Madame Flirt / A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera'

by Charles Edward Pearce

Then patting her cheek and chucking her under the chin Gay took his leave.

It would have been hard for Lavinia to say how the day passed. She walked on the heath for no other purpose, so she said, save to revel in the sunshine and pure air. She had a secret hope that she might encounter Lancelot Vane, but embarrassment was mingled with that hope. It would be better not, she felt, yet she was disappointed all the same when after strolling about for half an hour she saw nothing of him, and banishing her vain thoughts she went on to the concert room to inquire if she were wanted to sing that night.

"Yes, to be sure," said Palmer. "You're all the talk. I've seen Mr. Gay, and he tells me he's given you some songs he would like you to sing. Suppose you go over a couple now for me?"

A harpsichord was in the room and Palmer asked her to sing what she liked and he would fill in an accompaniment as best he could as she had not brought the music. She selected "Now ponder well ye parents dear," the tender pathos of which had always appealed to her, and "Thomas I cannot," a merry ditty which she knew from her old experience as a street singer would be sure to please. Palmer was delighted with both. The first he said brought tears to his eyes and the second put him in good humour.

"My dear, you could not have made a better choice. I expect a crowded room and you'll conquer 'em all."

And so she did. There was no longer coldness—no longer indifference. Everybody was agog with expectation, everybody was pleased. Lavinia's triumph was complete. Night after night it was the same. Palmer had never had so successful a season. He put money in his pocket and he paid his new star fairly well.

Two or three times a week for over a month Lavinia went to Gay's lodgings and rehearsed the songs she did not know and those also with which she was already acquainted. The words Gay gave her to sing were not those to which she was accustomed and she found the change confusing. Moreover, at each rehearsal some alterations in the words were made, occasionally by Gay, occasionally at the suggestion of Dr. Arbuthnot. But she never wearied, and so she was sufficiently rewarded for her trouble when Gay bestowed upon her a word of praise.

But Lancelot Vane?

He came not in spite of his earnest entreaty that she would meet him. At first she was wounded, then she was indignant. She remembered how faithless he had proved, and all her bitterness against him and Sally Salisbury revived. Then came a revulsion of feeling. Why should he not be ill? Nay, he might even be dead. Perhaps worse. If he had carried out his despairing threat? She pictured him floating on the surface of a Hampstead pond and a shudder went over her at the gruesome thought. Finally she subsided into dull resignation and strove to think no more about him.

It was September; with the colder weather came the waning of the Hampstead season, the fashionable folk were returning to London and preparing for masquerades, ridottos, the theatres and the opera. The Great Room concerts were but thinly attended and for a whole fortnight Lavinia had not sung twice. But this did not matter to her. She had been written to by John Rich, and he had engaged her at a little higher salary than he had hitherto paid.