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....