on waste pieces of ground grew starved buttercups and sainfoin which the dirty schoolchildren had spared to pick. May had been cold so far, but there had been plenty of sun. Now, one evening in the middle of the month, a sudden warmth brought a feeling of enervation into the air, so that people lagged by the roadside, and showed a tendency to loiter even in the ugly byways that were not town or country.

A man tramping along in the dusty highway that led from Wimbledon shifted his load of artists' paraphernalia, and pushed the old cap back from his lined, dark eyes. He was not a young man, and he had been tramping in a desultory fashion from Surrey towards the City of London — the real City, that lay beyond Balham and Brixton, to which his face was set. The children whom he passed turned to stare at him and his pack, but as much from an excuse to idle as from any interest; for he was by no means an artistic or romantic figure, despite his profession — a tall, spare man, with a face that was evil despite its refinement, and sinister because of the effects of dissipation and

x i self-indulgence. He had lived for forty years in the world, and few of them had been harmless, either for himself or others; but because he had not grown fat, or wore a beard, people sometimes mistook him for thirtyfive. There were times, on the other hand, when he looked fifty.

He had passed through Merton, with its glimpses of a ruined Abbey — which he had noted and condemned as a useless subject — and had reached Wandlebridge, that strip of straggling cottages and a muddy stream flanked by Mlotment grounds. The Wandle trickled along one side of the road with hardly the claim to be called anything more than a ditch, and on the other side were small buildings of red brick with strips of garden in front, and dingy signposts to the effect that this person was an undertaker or that took in washing. It was all infinitely sordid and depressing. Even the quiet evening was defiled by the raucous sound of London voices raised in timely gossip, and the lean man with the ugly face made a wry mouth as he strode onwards, his dusty shoes showing signs of wear and tear that suggested a weary journey.

He had no intention of staying in Wandlebridge, his next goal being the Pool of London; but the folding easel rasped his shoulder, so that he turned aside for a minute to alter the burden, and in a narrow lane at right angles to the highroad he slipped the whole pack to the ground and stood up at his full height for a moment, to stretch his many inches. Then, before he loaded himself again, he turned round and looked up the lane towards a gentler prospect of more open country.

The cottages here stopped abruptly beyond the row fronting the highroad, and behind the one at the corner was something he could not have seen if he had not turned into the lane — an apple-tree in full blossom. The long rays of the sinking sun shone full upon the rosy boughs and green tufts of leaves, and the tired man gave a little sigh of pleasure at the perfect thing. He left his pack in the middle of the lane in a way which was characteristic had anyone been there who knew him, and walking up to the paling which guarded the cottage, looked more closely at the tree. It stood in a small space of grass, too small to be called a field, where some chickens were wandering in search of food, and beyond was the gradual slope of an allotment ground, blurred to general greenness by the evening light. But as he approached the tree he was aware of something besides the wealth of blossom — two legs in thick stockings much wrinkled about the ankles and a pair of shabby brown shoes. They were a girl’s legs, though the short skirts were not even visible, but a minute later the branches were parted to satisfy the curiosity of the owner of the legs, and a face appeared framed in the apple blossoms.

It was the face of a little girl of about thirteen or fourteen years old — a face that had lost no curve of childhood and was rather round save for the beautiful moulding of the lower jaw, the line of which ran almost straight from the lobe of the ear to the decided chin. The features were small and well cut and the lips red and inclined to pout. But it was the general effect of ideal health and youth which was so arresting among the bonny apple blossoms, — the bloom of sunburnt cheeks, the gloss of the golden-brown hair curlmg thickly round the whole face, the deep, dewy eyes beneath long lashes and daintily drawn brows. There was hardly any character in the face as yet, and absolutely no experience to make it interesting. It was just beautiful, and an ideal type of Youth.

The man in the road and the girl in the tree stared at each other for a few seconds in absolute silence. Then the face was withdrawn amongst the apple blossom, there was a scramble, and something tumbled on to the soft grass and ran into the back of the house. He could see the outline of her figure as she ran, and it was that of a neatly made child clumsily dressed in a coarse stuff frock and white pinafore.

The artist turned back to the lane and picked up his pack, which he slung on to his shoulders again. The lines about his eyes had deepened, and he was smiling, so that he looked devilish rather than ingratiating. But the sunset was behind him as he walked round to the front of the cottage and knocked at the door, and the person who opened it could only see a tall man silhouetted against the sky.

