Generally, she hated the hotels frequented by artistes, but she was very

glad to be in one this time. She, poor little broken-down thing, was not

left to the care of a common servant; she had nice, kind nurses.... And

she had no lack of friends who took interest in her, very sincerely, for

that matter, for she was a favorite with all of them, that pretty Miss

Lily, who would soon be free....

Lily let herself be coddled. Pending the arrival of the money which Trampy

was to send, she wanted for nothing, especially in the way of luxuries:

chocolates, sweets, flowers, they brought her everything. Her friends

passing through Berlin, the impersonator, the Paras, many others, hearing

that she was ill, came to see her, treated her as a lady, cried out how

well she was looking, how pretty she was and how it suited her to be ill

in bed.

Lily thought that very nice, put on a languid air, like a poor little

jaded thing that had got out of gear:

"I shall die of overdoing it, I know I shall," she said. "I've been at the

bike ever since I was that high"--raising her hand twelve inches above the

bed--"and my heart's worn out by the hard work. My knees, too. Sit down

there on the basket trunk. You at the foot of the bed. Have a chocolate."

Then she turned over in her sheets, which molded her firm, plump shape,

took a bag of sweets from the chair beside her and offered it round. Poor

little martyr, she had been forbidden them by the doctor, because of a

cough.... But she took them all the same, merely for the sake of taking

them, with a graceful movement, her bare arm outstretched, her wrist

making a supple curve, like a swan's neck, as she dipped her pretty hand

into the bag.

* * * * *

In addition to her regular friends, such as the impersonator or the Paras,

others, the people staying in the hotel, would tap discreetly at the glass

door between her room and the passage, come in on tip-toe, speak in a

whisper.

"What nonsense!" Lily would say. "I'm not dead yet, you know!"

And she laughed, and "Ugh! Ugh!" a cough or so, a matter of lifting her

embroidered handkerchief to her mouth, a favorite gesture. And there were

stories from all parts, the cackle of the profession. The Paras were

living together now, as they explained to her. The parrots? No go; given

them up; one had its neck wrung by a monkey in Chicago; another died of

consumption at Stockholm; the rest of the troupe sold to the

stage-doorkeepers of the different variety-theaters. His sight was

beginning to fail. She wanted smartness; wasn't--how should he put it? The

husband looked for a word--wasn't "Tottie" enough. However, they managed

somehow, as "eccentric duetists." Lily thought that very nice, those two

talents combined, very original; but could they give her any news of Ave

Maria ... a great artiste ... on the wire?...

If ever Lily might have hoped to receive news of Ave Maria, it was during

this illness, from the artistes who visited her, on their way from

anywhere to God knows where. Lily had news of everybody: of Mirzah, the

white elephant, who had to be pole-axed for killing his keeper; of Captain

North's seals; of the Three Graces, who were doing triumphantly in

England; of Poland, the Parisienne, now starring at Bill and Boom's. Tom

was talked about: biceps like thighs, now: a hornpipe danced on the hands.

She had news of the Pawnees, of the Hauptmanns. Roofer was sending out

four new troupes, to Canada, Australia, India, Cape Colony: the

Greater-England Girls. She had news of the New Zealanders and of her

cousin Daisy, who seemed to find the star business jolly hard work:

"The wind-bag!" said Lily.

They talked of Jimmy, of dogs, cats and monkeys and of Tom Grave and Butt

Snyders, those great breakneck acrobats: they talked of one and all, but

not a word of Ave Maria. They knew her by reputation, as one who had been

through the mill, more than Lily had, as Lily modestly admitted.

"Darling," said the impersonator affectionately, "don't bother about that

Ave Maria of yours. I'm jealous. Be mine, darling! How well we two should

get on together, eh, Lily?"

"Hands off!" said Lily. "Be good ... there ... like that ... down by your

sides ... or you'll get a smacking!"

Concerts were got up for Lily's amusement. Sketch-comedians pulled their

faces: a musician twanged his banjo. At other times, by closing her eyes,

Lily could have imagined herself in an aviary: the Whistling Wonder

imitated the nightingale, the thrush, the lark. Another, an equilibrist,

showed her how, when he was obliged to stay in bed with a broken leg and

had nobody to wait on him, he used to wait on himself by going round the

room on his hands ... like that. Lily was given, for nothing, a

performance which was worth a whole music-hall program. To put everybody

at their ease, Lily told them to smoke, took a puff or two at a cigarette

herself--"Ugh! Ugh!"--almost choked....

They amused themselves, among themselves, free from any constraint due to

the presence of jossers. Lily joked with them as she used to do with the

apprentices in the mornings, when they showed one another their bruises of

the day before. She made them look at her pigeon's egg, on the side of her

foot, the little ball-shaped muscle special to her profession, like the

triceps of the pugilist or the dancing-girls' calves. She was vain enough

to put on a silk stocking, poked out her foot from under the bedclothes,

let them feel "her egg," made it jump under their fingers by a sudden

contraction.

"Is that all you've got to show us, darling?" asked the impersonator.

"You don't want much, I _don't_ think!" said Lily, pulling back her foot

under the quilt.

The incident was interrupted by new-comers who had also known Lily when

she was that high. They brought fresh news from Lisle Street. They had had

a drink with P. T. Clifton himself, had had a drink with an author who was

writing a book on the business.

"Another josser who's sure to talk a lot of nonsense!" cried Lily. "If

only they told the truth and described us as we are, a sight better than

the society ladies, who come and wait for pros outside the stage-door!"

And they went on. The healths they had drunk with this girl and that girl;

and new turns: competitors who were cropping up ... names ... names ...

Ave Maria? Dead, they said: somewhere in Ecuador or Peru.

Then Lily stretched herself to her full length in the sheets, feeling

weary, weary, crushed under all that talk.

And Trampy just didn't write, sent no money at all. She blushed for him

... in spite of her wish to catch him tripping, before witnesses. She was

ashamed to be his wife, his only wife, his little wife for ever.

On that day, as it happened, Jimmy came to pay her a visit. His engagement

at the Kolossal was ending. He was to perform at the London Hippodrome,

before going to the States. A certain air of respect surrounded him from

the moment he entered the room, that Jimmy who already stood higher than

any of them among the famous bill-toppers! And they gradually retired, as

though Lily would prefer that. It was no use her saying, "Do stay!" They

went all the same; and Lily was left alone with him, a little embarrassed

and yet flattered at being thought on such good terms with Jimmy. As for

him, he had just heard about Lily's illness, Trampy's absence, and hurried

to see her, bringing her the good news that the lawsuit was over. Trampy

would have nothing more to pay....

From that day, Jimmy was sometimes seen at Lily's. He spoke little, sat

down on the basket trunk, listened, thought of things. He was known to

have his mind full of an invention superior to "Bridging the Abyss," one

could expect anything from him: a wonderful chap Jimmy, a bit cracked,

though, with ideas of his own which went the round of the profession and

were variously appreciated. A fund for stage-children; a reserve upon

their earnings, to be banked and kept untouched till they came of age; a

home of rest for the old and the sick; a weekly matinee for the benefit of

the fund....

Jimmy described the piteous lot of those who grow old in a profession

intended for youth: but a few shillings a month paid into the fund, a

benefit performance or two ... and our home is established and endowed and

we should see no more stars flung aside, to die in hopeless poverty, after

amusing crowds of people for years and years.

"I'm with you," said Lily, laughing. "Put me down for a pension for my old

age ... if ever I reach old age ... ugh, ugh!"

And she coughed, with the embroidered handkerchief at her lips.

But Lily's joke was left unechoed: everybody talked professional shop,

quoted figures; the habit of signing contracts, of avoiding the traps laid

by the agents had given them all a keen sense of business. And the

frequent traveling, in the absence of education, had made them sharp at

understanding, quick in the uptake. Their clean-shaven faces fell into

wise folds, like lawyers'.

Jimmy also explained his idea about the apprentices, the compulsory so

much per cent., the inalienable deposit paid in by the Pas and Mas ...

and, much more still, by the profs and managers....

"Good!" said Lily. "I'm with you!"

There was a general laugh. The Whistling Wonder interrupted the

conversation by quacking like a duck at Jimmy and cooing like a pigeon at

Lily. Jimmy got up and said good-by, pleased to see Lily making daily

progress.

"Ah, Lily," they said again, when he had gone, "that's the one you ought

to have married, not the other!"

And thereupon they began to pursue their favorite theme and amuse

themselves by describing the awful troubles which she would get into one

day with "the other," that drunkard;--the man with the thirty-six girls!

And they laughed and they laughed, my! Lily herself held her sides with

laughing.

All this was stage effect, professional exaggeration. Lily dared not

indulge in it before Jimmy. She was more sincere, always a little

embarrassed, in the presence of that man toward whom everybody was driving

her, as though they all saw farther into her life than she herself could.

She was no longer ill, only tired, with an accumulation of past

wearinesses that made her love to lie down flat. But she would get up

to-morrow, instead of remaining in bed to see her friends; no humbug

before Jimmy.

The next day when he came, Lily was alone. So much the better, he had

something to say to her. He had made up his mind that day. His own present

prosperity formed too great a contrast with the poverty of Lily ... that

poor kiddie who had run away from home in pursuit of happiness and whom he

now found here, in this squalid room.... It was all very well to theorize

about children who have earned fortunes and who haven't a farthing; but

that was mere talk! Suppose he helped Lily a little in the meantime. He

had prepared all sorts of good reasons; he had found a smart excuse, the

great excuse of the music-hall, that he had been betting on horses and

losing. He would ask Lily to keep his money for him, as a kindness,

otherwise he simply couldn't help it, his money burned a hole in his

pocket. Then, on second thought, why all that fuss? Hadn't he known her

since she was that high? And, the moment he came in, he just handed Lily a

thousand-mark note:

"For the law-costs, Lily! And, anything over, for your expenses, till

Trampy's money comes. Only too pleased to be of any use. You can pay it

back when it suits you. And good-by, Lily, ta-ta!"

And he hurried out, leaving Lily with the thousand marks in her hand.

Lily was stupefied and confused. She asked herself why? why? a real piece

of brain-work, which made her head ache. Anyhow she would give back the

money to-morrow! She wouldn't keep it! Trampy would be sure to bring some;

it was impossible that he should bring nothing; but, come what may, she

would give back the money to-morrow! She took the great oath of the stage

upon it: three fingers of her right hand uplifted; her left hand on the

lucky charm. And then she went and shut the door, turned the key in the

lock and lay down....

* * * * *

A noise woke her: some one was knocking outside; but, before she could get

out of bed, one of the glass panes of the door broke into fragments.

Somebody had smashed it with his elbow. A hand came through the opening,

turned back the key. The door opened and Trampy entered, raging,

growling:

"There's a man here!"

"You won't find him; you can kill me if you do!" cried Lily.

She expected a terrible scene. Trampy, drunk, had the look which he wore

on his bad days. He peered into the corners, turned a cunning eye on

Lily.

Trampy had spent the evening at the cafe and there heard of the visits

which Lily received during his absence. The neighbors he didn't mind

about, but Jimmy. Jimmy again! The damned dog! Why should he poke his nose

in? And, perhaps, at heart, Trampy was not sorry to have a scene with

Lily, for he wasn't bringing home a pfennig, having spent all his money on

champagne with girls. He felt himself at fault. He would get out of it

with violence.

"There's a man here!" repeated Trampy, walking up to Lily like a madman.

She was humiliated to the core when she saw Trampy, dazed with tobacco,

heavy with beer, stoop and look under the bed. And, suddenly, seeing the

banknote which Lily had laid on the table, Trampy shouted:

"You can't deny it this time. Tell me where the money comes from!"

"It's from Jimmy," said Lily, beside herself. "He thinks of me, Jimmy

does, while you leave me here to starve. It's ... it's for the

law-costs."

