With his customary determination, yielding to a fixed idea, he devoted himself to it. And, in the halls, at the agents’, in the bars, at the Internationale Artisten-Klause in Lisle Street, that universal meeting-place, Pa, ever on the watch, strove to make people talk, listened with all his ears, took notes. It was very difficult to get at the real facts; one had to ferret them out; the owners of the troupes jealously concealed their methods, endeavored to put you off, talked of apprentices at five or six shillings a day, plus food and expenses. Pa saw through these tricks and, to arrive at the truth, discounted the six shillings down to sixpence. Lily, her Pa’s own daughter, easily obtained information from the apprentices themselves which she afterward repeated to him. He studied The Era, the paper of the Profession, got the names by heart: the managers, the “Pas”, the “bosses”, the “profs.” He got acquainted with some of them personally. Old Martello, for instance, the father of Ave Maria and the “Bambinis.” Martello could have given Pa hints; but he no longer interested himself in anything except his Bambinis, whom the poor man, grown calm with age and overwork, was now spoiling. The rest left him indifferent; he hardly listened, spoke in short sentences, like a man too old to care:
“Train apprentices? What’s the good? Run a troupe? Pooh, madness!”
Pa thought this exclusive admiration very touching, but it wasn’t what he wanted and, madness or not, damn it, he was resolved to carry out his idea to the end!
There were imperial and royal troupes, “Risleys,” carpet acrobats, pyramids of tumblers, some of them undergoing an apprenticeship of cuffs and thumps. Pa was not interested in these methods, did not approve of them; he had never knocked Lily about, never let her fall on purpose—“Have I, Lily?”—whereas in the imperial and royal they sent the apprentice sprawling on his back, just to teach him, when he started wrong.
Still, all these were boys; and it was the little girls that interested him, for he meant to have only girls among his apprentices. The rest wasn’t his damned business; but the different troupes of Roofer girls, for instance, affected him directly: where did old Roofer fish those girls out? That’s what Pa wanted to know. He had even, in order to visit the school, pretended to bring Lily as a pupil. He had seen the place in Broad Street, where they turned out “sisters” by the gross; had watched the squads in knickerbockers, scattered over the immense room, like recruits drilling in a barrack-yard: groups engaged in club-swinging, juggling, clog-dancing, all together, a tangle of different movements timed “one, two, three!” Roofer chose among the heap, sorted out the sizes, called this lot the Merry Wives, that lot the Crazy Things, christened them after an insect or a flower, packed them up in lots of ten or twelve girls, with snub-noses or Greek profiles, as preferred, despatched them, carriage-paid, C. O. D., with words, music and muslin skirts complete, and received every day a detailed account of his Honeysuckles and Bees, scattered all over the world, from the Klondike to Calcutta.
This superlative organization produced upon Pa the effect of a state affair; it was something beyond him, above him; it interested him especially from the recruiting point of view; and what stimulated him above all was the troupes of trick cyclists. He had seen plenty of them in America, but then, wholly occupied as he was with his Lily, they did not interest him, whereas now he was seeking to fathom their lives, so that he might know. Some of them, who went cheap, slept three in a bed, niggers and whites all mixed; others, who were well paid, lived easily and comfortably and put themselves forward with less work and for more money than Lily, Lily who possessed artistic talent, and who had toiled harder than all the rest of them put together! Patience, his turn would come ... when she was a bit less thin. And he would have the troupe of troupes, he’d show them, jolly soon!
Mrs. Clifton was terrified at her husband’s boldness, but dared not protest; however, she observed that it was a big undertaking.
“We shall have five apprentices,” interrupted Clifton, “six including Lily. We must find lodgings.”
“But, dear...!”
“Don’t you think...?”