“ I beg your pardon for troubling you,” said the artist in a voice that was unexpectedly charming. “ But I wonder if you could advise me where I might get a room hereabouts for a few days? I want to make a sketch of — of Merton Abbey. I am not a very tiresome lodger, for I only want a bed, and I get my meals out anywhere.”

The person who had answered the door to his knock was a large stout woman in a respectable cotton gown and apron, although her sleeves were rolled ba*ck to the elbow and it was evident from the smell of steam and soap that she had been washing. She had once probably been good-looking, but there was nothing now in her hard-featured face at all resembling the vision in the apple-tree. There had been something uncompromising in her attitude when she first opened the door, but at the sound of the visitor’s voice an intangible change came over her. One felt that she had been about to speak as to an equal — possibly an intrusive inferior — and that now she was going to add “ sir.”

“ Will you come inside, sir? ” was what she actually said, with a reserved civility that seemed to preserve her self-respect very carefully. “ I’m doing some washing, and my hands are wet.” It was noticeable that though she did not misplace her h’s or make any mistakes in English, her accent contrived to be that of the lower classes. The tired, dusty man followed her into a sitting-room with horsehair-covered furniture and a round table on which were several “ gift ” books in the centre. But in the window (which was mercifully open) stood a giant aspidistra, a really magnificent plant, the girth of whose pot alone was considerably over a yard.

“ What a splendid fellow ! ” said the artist at once, walking over to the plant with a kind of brotherly good-fellowship. His voice was the voice for which lovers have pined in all ages, making the lightest word a caress and the most trivial phrase holy. A bishop or an actor would have found a fortune in such a voice. Taken in conjunction with his face it was a hideous irony.

It was evident, however, that his instinct for tact was equal to the dulcet notes of his voice. The woman's face lost a little of its reserve and almost brightened.

“ I’ve had that plant four year,” she said, wiping her wet hands on her useful linen apron and sitting down on one of the hard slippery chairs. “ Sit down sir, you look tired. Yes, many’s the people come in here just to look at it nearer, seeing it stand in the window there. I never had no trouble with it. Just watered it myself and cut the dead leaves. It do grow beautiful.”

“ It is such a wonderful size ! ” said the artist simply, letting his pack fall once more from his shoulders. “ I’m not fit to come into your sitting-room. I’m so covered with dust. I’ve walked from Reigate to-day. .Will my traps hurt the carpet ? ” He looked down at it as if considering its egregious red cabbages on a black ground, with a border of false oilcloth where it did not reach to the wainscot. But his hostess saw only his outward politeness.

“ That’s nothing — don’t you think about it. My girl will sweep it over. I’m thinking of your getting a room, sir. Mrs. Higgins used to let to a young man about Christmas time, and I think he’s left. You might have his room.”

“ Is Mrs. Higgins a neighbour of yours ? ”

Somehow his delightful voice conveyed a distinct and flattering impression that he did not wish to be far away from this his first friend — and the aspidistra. He was very tired and shabby, and it was extremely unlikely that Mrs. Higgins or anyone else would make much out of him ; but the woman knew that he was a gentleman, and also that she was going to make him what was really a generous offer. Her real reason for this was because he had reached and played upon the softer side of her nature with a touch as delicate and unerring as any specialist in emotions; but that she did not know.

“ Look here, sir, there’s my brother Tom’s room — you’re welcome to that if you don’t mind a sloping roof. I don’t think Mrs. Higgins would suit you, and I know my own things are clean.”

“ I like a sloping roof ! ” said the artist, smiling very gently, for he knew that he was apt to destroy the impression of his voice when he smiled. It had all the gigantic cynicism of the king of hell.

“ It’s not a hot room,” said the woman, rising with a certain slowness that suggested rheumatism. “ It faces north, but it’s right up in the roof.”

“I want a north aspect of all things!” said the artist almost breathlessly. “ But you said the room was your brother’s — ? ”

“ It was, sir — he’s dead ! ” The woman stopped with startling suddenness on her way to the door, and turned round to plunge into reminiscence. “ He came to me at Christmas — to spend it all together like — and his wife, my sister-in-law, had written to say he was very ill, but I saw the minute he come in at that gate that he was done! And he so cheerful and hopeful too. ‘ It’s all right, Mary,’ he says; ‘ I’ll be better in a few days and amongst you all,’ just as his wife was helping him up to bed. ‘Torn,’ I says; ‘ don’t deceive yourself, my boy. You'll never come down again out of this house but feet first!’ That was before Christmas, and he was buried on Boxing Day.”