"Oh, that's another thing!" said Trampy, putting the note in his pocket.

"Let the money be!" cried Lily, leaping out of bed. "Don't you touch it!"

"Everything here belongs to me, I should think," said Trampy, a little

more calmly, already overcome with drunken drowsiness. "Everything, even a

dear little wifie," he continued, putting his snout under Lily's disgusted

nose.

But she gave a movement of revulsion so spontaneous that Trampy turned

pale under the insult:

"W-what! N-no love?" he stammered. "I'm not used to that. I can get

l-l-love for the asking ... at the ca-ca-cafe ... or the th-theater ... or

anywhere."

And Trampy, making a false step, caught hold of the curtain and drew it

back.

In the pitiless light of the morning, he appeared to Lily like a drowned

man, with a puffed-out face, swollen eyes and wan cheeks. To think that

she belonged to that! Lily spat at him in contempt. Oh, rather sleep with

lizards and guinea-pigs than that; rather with a woolly dog, like Poland,

that Parisienne! Oh, to get rid of him and be free again, thought Lily,

never again to have Trampy before her eyes! And, suddenly, her mind was

made up. She dressed herself hurriedly.

"Where are you going?" asked Trampy.

"I'm off!" said Lily. "I've had enough of this!"

"What's that?" said Trampy, dull-mouthed, flinging his body across the

bed. "What's that? Say it again!"

"I say I hate the sight of you! I'm going back to my Pa and Ma!"

"You, you're going back to ... well, good-by, darling, goo-good ...

goo-good-by," stammered Trampy, sprawling on the bed, among the disordered

clothes....

Lily moved freely round the room, without even troubling about him, like

one who has made up her mind once and for all. She packed up her things in

the basket trunk. She put her bike outside the door; and, just as she was

going to look for a neighbor to help her down with her trunk, an idea

entered her head. She stopped on the threshold, came back to Trampy,

slipped her hand into his pocket and gingerly took out the banknote:

"An insult like that!" she muttered. "I'd rather starve than not give

Jimmy back the money!"

CHAPTER VI

"Lily!"

She thought she heard herself called, in her dream, just because she was

back in her room again, in London, among familiar objects. She felt as if

her life was going on exactly as in the old days, as if nothing had

happened in between. Her marriage? A nightmare. And her home-coming

yesterday had been very nice: no questions asked, no whys and hows. Her

parents knew, of course. They knew all about her troubles with Trampy. But

no reproaches, nothing: kisses, everybody very happy, including herself.

She snuggled under the bedclothes, in the hollow left by Glass-Eye, who

had gone down-stairs. Lily felt sorry that she had left her trunk at the

hotel, when she thought of the cordial welcome she had received at the

hands of Pa and Ma.

It was quite three weeks since she left her husband. She went over it all

again in her head. Her departure from Berlin! She meant to go straight to

Jimmy, first, and give him back that money; only, those Vienna hats,

displayed in the shop-windows, those dresses, those boots, when she saw

all that, Lily understood that she could not return to London, to her

parents, with dingy-looking clothes, after her successes on the continent!

Pa and Ma would have laughed in her face.

Lily felt bound to say that she had been most reasonable: three hundred

marks for that Vienna dress, which suited her so well; why, Jimmy himself

would have approved.

"Let's see!"

She reckoned on her fingers: forty marks the hat, three hundred the dress;

and the underthings, chemises, stays, a silk petticoat, boots ... that

came to ... came to ... a week at a hotel in Berlin ... time lost at

Hamburg ... the journey from Hamburg to Rotterdam, Harwich and London ...

the hotel on arriving, so as to be able to dress before going home: it

left her just fifty shillings to play the lady with and buy presents for

Pa and Ma. And Jimmy ... Jimmy, who was in London also, due to open at the

Hippodrome! And she had sworn that she would give him back that money at

once! To quiet her conscience, Lily, under her blankets, took the

"counter-oath" of the stage, with her left hand behind her back, the

fingers closed over the thumb, that she would repay him the money, most

certainly, as soon as she began to earn any.

"Lily! Can I come in, Lily?"

It was Ma, bringing her breakfast and a paper, _The Era_. Lily gave a

quick glance round the room: her skirt was hanging on the peg; the bodice

lay, without a crease, over the back of a chair, the hat on top of it, the

linen neatly folded: good! She did not look a scarecrow, at any rate! And,

sitting up against the pillows, with a napkin on her knees, Lily

breakfasted daintily, with her finger-tips:

"Pa, Where's Pa?" asked Lily. "Tell him to come up."

"Your Pa has gone out with the apprentices," said Ma. "He wouldn't wake

you, you looked so tired last night. Here, Lily, some more coffee? Another

slice of bread and butter?" continued Ma, spreading it for her.

"'K you!"

Lily accepted this as her due, like a lady accustomed to the manners of

good society, to having her breakfast brought to her in bed by the maid.

"Oh, Ma," said Lily, as she sugared her coffee, "they do understand things

on the continent! They know how to appreciate artistes there. I've had

such successes!"

"And you were angry with us for teaching you your profession," said Ma.

"You see now that it was for your good."

"But it depends on how it's done," said Lily. "If I had always been

treated like this, I should never have left you."

"Well, you don't bear your Pa and me a grudge, I suppose," said Ma, "or

you wouldn't have come back. We knew you'd come back. This has always been

your address; your Pa never took your name out of _The Era_."

"You didn't treat me fair," said Lily, "but I've forgotten most of it. Oh,

don't let's talk about it any more! Let's talk of something else; let's

talk of you."

Lily knew all about their struggles, their successes; had heard of it on

the stage, in the cafes. But here, in her room, as described by Ma, she

put her finger on it, so to speak, and realized more fully what a blank

her flight had made, what a catastrophe it had been for them.

And Ma gave details, tried to interest Lily in the fate of the troupe;

told her that, for months, the troupe had been refused everywhere, because

she wasn't in it, and her Pa had to change apprentices.

"I was the troupe!" said Lily.

"Oh, the trouble your Pa took running after his own fat freaks! I thought

he would get heart-disease! And months of it, without earning a thing. Oh,

if your Pa hadn't had some money ...!"

"But he had plenty!" said Lily.

"Oh, not much, not so much as you think!" Ma hastened to say, thinking she

saw a spiteful allusion in Lily's remark.

"Yes, all right, I know," said Lily. "Never mind about that. It's my turn

to make money now, for myself."

"Still that independent spirit! We haven't got her yet!" thought Ma.

And she went on talking of the troupe, of the cousin who played the star.

"Pooh!" said Lily. "A nice sort of star!"

"It's not every one who can star in Berlin by herself, like you," said Ma.

"Do you know, Lily, you ought to stay with us: we should get on so well

together. You would manage the troupe; and, one day--who knows?--you might

make a nice marriage."

"But I am married, Ma! I didn't live with him! Do you mean to say you

think ...? Not I!"

"I know you're married, but you can get a divorce. Jimmy used to make love

to you; now there's a man who ..."

"And you used to say he was a drunkard, Ma!"

"Never!" said Ma, rising to leave.

Lily was flattered, at heart, to be received like that. She also felt

proud that her Pa had not been ashamed of her and that he had kept her

name in _The Era_. Well, they treated her as a lady, saw her value, gave

her her due. And she lay for a while enjoying her triumph, while she

turned the pages of _The Era_ in an absent-minded way: Miss This, Miss

That, Cape Town, Calcutta ... actors, singers ...

"Those aren't artistes, any of them!"

Programs, plays, songs: "_Why I Love Women_!"

"I know, you footy rotter!"

"_Is Marriage a Failure_?"

"I should think so!" thought Lily.

And articles, biographies ...

"Pack of lies!" thought Lily.

And pages of "Wanted ... Wanted ..."

Lily ran her eye down the columns: artistes' boarding-houses,

_costumiers_, scene-painters, dancing-schools, every town, every theater.

Hullo!--she had turned the page--Tom, the dancer--Hullo! At Milan!

"Bravo, Tom!"

Jimmy at the Hippodrome next week; private address, Whitcomb Mansions.

"Pooh, he's well off! What's fifty pounds to him?"

Hullo! Miss Lily--Berlin--Permanent address, Rathbone Place, London, W.

"Well done, Pa! Serve him right, the tramp cyclist!" said Lily, throwing

down the paper and jumping out of bed.

Quite a business, her toilet. She was two hours titivating herself. She

wanted Pa and Ma to be proud of her, of her successes on the continent.

And, when the apprentices came in from practice, you should have seen her

walk into the dining-room. A little air of simplicity, her forehead put

out for her delighted Pa to kiss, hands all round--"Hullo, girls! Hullo,

Daisy!" And she sat down like a lady accustomed to smart restaurants, who

does not despise dinner at home, however, with a boiled leg of mutton to

recruit her inside after those champagne suppers, those truffled

pheasants, that damned continental cooking! She accepted everything, and

thought it all very nice, simple life, simple joys, the only ones!

She set a good example to the new apprentices, who eyed her stealthily,

instead of eating, for Miss Lily's presence turned their heads entirely.

My! A star like that, a real one! Lily Clifton, the New Zealander on

Wheels! And dressed ... dressed like a lady in the front boxes! Cousin

Daisy was green with jealousy. Lily talked of her travels, her successes

and the crossing, gee! Waves "miles high," the boat standing on end! Glass

Eye Maud devoured her with her one eye, screwed up her fat red cheeks in a

fixed and motionless laugh, scared before Lily, who came from over the

sea, from countries where savages live. Glass-Eye, in her perturbation,

served Lily first. Pa made no objection, asked Lily's permission to light

his pipe: was she sure she didn't mind smoke? Lord, you never knew, with

those ladies! He swelled with pride. If it had been Christmas-time, he

would have ordered a pudding, my, a real wedding-cake three feet across!

His ideas of grandeur returned, his triumphal tour round the world, the

definite extermination of the fat freaks ... if Lily remained with him

...

After dinner, the apprentices retired, to finish sewing some bloomers.

Lily approved:

"Bloomers? Very nice ... for a troupe!"

Presently, in the afternoon, the three of them went for a walk: Pa freshly

shaven; Ma decked out in her jewelry: Lily did not wear any, "only in the

evening when she went into society." Tottenham Court Road, the Palace, the

Hippodrome.... Pa would have liked to write up on his hat:

"Lily has come back!"

He looked to right and left, had the satisfaction of distributing nods and

bows to some artistes, with Lily on his arm, as though to say:

"You see it was wrong, all that people were saying, about those smackings!

And the proof is, here she is,--on my arm, damn it!"

As for Lily, she thought only of showing herself:

"If Trampy could see me now!" she reflected. "And Jimmy, if he could see

me, in my fine dress, while it's still new!"

Regent Street reminded Lily of Pa's generosity. She would not be

behindhand. Pa had to accept a red tie, a pair of gloves, a match-box, as

a present; Ma, an embroidered handkerchief, a lucky charm. Lily had the

satisfaction of paying with gold and receiving change.

She was tired, in the evening, put on a languid air: gee, her mother would

have shaken her for less in the old days! Lily put it on still more, to

show them all that times were changed. But she did the troupe the honor of

going to see their performance at the Castle. It was a great success for

her.

"Made a bit, eh?" asked the manager, seeing her fine dress. "Coming back

for good, to star with the New Zealanders?"

"I don't know; I shall see."

Lily was quite ready to come back, in her own mind, but she wanted to

return in triumph. It all depended on the price offered: to think that she

had worked for them at ten shillings a week, when she was worth quite two

pounds a night! She would see; she would make her own conditions: for

instance, herself in tights, the others in bloomers ... a special tune for

her entrance ... no star beside herself!

Lily watched the New Zealanders' performance with the air of an expert:

"Not so bad; quite good ..."

