Madame Flirt
superintended Lavinia's shopping and turned a deaf ear to Mrs. Fenton's
scoffs and innuendoes.
The girl was transformed. Her new gowns, hats, aprons, 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 amusement.
"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 apron 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 scrape 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 tittered 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.
The others knew this too, for they ceased to irritate Lavinia and
continued their talk among themselves. All the same, the principal
topic was Lavinia Fenton. She was so strangely unlike herself to-night.
Half an hour later the room was in silence save for the whispering
between the occupants of those beds sufficiently close to each other to
permit this luxury. When the neighbouring clock of St. George's,
Bloomsbury, chimed half-past nine even these subdued sounds had ceased.
At half-past ten the moon was at the full. The pale light streamed
through the small window panes and threw the shadows of the broad
framework lattice-wise on Lavinia's bed which was next the window. In
daylight she had but to lie on her right side and she could see across
the fields and the rising ground each side of the Fleet river to the
villages of Islington and Hornsey.
Gradually the latticed shadow crept upwards. It at last reached
Lavinia's face. She was not asleep. Her eyes very wide open were staring
at the ceiling with a vague, wistful expression. She gave a long sigh,
her body twisted, and leaning on her right elbow, her left hand
insinuated itself beneath the pillow and drew forth a letter which she
held in the moonlight and read. Her forehead puckered as though she were
in doubt. Her steadfast eyes seemed to contradict the smile curving her
upper lip. The paper slipped from her limp fingers and she pondered, her
colour deepening the while. Nothing short of a love letter could have
caused that delightful blush. What she read was this:--
"MY DEAREST LITTLE CHARMER,--
"My soul is full of expectancy. I can think of nothing but you--the
divinest being that ever tortured the heart of man. But the torture
is exquisite because I know when I fold you in my arms it will
change to bliss. You will keep your promise and meet me at the
'Conduit Head' to-morrow midnight, will you not? I can scarce
contain myself with thinking of it. If you come not what remains
for me but death? Without you life is worthless. Come. My coach
will be in readiness and the parson waiting for us at the Fleet.
"When we are married, as I've told you, my family cannot refuse to
receive my wife, but until we are made one they will do all they
can to keep us apart. My father insists upon my marrying a rich
city madam, but I'll none of her. I will only have you, my
beauteous Lavinia. I swear to you by all the gods that you shall be
back at school before dawn, as on the night of the dance when I
first saw my adorable divinity. No one will know but us two. It
will be a delicious secret. After I have seen you safely to Queen
Square and have parted from my dearest--it will be misery to bid
thee adieu--I shall ride post haste to my father and tell him
everything. He will at first be angry, but he will relent when he
sees your loveliness. We shall be forgiven and Heaven will be ours.
"Panting with impatience, ever your most devoted humble servant,
ARCHIBALD DORRIMORE."
Present taste would pronounce this effusion to be extravagant,
rhapsodical, high-flown, super-sentimental, but it did not read so to
Lavinia. It was in the fashion of the times--indeed it approached nearer
modern ideas than the majority of love letters of that day which
generally began with "Madam" without any endearing prefix. Lavinia liked
it none the less because it was not so formal as the letters which some
girls had shown her in all pride and secrecy.
But it troubled her all the same.
"I wonder if I really--really love him," she mused. "I suppose I do or I
shouldn't be continually thinking about him. But to be married--oh,
that's a different thing. Perhaps he'd want to live in the country.
That would be horribly dull, especially if he had to come to London
often. He hopes to be a great lawyer some day he says. I don't think I'd
like him in a wig and gown and white bands. He would look so horribly
old. Oh, but I wouldn't let him have his rooms in the Temple after we're
married. He'll have to burn his musty old books. He won't need them. His
father's very rich. He's told me so hundreds of times."
A half dozen times would have been nearer the mark and this would
probably represent the number of their meetings, once at a ball at