The artist’s mouth twitched, and it seemed as if his tact failed him for a minute. Something in this Christmas greeting to the unfortunate invalid seemed to appeal to his sense of humour. But his hostess did not wait for a reply.

“ And there’s his room all ready, sir, left just as he had it, and you’re welcome to it for half-a-crown a week. You can go up and see it now, if you like, but if you’ll excuse me I won’t show you myself, for the stairs are bad for me. My girl will take you up — Beau-ty ! Beau-ty ! ”

“ Wait a minute,” said the artist, as she turned towards the regions whence the smell of washing still issued. “ Of course you must not climb those steep stairs — but would you tell me your name? Mine is Trevor Guy.”

“ Mrs. Darling,” said the woman with the same unconscious dignity. “ I’ll send my girl — or else the laundry help. Beau-ty ! Beau-ty ! ”

She walked down the passage in the same deliberate, ponderous fashion, leaving Trevor Guy waiting at the foot of the narrow staircase. He had time to reflect that Mrs. Darling had the build of a person who would die of apoplexy if not careful of her health, before a new figure appeared from the regions into which she had vanished — new, and yet not new to Trevor, for it was the girl who had been sitting in the apple-tree.

She did not come very willingly, and after her first quick glance of recognition she did not appear very interested. When he stood near to her Guy saw that she was of a very different type to Mrs. Darling physically, whatever likeness there might be mentally.

The father — if this were Mrs. Darling’s daughter, and she looked too young a child for the heavy work of the laundry, to be the “help” — must have been small-boned and delicately turned, for even her hands, though reddened and roughened, belonged to a different breed to Mrs. Darling’s. Her marvellous prettiness had not owed anything to the glamour of the apple blossom and the sunset. She was just as much the personification of Youth as she ran up the stairs in front of him as she had been leaning from the branches. “ Nevertheless, I will paint her in the apple-tree, exactly as I first saw her,” said Trevor Guy to himself as he followed her.

The room was literally, as Mrs. Darling had said, under the roof. The back portion of the cottage had been an older building, and the new and ugly frontage had been built on to match its neighbours. But being the corner house it ran back into the lane, and from the first floor a second and very irregular flight of steps led into that chamber from which poor Tom was only destined to descend “ feet first.” Guy’s observant eyes took in the details of the place with the training of his profession and with some satisfaction. It was furnished as only the lower middle class do furnish, with a mixture of extreme penury and show ; but though the low pallet bed looked very hard, the coverlet was quite clean, and if the furniture was gimcrack there was mercifully little of it. The window in the gable of the roof faced due north, as Mrs. Darling had promised, and the room was large if low.

“Who else sleeps on this side of the house?” he asked, turning to the indifferent figure of the girl waiting at the door.

io THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING

“ No one ! ” was the answer, delivered in a very shy voice.

“ Is there any other room? ”

“ Yes, but mother only uses it for storing things in it. Aunt Carrie did sleep there in the winter when Uncle Tom was so ill, but there’s no one there now.”

“ Oh ! ” He turned a little more towards her and smiled that careful smile. “And are you Mrs. Darling’s daughter ? ”

“ Yes.”

“ And what is your name? ”

“ Beauty ! ” she answered after more hesitation. It was not the claim of the appellation that made her tongue-tied, or its undoubted and pointed application tQ herself; but something in the gentleman himself made her uncomfortable. He did not interest her, for he was so elderly in her eyes as to be almost beyond the sphere of sex — “ a young man ” to Beauty Darling being strictly within the age limits of seventeen to twenty-six — and he was neither well-dressed nor good-looking. And yet she felt the same alien atmosphere that had made Mrs. Darling call him “ sir,” and it weighed upon her in conjunction with that deeply sweet voice that was so bewildering to all those who first heard it. It was a relief to her when she made good her escape to the kitchen again, though the irksome task of ironing the finer articles of apparel awaited her there.

Trevor Guy took the room. He had slept in many worse places, and it was as cheap as anything he was likely to get in London on this side of the water. He was little trouble as a lodger, as he had promised, for he got his meals at the nearest public-house when he

THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING II did not eat bread and cheese at his easel, and he really did make a sketch of Merton Abbey and sent it to an art shop in Westminster which occasionally sold his drawings on commission, and to his own surprise got fifteen shillings for it the first week it appeared in the window. This was a fluke, and was probably the result of some sentimental association with Merton on the part of the buyer; but it ensured his rent for a few weeks to come, and he stayed on in Mrs. Darling’s cottage for the real purpose for which he had gone there — to paint a picture of the girl in the apple-tree.

