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Berinthia
The Manchester Weekly Times (Literary Supplement) (Friday, 22 June, 1900) BERINTHIA.
_____ (A LONDON EPISODE.)
_____ By ROBERT BUCHANAN, Author of “Andromeda,” “Father Anthony,”
“Lady Kilpatrick,” “Stormy Waters,” &c., &c.
_____ I. It was clear to every one of the Three that Berinthia was out of temper. She found it difficult, if not impossible, to keep the pose for many minutes together; she trembled, she shifted her feet, she showed her white teeth in a grin that did not at all resemble her usual smile, and every time that she was remonstrated with, her eyes flashed angrily. At last, unable to control herself any longer, she jumped down from the dais or platform, and moved towards the screen which was drawn across one corner of the studio and formed a sort of dressing or ’tiring room for the occasional use of “models.”
“It’s no use,” she cried, “I’m off!”
And casting the shawl from her in the manner of one preparing to take a header into a swimming bath, she disappeared behind the screen.
“What the devil’s the matter with you?” growled Belford, a bearded man of nearly forty, with a black patch over his left eye, a wooden pipe between his teeth, and a Turkish fez stuck rakishly on his bald head.
“Never mind,” answered Berinthia, now hidden from sight.
“Come back, confound you! I won’t keep you another ten minutes,” cried Belford, bending close to a large block on which he was drawing a black and white sketch for the wood engraver, and inspecting it critically with his one available eye.
This time there was no answer; so Belford, whose manners lacked the repose characteristic of the caste of Vere de Vere, glanced savagely round at his companions and uttered an imprecation.
He was the oldest of the Three—the oldest and the cleverest. His two companions in Art and Impecuniosity, who sat at work with him in the studio, were Charles Somerset, a handsome fair-haired young fellow of five-and-twenty, and George Constable Leroy, a man of about thirty, with a mild good-humoured face, fair hair thinning already at the top, “mutton chop” whiskers, and a shaven chin. Being very short-sighted Leroy wore spectacles, which might have been literally rose-coloured, so pleasant and so amiable was the view which he took through them of all creation.
Belford was at work, as we have said, on a wood block, which he was executing for an illustrated magazine, and which was set before him on a small table. Somerset and Leroy sat before their easels, the former drawing in crayon, the latter sketching in oils. Belford was not only the oldest and the cleverest, but the shabbiest, wearing, in addition to the fez already described, and old dressing gown, ragged, torn, and liberally splashed with paint. Leroy wore very seedy tweed trousers and painting-jacket of velveteen; his collar and short front were frayed and dirty, and marked with coffee stains. Somerset, the swell of the trio, had a linen blouse thrown over his walking suit, and was smoking a cigar.
“What’s the matter with her, Billie?” asked Somerset, laughing and looking at Belford.
“How the deuce do I know?” was the reply. “Infernal little cat! You fellows have spoiled her by humouring her whims and fancies.”
“Poor little Berry!” murmured Leroy, blinking compassionately through his spectacles. “I suppose there’s trouble at home.”
“Then why doesn’t she chuck it?” grunted Belford, glancing contemptuously with his bloodshot eye at Leroy. “Father’s a drunkard, mother’s worse/ If she’d had any sense, she’d have left them long ago, the idiot.” He added, as if tired of the subject, and addressing Somerset, “Here, youngster, cut out and get some beer!”
The young man nodded, sprang up lightly, and ran out of the studio. Scarcely had he disappeared when Berinthia appeared in walking costume from behind the screen. In her thin cotton dress, very shabby cloth jacket, round hat with faded feathers, and an old pair of laced-up boots, she looked very different from the shapely lissome creature who had recently been posing on the dais, but even her unbecoming attire could not quite obscure her look of elfin-like grace and beauty. Her face, brown as a ripe pear with sun and wind, was framed in dark hair, cut short at the neck like the hair of a boy, her eyes were bright and keen under black eyebrows, her teeth white as the milk of the cocoa-nut, her mouth soft and full like that of a child. And indeed she was little more than a child in years, being only just seventeen years of age, although as old and knowing in the ways and wiles of Bohemia as Belford himself.
“I don’t know what’s the matter with me today,” she observed apologetically. “I’ve got the ‘fidgets.’ I couldn’t keep still.”
“You never can keep still,” growled Belford. “You’re like a monkey up a tree!”
She looked up, and her face broke into a smile.
