Madame Flirt Part 14

"You've a mighty coaxing tongue, you baggage. Keep it to yourself that I gave you what you asked, lest my reputation as a fair dealing man be gone for ever."

"Oh, you may trust me to keep my mouth shut," said Lavinia with mock gravity.

A sweeping curtsey and she turned towards the door. At the same moment a lady cloaked and hooded like herself entered. They stared at each other as they pa.s.sed.

Lavinia recognised Sally Salisbury, though the latter was much more finely dressed than when they encountered each other outside the Maidenhead Tavern in St. Giles. Sally was not so sure about Lavinia. The slim girl was now a woman. She carried herself with an air. She had exchanged her shabby garments for clothes of a fas.h.i.+onable cut which she knew how to wear. Still, some chord in Sally's memory was stirred and she advanced into the shop with a puzzled look on her face.

Mountchance received his fresh customer obsequiously. He had made a good deal of money out of Sally; she never brought him anything which was not valuable and worth buying. Sometimes her treasures were presents from admirers, sometimes they were the proceeds of highway robberies. The latter yielded the most profit. The would-be sellers dared not haggle.

They were only too anxious to get rid of their ill-gotten gains.

The old man bowed Sally Salisbury into his inner room. He knew that the business which had brought her to him was one that meant privacy. He ceremoniously placed a chair for her and awaited her pleasure.

The lady was in no hurry. She caught sight of the gold brooch lying on the table, took it up and examined it. On the back was graven "A.D. to Lavinia." Sally's dark arched eyebrows contracted.

"Lavinia," she thought. "So it _was_ that little squalling cat. I hate her. She's tumbled on her feet--like all cats. But for the letters I'd say she'd flung herself at the head of _my_ man."

Sally was thinking of her encounter with Lavinia outside the Maiden Head tavern. Lancelot Vane was then sitting in the bow window of the coffee-room. True he was in a drunken sleep but this would make no difference. Lavinia, Sally decided, was in a fair way to earn her living, much as Sally herself did--the toy of the bloods of fas.h.i.+on one day, the companions of highwaymen and bullies the next.

"Where did the impertinent young madam get her fine clothes and her quality air if not?" Sally asked herself, and the question was a reasonable one.

"Have you brought me ought that I care to look at, Mistress Salisbury?"

broke in the old man impatiently. "You haven't come to buy that paltry trinket, I'll swear."

"How do you knew? It takes my fancy. Where did you get it?"

"I've had it but five minutes. You pa.s.sed the girl who sold it me as you came in. A pretty coaxing wench. She'd make a man pour out his gold at her feet if she cared to try."

Sally's lips went pallid with pa.s.sion and her white nostrils quivered.

"A common little trull," she burst out. "She should be sent to Bridewell and soundly whipped. 'Tis little more than six months she was a street squaller cadging for pence round the boozing kens of St. Giles and Clare Market. And now--pah! it makes me sick."

Sally flung the brooch upon the table with such violence it bounced a foot in the air.

"Gently--gently, my good Sally," remonstrated Mountchance, "if you must vent your fury upon anything choose your own property, not mine."

It was doubtful if the virago heard the request. She was not given to curbing her temper, and leaning back in the chair, her body rigid, she beat a tattoo with her high-heeled shoes and clenched her fists till the knuckles whitened.

Mountchance had seen hysterical women oft times and was not troubled. He opened a stoppered bottle and held its rim to the lady's nose. The moment was well chosen, Sally was in the act of drawing a deep breath, probably with the intention of relieving her feelings by shrieking aloud. The ammonia was strong and she inhaled a full dose. She gasped, she coughed, her eyes streamed, the current of her thoughts changed, she poured a torrent of unadulterated Billingsgate upon the imperturbable doctor who busied himself about other matters until Sally should think fit to regain her senses.

That time came when after a brief interval of sullenness, accompanied by much heaving of the bosom and biting of lips she deigned to produce the pearl necklace, the spoil of Rofflash's highway robbery on the Bath Road.