And she had various ideas: herself as a fine lady, undressing on the

stage. Or rather, no, as a statue, on a pedestal in a park ... with Cousin

Daisy at her feet, throwing flowers to her. Then she would come to life,

as though waking from sleep, and step down prettily to a special tune.

Hullo, what's this? A bike! And then, gee, a blast of the trombone and she

would show them what a star was, a real one! Yes ... she would see ... if

Pa and Ma insisted ... perhaps ...

But her real triumph was next day, at practice. Her Pa, excited by her

presence, ran and ran, notwithstanding his palpitations of the heart. It

was no use his trying to restrain himself: his enthusiasm mastered him as

soon as he saw them all in the saddle, his little Woolly-legs!

And no more Tom: he was all by himself now; and, when he sat down to take

breath, he still ordered his little Woolly-legs about, shouted his cutting

remarks at them.

Lily raised her head proudly. She seemed to take the apprentices to

witness. She had gone through that, much worse than that, for years! She

was a gentle little lady, all the same. Besides, she was all for

gentleness:

"Leave her to me, Pa; you're making poor Cousin Daisy quite nervous. She

doesn't know; I'll show her!"

And, under her great waving feather, Lily, without even taking off her

gloves:

"There, put your foot there ... like that ... and like that ... firmly.

No, not like that!"

And, suddenly, stimulated with professional zeal:

"Wait, I'll show you how it's done!"

And, in an instant, to show them all how you're got up when you're a star

and when you come back from the continent, Lily took off her bodice,

pinned up her skirt amid the rustling of the silk and, bare-armed, in a

lace-trimmed chemisette:

"Now then, I'll show you!"

And Lily, with all her little muscles alive, took a bike, jumped on it as

she would on a stool and then--yoop!--the bike on its back-wheel, spinning

round like a top.

"Twirls are as easy as anything: you only have to know how to do them.

Come on! Have a try!"

And the other, encouraged by a friendly slap, tried in her turn

and--yoop!--succeeded ... very nearly.

Pa was enraptured at the mere sight of Lily's little curled nostrils and

her earnest look:

"What a professor she would make!" he thought. "If ever she takes the

belt, she'll be simply grand. I can just fold my arms!"

But he made her dress very quickly. That exhibition of dainty underwear,

which flattered his pride as a father, would have driven girls used to

sewing their own calico shifts quite crazy: there would have been no

holding them; and, besides, artistes might come in at any moment. It would

not do for Lily to be seen half-dressed like that; and she realized this

herself, like a sensible little lady, who hates scandal.

"Stay with us, Lily," said her Pa, at home, after dinner, when the

apprentices had gone out. "Stay with us."

"It's your duty," said Ma.

"If you stay," continued Pa, "I'll make you a present of a brand-new

banjo!"

"Thank you, no more banjo for me," said Lily, laughing. "I've had my

share."

"All right, no more banjo," agreed Pa, "provided you stay with us: that's

all I ask. I shall be afraid of nobody then; I'll show them what an

artiste is!"

And, warming to his subject, Pa built up his plans: the great English

tours; and Eastern and Western America, Australia, South Africa:

"Eh, Lily? Wouldn't you like to see it all again? Or else, for once, I'll

get up a troupe and take it round the world myself, with you in it!"

"But, Pa," said Lily, very coldly, "I have business arrangements of my

own, more engagements than I want."

"It's a business arrangement I'm proposing to you," said Pa.

"And shall I come on in tights?"

"In tights, if you like."

"And no other star but me!" continued Lily, explaining her idea:

undressing on the stage, or else the statue, her own scenery ...

"Capital idea!" cried Pa.

"And then there's the money side of the question," said Lily. "I make a

lot of money now. I want to work for myself."

"And what you make with us, won't it be yours, one day?" suggested Ma.

"Stay with us," said Pa, "and Trampy will burst with spite and you'll be

much happier here, with your Pa and Ma, instead of with that

good-for-nothing!"

"Or instead of remaining alone, which is even worse," Ma insisted. "You

want us still, Lily ..."

"And you me! Let us talk business," interrupted Lily, who would have liked

a pencil and paper, to make her calculations with.

Ma, in her heart of hearts, did not think it at all nice of a daughter to

consider only her own interests; but Pa hurried up, thought Lily was quite

right ... although he was greatly embarrassed in reality and asked himself

how much he could well offer her, so as to make a profit for himself.

Fortunately, he was relieved of his predicament by Glass-Eye, who came in

with a telegram for Miss Lily.

"Give it here!" said Lily, who noticed, as she opened the envelope, that a

chair had creaked and that the palm of her left hand was itching: a sign

of money. "I'll bet it's about an engagement. I have offers from every

side; you have no idea ... Well, I never!" she said. "A telegram from

Jimmy, at the Horse Shoe! I thought he was at Whitcomb Mansions. What can

he want with me? He asks me to call on him! Funny way of treating a lady.

Why can't he come himself?"

But Pa and Ma thought differently: Jimmy was "somebody," a man to be

considered, right at the top of the profession; she'd have done better to

marry him and not her Trampy Wheel-Pad!...

"You must go," insisted Ma. "Don't you like going alone? Shall I come with

you?"

"Yes, that's different," said Lily, who had a certain pride and who felt

sure that Jimmy would never mention that thousand marks before a witness.

Her heart beat a little, as she went up the staircase of the Horse Shoe to

the third floor, on the left, door 32. At first, she was surprised that he

should be there, having read in _The Era_ ... but he might have moved. On

the whole, she was not sorry to show herself to Jimmy in her pretty frock,

he having seen her last in her room in Berlin, looking ill, unkempt and

frightfully ugly. She was not sorry, either, that Ma was with her:

"He's in love, I suppose," said Lily. "Everybody makes love to me: why do

they, Ma? I'm not a bit pretty, off the stage."

And she took a mischievous pleasure in enlarging upon her successes and

her flirtations, there, on the staircase of the Horse Shoe, with Ma beside

her, and no smackings, gee, nor any fear of smackings in the future! What

a change since her marriage!

"Yes," Lily went on, as she read the numbers on the doors--29--"Ma, you

ought to see the flowers I get, the chocolates, the sweets"--31--"but all

that does not prevent a lady from keeping straight"--32--

Then she gave a stifled cry, her voice stuck in her throat: Trampy, Trampy

himself stood in the doorway, his hands in his pockets, a cigar in his

mouth, his hat cocked over one ear; and he looked at her with a bantering

air:

"Sorry to disappoint you, Miss Lily. You hoped to find some one else,

eh?"

Ma, utterly flabbergasted, had dropped on to a bench in the passage, in

the shadow. Trampy did not even see her. Lily was crimson with shame at

being caught tripping by Trampy: she could not deny it. She wanted to run

away, but, stupefied with surprise, remained where she stood, with dilated

pupils, open-mouthed.

"You can look at me till to-morrow morning and it won't help you," said

Trampy quietly, with the air of a man who has prepared his speech. "I've

got you this time! I sent the telegram; I knew you'd come, wherever he

thought fit to meet you; you'd have come for less than Jimmy; you'd have

come for the impersonator or any one else, never mind whom; any one in the

rotten lot, any gentleman in the front boxes, eh? It's 'Whistle and I'll

come to you, my lad!' with you! But I thought Jimmy would do best, Jimmy

your lover, whom you followed to London. Now my luck has brought me here,

too ... for my work ... not like you! And, by the way, Miss Lily, have you

brought me that thousand marks which you got from Jimmy and which I was

going to give back to him, when you stole it out of my pocket? Or did you

spend it on the way here? You hadn't a rag to your back, when you left me,

and I find you dressed up like a Tottie. My compliments, Miss Lily."

"O God, strike him dead!" prayed Lily. "Strike him, kill him, kill him!"

Lily felt like fainting. She could not breathe, her ribs seemed to be

crushing her lungs. At last she drew a long, slow breath:

"Well," she stammered, overcome with shame, "well, we can be divorced ...

if you like."

"I'll see," said Trampy, hardening his voice and throwing away his cigar.

"Go back to your Jimmy in the meantime. You may be sure I have no use for

a traitress like you, an idler who refuses to work, a woman who lets every

man make love to her!" And, suddenly, pointing to the stairs, "You can be

sure that I've no further use for you! Get out of this, damn you! And

you're not going, mind you: I'm kicking you out!"

And therewith Trampy went back into his room and slammed the door in her

face.

Mrs. Clifton and Lily remained glued where they were. At last, Ma,

trembling all over, rose from the bench and led away her daughter, who

shook her fist at the door, crying:

"Liar!"

"Why didn't you speak just now, my poor Lily?" said Ma. "You ought to have

answered back! So it's true, all that? A nice thing! You, who

pretended...."

"Oh, let go, you're crushing my sleeve!" retorted Lily angrily, pulling

her arm away from the hand that clasped it.

She went down the stairs, followed by Ma, without knowing what she was

doing. She would have liked to find a train on the pavement, a motor, to

jump into it, to make off and never see anybody again, after the

humiliation which she had undergone before Ma.

She flung herself into the first cab that came along, yelled a direction

to the driver: Hyde Park, anywhere! Ma found herself by Lily's side,

without being asked to step in, and she repeated:

"Lily, you ought to have ... Why did you let him treat you like that? Is

it true?"

"First of all," said Lily, suddenly turning and facing her Ma; "first of

all, it's your fault ... yours ... all that's happened, damn it! If you

had been less hard on me, I shouldn't have gone off with that footy

rotter!"

"I've often been sorry since," said Ma. "I've been sorry for it. Calm

yourself, Lily. And then ... were we so very wrong? Look how your husband

has just treated you before me, before your mother!"

"He's a liar! I swear it!"

"And Jimmy's thousand marks? What was that money for? Why didn't you give

it back?"

"It's a lie! It's a lie!"

"You, who pretended you were making such a lot of money!" continued Ma.

"There's not a word of truth in what you said. You haven't a penny. I can

see it. Oh, you're the same as ever, my poor Lily--extravagant habits,

dresses--and here you are, penniless, left to yourself with your expensive

tastes. You'll die in poverty one day, without a Pa or Ma. Come back to

us, Lily."

"To make nothing? No, thank you!"

"Who says so?"

"Oh, I know! Ten shillings a week, eh? Family life, as that old beast of a

Fuchs says!"

"Lily," said Ma severely, "don't insult decent people! Have some respect,

at any rate."

But Lily had no respect left for anybody. Pas, Mas, Trampies, Nunkies, one

and all, were so many slave-drivers!

"And yet it's quite true, I'm penniless," thought Lily to herself. "I, who

have earned a fortune for you!" she grumbled under her breath, stifling a

sob.

"You're mad, my poor Lily! All that we have will be yours some day. You

never think of the future; you spend your last penny."

"I earn and I spend!"

"And suppose you fell ill, my poor Lily?"

"Hospitals aren't made for dogs! Besides, I have friends. And then, at

least, I shall have had some fun for my money, while you, if you died

to-morrow, Pa would marry another woman, who would spend all your savings,

all the money I have earned for you."

"Lily," cried Mrs. Clifton, "you're insulting your father!"

"I'm telling you things as they are; and I won't come back to you, because

I can make more elsewhere! Every one for himself!"

"But you don't make a penny!" said Ma, gradually getting angry. "You heard

Trampy, just now. He called you an idler. Your Pa, at least, used to make

you work. You're trying to bluff us with those stories of your successes.

I dare say you'll be glad, one day, of a crust of bread with us."

"Ma!"

"Your contracts," said Ma, "you're always talking of your contracts. I

should like to see them and your programs too."

"Certainly," said Lily. "I'll show them to you: Munich, Berlin, Hamburg.

I've had successes everywhere, engagements everywhere! I make more by

myself than all Pa's troupe put together!"

"Yes, but how do you get your engagements?" said Ma, pale with anger,

seeing that Lily was escaping them and, this time, for good. "Tell me how

you get them?"

"Why, through my talent, I suppose."

