Madame Flirt

"As pretty a wench as man ever clapped eyes on. Wake up, Lance, and look at her."

The portly man of genial aspect sitting in the corner of the bow window of the Maiden Head Inn at the High Street end of Dyott Street in the very heart of St. Giles, clapped his sleeping friend on the shoulder and shook him. The sleeper, a young man whose finely drawn features were clouded with the dregs of wine, muttered something incoherently, and with an impatient twist shifted his body in the capacious arm-chair.

"Let him alone, Mr. Gay. When a man's in his cups he's best by himself. 'Twill take him a day's snoring to get rid of his bout. The landlord here tells me he walked with the mob from Newgate to Tyburn and back and refreshed himself at every tavern on the way, not forgetting, I warrant you, to fling away a guinea at the Bowl, the Lamb, and the 'Black Jack' over yonder, and drink to the long life of the daring rogue in the cart and the health of the hangman to boot."

"Long life indeed, my lord. A couple of hours at most. Not that the length of life is to be measured by years. I don't know but what it's possible to cram one's whole existence into a few hours, thanks to that thief of time," rejoined John Gay pointing to the bottle on the table.

The poet's placid face saddened. John Gay had always taken life as a pleasure, but there is no pleasure without pain as he had come to discover. Maybe at that moment a recollection of his follies gave his conscience a tinge. Of Gay it might be said that he had no enemies other than himself.

"Oh, the passing hour is the best doubtless, since we never know whether the next may not be the worst," laughed Henry St. John, Lord Bolingbroke. "I'll wager Jack Sheppard's best was when the noose was round his neck. The rascal will trouble nervous folks no more. After all he was of some use. See that drunken rabble. But for the brave show he made at Tyburn yesterday, would those ladies and gentlemen be merry making, think you, and would the tavern keepers and the gin sellers be putting money in their pockets?"

Gay turned his eyes to the open window.

"I don't want to think of the rascally knave or the rabble either. My thoughts are on yonder pretty little jade. Look for yourself, Bolingbroke. You're not so insensible to beauty as Lance Vane is at this moment."

"Faith, I hope not. Where's the charmer?" said Bolingbroke walking to the window.

"Stay. She's going to sing. She has the voice of a nightingale. I've heard her before. Lord! to think she has to do it for a living!"

"Humph. She has courage. Most girls would die rather than rub shoulders with that frousy, bestial, drunken mob."

"Aye, but that little witch subdues them all with her voice. What says Will Congreve? Music has charms to soothe a savage breast? Listen."

A girl slight in figure but harmoniously proportioned had placed herself about two yards from the bow window. She fixed her eyes on Gay and her pretty mouth curved into a smile. Then she sang. The ditty was "Cold and Raw," a ballad that two hundred years ago or so, never failed to delight everybody from the highest to the lowest. She gave it with natural feeling and without any attempt at display. The voice was untrained but this did not matter. It was like the trill of a bird, sweet, flexible and pure toned.

"A voice like that ought not to be battered about. It's meant for something better than bawling to a mob. What says your lordship?"

Bolingbroke's face had become grave, almost stern. His high, somewhat narrow, slightly retreating forehead, long nose and piercing eyes lent themselves readily to severity. Twenty-five years before it was not so. He was then the gayest of the gay and in the heyday of his career. Much had happened since then. Disappointed political ambitions and political flirtations with the Jacobite party had ended in exile in France, from which, having been pardoned, he had not long returned.

Meeting Gay, the latter suggested a prowl in St. Giles, where life was in more than its usual turmoil consequent upon the execution of Jack Sheppard; so Viscount Bolingbroke revisited the slums of St. Giles, which had been the scene of many an orgy in his hot youth.

The nobleman returned no answer to Gay's question. His thoughts had gone back to his early manhood when he took his pleasure wherever he found it. In some of his mad moods St. Giles was more to his taste than St. James's. So long as the face was beautiful, and the tongue given to piquant raillery, any girl was good enough for him. He was of the time when a love intrigue was a necessary part of a man's life, and not infrequently of a woman's too.