He was far too subtle to betray his intention all at once, and he knew with the fine sense that had been both his success and his disaster all his life that if he had suggested painting her daughter to Mrs. Darling she would have taken fright and made up her mind once for all that it was undesirable. He made studies of the fleeting apple blossom while it still clung to the tree, and sat out day after day in the little back garden among the chickens, where Beauty might be seen coming and going on various errands and duties when she was not at school. She attended a school in Wandlebridge rather above the Board Schools of ten years ago — an old Foundation whose pupils paid some five pounds a year for the privilege of being taught to spell decently and write an educated hand, and it was due to her training there that her accent and English were better than Mrs. Darling’s, though, like all girls of her class, she had two manners and two languages — one that she put on in the vestibule of the school when she arrived there and took off when she left, and the other that she assumed in her own home.

Remnants of the school language and manner resumed themselves instinctively in her brief relations with Guy, and that was how he came to comprehend the dual personality.

He had been nearly a week in Mrs. Darling’s cottage before he said to her casually, “ I want a figure in my picture of your apple-tree. I will give your little girl a shilling if she will climb into the tree and sit there for me to paint.”

Mrs. Darling shut her lips. A desire to accommodate her lodger was evidently being balanced by some private objection to the proposal.

“ Well, I’d rather she did not, sir,” she said unwillingly. “ It’s very kind of you, I’m sure, and I don’t mind about giving her anything for doing it.” (She had generously saved the artist small expenses when possible, which consideration for his means caused him that wry smile again when forced upon his notice. It was the only time when he thought of his own family and their traditions with any tolerance.) “ But I don’t want her to think she’s worth making a picture of — she’s vain enough as things are, and always getting her head full of dressing up and finery and all.”

“ But I only want her as a figure study,” said Guy with an easy laugh. “ I’m not painting her portrait. I don’t think she could find it very flattering to be made use of like that; she will probably think it a great nuisance, and want to run off and play with her schoolfellows. How old is she? ”

“ Beauty is fourteen.”

“ Is she really ! She looks about eleven,” he said with well- feigned surprise, for he had guessed the girl’s age correctly, small though she was. “ She must be getting useful to you in the house.”

“ She might be if she would, but she hates work; she isn’t even one of the clever ones at school. I’d have made her a teacher if she had been that way, but she’ll have to go into a shop, or service.”

“ Children are a disappointment, aren’t they, Mrs. Darling?”

“ They are, sir. I’m almost thankful sometimes as all mine died young.”

“All your children?” He turned quickly with some real surprise in his dark eyes this time, and they half closed as they did when he was considering a “ subject.”

“ Yes, sir; Beauty’s not one of my daughters, though she’s called so for charity’s sake. She’s a come-by-chance.”

“ Ah ! ” The sweet voice was very low and sympathetic, and wooed Mrs. Darling into confidences even by the one word. He did not even smile at the quaint phrase for illegitimacy.

“ She was just truly left on the doorstep; we were living in Bloomsbury then,” said Mrs. Darling with some secret enjoyment of the story. “ I’d not lost my husband six months, and the children was all dead.. And there was this poor small thing lying there in a shawl; I tell you, sir, she was one of the smallest babies I have ever seen, not weighing more than nine pounds, and my children had weighed that when they was just born! But there it was, and she was eight or ten months old, the doctor thought. Not a sign to trace her by ! The shawl was a cheap thing, bought new for the purpose, and it was a poor neighbourhood.

Some unfortunate creature must have left her there and said good riddance ! ”

“And you took her in? You are a good woman, Mrs. Darling!” There was just the necessary enthusiasm and emotion in his tones to continue the story, but he did not mean to tell the plain truth. Truth, plain or otherwise, did not appeal to Trevor Guy.

“ What else could I do, sir ? ” Mrs. Darling in her turn was a thought dramatic, enjoying the situation. “ I’d none of my own left, and a pair of hands to work for us both. Yes, I took her and brought her up. But there’s none of me in her — she would never have pulled through the hard time we had if she’d been in my place.”