"Your talent! Pooh! You've none left! You get them through your friends:

through your Jimmy, your gentlemen friends...."

"That's a lie!"

"You get them ... by looking pretty and getting round the men ... you ...

you ... you...."

"Mother!"

Lily drew back her shoulder, her arm stiff, ready to strike; but a sense

of respect withheld her.

"Stop!" she cried to the cabman, in a hoarse voice.

And, without even waiting for the cab to pull up beside the curb, Lily

jumped out in the roadway, into the mud.

"Mother," she said to Mrs. Clifton, "mother, I shall never forget this!"

And, mechanically, in her haste to get away, she handed the man what money

she had left, made a sign to him to go on and, without saying good-by,

Lily saw the cab drive off. It was evening, in a quiet street: where was

she? Lily did not know; her head was in a whirl. She recognized Old

Compton Street: had they gone no farther? It seemed to her that she had

been riding for an hour ... but no, barely a few minutes....

Alone in London, without money, in the mud, in the dark, oh! she wished

she could be swallowed up in the sewer. She felt like killing herself.

"If I walk toward the Thames," she muttered, "I am done for!"

And she took a street on the left, leading in the direction of the

embankment. The movement restored her to her self-consciousness.

An idea came to her, a distant hope, a glimmer, very faint at first, which

suddenly grew in dimensions within her and lit her up in every particle.

Jimmy! He appeared to her, all at once, like a giant eight feet high, as

on his posters. Ah, people seemed to associate her life with his, to

presume all sorts of things ... though he had never even kissed her! Yes,

he had ... on the stage ... in Berlin, but that was before everybody! And

everything drove her toward him, she always found herself on his path:

Jimmy was everywhere, always. And Jimmy was powerful and he was

good-looking and he loved her! He loved her! To keep straight was no use.

Why, all of them, all of them, including her husband, that footy rotter,

who was jealous of Jimmy without reason: she'd give him cause for jealousy

soon, if it killed him with rage, him and all the rotten lot. And she'd do

it that very moment! At two minutes' walk from where she stood, in

Whitcomb Mansions! She was not one of those women whom you can drive to

despair with impunity: she had her vengeance ready....

* * * * *

Jimmy was alone in his room; his table was covered with books and papers.

He was still at his great plan.

Jimmy sat plunged in work, without the least thought of what was happening

near him: in fact, he did not even know that Lily was in London. His

installation of "Bridging the Abyss" at the Hippodrome had taken him the

whole day. There was a scenic effect to contrive with the manager: a

"hydrodrama" ... bridging the abyss over a torrent ... with a waterfall

behind ... and the whole thing set and framed in a pantomine, which was

ready for production, because Jimmy had been expected for a month; in

short, it would go of itself.

And under the peaceful light he resumed his compasses, or else flung

himself back in his chair, lit a cigarette, followed the smoke with his

eyes....

Poor Lily, what was she doing, over there, in Berlin, thought Jimmy. She

deserved something better than Trampy, that adorable Lily, to whom he,

Jimmy, would gladly have devoted his life ... and whom he felt as it were

swelling up inside him ... in his heart ... in his brain ... in spite of

himself! That poor Lily! To think that he could do nothing for her, that

he almost regretted having done her a service, after the short scene which

he had had the day after with Trampy, blinded with jealousy, because he,

Jimmy, had visited Lily during his absence; the reproaches which that

simple action had earned for him:

"Look here, you righter of wrongs, you who preach to others and go making

love to their wives!"

To have put himself in a position that he could be spoken to like that, in

a position to have Lily suspected! What a shame! Oh, the worries it would

cause her! Yes, he had been imprudent, perhaps: it was all his fault;

another man's wife....

[Illustration: "Oh, you mean cur!" roared Lily.]

A tap at the door. It was opened behind him, before he had time to say,

"Come in," and Lily walked up to Jimmy, who sat dumb with surprise: a

strange Lily, feverish, distraught with passion. At any other time, she

would have felt constrained, because of the thousand marks, or proud to

show off her dress. Perhaps also she had prepared things to say. But all

that was forgotten, gone, blown away, like a straw in the storm, for

nothing came from her but this, in an anxious voice:

"Tell me, Jimmy, is it true that you love me?"

"Why," said Jimmy, perceiving Lily's agitation, without guessing the

reason: oh, but for Lily to do a thing like that! How she would regret it

later; it was terrible this time really. He saw all that at a glance; a

great pity invaded him; and yet he was a man of flesh and blood and felt

stirred to the marrow. "Why," he began, in a voice which he strove to make

friendly, no more, "why, Lily, who told you that? Why really ... I...."

"Jimmy," she cried, fixing her eyes, like two flaming swords upon him,

"answer me! Do you love me or not?"

Jimmy, turning as pale as a corpse, looked at her without flinching and

shook his head in sign of no.

"Oh, you mean cur!" roared Lily.

And she struck him on the face with her clenched fist.

* * * * *

Then she went out without a word, ran down the stairs, out into the blaze

of Leicester Square, made for the dark streets and plunged into the

night....

INTERMEZZO

I

The artistes' special left Euston at noon that Sunday. The Three Graces

were the first to arrive; then the waiting-rooms, until lately deserted,

began to fill with silent groups of five or six persons at a time, who

had, no doubt, arranged the night before, at the theater, to travel

together and avail themselves of the reduction allowed to members of the

M. H. A. R. A.: a reduction of at least a third, provided there were five

in the party. They now swarmed into the station from every side: pale

faces, under huge feathers; wrists hooped round with bangles; breasts

bristling with gollywogs and lucky charms. There were little girls with

bows over their ears, dressed in plush and velvet and following their Pas

and Mas. There were troupes of carpet acrobats, with low foreheads, broad

shoulders and bow legs; and profs, bosses and managers, recognizable by

the richness of their watch-chains, looked after the luggage. Theater-vans

discharged immense basket trunks, marked with letters a foot

high--"Brothers This ... Sisters That ... So-and-so Trio ... Miss

Such-and-such"--and bearing on the handles, on the yellow labels of the M.

H. A. R. A., addresses of Empires and Palaces and of Grand Opera-Houses

and Grand Theaters, too, for there were not only "artistes," but singers,

actresses, "chicken-necks," "woolly-legs," who rubbed shoulders with the

muscular acrobats. All of them crowded round the booking-office; they

handed in professional cards, helped one another, among pros; those who

were traveling alone borrowed tickets to enable them to get their

over-weight luggage labeled: complicated pieces of apparatus,

nickel-plated rods wrapped up in sacking, equilibrists' perches; the

coaches, which were carried by assault, were encumbered with hand-luggage,

bags, parcels, picture-frames containing photographs for the doors of the

theaters, heaped up in the racks, under the seats, in the corridor; and

there was a constant fire of "Hullo, girls! Hullo, boys!"

The Three Graces, standing before the carriage-door, now that their things

were settled, watched this tumult sadly, especially Thea. What was it?

Nunkie's absence? No, but poor Lily had been kicked out by her husband, so

they heard, and turned out by her mother as well: was it possible? Lily

was dead or vanished, they didn't know which; they were told about it at

the theater; a stagehand had met her near St. Martin's Lane, in a small

street, with her hair undone and her hat on the back of her head, crying,

biting her handkerchief, drunk, apparently, and running in the direction

of the Thames. And, since then, they had had no news of her.

"Poor Lily, what can she have done, what can have happened?" sighed Thea.

"Poor Lily, she was always so nice!"

Thea could have cried for sadness.

The start caused a diversion. The collector punched the tickets:

"Blackpool? Glasgow?"

The Three Graces stepped in, the engine whistled. But a porter rushed

past, pushing before him, with a rumbling like thunder, a huge trunk on a

barrow. Thea turned her head and a name in scarlet letters caught her

eyes: "Miss Lily!" And, running after the trunk, magnificently bedecked,

in a hat all feathers and gold tassels, who? What? Lily! Lily herself, red

and out of breath, leading her bike with one hand, carrying an umbrella in

the other, and Glass-Eye, her arms stretched wide with parcels, following

in her train! Just time to throw her bike to the porter in the luggage-van

and quick, quick, Lily came scudding back, hustled along by the

train-master! She would have missed the start, were it not for Thea, who

opened the door and, with her arms of steel, gripped her as she passed:

"Hullo, Lily! That's a good girl! Quick!"

Lily leaped into the carriage with a bound. Glass-Eye, entangled in her

parcels, had, amid general laughter, to be dragged by main force, through

the narrow doorway, like a piece of luggage. Oof, just in time ... Off

they were!

In the railway-carriage was nothing but gaiety and handshaking and

ingenuous questions:

"Traveling by yourself? Where's Trampy? And your Pa and Ma? So you're not

dead, eh?"

"Certainly not," said Lily. "If they had come to annoy me at the station,

I'd have shown them if I was alive or dead! I was ready for them!"

And she brandished her umbrella.

Then she had to make herself comfortable, to find room for all her

belongings as best she could. Lily pushed Glass-Eye about, like a fine

lady used to being waited on:

"Here, take my hat, Glass-Eye; hang it up. Take my wrist-bag. Wait, give

me my handkerchief first!"

To look at Lily, all fresh and rosy, one would never have suspected the

trials she had passed through, but a few days ago. Still quite flustered

with that hurried departure, she smiled as she watched the Three Graces,

who, on their side, were carefully folding up their cloaks. And the train

rushed on, rushed on through deep cuttings, dashed through deserted

stations ... and then, suddenly, entered a tunnel. Lily, but for the noise

of the wheels, would have seen herself as she had been that night. Oh, she

would never forget it! It clutched at her heart. She clenched her fists

with anger. Turned out by Trampy! Insulted by her Ma! Flouted by Jimmy,

that mean cur! Oh, when she left his place, a few days ago, she felt like

a madwoman! Her first idea was to disappear, to take a header into the

black water! But, ugh, the mud, the cold! And then the hospital, with

those people who cut you up! She must also show Pa and Ma whether it was

through her gentlemen friends that she meant to earn more by herself alone

than they and all their rotten troupe put together. Perhaps Pa and Ma

would come to her, one day, to beg their bread! But Ma must first ask

Lily's pardon on her knees. On her knees, damn it! And, in despair,

inwardly raging, her chest aching with grief and spite, Lily, penniless,

but brave for all that and ready for the fray, returned to her hotel,

where, to her great surprise, she found some one waiting for her, with a

parcel in her hand.

Lily recognized Glass-Eye.

It was, indeed, poor Glass-Eye. When she heard what had happened and that

Lily would starve in London and a jolly good thing too, that she could

sleep in Leicester Square for all they cared: when she heard this behind

the door, Glass-Eye almost fainted. Without a word to a soul, she had

packed up her parcel and gone to join Lily; and Lily, in her misery, cried

for joy when she saw the decent girl, who offered her her savings, twelve

shillings in all, saying:

"Take me with you, Miss Lily; I'll wait on you for nothing. Take me, take

me!"

Oh, not to feel alone, to have some one beside you who loves you: that had

consoled Lily....

The next day, accompanied by Glass-Eye, she called on the agents, in the

Leicester Square quarter, at the risk of meeting Pa, or Trampy, or Jimmy;

but who cared? With her umbrella in her hand, she feared nobody and did

not give a fig for any of them.

Nothing for her at Harrasford's, where the Warwicks were starring. Very

well, she'd come back again some other time! And straight on to Bill and

Boom's in Whitcomb Mansions, below Jimmy. As she climbed the stairs, Lily

screwed up her eyes, like a short-sighted person, for fear of meeting

Jimmy, prepared a haughty attitude; but she saw no one. She was not kept

waiting, was shown in at once to Boom's office. Lily Clifton? the New

Zealander on Wheels? Straight away a contract! And Lily left with twenty

music-halls in her pocket! Liverpool, Birmingham, Sheffield and so on: a

week in each town, beginning on Monday next. And that was how she got

engagements through her gentlemen friends!

