Madame Flirt Part 4

Mrs. Fenton, whose eyes all the while had been gloating over the gold on the table now swept it into her pocket. It was a windfall which had come at the right moment. She was tired of Bedfordbury. She aimed at a step higher. There was a coffee house business in the Old Bailey going cheap, the twenty pounds would enable her to buy it.

As for her daughter, she had no scruple about letting her go with a man who was quite a stranger. The girl's future didn't trouble her. Since Lavinia had entered her teens, mother and daughter had wrangled incessantly. Lavinia was amiable enough, but constant snubbing had roused a spirit which guided her according to her moods. Sometimes she was full of defiance, at others she would run out of the house, and ramble about the streets until she was dead tired.

Lavinia was shrewd enough to discover why her mother did not want her at home. Mrs. Fenton, still good-looking, was not averse to flirting with the more presentable of her customers, and as Lavinia developed into womanhood she became a serious rival to her mother, so on the whole, Gay's proposition suited Mrs. Fenton admirably, and she certainly never bothered to find out if he spoke the truth. She was not inclined to accept his story of the boarding school as a stepping-stone to the stage, but to pretend to believe it in a way quieted what little conscience she possessed. If the scheme turned out badly, why, no one could say _she_ was to blame.

Lavinia, tremulous with excitement and looking prettier than ever, came into the room where the poet was awaiting her. Her face fell when Gay talked about the boarding school and of the possibility of her having to remain there a long time, but she brightened up on his going on to say that the period might be considerably shortened if she made a rapid improvement.

"And do you really think, sir, I shall ever be good enough to act in a theatre like Mrs. Barry and Mrs. Oldfield, and--oh, and Mrs.

Bracegurdle?" cried the girl, her eyes blazing with anxious ambition.

"I don't say you'll act like them. You'll act in your own way, and if you work hard your own way will be good enough. If you succeed the friends who are now helping you will be more than rewarded."

"Ah, I will do anything to please you, sir."

She caught his hand and impulsively raised it to her lips.

Gay was a little embarra.s.sed at this outburst. Did it mean that the girl had fallen in love with him? He checked the rising thought. Yet there was nothing outrageous in such a possibility. Lavinia was only sixteen, it is true, and romantic sixteen might see nothing incongruous in thirty-seven, which was Gay's age.

"What pleases me, child, doesn't matter," he returned hastily. "I want to see you please others--in the play house I mean."

She looked at him wistfully.

"But," he continued, "it will be time enough to talk of that when I see how you get on. Now is it all settled? You're leaving this place and your mother of your own free will--isn't that so?"

Lavinia said nothing, but pinched her lips and nodded her head vigorously. The action was sufficiently expressive and Gay was satisfied.

Three days went by. Her Grace of Queensberry's maid, a hard-faced Scotswoman who was not to be intimidated nor betrayed into confidences, superintended Lavinia's shopping and turned a deaf ear to Mrs. Fenton's scoffs and innuendoes.

The girl was transformed. Her new gowns, hats, ap.r.o.ns, and what not sent her into high spirits and she bade her mother adieu with a light heart.

"Go your own way, you ungrateful minx," was Mrs. Fenton's parting shot, "and when you're tired of your fine gentleman or he's tired of you, don't think you're coming back here 'cause I won't have you."

Lavinia smiled triumphantly and tripped into the hackney coach that was awaiting her.

CHAPTER III

"OH, MISTRESS MINE, WHERE ART THOU ROAMING?"

"Lavina! Have done!"

It was a whispered entreaty. The victim of the feather of a quill pen tickling her neck dared not raise her voice. Miss Pinwell, the proprietress of the extremely genteel seminary for young ladies, Queen Square--quite an aristocratic retreat some two hundred years ago--was pacing the school-room. Her cold, sharp eyes roamed over the shapely heads--black, golden, brown, auburn, flaxen--of some thirty girls--eager to detect any sign of levity and prompt to inflict summary punishment.

"Miss Fenton, why are you not working?" came the inquiry sharply from Miss Pinwell's thin lips.

Lavinia Fenton withdrew the instrument of torture and Priscilla Coupland's neck was left in peace. It was done so swiftly that Miss Pinwell's glance, keen as it was, never detected the movement. But the lady had her suspicions nevertheless, and she marched with the erectness of a grenadier to where Lavinia Fenton sat with her eyes fixed upon her copy book, apparently absorbed in inscribing over and over again the moral maxim at the top of the page, and, it may be hoped, engrafting it on her mind.

The young lady's industry did not deceive Miss Pinwell. Lavinia Fenton was the black sheep--lamb perhaps is a more fitting word, she was but seventeen--of the school. But somehow her peccadilloes were always forgiven. She had a smile against which severity--even Miss Pinwell's--was powerless.