“ What made you call her Beauty ? Is it her real name? ”

“ I had her christened that, yes. Well, you see, she was such a little beauty, though so small, or I thought so at the time. And her teacher at school says she’s well named still, though she thinks it was a pity to call her so.”

“ But I’m sure she’s a good girl with your training ! ” He was slightly curious on this point. Beauty’s history, poor child! had made her doubly artistic in his eyes.

“ Good enough, while my eye is on her. You can’t make a silk purse from a sow’s ear. She must have come of a bad stock. Decent women don’t leave their babies on doorsteps to the mercy of other people ! ”

“Are you a Calvinist, Mrs. Darling? Do you think she is doomed from the beginning? ” Even his voice was not attractive when he laughed like that.

“ Mrs. Smith at No. 10 calls herself a Calvinist,” said Mrs. Darling, waiving the imputation. “ No, I don’t hold with such things myself. Not that I’d do away with hell — especially for men. It takes such a lot of damnation held over them to keep them straight ! ”

Guy’s laugh was checked this time by the appearance of Beauty herself, coming into the room with a parcel of clean linen to be taken home. She must have heard her foster-mother’s final sentence, but she was probably used to such sentiments, for her round, childish face did not alter at all. She was going to retreat with her burden, as she generally did out of the artist’s presence, when he caught her by the arm.

“ Here, little one, I’ve been asking your mother if you may climb into the apple-tree to put some life into my picture for me,” he said carelessly. “ I want a figure to paint. It needn’t interfere with her lessons, Mrs. Darling — hasn’t she a half holiday on Saturday?”

Taken by storm like this, Mrs. Darling found herself somehow in the position of having already given her consent, but she made the situation as little attractive as possible by telling Beauty to “ make herself useful ” as she could to Mr. Guy, and warning her that she must keep very still and not fidget as she did in class or at church. The girl was really not at all anxious to waste her holiday in such tedious recreation, and Mrs. Darling’s scruples were further lulled to rest by her foster-child’s uncomplimentary criticism on the “ loony old dauber ” who wanted her to stick up in a tree like a silly monkey for his rotten picture !

(It must be borne in mind that Beauty was cross at missing the chance of a ride on another girl’s bicycle that particular afternoon.)

Something of her disaffection was plainly visible on the child’s face as she sulkily took up her position in the tree, her feet dangling ludicrously, every angle of her body a witness to ill-temper. The straight delicate brows were half an inch lower than usual above the dark blue eyes that stared straight over the artist’s head to a distant prospect of cabbages and potatoes on the allotment ground. He looked at the cross little face deliberately, and then he rose and sauntered leisurely up to the tree where she sat.

For a minute or two he stood and studied her out of his narrowed dark eyes. Beauty shrank instinctively from the sudden nearness of his face thrust closer to her among the quivering apple blossoms, and thought anew how ugly he was, with a very natural indignation. Had he been a young man, or more attractive, there would have been some consolation in this posing for her picture. But somehow the thin, battered face, so full of lines that wrote a story of a life she could not read, made her feel that she was only a very small accessory — a figure to give life to his picture. There was nothing more flattering to be hoped from the situation than that. His hair was much greyer, too, in the betraying sunlight than she had even thought, and the large rusty moustache that hid his mouth was neither trimmed nor waxed. Beauty wriggled in the gnarled old boughs, bringing down a shower of petals from the passing flowers, and wished that he would go away.

Suddenly he began to speak in a voice that lost none of its music for the ripple of laughter through the words.

“ How naughty to shake all the blossom down and spoil the picture ! Is she a very cross baby, and didn’t she want to sit in a nasty old tree and waste her holiday ? Poor Beauty ! What a shame ! ”

He took hold of her by her elbows as he spoke, and moved her into a more favourable position. The girl’s muscles relaxed under the sound of his voice, and she unconsciously fell more into the pose he wanted. His hands still touched her, however, pulling her frock here and there and arranging her thick soft hair. There was something very practised in those hands, though they were knotted and heavily veined. Suddenly the girl perceived that she was being coaxed, and a little dimple showed at the corner of her red mouth, while her brows went back into their rightful place. He was elderly and plain to her physical vision, but his hands told her that he was a man.

“ It seems so silly, Mr. Guy ! ”

“ Wait till you see what I make of you. There, that’s better. I’m only going to get the outlines to-day, and the play of light on the apple blossom — I mustn’t lose the apple blossom, it falls so quickly. Don’t move for a few minutes, there’s a good child.”