The next day, she borrowed some money on her contracts from the Brixton

financier: "loans from five pounds upward, in the strictest confidence."

Then, proposed and seconded by two artistes, she joined the Variety

Artistes' Federation and, in return for ten shillings, received the red

card of membership. She paid another ten shillings and the same for

Glass-Eye, her maid, to the M. H. A. R. A. and obtained the right, for one

year, to travel at reduced fares, including an insurance against

accidents: five hundred pounds to her heirs in case of death--her

heirs!--and two hundred and fifty pounds if she lost a hand or foot in a

railway accident; and one hundred and fifty for a serious injury. Then she

bought a big gollywog, for her dressing-room, and a little lucky charm for

her watch-chain--a closed black hand, with the thumb between the fingers,

as a preservative against falls--and with that and her bike she would have

set out for India and Australia as calmly as she might have taken the

omnibus to Earl's Court.

Oh yes, she had done a deal in those few days and, above all, she had got

out of her difficulties, thanks, to a certain extent, to Glass-Eye, who

had comforted her. And besides, hang it, that was all over now! The

worries were forgotten, and, as the train emerged from the tunnel, Lily,

with her arm round Glass-Eye's waist, was patting that decent girl and

Glass-Eye lifted her one good eye to Lily, while the other, the glass one,

gazing fixedly at the door, reflected the thinly scattered houses and the

beginning of the country.

Lily, when she had recovered a little from her mad rush, lay down at full

length among her bags, parcels and bandboxes. She laughed with the Three

Graces; and there was no one there to interfere with them; there they

were, by themselves, among themselves, alone in the compartment, a

regular, rollicking school-girls' picnic. Lily made them scream by telling

them about her life since they had last seen her. She felt a need for a

reaction of gaiety, after her sadness of the days just past. The Graces

fixed their round eyes upon her, upon that Lily who was so thoroughly up

in all sorts of things which they knew only by hearsay: men, love. A life

fit to kill a horse; and a very nice girl, for all that: a kind of

forbidden fruit, pink and fair-haired, soft to the touch; and no jealousy

between them, friendship rather, a rare thing, in the "Profession"....

Lily grew excited in talking, told of her successes, the receptions, the

teas she used to give in her drawing-room, in Berlin, when she was ill.

Jossers, according to her, would have paid any price to have been there!

It would form a subject of conversation over there for many a long day to

come. And then her journeys, her impressions of the continent--"Jam with

your meat, my dear!"--and such clean dressing-rooms in Germany; very

severe managers, though: gee, harder than Pas. But very good to her, all

the same. The Battenberg at Leipzig: nothing but leading turns; and she

had topped the bill at Leipzig! And to see all those people eating, during

the show, when you were hungry yourself, had a very funny effect upon you.

By the way, she didn't like that system of being lodged and boarded by the

management; it was all very well for those people; but none of that for

her: give her a nice flat in town or a smart hotel! Once she was started,

Lily never stopped, called Glass-Eye to witness, went on telling of her

life in Berlin; how Jimmy had fallen in love with her when he saw her on

the stage, and he had the cheek to want her to run away with him; but who

got a box on the ear that day, eh? She perhaps: yes, rather, over the

left! And Jimmy and Trampy had fought for her! So had all the pros, worse

than dogs in September!

"What a rotten lot!" concluded Lily.

"My, how you've changed!" said Thea. "You used to be so fond of men."

"I give it them where they deserve," said Lily, slapping her firm, round

hips.

And they laughed noisily at Lily's anger when, with her shoulder drawn

back and her arm ready to strike, she spoke of breaking the jaws of those

two scoundrels.

"Go it! Hit me!" said Thea, putting forward her deltoid muscle. "Hit away!

You'll only smash your wrist!"

And then those Spartans calmed down, asked one another for news of absent

friends, talked about different people they had known, all over the place,

on the stage: their conversation always came round to the profession.

Lily, with greater refinement, sometimes tried to discuss dress: tulle

ruches were to be worn this year, she heard; feather boas. The Graces knew

nothing about that, stuck to their "Did you ever know...? Do you

remember...?" And every part of the world was mixed up in their talk:

India, Tasmania, Mexico, South Wales, New South Wales, York, New York,

Hampshire, New Hampshire.

"Did you know Ave Maria?" asked Lily.

"No."

But they mentioned other friends, like school-girls living in the same

quarter; only, for them, the school, the quarter was San Francisco,

Chicago, Berlin, and the schoolmates were the girl in a knot, who had sold

her skeleton in advance to the Medical College: Marjutti, the

double-knotted girl, to whom the South Kensington Museum offered five

hundred pounds for a cast of her figure; the Pawnees, who had just won a

treble beauty prize; and the Laurence girl, whose cruelly daring

performance was forbidden by the Manchester police; and heaps of others

whom they had known and who, at that moment, were asleep at the antipodes,

right under your feet, or waking up in the Far West, or going to bed in

the Far East, or pitching on the ocean, or rolling in express trains

toward the five corners of the earth. And their own traveling adventures,

the Graces' and Lily's: broken railway-bridges! ships on fire at sea!

towns blazing up in the night! ropes breaking, falls head-first, my! One

would have thought that these girls of seventeen to twenty were South Sea

pirates, talking of hangings and tortures, or, rather, children playing at

frightening one another. Lily, for instance, in India: two eyes glaring at

her in the dark, gee! And, in New York, a fall into a mirror; all over

blood; half dead. She grew excited, in her desire to outdo Laurence and

Crack-o'-Whip: the steel-buckled belt, the kicks in the ribs! Stories of

brutal treatment picked up on every side--from the Gilson girl, from Ave

Maria, from all the boys and all the girls and all the monkeys who had

been through the mill--she made every one of them her own, served them up

hot and hot to the astounded Graces, talked of whole days spent in

practising on rough, uneven boards--"And given no food, was I,

Glass-Eye?"--so much so that she would sometimes get up in the night and

go and pick up the crusts under the table, gee! Lily reveled in the

pitying expressions of the Three Graces and her heart swelled with pride

when Thea, greatly touched, remarked that, in such cases, it would have

been better not to be born.

"You're quite right," said Lily, with a drooping air; but she burst into a

peal of fresh, young laughter when she saw Glass-Eye overcome with

emotion. "What's that?" asked Lily, giving her a thump in the ribs.

"Crying? You silly cuckoo!"

If it hadn't been for her Ma's insults and Jimmy's and Trampy's--when it

all came back to her, it was like a needle stuck in her heart!--Lily would

have been in the seventh heaven! No more Pa, no more Ma, no more anybody;

no boss, no prof, no husband, nothing, all alone ... with her maid!

Certainly, there would be the worry of business, looking for her "digs,"

seeing the agents, writing letters and so on; but she would know how to

put herself forward, how to make the most of her work; and she smiled as

she reflected how little all those worries meant, compared with her past

life: and she would be free, free, free at last. She was going to earn

money, to enjoy life.

And the train rushed on, rushed on through the fields. Glass-Eye, with her

nose glued to the window, was astonished to find everything so large

outside of London: red villages decked the green country-side; and then

came empty railway stations. Sometimes the train slowed down:--a large

silent town lay spread in the valley, white smoke rose from the endless

roofs; homes, more homes; the air of rest, the empty streets and the

indistinct chimes of the church-bells proclaimed to the pale heavens the

majesty of prayer. Lily listened with a dreamy air; it all reminded her of

things:

"It's like the American engines," she said to the Three Graces, "that used

to ring their bells when they passed through Syracuse."

But the train rushed on, rushed on.... And they again began to talk shop,

as always: with, here and there, an excursion into the cost of food. The

Graces, just then, were unpacking their lunch; and Lily fetched her

traveling provisions from her bag in the corridor. There was a sound of

clattering plates from end to end of the train, in a mist of

tobacco-smoke. Lily rejoined the party very quickly, to avoid coming in

contact with the pros, and, waited on by Glass-Eye, attacked her meal and

broke her bread so heartily that the crusts flew to the ceiling. They

drank out of the same cup, took their meat in their hands, Lily saying

that fingers were made before forks. They chattered noisily, with the

time-honored jokes about apples and bananas. They made Glass-Eye talk a

lot of nonsense. Lily, flinging back her head, laughed full-throated, held

her sides.

"My!" said the Graces. "What a pity that we are separating! It would have

been so nice to travel together; one's never bored with you. What a

tomboy!"

"'K you!" said Lily, greatly flattered, with a stage curtsey.

Unfortunately, they would have to part at Warrington. The Graces were

going on to Glasgow, Lily was changing for Liverpool; a few moments more

and it was good-by, until chance....

At Lily's request, the Graces gave her a few last words of advice,

explained the system of the pass-book of the Artistes' Federation: the

sixpenny stamp to be stuck in the little square every week; the extra

stamp at each death of a member, for the benefit of the heirs. They talked

to her of the Friday meetings at Manchester, at which every artiste can

speak and see himself printed afterward in the London _Performer_.

"Good!" thought Lily. "I may have things to say. There will be news for

somebody!"

The Graces had a "three years' book," the professional _agenda_, with

nothing but Mondays marked on it for the weekly engagement: 8 January, 15

January and so on.

"Yes, I know," said Lily. "Mine's full for months ahead!"

They showed her, on theirs, the last pages containing portrait

advertisements of famous artistes: the Pawnees, Marjutti, Laurence.

"Oh, if I could get there one day!" thought Lily. "I'd post it to Pa; it

would be the death of him!"

And then followed the thousand and one details of the wandering life: your

name on the red list, the list handed in at the station; the journeys at

reduced fares; the music for twelve instruments, forty executants, sent on

to the theater a fortnight in advance.

"And matinees are paid for now. And you know, Lily, in the Federation you

can get a solicitor free."

"That's a good thing to know," thought Lily, "for my divorce from that

rusty biker!"

Oh, how she hated pros, now! The sight of them in the corridor, looking at

her with glistening eyes, made her want to put out her tongue at them! But

she preferred not to see:

"I don't like to seem stuck-up with them, it's not polite," she observed.

Nevertheless, she shrugged her shoulders when one of them who, no doubt,

had known her when she was "that high," blew kisses to her from the tips

of his fingers, with a gesture straight at her heart, through the window.

And the train rushed on, rushed on. They were nearing Warrington. The

slopes, on either side, bristled with chimneys and houses, houses, endless

roofs ... a Lancashire rid of its black smoke, like an extinct and silent

crater ... Warrington!

A few minutes' wait. There was a general hustle, pros stretching their

legs, running to the refreshment-room for a drink, some seeking seats in

the train, others saying good-by:

"Write to me, eh? Cathedral Hotel, Melbourne."

And a shake of the hand; so long; perhaps for ever. More basket trunks

were being trundled down the platform. A wife was leaving her husband: six

months, twelve months, without meeting; who could tell? Or else, perhaps,

between two trains, as the luck of the tours would have it; and they

seemed very fond of each other, too; Lily thought it very pretty. But she

had other things to do than sentimentalize. She handed out her parcels to

Glass-Eye and then, standing on the platform, said good-by to the Three

Graces:

"Hope you'll have a good journey! _Au revoir_! Send me some post-cards,"

said Lily. "Address them to the theater, I love that! Good-by! Ta-ta!"

The train started. Lily waved her handkerchief to the Three Graces.

One more separation; one more little rent: Lily had had so many in her

life. As far back as she could remember there had been heads at the

carriage-window, like that; ships standing out to sea; trains rushing into

the night. But, this time, she was alone, with her maid. And she drew

herself up proudly, like a lady who had a sense of her responsibilities. A

new life was opening before Lily, as before a girl just coming out. Poor

Lily, a girl still, in her way, yes, with, for her portion, a feather in

her hat, a gollywog in her trunk, a pair of supple legs and nerves of

steel, unerring and exact, trained to turn round and round....