"What were you doing just now when you were not writing?"

The head was slowly raised. The wealth of wavy brown hair fell back from the broad smooth brow. The large limpid imploring eyes looked straight, without a trace of guilt in them, at the thin-faced schoolmistress. The beautiful mouth, the upper lip of which with its corners slightly upturned was delightfully suggestive of a smile, quivered slightly but not with fear, rather with suppressed amus.e.m.e.nt.

"Nothing madam," was the demure reply.

"Nothing? I don't believe you. Your hand was not on your book. Where was it?"

"Oh, _that_. Yes, a wasp was flying near us. I thought it was going to settle on Priscilla Coupland's neck and I brushed it away with my pen."

Miss Pinwell could say nothing to this, especially as she distinctly heard at that moment the hum of some winged insect. It _was_ a wasp, a real one, not the insect of Lavinia's fervid imagination. The windows were open and it had found its way in from Lamb's Conduit Fields, at a happy moment allying itself with Lavinia.

Others heard it as well and sprang to their feet shrieking. The chance of escaping from tiresome moral maxims was too good to be lost.

"Young ladies----" commanded Miss Pinwell, but she could get no further.

Her voice was lost in the din. The lady no more loved wasps than did her pupils. She retreated as the wasp advanced. The intruder ranged itself on the side of the girls and circled towards their instructress with malevolence in every turn and vicious intent in its buzz.

The only one not afraid was Lavinia Fenton who, waving a pocket handkerchief met the foe bravely but without success. The enemy refused to turn tail. Other girls plucking up courage joined the champion and soon the school-room was in a hubbub. Probably the army of hoydenish maidens were not anxious the conflict should cease--it was far more entertaining than maxims, arithmetic and working texts on samples--and Miss Pinwell seeing this, summoned Bridget, the brawny housemaid, who with a canvas ap.r.o.n finally caught and squashed the rash intruder.

It was sometime before the excitement died down, and meanwhile Lavinia Fenton's remissness of conduct was forgotten--indeed her intrepidity singled her out for praise, which she received with becoming graciousness.

But before the day was out she relapsed into her bad ways. She could or would do nothing right. Miss Pinwell chided her for carelessness, she retorted saucily. As discipline had to be maintained she was at last condemned to an hour with the backboard and there she sat in a corner of the room on a high legged chair with a small and extremely uncomfortable oval seat made still more uncomfortable by it sloping slightly forward.

As for the back, it was high and narrow. It afforded no rest for the spine. The delinquent was compelled to sit perfectly upright. Thus it was at the same time an instrument of correction and of deportment.

Whatever bodily defects the early Georgian damsels possessed they certainly had straight backs and level shoulders. The backboard was admirable training for the carriage of the stately sacque, the graceful flirting of the fan and for the dancing of the grave and dignified minuet.

The day was nearing its end. The hour for retiring was early, and at dusk the head of each bedroom took her candle from the hall table and after a low curtsy to the mistress of the establishment preceded those who slept in the same room up the broad staircase. The maidens'

behaviour was highly decorous until they were safe in their respective bed-chambers, when their tongues were unloosed.

Oddly enough Lavinia, who was usually full of chatter, had to-night little to say. Her schoolmates rallied her on her silent tongue.

"Oh, don't bother me, Priscilla," she exclaimed pettishly. "I suppose I can do as I like when Miss Pinwell isn't looking."

"My dear, you generally do that when she _is_. I never saw such favouritism. I declare it's not fair. You were terribly tormenting all day. Anybody but you would have been sent to bed and kept on bread and water. What's the matter with you, miss?"

"Nothing. I'm tired, that's all."

"First time in your life then. You were lively enough this afternoon when you nearly got me into a sc.r.a.pe trying to make me laugh with your tickling. It was as much as I could do to keep from screaming,"

exclaimed Priscilla angrily.

"Well, you can do your screaming now if it pleases you, so long as it doesn't bring Miss Pinwell upstairs. Let me alone. I'm thinking about something."

"Some _one_, my dear, you mean," put in a tall fair girl, Grace Armitage by name. "Confess now, isn't it the new curate at St. George's? He seemed to have no eyes for any one but you last Sunday evening. How cruel to disturb the poor man's thoughts."

"Console yourself, Grace dear--_you're_ never likely to do that."

The girls t.i.ttered at Lavinia's repartee. All knew that Grace Armitage was the vainest of the vain and believed every man who cast his eyes in her direction was in love with her. She went white with anger. But she was slow witted. She had no sarcastic rejoinder ready and if she had it was doubtful if she would have uttered it. Lavinia Fenton, the soul of sweetness and amiability, could show resolute fight when roused. Miss Armitage turned away with a disdainful toss of her head.