“That’s right, Mr. Belford, scold away! I like it, and what’s more, I deserve it!” Then drawing herself erect, and stretching out her arms towards a shaft of sunlight which broke in through the window of the studio, she added: “O lor, I wish I was a monkey, or a bird, or something of that sort! I’m sick and tired of being only a girl!”
She pronounced something “somethink” and girl “gel,” but these are details on which we do not think it necessary to insist.
We should have explained, perhaps, that it was a quiet morning in the early sixties. Christmas close at hand, with all its merry sights and sounds. Outside in smoky Bloomsbury the snow was lying white on street and square, but in the great dismal studio, a cavernous apartment situated close to the mews and adjoining a dreary square, there was a sense of stuffiness and warmth. The place was rented by the three men in common, and consisted of the studio itself, and of two small cupboards or closets, which Belford and Leroy had converted into sleeping apartments. Somerset slept out, in a bedroom over a livery stable.
All three were very poor, and were constantly occupied in what is figuratively known as “dining with Duke Humphry”; for it was (as we have said) the early Sixties, as they have been called. Bohemia still existed, and neither Art nor Literature had yet attained their present commercial importance as fashionable professions.
Although all the three were nominally artists, William Belford alone was an artist born not made, a great and neglected genius, doing job-work just then for the small dealers and wood engravers, and painting pictures which were destined after his death to be regarded as masterpieces. At forty years of age he was still incorrigibly eccentric and indifferent to worldly success, superficially savage and cynical, but in reality the kindest and most unselfish of mortals. Somerset was little more than an ambitious amateur. Leroy combined the profession of painting with that of writing sketches for magazines and pieces for minor theatres. Like Belford, and unlike Somerset, he was a thorough Bohemian.
“I think, Berinthia,” said Leroy gently, “you want a holiday! You’ve been working too hard, and should be enjoying yourself, not working, this Christmas time.”
“Bosh!” interrupted Belford, grinning savagely. “She wants a hiding! her life’s one long holiday, and she loafs and idles while honest folks are working. What are you going to be up to now?” he demanded, with a comic assumption of severity.
Berinthia, who appeared by this time to have recovered all her natural good temper, looked at him with laughing eyes.
“There’s a swell wedding in Hanover Square,” she replied. “I’m going to see it.”
“And I suppose you wish you were the bride?” said the painter, sarcastically.
“Don’t I just!” cried Berinthia, winking at him with the utmost effrontery, and nodding her roguish head.
At that moment Somerset re-entered the studio, laden with a large pewter measure of half-and-half, procured at the neighbouring public-house.
“Bravo, Ganymede!” cried Belford, smacking his lips, while Somerset set down the measure on a paint-bedaubed table and going to a cupboard close by brought out and filled a couple of tumblers. “Tumblers for you fellows,” continued Belford. “I’ll take mine ‘au naturel’—in the pewter!”
Here there was a sudden interruption from Berinthia, who began in a clear soft voice, albeit with an unmistakeable Cockney accent, to troll the following lines:—
“Here, boy, take this handful of brass,
Across to the Goose and the Gridiron pass,
Pay the coin on the counter out,
And bring me a pint of foaming stout!
Put it in neither bottle nor jug,
Cannikin, mannikin, flagon, or mug,
Into nothing at all, in short,
Except the natural Pewter Quart!”
So singing she had tripped towards the door, when Somerset called her back.
“Stop, Berry!” he cried, “I’ve got something for you!” and as she turned he pulled from the pocket of his jacket a brown stone bottle of ginger beer. “I know your tipple,” he added, smiling, “and have brought you some of the right sort.”
Berinthia thanked him with a smile, and ran to the cupboard to fetch another glass, while he cut the string of the bottle and pulled out the cork.
“Your health, Monkey!” cried Belford, waving the pewter measure preparatory to taking a deep draught.
“Yours, Mr. Belford”" said Berinthia, lifting her glass of ginger beer and seating herself unceremoniously on the edge of the raised dais, while Somerset and Leroy, each with a glass in his hand, nodded to her gaily.
“You’ll be too late for the wedding,” continued Belford.
“Never mind,” said the girl, sipping from her glass with rapture and rolling her black eyes. “Oh, ain’t it lovely!”
“I say, Berry,” asked Belford, after a pause, “who taught you that song?”
“What song?”
“The one you were singing a moment ago.”
Berinthia smiled and glanced at Leroy, who blinked comically.
“I did,” he said, blushing.
“Oh, you did, did you?” observed Belford. “I was wondering where the monkey had picked it up. Do you know who wrote it? Of course you don’t. Old Maginn; and it’s a burlesque of the ‘Leather Bottel!’”
