Pa would have covered his Lily with diamonds, if he had the money ... and
if Ma had allowed it! But, on this special point, she ventured to oppose
him. She had been Lily's age herself, had Ma, and she enlarged upon the
necessity of keeping a tight rein on Lily.
Ma enumerated the fugitives: Ave Maria, and this one, and that one, and
ever so many others who had bolted; and troupes ruined by the flight,--or
the marriage,--of the star....
"Lily has changed a good deal lately, dear, are you sure she hasn't a man
in her mind?"
"There we are again!" said Pa. "Always the same old story! But just tell
me, who does she see? Who does she know? Jimmy? You don't mean him, I
suppose? Very well! Trampy, then? A married man, divorced, married again,
goodness knows what! and then ... and then ... Oh, well, let's have peace
at home, at any rate! Damn it, Lily may be a bit of a flirt: why shouldn't
she be, a pretty girl like that? Beauty, in the profession, is half the
battle."
And Pa entered into details, comforted Ma with good news: a fresh contract
signed with Bill and Boom, after that, the Harrasford tour: big salaries
now....
"No, dear, this isn't the time to worry Lily about trifles. And I don't
want her to be bothered with useless work, either."
"Call home work useless! A woman's greatest charm!" exclaimed Ma.
Lily was a subject of friendly discussion to them. Both adored her
equally: both were proud of her at heart. For Lily was growing very
beautiful; everybody said so at the theater: the stage-manager; the acting
manager, down to Jimmy, who stammered things. It was an endless series of
compliments; Harrasford's friend, the architect, who had not seen her for
a long time, fell into raptures when he met her on the stage:
"Magneeficent!" he exclaimed, in his Franco-Belgian accent. "How old is
she: sixteen? seventeen?"
"Fourteen," said Ma, with a mincing air, for to that damned "parley-voo"
she was as anxious to make Lily out a child now, in order to keep a firmer
hold of her, as she had been to increase her age in America, so as to make
her work.
"What, fourteen, Ma!" protested Lily.
"Yes, fourteen, of course; do you think you know better than your mother,
you little fool? Can't you see everybody's laughing at you?"
Ma dreaded those irresponsible jossers, who filled Lily's head with a pack
of false notions, and kept a good watch, in her growing anxiety.
Ma, in the early days of their arrival in London, had been terribly
obsessed by the dread of being left without means in the huge city. Lily
had got them out of that difficulty. And now she was earning such a lot of
money: one day, who knows, they would have made enough to assure their
independence for good and all! When she thought of this possibility, Ma's
eyes lit up with yellow gleams; she felt like catching hold of Lily and
locking her up in a safe.
Pa was less eager for gain, less ant-like in his economies; he was an
artiste, above all; he knew how to make allowances; there was a time for
work and a time for play. He often treated himself to the pleasure of
taking Lily out; and, each time, as usual, she got a nice little
present--he liked to pass for a Pa who spoiled his daughter, loved to hear
himself so described, and took a wicked delight in repeating it all to
Mrs. Clifton.
Lily was the gainer by the difference in opinion; she felt herself a
little freer. When she went out in the morning, she considered herself at
liberty to walk less fast, and no longer trembled on returning. She loved
to loiter in the Tottenham Court Road; her little person assumed an air of
importance; if, after practice, some artiste passed her in the street and
gave her a smile, she believed that he was waiting for her; a "comic
quartet," the Out-of-Tune Musicals, happening to come out of a bar and
blow a kiss to her, were there on her account, she thought--four lovers at
a swoop!
It was almost impossible that she should not meet Trampy, who was always
prowling about from bar to bar, between Oxford Street and Leicester
Square. She did meet him, in fact. Trampy, that day, wore a felt hat, a
blue suit, a red tie, with a sixpenny Murias cocked in the corner of his
mouth, and he greeted her with a triumphant "Hullo, peach!" as she passed.
Lily was quite excited, stopped just long enough to refuse a drink and
then left him very quickly. She was afraid it showed on her face, when she
got home, and his words still rang in her ears, that she was awfully
pretty, the prettiest girl on the stage, a peach, a duck, a pearl, a
daisy, a bird.