Successful lover though he had been he was not all conquering. The ballad singer's tender liquid tones carried his memory back to the low-born girl with the laughing eyes who had captured his heart. She sold oranges about the door of the Court of Requests, she sang ballads in the street, she was a little better than a light of love, yet Bolingbroke could never claim her as his own. It angered him sorely that she had a smile for others. But he bore her no malice, or he would hardly have written his poetical tribute commencing:-

"Dear, thoughtless Clara, to my verse attend,

Believe for once the lover and the friend."

So Gay's words were unheeded. A heavy step sounded on the sanded floor. A big man with features formed on an ample mould had entered. Gay was entranced by the singer and did not hear him. The newcomer stood silently behind the poet. He too, was listening intently.

The girl's voice died into a cadence. Gay beckoned to her and she came up to the window.

"Finely sung, Polly," cried Gay. "Who taught thee, child?"

"I taught myself, sir," said she dropping a curtsey.

"Then you had a good teacher. There's a crown for you."

"Oh sir ... it's too much."

"Nay, Polly-if your name isn't Polly it ought to be. What does your mother call you?"

"Mostly an idle slut, sir."

Her face remained unmoved save her eyes, which danced with sly merriment.

The men at the window burst into a roar of laughter. He who had entered last laughed the loudest and deepest, and loud and deep as was that laugh it was full of music. At its sound Gay turned sharply.

"What? Dick Leveridge? You've come at the right moment. We need someone who knows good music when he hears it. What of this pretty child's voice. Is it good?"

"Is it good? I'll answer your question, Mr. Gay, by asking you another. Are you good at verses?"

"'Tis said my 'Fables' will be pretty well. The young Prince William will have the dedication of it and if his mother, the Princess of Wales approves, methinks my fortune's made," cried Gay buoyantly.

"Glad to hear it," replied Leveridge, dryly. "If I know anything about His Royal Highness you'll gain a fortune sooner by writing a ballad or two for this pretty songster. Make her famous as you made me with 'All in the Downs' and 'T'was when the seas were roaring.'"

Gay's face brightened.

"Faith, Dick, you've set my brain working. I'll think on't, but that means I must keep my eye on the wench."

"Oh, I'll trust you for that," rejoined Leveridge, the ghost of a smile flitting across his solemn visage.

Meanwhile the girl had retreated a yard or two from the window, her gaze fixed wistfully on Gay and Leveridge. She knew from their looks that she was the subject of their talk.

Gay turned from his friend Richard Leveridge, the great bass singer of the day, and rested his hands on the window sill. Bolingbroke had sunk into his chair, and buried in his thoughts, was slowly sipping his wine. Lancelot Vane continued to breathe heavily.

"Come here, child," said Gay through the open window and sinking his voice. The crowd had pressed round her and were clamourous for her to sing again. Some had thrown her a few pence for which a couple of urchins were groping on the ground.

The girl approached.

"Now Polly--"

"My name's Lavinia-Lavinia Fenton, sir," she interrupted.

"Too fine-too fine. I like Polly better. Never mind. If it's Lavinia, Lavinia it must be. What's your mother? Where does she live?"

"At the coffee house in Bedfordbury."

"Does she keep it?"

"Yes, sir."

"And what do you do?"

"Wait on the customers-sometimes."

"And sometimes you sing in the streets-round the taverns, eh?"

"Only when mother drives me out."

"Oh. She ill treats you, does she? That bruise on your shoulder-was it her work?"

The girl nodded.

"You wouldn't mind if you left your mother and did nothing but sing?"

"Oh, that would be joy," cried the girl squeezing her hands tightly together to stifle her emotions. "But how can I?"

"It may be managed, perhaps. I must see your mother--"

He was interrupted by a deafening roar-hoarse, shrill, raucous, unmistakably drunken. A huge, ragged multitude had poured into the High Street from St. Martin's Lane, jostling, fighting, cursing, eager for devilment, no matter what. They rushed to the hostelries, they surrounded the street sellers of gin, demanding the fiery poisonous stuff for which they had no intention of paying.