“I was aware of the fact,” replied Leroy. “I found it in an old number of ‘Blackwood’s Magazine.’”
“Nice sort of song to teach a kid like that!” grunted the cynic.
“I ain’t a kid, Mr. Belford,” cried Berinthia, indignantly. “I’m a young woman!”
“Of course, you are, Berry,” said Somerset, laughing, and a clinking fine young woman too, as I am ready to swear—witness my sign and seal!”
“I know you’re chaffing,” she said, “but as long as I can earn a bit of money for mother, and keep myself respectable, I don’t mind. I’m not like some of the girls who sit to gentlemen, and it ain’t everybody I’d sit to at all, for that matter!”
She finished her glass of ginger beer, sprang to her feet, and humming the tune of Weber’s “Last Waltz,” then very popular as an organ tune, began tripping quietly towards the door; then turning suddenly, and dropping a profound curtsey, she saluted the three with mock dignity, laughed lightly, and disappeared. _____ II. Berinthia Lambert was the only daughter of a poor and unworthy couple, who had suffered her to grow up like a wild seed on their dingy hearth until such time as she was able to shift in some measure for herself. Both her father and her mother had been, and were, models by profession and rogues by natural instinct and disposition—the father a loafing, drunken scoundrel with the head of a handsome Italian brigand, the mother a dark-eyed semi-savage Italian girl, who had first come to London in company with an organ-grinder, and had afterwards drifted into the studios, where her swarthy beauty was greatly in request among artists who affected foreign subjects generally and Scriptural ones particularly. Late in life, when her good looks were fast disappearing, the woman had cast in her lot with the idle scamp who was now her husband, and Berinthia was the result of the union.
Berinthia’s first introduction to Art was made when she was a baby in her mother’s arms; and before she was eighteen months old she had gained the glory of being hung on “the line” at the Academy, as the black-eyed infant in a study by John Phillip, called “Spanish Mother and Child.” Later on she figured again and again on canvas as a swarthy child, saintly or unsaintly, English or Eastern, and by the time she was fifteen years of age, she was as familiar with the studios as if she had been born and bred there, as, indeed, was almost the case.
At sixteen years old, she had so developed in budding womanhood and beauty, that she might easily have passed for eighteen or nineteen. Rather under than over the middle height, exquisitely knit, perfect in shape, slender without thinness, with admirable feet and hands, she combined the lithe supple vigour of a youth with the softness and delicacy of a girl. Hair black as the raven’s wing, eyes brilliant, yet black as sloes, a merry mobile mouth, sun-tanned cheeks, completed her resemblance to the old Greek type of athletic maidenhood. She was as alert and bright as a young Faun, and as gamesome as an Elf. In a word, she was an English “gamine,” with all the health and all the audacity of her class, plus a degree of physical beauty not often to be found in our sunless streets.
Accustomed from earliest girlhood to the life of the studio, she pursued her profession as a model without the slightest “arriere pensee,” and in a thoroughly careless and businesslike spirit. Where there was no feeling of indelicacy there could be no shame, and, to speak frankly, Berinthia was as pure-minded and honest a girl as could be found within the sound of Bow Bells. Her purity was the more impregnable, in so far as it was not founded on ignorance or inexperience. She knew the seamy side of life thoroughly—she had been familiar, both at home and abroad, with all that is evil and ugly in our modern civilisation, she had heard the “argot” of vice even in her cradle.
Her father was a drunken satyr, who had struck her when a child, and who cursed her when she was too old to be beaten. Her mother had developed into a scolding hag, ready at any moment to sell her child to the highest bidder, but otherwise quite indifferent to her comings and goings. In spite of all this, Berinthia remained uncontaminated, frank, fearless, audacious, and fully capable of being her own protector even in the most questionable society.
More than once, as she increased in personal beauty, temptation came to her, but it slipped off her shoulders as water slips off a duck’s back. She could defend herself against all comers; if need be, with teeth and nails. Those who imagined that she was an easy conquest had occasion to remember that a tiger-cat might have been as easily played with. Yet she was no prude, and her conversation was now and then appallingly free and easy. Up to a certain point she was “bonne camarade,” even to the extent of a kiss or a playful embrace; beyond that point she was a vestal virgin.
We are all of us—the greatest and the least—lost and saved by our ideals, and Berinthia was no exception to the rule. Under her wild and reckless manner, her gamesome audacity, her free and easy Bohemianism, she cherished a dream, which had come to her very early in life, and had been awakened at first, no doubt, by her childish admiration for the genteel ways and manners of certain artists. This dream was, to express it in her own language, that she should marry, if ever she married at all, “a Gentleman!”