All that she had seen and heard in her jostled existence, now came back to
her, grew and sprouted in her ... now that Lily was being made love to by
gentlemen, not the monkey-faces or the blue-chins, but men like Trampy,
her craving for admiration oozed out of her at every pore....
Trampy! Lily did not care for Trampy; but she thought him amiable, polite
with the girls.... She was grateful to him for being there to say pretty
things to her when she passed. She preferred that type to men like Jimmy,
for instance, savages who always seemed on the point of speaking and never
opened their mouths; with them, she thought, a wife would be bored to
death. Besides, Jimmy, pooh, a common workman, a josser! While Trampy was
an artiste, a bill-topper and rich, no doubt. You had only to listen to
Trampy to see that he was very well off! Chocolates, sweets, jewelry,
ostrich-feathers, patent-leather boots, everything! He would have loaded
her with presents, if she had let him, but she had never accepted anything
except a little gold ring, which she hid in her pocket when she came in,
for, if Ma had caught sight of it, gee, what a smacking!
Trampy often met her; he seemed almost to do so on purpose; he found
pretty speeches, compliments which he had already uttered a score of times
to ever so many girls, on ever so many stages, like a real Don Juan who
had been all over the world and everywhere picked up love-speeches and
jokes to "fetch" the ladies with. He tickled her vanity, told her that a
dear little girl like her was cut out for dress, that a big hat with
ostrich feathers would go well with her fair hair and that men, by Jove,
ought to go on their knees whenever they spoke to her!
All this hummed and buzzed in her head. At night, when she fell asleep in
Maud's arms, she dreamed of big hats and fine dresses and referred to it
during the day. Pa hardly knew what to think; if she did as well as last
night--three encores--Lily could have half a sovereign, to buy a new hat
in the Tottenham Court Road with, said Pa.
"Oh, Pa, I shall do all right, you'll see. Will you be very nice? Then get
me that one at two guineas, you know, in Regent Street."
"But you're mad, Lily!" said Pa, without attaching too much importance to
it, for he had other cares: agents to see, letters to write, business,
damn it!
That took down Lily's cheek a bit; but her luxurious ideas returned,
nevertheless. For instance, from admiring the Three Graces or the Gilson
girl, who looked like Venuses in their silk tights and whose entrance on
the stage caused every opera-glass to glint upon them, the wish to appear
in tights began to grow on Lily. Oh, not the plain tights of living
statues; no, but with flowers and leaves embroidered here and there and
jet braid laced about the right arm. She was tired of bloomers and told Pa
so, straight out, when the apprentices had left the room and Pa, stretched
in his easy-chair, seemed in a good temper. Pa thought this notion about
tights, silly:
"They're very nice, those bloomers; those little shirts. Ask your
mother."
"Oh, yes," said Ma sarcastically, "but bloomers are made at home, in the
afternoon; you have to stitch them yourself, dear. Tights, which you buy
ready-made and which cost just ten times as much and last only half as
long, are much more convenient, aren't they, Lily? To say nothing of the
absurdity of an ugly girl like you showing yourself in tights!"
"And the troupe," said Pa. "What would the troupe look like? Might as well
not have a troupe; there'd be no one but you!"
"Well, what harm would that do? I _am_ the troupe!" said Lily, tossing her
obstinate forehead. "And all the money you give them you could give me!"
"Lily," said Pa, alarmed, "you deserve to be smacked for that!"
"Oh, Pa, what an idea!" said Lily, who was just arranging her fringe
before the glass. "A Pa to beat his Lily for a little thing like that,
away from work!" And, darting a bright smile at Pa, "You never would, Pa,
would you?" she ventured.
Clifton, taken aback, looked at his Lily, as if to say that she was right,
damn it! But Ma, in her fury, cried:
"Wait a bit! You shall see if _I_ would!"
Bang! A box on the ears, followed by an order to go to her room, on dry
bread and water, impudence! And practise her banjo till the evening!