CHAPTER II

"Liverpool! Come along, Glass-Eye!" said Lily, jogging her maid in the

ribs.

Glass-Eye, half asleep, clumsily gathered up her parcels, while Lily

looked round for the baggage-man. On the platform was an avalanche of

bags, boxes, picture-frames, as at the departure from Euston; the basket

trunks were being piled up in the theater-vans. Lily pointed out her

hamper and her bike to the boy from the theater, who had come to meet the

"program" at the station.

"Are you the bicyclist?"

"I am," replied Lily modestly.

She gave her address: not the pros' boarding-house, but private "digs"

which had been recommended to her in London, with a note of introduction.

Then she walked out of the station, followed by Glass-Eye.

Lily knew Liverpool, vaguely, as she knew all the towns of the United

Kingdom and those of America, too, and Australia and India and Germany and

Holland and elsewhere. They were all muddled up in her memory, she had

seen so many, and made as it were one great city, but for occasional

salient points, as in the towns which you came to in a boat, or those in

which you had a circus parade, or others still, here and there: Glasgow,

where she had fallen and broken a tooth; Blackpool with its ball-rooms,

its tower and a "contract!" Sheffield, with its smoking chimneys;

Washington, with a dome at the end; New York, with its sky-scrapers. The

towns of her early childhood, leaning against mountains, buried under

trees, were more remote, more like a dream. Elephants, monkeys, harnessed

buffaloes; and then Mexico and Ave Maria, London and those footy rotters!

Liverpool was Lime Street: Lily remembered a sort of round church; when

you got to that, you turned to the left. She soon found the house and

received from a huge, full-blown lady the friendly welcome which Lily's

artless air and fair curls always insured her. No gentleman with them? All

alone by themselves? A room with a big double bed, a little parlor with a

bow-window; sixteen shillings a week, including the use of the kitchen.

Just then, the baggage-man arrived, took the trunk up to the room and went

on with the bike to the pros' boarding-house and the theater. Lily,

assisted by Glass-Eye, fixed herself up for the week: her dresses on the

pegs, her linen safe under lock and key in the hamper. Then she made a

special parcel of things for the stage: paper flowers, ostrich feathers,

white laced boots.

"There, wrap that up in my petticoat," said Lily. "And the music and the

gollywog: you can bring all that to my dressing-room to-morrow morning."

Next, Lily made herself look smart, freshened up her two bows, threw her

green muslin scarf over her shoulders and went down to the parlor to pick

out her favorite tune--_The Bluebells of Scotland_--with one finger on the

piano. Meanwhile, the landlady spread the cloth: bread, marmalade,

watercress, two eggs. Then, according to instructions received, Glass-Eye

announced to Miss Lily that tea was ready. Lily affably invited Glass-Eye

to sit down to table with her; and the two ate away like friends. Lily

took the opportunity to settle her expenses; for instance--and this she

insisted upon--if she, Lily, took a maid, she wouldn't have her for

nothing; she intended to pay her some small monthly wage.

"And a good many little perquisites besides, you understand, Glass-Eye; my

old frocks, my hats."

Glass-Eye did not ask that, would have given her other eye to serve Miss

Lily.

Lily was still asleep, at twelve o'clock the next morning, when Glass-Eye

entered the room. She had lost her way, had walked miles, had been to the

landing-stage of the music-hall....

"At what time's rehearsal?" asked Lily.

"At one o'clock, Miss Lily."

"And you let me sleep till twelve, when I have so much to do!" said Lily.

"Go and get breakfast ready ... or you'd better mind yourself!"

And Lily put out her hand to lay hold of a boot; but Glass-Eye was gone.

[Illustration: GLASS-EYE MAUD]

Lily, while dressing, reflected upon her new responsibilities, upon the

way in which servants should be treated. No familiarity; not too severe,

either; and no smackings ... that is to say ... however ...

"I must dress her simply," thought Lily. "My hats, but without the

feathers; coarse thread gloves; and she must always carry a parcel."

Lily was eager to go to rehearsal, accompanied by her maid. There is no

rehearsing at "rehearsal:" the "times," the scenic effects are settled

with the conductor of the band; there are no bare arms or bloomers

practising on their carpets: a few dark groups, in ordinary walking dress;

others, in their shirt sleeves, are opening boxes, and no mystery, no

shifting lights: the stage and the house one wan hole, except the red and

gold note of the curtain and the black mass of the musicians, with the

gleaming brasses.

The artistes went up to the conductor, one after the other, and explained

their "turns:"

"When I come on, this tune, soft, six times, to begin with; then, once,

loud. When I go off ... a roll of drums."

The band, each time, played two or three bars, mechanically, at sight;

then it was understood and ... next, please.

Lily had seen this before, but not under these conditions; not dressed as

at present; not accompanied by a maid. She listened as hard as she could

when she walked on to the stage, caught the remarks, enjoyed the

impression which she produced. They seemed to ask:

"Who is it? A singer? A dancer?"

"No, Lily; Miss Lily, you know."

She guessed all that. Then:

"My score, Maud!"

And, leaning toward the orchestra, she explained, in her turn: pizzicati,

mazurka, frog, swan, back-wheel, the waltz for the twirls, the march for

the exit. And Lily withdrew with a half-curtsey and a pretty smile. Next,

she put out her things in her dressing-room, on the table, before the

looking-glass: brushes, pencils, grease-paints, strings of pearls for her

hair. She hung a cord from the door to the window, to dry her tights on,

when she washed a pair in the basin. She got out her little work-box, in

case of anything tearing, threaded a needle, freshened up the knots of her

ribbons, pinned photographs and p.-c.'s on the wall. And, over all, she

hung her gollywog, a hairy doll, white-collared, red-waistcoated, with, in

its black face, under the bristling hair, two shining tacks by way of

eyes. It was the protecting idol. Not that Lily, ever faithful to the

Church of England, believed much in gollywogs; but, like most music-hall

people, she felt safer when she knew it was there. And her dressing-room,

with the spangled skirts and the tights hanging down like flayed skins,

suggested some strange, exotic chapel in which a fetish sat enthroned.

After that, Lily had nothing left to do. She went out with Glass-Eye and

walked round to the front to look at her lithos. She saw to her annoyance

that a serio was topping the bill--and a comic singer middling it and a

cinematograph bottoming it. But no matter, she had a good place, just

under the bill-topper.

Next came shopping, through the windows. She bought a pair of thread

gloves for Glass-Eye at Lewis's and then went in and lay on her bed,

feeling ever so tired from getting up late that morning. She dreamed and

dreamed, while Glass-Eye went marketing. As soon as Lily was alone, the

thought pricked her like a pin: looking pretty, indeed! Her gentlemen

friends! Jimmy, that traitor, and Trampy! Trampy would be sure to play her

some dirty trick. Oh, if she could get a divorce from him, in spite of

all! She had made inquiries in London. She would want a solicitor. She

must have one, to set inquiries on foot.... She could have as many

witnesses as she pleased: all those girls ... and the stage hands ... and

two artistes, on the day when Trampy, in his fury, had flung his bike at

her on the stairs; the pedal had grazed her temple, yes, at Dresden. That

wasn't the way to treat a lady. Everything that had happened was his

fault; and they'd see who won the day, he or she. Her forehead wrinkled up

with anger when she thought of it. She bit her lips and clenched her fists

and then ... and then ... enough of that! She'd see to-morrow. And other

cares came to bother her: the indispensable things which she would have to

buy at the end of the week out of her salary; open-work stockings, an

aigrette for the theater, a little black bog-oak pig to wear at her wrist.

And Jimmy's thousand marks ...

"Damn it, let him wait!" And, with her hand on her lucky charm, Lily fell

asleep.

In the evening, at the theater, she forgot everything. She felt a longing,

a fevered desire to appear. When her turn came, after the xylophones, who

seemed, behind their tables laden with bottles, to be keeping a bar of

musical sounds; when the light shining on the great back-drop threw up

into dazzling relief the blue sea, the blue sky and the white colonnade

and terraces; when, amid the flash of the lime-light and the thunder of

the orchestra, she made her entrance on the stage, Lily had a smile of

triumph. Life was beginning for her at last! She could have cried out for

happiness to that human mass which, behind the flaming streak of the

footlights, spread itself, bare-necked and bedizened, in the warm shadow

of the front boxes. And she directed a scarlet smile, set off with a glint

of gold, to the audience.

"I believe I was grand to-night," said Lily, as she went off, out of

breath. "Oh, if there had been an agent in the house! But no such luck:

they're never there when they're wanted! And those two fellows," she

thought to herself. "If they had been there, they'd have died of

jealousy."

Everybody spoiled her. She needed a strong head to resist the flatteries

with which she was overwhelmed, both as artiste and woman. For instance,

when a row of Roofers were puffing away on the stage, some manager, who

had known her when she was "that high," was sure to observe that her

talent, her firm, round hips--"Eh, Lily, you've got plenty of that now!"

... Lily blushed under the compliment--would make more impression than a

whole herd of Roofers:

"Eh, Lily? I say, what are you doing to-night? Come and have some ..."

"Glass-Eye, my handkerchief," Lily broke in, suspecting an invitation to

supper.

Glass-Eye, in obedience to a gesture of Lily's, opened the wrist-bag, gave

Lily the lace handkerchief and Lily hid her mocking smile in a scented

gesture. Then:

"Good-by. Ta-ta!"

And they shook hands, like good friends, nothing more.

Glass-Eye frightened off the admirers with her fixed stare. And Lily had

no lack of them. She loved flirting. She wanted adulation, wanted to be

made much of. She had a revenge to take, arrears to make up; she and

sympathy had, till then, been strangers. She now took her fill of it, got

carried away, saw nothing but lovers around her, three or four at a time,

as when the comic quartet, the Out-of-Tunes, used to grin kisses to her in

the street. It was for her that they were there, every one of them, down

to the acting managers, who did not disdain to come round from the front

and take a turn on the stage. It might be a question of steam-pipes or

electric wires; no matter, Lily took it all to herself, made herself

amiable toward their dress-coats and white shirt-fronts, and said "'K

you!" with the great stage bow, the body bent in a sweeping curtsey, when

they complimented her on her firm, round hips. She stabbed them with

smiles, to make sure of complimentary phrases in their weekly reports to

the central boards. All of them; the electrician, the conductor of the

band, she had them all at her feet. It became a need for Lily to see

people all around her dying for love. It gave her a feeling of mingled

pride and remorse.

"Can I help it, Glass-Eye?" she would ask, to quiet her conscience.

"They're mad. They would leave their wives and children for me!"

She had an autograph album filled with "thoughts" and declarations:

"I love you! _Je vous aime! Ich liebe dich_!"

[Illustration: In the pros' smoking-room.]

Lily, now that the audience was good for invitations to supper, bouquets

and sweets, occupied herself with that somber mass which, formerly, did

not cause her so much uneasiness as the presence of her Pa. Lily, like a

real stage-girl, who had beheld waves miles high between Harwich and the

Hook of Holland, saw in a few flowers a bouquet large enough to fill a cab

and the least little love letter grew, in her eyes, into an offer to

present her with motor-cars and to abandon wife and child. If a gentleman,

for once in a way, stood on the pavement waiting for her, she dreamed of

an elopement. And there were pros, too, who prowled around her, in the

half light of the wings, and came up to her with outstretched hand:

"Hullo, Mrs. Trampy!"

"Call me Miss Lily," she said, in a vexed voice. "That's the name I'm

known by."

And many of them did know her, in fact, from having talked about her in

Fourteenth Street in New York, or in State Street at Sidney, or in the

theaters in South Africa, for that story of the whippings had traveled all

around the world, under the folds of the Union Jack. Some proposed to take

her with them in their show, or to go with her to clean her bike, instead

of Glass-Eye:

"Is it a bargain?"