Now what Berinthia meant by the word “gentleman” was not, perhaps, what we mean, though it was very much what is meant by a large portion of humanity. A “gentleman” in Berinthia’s eyes was one who was well educated, who dressed nicely, who wore clean linen, good boots and gloves and was polite to the fair sex. For, above all things in the world, Berinthia disliked what she described as “common people”—people like her father and mother, and the thousands of coarse creatures who surrounded her in the London streets. Elegant persons like Mr. Somerset, persons who were refined to the finger tips, were her admiration. Yes, her mind was made up and nothing would change it; she would marry a “gentleman,” no matter how poor, and she herself would become that paragon of paragons, a “lady.”
Of course, it was only a dream, and in some respects a very foolish one; yet it had this good result—it saved poor Berinthia from ideals even more ignoble, and it kept her pure and clean in her hard fight for bread. Wherever she went she saw before her the picture of the unknown cavalier who was to lift her, figuratively speaking, on the crupper of his steed, and gallop away with her into Fairyland where the well-dressed people came from. It never occurred to her that he would despise her for earning her living as she did, as an artist’s model. Her heart was pure, and he would know it. The greatest lady in the land had not a keener sense of purity than Berinthia.
Sometimes, in the innocence of her heart, she talked about her fancy to her friends at the studio. Of course, they chaffed her, but all the same she saw that they thought none the worse of her. Mr. Leroy particularly was very kind. He would talk to her quite seriously, lend her nice books, recite “poetry” to her, and laboriously try to improve her mind.
Unfortunately, Leroy had one great failing—a too great liking for the cup that cheers and inebriates. He got tipsy twice or thrice a week, and became utterly irresponsible. Even in his cups, however, he was the most amiable creature in the world, and, as his acquaintances expressed it, “nobody’s enemy but his own.” . . . . . . A few months after the scene in the studio, with which our story opened, came Easter Monday, the spring Bank Holiday; and among those who drifted out of town' with the crowd were Somerset and Leroy. Belford, who hated holidays, stayed at home, hard at work as usual.
The two artists took the train to Teddington, and walked thence to Bushey Park, where the colonnades of horse-chesnuts were in full bloom, and which was thronged with holiday makers from the great city. It was a bright and sunny day, the grass was green as emerald, the air clear and sparkling like champagne, the whole scene frankly pagan like a glimpse of old Arcady. Men and girls danced and romped, babies sprawled on the grass, while the crowded omnibuses rolled along the dusty road between the chestnuts, followed by the city clerk in his hired dog cart and the coster on his donkey tray.
“Pan was there, and Faunus too,
All the romping sylvan crew!
Nature’s Mśnads flocking mad
From the city dark and sad,
Finding once again the free
Sunshine and its jollitie!
Gaily twanged the fiddle string,
Men and girls played kiss-in-ring
Fountains leapt against the sun,
Roses bloomed and children played,
All the world was full of fun,
Lovers cuddled in the shade!”
Out at the Hampton Court end of the Park they strolled, and elbowing their way through the throng in front of the “King’s Arms,” halted at the bar for what Mr. Richard Swiveller called “a modest quencher.” Then sallying forth they entered the Court gardens and watched the throng which was swarming, thick as bees, in and out of the Maze.
Suddenly Somerset gripped Leroy by the arm, and uttered an exclamation.
“By Jove, look there!”
Leroy blinked round and saw, approaching out of the Maze, the face and form of Berinthia. She wore a pretty cotton gown, a hat with feathers, and in her hand she carried a bunch of blooming lilac. Her look was radiant, and she was hanging on the arm of a young man! So absorbed was she in the contemplation of her companion and in her own abundant happiness, that she did not notice her two friends of the studio, who drew aside quietly as she approached.
The young man was stylishly dressed in the fashion of the period; a white hat, white waistcoat, peg-top trousers, and frock coat with a rose in the button-hole. His hair was fair, his moustache fairer, and his face somewhat sickly and insipid. He wore lilac-coloured gloves, and swung a Malacca cane.
“Who the deuce has she picked up? asked Somerset, smiling.
“Possibly the long-expected One!” mildly suggested Leroy.
“Looks like a counter jumper!” muttered Somerset.
Curious to ascertain what had brought Berinthia there, they followed the pair at a respectful distance.
