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!