"Yes, I _don't_ think!" said Lily.

Another, just off for Melbourne, told her that, in Australia, you could

find fire-escapes to marry you for half-a-crown. They joked without

constraint, in the pros' smoking-room, a small and dark corner between the

house and the stage.... All of them, all the pros, she had them all at her

feet; but she didn't care for that sort and she sent them all to eat

coke.

The months all passed alike. She had finished the Bill and Boom tour. She

continued in the private music-halls, from north to south, from east to

west of England. In spite of Glass-Eye's impossible cooking and the

everlasting ham sandwiches and pork-pies of the railway station

refreshment rooms, Lily grew plumper and plumper, her nervous leanness

filled out, with pigeon's eggs and ostrich's eggs everywhere, in front and

behind. She did not kill herself with work. Once, in Glasgow, at a

music-hall where, a few weeks earlier, Laurence had had a terrible fall,

lying unconscious for two whole hours, the frightened manager said:

"No dangerous tricks, mind! They only get us into trouble!"

Another time, she was given only seven minutes, watch in hand, on the

stage.

"Couldn't you cut that little trick? You know the one I mean," said the

manager.

He called a little trick a performance which it had cost her eighteen

months' hard practice and no end of bruises to learn. Lily did not wait to

be asked twice. She cut as desired and thought it a jolly lot easier to

trot round quietly, as though out for a ride, with pretty smiles to the

audience. She ended by paying more attention to her dresses than to her

work:

"It's not so much what one does," she said, "as the way one does it."

The sympathy with which she was surrounded unmanned the Spartan in her.

She strove to please, no longer gave her performance for herself, like a

machine, unerring and exact. Already in a few months, she was spoiled. She

looked for adventitious successes. She said, "The audience is very cold at

Birmingham," because she was not asked out to supper, and, "They do like

artistes at Sheffield, gee!" because a gentleman had sent her champagne

and flowers in her dressing-room.

In the towns where she played three times a day--a matinee and two night

turns--she gave half of her performance, cut whatever was dangerous or

tiring. She never practised now; just went down in the morning to fetch

her letters at the theater, where she loved receiving them, post-cards

especially, which any one could read. She said to the jossers:

"Send me lots; talk about motor-cars and champagne suppers: that drives

the pros wild."

She left them lying on the table, or else walked about on the stage, with

her letters in her hand, like a lady overwhelmed with offers, with

invitations. If, by any chance, she went to the practice at the end of the

week, it was to display her hat, her new boots; and she laughed to herself

when she saw the artistes, each on his carpet, fagging away like mad. She

felt like a fine lady visiting a boarding-school, among those little girls

practising their flip-flaps or gluing themselves to the wall to try their

back-bendings. The pride of a Marjutti, who, they said, tortured her

spinal column to achieve a double knot; the inordinate ambition of a

Laurence, risking her life for the pleasure of risking it, were things

which she did not understand. And then, all those accidents! Dolly Pawnee,

the other day, had broken her arm at the New York Hippodrome; the Gilson

girl had fallen on her head at Budapest. They were mad, thought Lily, to

do all that without being obliged to! No, no; no more of that for her! The

last thing she wanted was to spoil her face, seeing that she had nothing

but her smile to keep her. And Lily grew timid, looked upon herself more

and more as a very precious little thing. She gave herself terrible airs

on rehearsal day; thought the stage too slippery, or too small. Lily

wanted a stage thirty feet wide, no less; she who, in the old days, at a

gesture from Pa, would have performed her whole turn, including the

head-on-the-saddle, on the top of a cab or on the Stoke Newington

pavement. Formerly, she used to think everything good, did not know what

fatigue meant; now, in the middle of her turn, she would say to herself,

sometimes with a feeling of discouragement:

"I've only done half. I've still got this and that to do."

And the audience itself seemed to act as her confederate. When she missed

one of her tricks, Lily would lay her bike on the stage, step down to the

footlights, bow with a confused air, beg pardon with a smile and receive a

reassuring round of applause. Lily loved these refined audiences: _her_

audiences, as she said; not the matinee audiences, with seats at reduced

prices: to see your grocer or your butcher in the front boxes was rotten;

and those people gave themselves such airs. A cheap way of doing the

grand!

And the landladies spoiled her, too; those worthy souls who treated her as

their own daughter.

"And a jolly sight better!" thought Lily.

Others pitied her for the profession she followed, feared she would break

something, one fine day. Lily thought that very sweet of them, would have

liked to stay with them for ever; but there was the constant rent at

parting, a bit of herself which Lily left behind her every week. And the

bothers that Maud caused her! Her stupidity drove Lily mad: tickets lost,

bags mislaid, disputes with the tradesmen, battles with the bike,

scratches on the shins, on the hands, everywhere. Lily lost patience,

threatened her with the leather belt, damn it!

Sometimes, Lily became incensed with herself and everybody. Her divorce

kept running in her head. And her three years' book, with its last pages

unsoiled by engagements, also gave her cause for uneasiness; and yet the

acting managers must have sung her praises, in their weekly reports,--the

ones who came and made love to her on the stage!

After different music-halls, she had done the Harrasford tour, but without

any great success. People who had known her with the troupe thought that

she had gone off. Lily was furious: if, on those evenings, she missed a

trick, she would knock Glass-Eye about when she returned to the wings,

storm at the stage--"Slippery as ice, damn it!"--fling her bike, which was

not to blame, against the wall. Lily, in her pink tights, under the

pendants of false pearls on her forehead, looked like an angry savage,

ready to fly at your throat.

That was her life. No adventures, really; theaters in which she caught on,

theaters in which she didn't go down so well; more or less prolonged

applause; an encore or two; and, here and there, a bouquet large enough to

fill a cab: those were the great events. And it was always the same show,

on the same stage, from one end of England to the other; theaters and

theaters; so many theaters that, in her memory, they ended, like the

towns, by making only one. It was always herds of Roofers, swaying in

unison, with flaxen wigs, scarlet legs, boyish voices; and "families,"

"sisters," "brothers," all different, but all alike, going up the

staircase to their dressing-rooms in wraps, like gouty people at a spa,

and serios, serios, with choruses emphasized by dances. Sometimes, a new

attraction, a Venus without tights, or a bare-breasted Salome, would draw

whole groups, boys and girls mixed, to the wings, with their necks

stretched toward the stage. And there were exotic features, too: conjurers

from Malabar; boomerang-throwing bush-men; the Light of Asia, a Chinese

girl without arms, an artificial product, like those beggar-monsters whom

they cultivate in pots in the mountains of Navarre. She saw the

boy-violinist again. Since that bite in the seat of his trousers, at

Budapest, he had abandoned all hope of fame and was looking for an

engagement in the orchestra. She saw the female-impersonator with the

green eyes. She saw numbers and numbers. She ended by seeing them all

again, in the various greenrooms. She heard names mentioned. People were

coming on all round: Tom, singing-girls, dancing-girls. She would have to

do something, too, after all, to get herself talked about! She had

received a shock on opening _The Era_: they had not taken out her name!

There was still a Miss Lily at Rathbone Place: her cousin Daisy, it

appeared, a stranger, was there in her stead, under her name! And they

were stealing her idea! The New Zealanders were now called the New

Trickers; no doubt the turn which she had described to Pa. Something new,

something new was essential. She must manage to hit upon something! She

turned it all over in her head. There were too many Lilies, Lilians,

Lillians; you saw nothing but Lillians on the posters. But what about a

Lilia Godiva, quite naked on her bike, like the other on her horse? She

would mimic the scene, love and despair, and she would think of something

to raise a laugh! Peeping Tom, for instance, stretching out his neck and

stealing a kiss as she passed. Oh, she would find a way--trust her!--of

showing them what she had in her! And Jimmy and Trampy pursued her

incessantly with their hateful memory. Trampy, she was told, was still the

darling of the fair.

Lily was greatly astonished that he had not tried to obtain a divorce, on

his side:

"He's afraid," she said to herself.

More than ever, she busied herself with collecting her witnesses; she

would soon be rid of her tramp cyclist.

People also talked about Jimmy, whose reputation was still increasing.

After a triumphant season at the Hippodrome, he had left for America.

Jimmy was becoming a national champion. An article in _The Era_ spoke of

"our Jimmy."

"He's a friend of yours, Lily," people said. "You ought to know all about

him."

Lily tossed her head, like one who could say a great deal if she

would....

Oh, how she longed for revenge when she thought of that! Oh, if she could

only have served them out somehow! If she could get _The Performer Annual_

to send her those questions to answer: "Q. Your favorite town? Your

favorite audience? Your idea of marriage? Your pet aversion?" wouldn't she

give it them hot, just! She thought of having her biography written, the

real one. She herself sometimes jotted down things she remembered, on bits

of paper, on the backs of envelopes, in her dressing-room; arranged her

picture post-cards in order; called that writing her memoirs. She would

crush them with her successes, give names and dates: that lord who wanted

to travel with her, the fifty-pound diamond brooch he had given her. And

bouquets, chocolates, sweets ... by the cart-load! That stage-manager who

cried when she went away! All, all in love with her: yes, those and ever

so many more!

She had so much to say that she did not know where to begin. She knocked

up against too many people, men and women, without counting monkeys,

parrots, dogs, cats, ponies, elephants; it all ended by getting mixed up

in her head, like the theaters and the towns. She grew quite bewildered,

among so many different things. She had seen everything and done

everything. Once, during a week when she was "resting," she had helped her

landlady, who kept a public-house, to draw the beer and had waited on the

customers, with her fifty-pound diamond brooch at her throat.

At a benefit performance, one night, when they were drinking champagne on

the stage, actors, singers, artistes, all together, her pink tights had

excited the dress-coats. Lily had been "pressed in company," that is to

say, surrounded till she did not know which way to turn, while her time

was pretty well taken up with saying, "Paws off!" before, behind, on every

side. She had triumphed at galas, above a tumult of heads and parasols: at

Roundhay Park, among other places, beneath the motto, "Let Leeds

flourish!" Feeling anxious about her future, she had consulted a "Zanzig"

at Earl's Court. Each week brought its surprises, its fresh knowledge.

Lily learned something every day: "If you see a lamb in the fields with

its head turned toward you, that's lucky; if you see its tail first, it's

a sign of bad luck," and the way of holding your hands, of placing your

fingers, of whispering certain words in certain circumstances.

She collected halfpennies with holes in them. In Ireland, she had kissed

the Blarney stone and picked shamrock in the ruins. She had lost her

little mother-of-pearl hunchback in the labyrinth of underground passages

at the Blackpool Tower Circus. The loss of this lucky charm had damped her

spirits for a week. And her profits were small and her "exes" constantly

increasing: tips to the call-boy, who cleaned her bike; tips to the

stage-manager; half-crowns and five shillings in every direction. As soon

as she had put a trifle by, a week without an engagement made her hard-up

again. Though she traveled at reduced fares and contented herself with a

ham sandwich or a slice of pork-pie on the road, she would never, never be

able to repay Jimmy that money: she had not even paid Glass-Eye yet! Her

dresses for on and off the stage swallowed up everything. And yet she

couldn't go about naked, like Lady Godiva!

And time passed and passed. Lily was growing _old_: she was eighteen!

There were girls of her age who were already beyond work, used up, like

that girl contortionist who had just been cut open for a tumor; and Lily

had as yet achieved nothing! Oh, she ought to have signed for America or

Australia, or else for Russia, of which she had heard wonders--Poland, the

Parisienne, had just returned from there covered with diamonds--theaters

that played all night and did not close till dawn, to the clicking of

champagne-glasses. Lily dreamed of it, ecstatically: England was no good

to her now. The New Trickers, with their own cheap Lily, were working her

idea on the Bill and Boom Tour! If only she could have the continent! They

were talking of a new music-hall which Harrasford was to open in Paris. He

meant to make a palace of it, they said, and he was also stretching out

his arm toward Antwerp, Cologne, Lyons, Marseilles, a continental

trust....