Mountchance looked at the pearls closely and his face became very serious.

"The High Toby game I'll take my oath," said he in a low voice. "Such a bit of plunder as this must be sent abroad. I dursn't attempt to get rid of it here."

"That's _your_ business. My business is how much'll you give."

Dr. Mountchance named a sum ridiculously low so Sally thought. Then ensued a long haggle which was settled at last by a compromise and Sally departed.

As she hurried back to her lodgings in the Borough, Sally was quite unaware that Rofflash, disguised as a beggar with a black patch over his eye and a dirty red handkerchief tied over his head in place of his wig, was stealthily shadowing her.

CHAPTER IX

"YOU WERE BRAVE AND FOUGHT FOR ME"

Meanwhile Lavinia was hastening to Grub Street. On her way she bought a pair of shoes which if not quite in the _mode_ were at least fellows.

She also cleverly talked the shopkeeper into allowing her something on the discarded odd ones and thereby saved a s.h.i.+lling.

The girl's old life in roaming about the streets had sharpened her wits.

Adversity had taught her much. It had given her a knowledge of persons and things denied to those to whom life had always been made easy. She had had sundry acquaintances among the pretty orange girls who plied their trade at Drury Lane and the Duke's theatres and had got to know how useful Dr. Mountchance was in buying presents bestowed upon them by young bloods flushed with wine, and in other ways. Hence when in want of money she looked upon her brooch she at once thought of the old man's shop on London Bridge.

The taverns in those days were real houses of refreshment. Food could be had at most of them as well as drink. Still a girl needed some courage to enter. The men she might meet were ready to make free in far too familiar a fas.h.i.+on. Lavinia stopped in front of the "Green Dragon" near the Cripples Gate, but hesitated. Many months had pa.s.sed since the time when she would have boldly walked into the galleried inn-yard and asked for what she wanted. The refining influence of Miss Pinwell's genteel establishment had made her loathe the low life in which her early years had been pa.s.sed.

"They can't eat me," she thought. "Besides, the poor fellow is starving."

The place was fairly quiet. One or two men of a group drinking and gossipping winked at each other when they caught sight of her pretty face, but they said nothing and she got what she asked for, a cold chicken, bread and a bottle of wine.

Lavinia hastened to Grub Street. She ran up the dirty narrow ricketty stairs, her heart palpitating with excitement, and she knocked at the garret door. It was opened immediately, Lancelot Vane stood in the doorway, his fine eyes beaming. He looked very handsome, Lavinia thought, and she blushed under his ardent gaze.

He had washed, he had shaved, he had put on his best suit and his wig concealed the cut on his forehead. He was altogether a different Lancelot from the bedraggled, woe-begone, haggard young man whom she had found in the last stage of misery two hours ago. He had moreover, enlisted the help of the old woman whom Lavinia had met on the stairs at her first visit and the place was swept and tidied. The room as well as its occupant was now quite presentable.

"I've brought you something to eat," stammered Lavinia quite shyly to her own surprise. "You don't mind, do you?"

"Not if you'll do me the honour to share it with me."

"Oh, but it will give you so much trouble. And I'm not hungry. I bought it all for you."

Lavinia was busy emptying the contents of a rush basket which the good-natured landlord of the "Green Dragon" had given her.

"Have you a plate and a knife and fork? You can't eat with your fingers, you know."

"I've two plates and two knives and forks, but the knives are not pairs.

I apologise humbly for my poverty stricken household."

"That doesn't matter. I'm not going to touch a morsel."

"Neither am I then. And it isn't my hospitality, remember, but yours.

Why are you such a good Samaritan?"

"You were brave and fought for me. I shall never forget last night--never."

"It will always be in my memory too, and I want our first meal together to be in my memory also. Alas! I have no tablecloth."

"But you have plenty of paper," Lavinia laughingly said. "That will do as well."