The landlord of the "Maiden Head" hurried into the room somewhat perturbed.

"Best shut the window, gentlemen," said he. "This vile scum's none too nice. Anything it wants it'll take without so much as by your leave, or with your leave."

"What does it mean, landlord?" asked Bolingbroke.

"Oh's all over Jack Sheppard. The people are mad about the rascal just because the turnkeys couldn't hold him, nor prison walls for the matter o' that. He was clever in slipping out o' prison I grant ye. Well, sirs, his body was to be handed over to the surgeons like the rest o' the Tyburn gentry, but his friends would have none of it. A bailiff somehow got hold of the corpse to make money out of it-trust them sharks for that when they see a chance-an' smuggled it to his house in Long Acre. It got wind afore many hours was past and the mob broke into the place, the Foot Guards was called out an' there's been no end of a rumpus."

"Faith, my poor Gay," said Bolingbroke with a sardonic smile, "the people make more fuss over a burglar than over a ballad maker. And what's become of the noble Sheppard's body, landlord?"

"It's hidden somewhere. They say as it'll be buried to-night in St. Martin's Churchyard. So the people'll get their way after all."

"As they mostly do if they make noise enough," rejoined Bolingbroke refreshing himself with a pinch of snuff.

"Yes, your honour, and--"

The sound of a loud high pitched, strident voice floated into the room through the open window. Gay, whose eyes had never shifted from the girl outside, saw her cheeks suddenly blanch. She looked round hurriedly like a frightened rabbit seeking a way of escape.

"Bring the girl in, landlord," exclaimed the poet hastily. "She'll come to harm else. Lord! Look at those drunken beasts. No-no"-the landlord was about to shut the latticed windows-"run to the door, child. Quick."

A howling sottish mob mad with drink, clamouring, gesticulating, men and women jostling each other, embracing vulgarly, their eyes glassy, their faces flushed, was approaching the inn.

The mob was headed by a handsome woman. She was in the plenitude of fleshly charms. Her dress, disordered, showed her round solidly built shoulders, her ample bust. Some day unless her tastes and her manner of life altered she would end in a bloway drab, every vestige of beauty gone in masses of fat. But at that moment she was the model of a reckless Bacchante, born for the amusement and aggravation of man.

Her maddening eyes were directed on the Maiden Head inn. Her full lips were parted in a harsh boisterous laugh; her white teeth gleamed; the blood ran riot in her veins; she was the embodiment of exuberant, semi-savage, animal life. She danced up to the open window. The sight of the sleeping Lance Vane had drawn her thither.

Up to that moment Lavinia Fenton's back was towards the woman. Lavinia tried to get away without notice, but the Bacchante's escort was too numerous, too aggressive, too closely packed. They hoped for some fun after their own tastes.

"Mercy on me," muttered Gay apprehensively, "that impudent hussy, Sally Salisbury. And drunk too. This means trouble. Dick," he whispered hurriedly to Leveridge, "you can use your fists if need be. I've seen you have a set-to in Figg's boxing shed. That girl's in danger. Sally's bent on mischief. There's murder in her eyes. Come with me."

Leveridge nodded and followed his friend out of the room.

Gay's action was none too prompt. No sooner had Sally Salisbury-destined to be, a few years later, the most notorious woman of her class-set eyes on the girl than her brows were knitted and her lips and nostrils went white. Her cheeks on the other hand blazed with fury. She gripped the shrinking girl and twisted her round. Then she thrust her face within a few inches of Lavinia's.

"What do you mean by coming here, you squalling trollop?" she screamed. "How dare you poach on my ground, you--"

How Sally finished the sentence can be very well left to take care of itself.

Lavinia despite her terror of the beautiful virago never lost her self-control.

"You're welcome to this ground every inch of it, but I suppose I've as much right to walk on it as you have," said she.

"Don't talk to me, you little trull, or you'll drive me to tear your eyes out. Take that."

With the back of her disengaged hand she struck the girl's cheek.

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