“Look how she hangs on his arm!” said Somerset. “How admiringly she looks up into his face! He must be Prince Charming after all!”
Presently they lost the pair in the crowd thronging the gardens, nor did they catch sight of them again, though they looked everywhere for them. Late that evening the artists returned to Bloomsbury, Leroy mildly tipsy as usual, Somerset full of life and spirits.
A whole week passed, and Berinthia did not appear at the studio. This was so unusual that the three were not a little astonished. At last one morning, some ten days after the rencontre at Hampton Court, Berinthia walked in and greeted them with a smiling nod.
“The prodigal returned!” cried Somerset. “Where on earth have you been hiding?”
“I haven’t been hiding anywhere,” replied the maiden; “I’ve been at home.”
“Quite sure? O Berry, I’ve had dreadful dreams about you! We dreamed—I dreamed, Billie dreamed, Leroy dreamed—that you’d been and gone and done it!”
“Done what?” asked Berinthia.
“Got married,” replied the young man.
Berinthia. blushed crimson.
“You’re only chaffing,” she cried, looking nervously towards Leroy.
“No, Berry, I’m quite serious,” said Somerset, still in the same bantering tone. “In our dreams about you, my dear, we saw the resplendent one as large as life. Shall I describe him to you? Golden hair and moustache, white hat, lilac gloves, a malacca cane! O Berry, Berry!”
Berinthia turned from red to pale, while her eyes opened wide in amazement. Then, meeting the laughing eyes of her tormentor, she rapidly recovered her self-possession.
“Somebody’s been telling on me,” she cried. “Well, I don’t care! You’d have had to know some day or other, I suppose. Yes, Mr. Leroy,” she continued, addressing the individual whom she knew by experience to be the least sarcastic and most sympathetic, “I’m engaged; and that’s why I’ve come to say that I can’t sit for you any more.”
“Why not?” growled Belford, the cynic, looking up from his work, and glaring at her with his Cyclopean eye.
“Because!” said Berinthia. Then she paused, blushed, and simpered.
“I see,” interrupted Somerset, “Prince Charming objects.”
“That ain’t his name,” returned Berinthia, slyly. “But he thinks it ain’t proper for an engaged young lady to sit to artists. P’raps it ain’t. At any rate he’s very particular!”
There was a long silence, during which Berinthia, went over to Leroy, and, standing close to him, watched him, as he worked at a nearly finished picture. Presently he glanced round to her and said quietly;
“Who is he, Berry?”
“O, Mr. Leroy, he’s a gentleman—a real gentleman! You’d know that if you only saw him!”
“Has he any profession? Does he do any work?” inquired Leroy, gently.
“No, Mr. Leroy,” replied Berinthia. “He’s got property and he dress beautiful! And mother’s mad with me for wanting to have him. She says he’s no good but I’m going to marry him for all that!”
“Soon?”
“I don’t know. As soon as he likes. The sooner the better.”
“I wish,” said Leroy, thoughtfully, “you’d bring him along and introduce him. I—I should like to see your choice. You know, Berry, I’ve always been interested in you and ——”
“I know that, Mr. Leroy,” cried Berinthia, placing her hand softly on his shoulder, “but I can’t bring him, I daren’t bring him! Mr. Somerset would chaff me before him; and he’s dreadfully proud. Besides, I’m sure he wouldn’t come! He don’t like artists.”
Somerset, overhearing the remark, burst into a peal of laughter.
“He don’t like artists!” he repeated scornfully. “What a swell he must be!”
“No mistake!” cried Berinthia, with a toss of the head.
Several weeks passed, and Berinthia did not reappear. The three often thought of her and spoke of her, for they missed her sunny presence and elf-like ways. At last one day Leroy received the following letter, written in a round uneducated hand and bearing the Manchester post mark:—
“Dear Mr. Leroy,—This comes hoping you are well, and to tell you that I was married last Monday and have gone with my husband into the country. He’s just what I told you, a, ‘gentleman’ every inch of him, and I’m that proud and happy I could cry for joy. Give my love to Mr. Somerset and Mr. Belford, not forgetting yourself, and believe me, your grateful and affectionate, BERINTHIA TOMKINS.
“P.S.—He’s a real gentleman, and his manners are lovely!”
Leroy read the letter aloud—not without a certain emotion.
“Tomkins!” shouted Somerset “O, Phśbus, what a name! Berinthia Tomkins!”
“Poor Berry!” said Leroy with a sigh. “I only hope that her marriage will turn out all right!” _____ |
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