"That's what I ought to have," thought Lily.

Her present life seemed empty, notwithstanding its excitement: it was like

the sound of a band; nothing remained of it. Departures, constant

departures from one town to another, always leaving, never staying. But

for Glass-Eye's company she would have cried, sometimes, for sheer

melancholy, as at the sight of those really loving couples in the

boarding-houses, on the stage itself; those babies in the arms of their

Mas; it made her heart ache; the thought of it pursued her like the call

of distant bells, while the train rushed into the darkness.

CHAPTER III

"May joy and pleasure be your lot

As through this world you trot, trot, trot.

"X."

"In the golden chain of friendship, regard me as a link.

"Loving Pal (Palace, Sheffield)."

There were pages and pages like this in Lily's autograph book. The last

entry was that of a couple of friends, the dark one and the fair one:

"May success always follow you, and eventually a good

fellow collar you, is the sincere wish of the

"Sisters Arriett and Nancy--The ideal pair (of legs!)"

Since Miss Lily's arrival in Paris, her collection had been increased by

the addition of a fervent declaration from her friend, the architect. This

had been her welcome in Paris, the good fellow, no doubt, prophesied by

the ideal pair of legs; yes, she had hardly reached Paris and already

there were people dying of love around her, already a man at her feet.

Lily was delighted to meet this sincere friend again, a friend of her

childhood, who, she said, had known her when she was "that high": one poor

devil the more ready to leave wife and children for her sake. The evening

before, in her dressing-room, at the Bijou Theater, she had told him the

story of her life since leaving her parents. It made her forget to ask

about Harrasford and the new theater which he was to open: was it ready?

The architect ought to know better than anybody. She would ask him

to-night. And Lily lay turning this over, in the morning, in bed,

notwithstanding her other cares, for she must get clear somehow, must see

the agents that afternoon. She had plenty to do beside her turn. She had

to busy herself with those thousand and one details.... She would never

have believed that it was so hard to fill her three years' book. Lily felt

half-dead with fatigue before she started:

"Let me sleep!" said Lily, stretching herself in the big double bed which

Glass-Eye had just left; "clear out! Let me sleep!"

But Glass-Eye made a rush at Lily, tickled her in the neck, stifled her

laughter under the pillow: it was a necessity for them in the morning,

those few minutes of horse-play, of thumps and smacks, which rang out on

every side. Lily, at last, full-throated, with fluttering nostrils, cried

out for mercy. The maid went off, Lily, now quite awake, remained alone,

and her worries returned: no more love, no more music, as at the theater,

no more purple rays, nothing but gloomy hours, a long day stretching out

before her like a gray corridor. It was real life now: letters to write,

costumes to mend, last night's tights to wash in the basin.... Lily,

sitting on the edge of her bed, took her purse from where she had hidden

it under the bolster--a habit she had acquired in marriage, because of

Trampy's nightly ferretings--and emptied it on the sheets: one blue

banknote; one, two, three gold coins. How much did that make in pounds,

shillings and pence? Hardly seven pounds. It was all in vain for her to

economize, like that Ma of a star, who counted the potatoes. It was all in

vain for her to stint in every way, to keep back Glass-Eye's wages for

over a year, saying that she would pay her in a lump: she would have

almost nothing left after the purchases which she had to make. It was true

that, to-morrow, she would receive her fortnight's pay; and she hoped for

a renewal. She felt sure of it, if only because of the way in which the

manager had taken her by the chin. Then a fortnight at the Brussels

Alhambra--1 November, Flora, Amsterdam--10 January, Copenhagen--and, for

the rest, her three years' book was empty and each empty page represented

months without work--all her profits would be swallowed up by her enforced

idleness. She would never clear herself, never be able to pay Jimmy. Oh,

she was furious with him because she could not discharge her debt to him

once and for all, fling his money in his face, show him if people remained

penniless long when they had her talent! That idea comforted Lily. And it

was important that she should look nice to-day, to go the round of the

agents. Lily dressed quickly, cunningly puffed out her bows, a trick she

had learned as a child, and then, before putting on her dress, cooked the

food with Glass-Eye, who had just come in with her parcels.

Then a dash of scent on the handkerchief, a touch of rouge on the lips

and, leaving the room all untidy, she went out, followed by Glass-Eye,

rigged out in a pair of thread mittens and carrying the sunshade and the

wrist-bag. Quick, quick! For Lily knew by experience that it is well to be

the first at the agent's or else there's nothing for you.

She did not dislike those walks through the Paris streets:

"Let's have some fun," she said to Glass-Eye.

By this, Lily meant laughing at those "tiny Frenchies"; and, if they

ventured to accost her, crushing them with a "_Vous hettes oun cochon_!"

Although, among the people she mixed with, agents, artistes, stage-hands,

everybody spoke English, Lily had not come to Paris without learning a few

words, "_Oui_ ... _Non_ ... _Vous_ _hettes oun cochon_!" and so on, which

were indispensable, she thought, to a girl who wanted to make herself

respected on the continent, a girl alone, especially. And she loved to

snub those damned _parley-voos_ who dared to accost ladies. It seemed to

lighten those days of visits to the agents, the very prospect of which

gave her a headache in advance, because one had to think of everything,

lithos, photographs, programs; and, if the agent wasn't in, ruin one's

self in correspondence; and puff one's self in every way, rub it into them

that one was the cleverest person on earth....

"If you're too modest," said Lily, "they'll take you at your word!"

And the pay would drop, in consequence.

"Never tell your salary!" was another of Lily's favorite maxims.

She gave out that she made heaps, that a little star like her, the Marie

Loyd of the bike, was only to be obtained for untold gold. But, at the

agent's, she had to cut her prices: there was no hiding anything from

them; it was like going to the doctor.

"And, when you're in work, everybody wants you; and, when you're out of

work, they have nothing for you: it's help yourself as best you may!" she

said.

She had to help herself now; and it was delicate business dealing with

people who have only one idea in their heads, to swindle you, in order to

curry favor with the managers by getting them cheap turns. They would have

skinned you alive:

"Two pounds a week. Do you accept?"

"Go to Halifax!" Lily would reply in such cases, looking them straight in

the face. It took courage to do that: the agent might grow bigger, become

an enemy. She didn't care! She wasn't going to lower her price for

anybody! And the commission she had to pay them was a torment to Lily;

calculating the percentage made her head split--not to speak of the

complicated nature of the contracts, worse than insurance policies. The

poor artiste was bound down on every side, at the mercy of the manager;

everything was foreseen, down to the prohibition of black tights, which

concealed one's poverty. And it was bad enough in England; but in the Dago

countries, on the continent, it was worse.

"Can you understand a word of it, Glass-Eye?" asked Lily, explaining to

her maid the tricks which the artiste had to fight against. "I don't know

how the small turns manage," she concluded, in the tone of a woman who

towers above all that.

Lily's prettiness made the people in the street turn round to look at her.

They would gaze at her cheeky feather, whisper, "You pretty, pretty

darling!" in her ear. Lily, secretly delighted, held herself ready to

crush the saucy rascal with a "How dare you?" like a lady who knows how to

appreciate a compliment, without permitting the least familiarity. And

when she approached the agency, she insisted on Glass-Eye's keeping by her

side, asked for things: her wrist-bag, her embroidered handkerchief. And

her way of walking in! Lily pretended to be short-sighted, so as to see no

one in the rotten lot. She sent in her card, sat down in the waiting-room.

It reminded her of the dentist's, with those pale people sitting on

benches; those serio-comics, all over-fat; loud-voiced topical singers,

who took the place of the real artistes, just like the bioscopes and

cinematographs! There were also little families--small turns that had

struggled hard to learn a few tricks--nobody wanted them, because they had

no "chic" costumes, sometimes, or no lithos....

Those were received like dogs: a wretched couple was just coming out, a

man and a woman, sad with a humility accustomed to rebuffs; and the agent

drove them toward the door, with his voice:

"Eccentric mashers? No opening for you. Call again."

Lily got a good reception, in the agent's room; but there was nothing for

her. And the agent saw her to the door, with a satisfied air and a knowing

wink, as though to make the others believe ... Lily didn't like that

kind--her short-sightedness did not prevent her noticing it and blushing

at it--but she was very pleased, all the same, to be seen to the door,

before those small turns who were received like dogs....

On the pavement outside, the wretched couple came up to her shyly:

"Don't you know us, Miss Lily? The Para-Paras."

She had to listen to a pitiful tale. She heard nothing but that, when she

went on her rounds of visits to the agents. Oh, the distress which she

beheld there! It made Lily feel quite ill at night. A little more and she

would have said her prayers, before getting into bed, to thank God that

she hadn't come to that. Poor Paras! Starving, no doubt, remaining for

weeks in their garret, pretending that they had been performing in the

provinces ... abroad.... Lily pictured them passing the stage-doorkeepers

to whom they had sold their parrots and being greeted with a "What's for

breakfast, Polly?"

"Miss Lily," they confessed, in a whisper, "you know such a lot of people:

if ever you hear of anything for us, never mind where ..."

"Poor beggars!" thought Lily.

And her Ma had prophesied to her that, one day, she would be worse off

than they! No, she would never be half so badly off! Why, she could have

had anything she wanted, motor-cars, Paris gowns, for the asking.

[Illustration: THE PARA-PARAS]

"Glass-Eye, my bag!" And, handing a small gold coin to the wretched

couple, "There ... between artistes, you know ... give it back when you

can; good-by. Did you notice, Glass-Eye," asked Lily, as she walked away,

"how flattered they were when I said, 'Between artistes?' They looked

quite touched."

But there was no time to waste in nonsense, on a day when she was calling

on the agents. The thing was to get there first; and Lily consulted her

addresses....

She was exasperated at being obliged, with her talent, to climb all those

stairs, to hang about in the waiting-room, she, Lily Clifton! And it

reeked of vice, stunk with the trashy scent of the "not-up-to-muches:"

merely to look at them suggested faces seen in Piccadilly at night or in

the Burlington Arcade.

Lily sent in her card, threw a short-sighted glance around her and

remained standing, like a lady who is never kept waiting and who is sure

to be received at once. And, with her head bent down and her chin in her

gold-spotted tie, she turned over the pages of _Le Courrier des Cafes

Concerts_ on the table ... names which she didn't know ... the small

"numbers" of the continent ... so much the better ... all the more chance

for her. But the engagement which she dreamed of did not offer this time

either. What the agent did propose to her, almost without lowering his

voice, with the door open, before everybody, was the grated private boxes

of South America ... the private rooms of Russia ... accompanied, at a

startled movement on Lily's part, by this concession:

"You needn't sleep there, you know!"

To talk like that to a lady! Lily felt stifled. Was that what she had

learned the bike for? To exhibit herself after the show, at the customers'

disposal? Lily could have fainted on the stairs, as she went down.

"One of those!" she said. "Not I!"

And she continued her weary pilgrimage of stairs, from agent to agent.

"I must have six months filled up in my book before to-night!" she said,

determined to visit them all, small and large, rather than go back

empty-handed.

There were some who suggested to her that ten per cent. was really very

little....

"I like their style!" thought Lily. "They want an extra sop thrown to

them: one might as well work for nothing!"

She thanked them, nevertheless, so as not to make enemies of them--one

never knows--and the agent doesn't matter so much; but the assistant, who

happens to have known you when you were "that high" ... better give him a

tip, lest he should round on you.

She also saw a former artiste, a friend of Pa's, who had become an agent.

"Miss Lily? Lily Clifton? What are you doing now? Won't you see my

secretary? Leave your address with him."

"Fellows whom Pa helped!" she grumbled angrily, as she went down the

stairs. "They're the worst of all! They make you pay for the humiliation

of their own failure on the stage!"