The blow itself was nothing, but what an humiliation for Lily, who, only
yesterday, had been told that she had the sweetest nose in the world,
cheeks to cover with kisses, eyes, lovely eyes: there wasn't a girl in a
hundred with eyes like that, by Jove! And those lovely eyes were only fit
to cry with! And those pretty cheeks Ma had covered with smacks! When she
thought of it, she felt inclined to kick over the traces. Did they think
her such a kid, then, her Pa and Ma? She'd show Ma if she was fourteen!
She'd be off like the others. Lily, at this idea, felt her heart come into
her mouth: no, no; she would never dare; she never would. She swore it to
herself; took the great oath of the stage: three fingers of her right hand
uplifted, the left hand on her lucky charm. And yet, one day, she would
marry. She didn't lack chances, if she wanted them. And a gentleman, too!
And her Pa and Ma, to disgust her, of course, pretended that he was
married! They must take her for an idiot: how could Trampy be married,
considering that he had suggested ... suggested different things to
her?...
Lily brooded like this, reviewing the tiny events of which her life was
made up. Then a gleam of sunshine came to change her thoughts. She amused
herself by breathing on the window-pane, making a circle ... wrote a name
with her finger and quickly licked it out with her tongue ... and Lily
brooded ... brooded....
But Ma's voice made her jump:
"What are you doing there, you good-for-nothing? I told you to take your
banjo!"
"Yes, Ma," Lily replied mechanically, with her nose glued to the window.
"Do you hear, Mr. Clifton?" said Ma furiously. "That's the way she
obeys!"
Mrs. Clifton had no doubt whatever that there was a man at the bottom of
it ... a flirtation ... something or other. It was useless for Ma to
provide for everything, to do her best to oppose Mr. Clifton's weakness.
There was Lily now, taking up an independent attitude. She thought herself
pretty, no doubt; some booby must have been stuffing her up, making love
to her, to laugh at her later on! If she, Mrs. Clifton, had been a man,
she would certainly never look at that ill-mannered baggage; but the
London jossers liked that brazen type! And to think that time was passing
... passing!... Oh, Ma would have liked to get hold of the man who
invented the law about girls coming of age ... and love ... and marriage!
A fierce jealousy seized upon her at the thought. Lily would have
bouquets, champagne suppers; Lily would be loved by gentlemen! Tell Lily
that she was pretty and, in less than six months the little hussy would
think herself a fine lady! And, on that day, Mrs. Clifton would wash her
hands of her!
These continued attacks ended by shaking Pa. He didn't quite know what to
say; there was a certain amount of truth in it:
"But," he persisted, "why should she go? She has everything she wants
here?"
But he was more and more annoyed; yes, he admitted, he was wrong to laugh
at Mr. Fuchs: you must never set children a bad example. And, from that
moment, once his attention had been called to the matter, he daily
discovered fresh causes for uneasiness: where the devil did she get that
love of dress from? And who sent her that bouquet behind the scenes the
other night? Why, Lily wanted to have it handed to her across the
footlights, like a singer!
And Pa and Ma watched Lily like a bag of money on which one keeps one's
hand, for fear of pickpockets. Ma doubled her precautions.
The gentlemen in the front boxes, especially, alarmed her, even more than
the Jim Crows: creatures apart, devilish creatures, the gentlemen in the
front boxes! She fancied she saw a reflection of hell in the eye-glass of
every one of them. If ever Lily dared to smile to them, she knew what
awaited her! Ma would get angry for nothing at all; she even scolded Lily
for allowing herself to be approached on the stage by a contributor to
_The Piccadilly Magazine_, which was publishing articles on _The Little
Favorites of the Public_.
"I am sure you only told him a lot of nonsense," said Ma. "A girl should
call her mother in a case like that. What have you to do with the public?
Aren't you ashamed?"
No, Lily was not ashamed. She was exasperated rather. And she had not told
the journalist any lies: just the plain truth, in her own little way.
Sweat and blood! Broken legs! Broken arms! And here, there, there, all
over her body, scars deep enough to put your finger in! That would revenge
her a bit for the way in which she was treated. She knew that, when the
article appeared, she would catch it at Pa's hands; but never mind! She
had told everything, everything, in revenge; just as she might have flung
her bike at their heads in a fit of anger!