The Bill-Toppers

by J. André Castaigne

“I don’t give my performance under five pounds, or on a stage of less than thirty feet!” cried Lily.

At last, luck seemed to turn; she settled for Spain and Portugal, and that same evening, at the Bijou Theater, she was offered another engagement, for three months hence. This contract would procure her others, after her spell of ill luck. Lily at once took courage again:

“Oh, if I had the Astrarium!” she thought.

Everywhere, at the theater, at the agents, people were talking of the new music-hall. It even became a current joke. They said, “So-and-So’s performing at the Astrarium,” as though to say, “He’s not performing! He’s living in a castle in the air!” Every one was talking of the great music-hall which was to open in a few months and which was not to be seen building anywhere. Some said that it was serious; they quoted engagements: Tom; the Three Graces; the impersonator; nothing but turns quite unknown to Paris; novelties, nothing but novelties: Marjutti; Laurence, perhaps; or the New Trickers. Lily shivered when she heard that!... She opened wide eyes, like Alice in Wonderland. Oh, to appear there! But she had performed in Paris. Then she would change her name; bike mixed with dancing; and her whole trick done backward, as Pa had once advised Trampy to do in Mexico! Oh, if she could have that! Lily Godiva, undressed on the bike! She’d show them she was a lady, not a performing dog! The Astrarium, that was certain, would open in Paris in a few months. Harrasford had said so himself. There was no doubt about it. They even told the name of the stage-manager, Joe Brooks, the cleverest of all. Lily felt herself carried away with ambition. Oh! to open there! Oh, if it were true! God grant that it might come true! Oh, if Daisy, their star, could only break a leg! The few days which Lily was still to remain in Paris, before leaving for Spain, she employed in obtaining further information. She learned the most exact particulars. Incredible though it seemed, the Astrarium was to open quite shortly! The blue-chins discussed the thing, amid clouds of tobacco smoke, in the bars, after the show. To allude to it now was not like talking of castles in the air; on the contrary. To tease a pal, one said:

“You’re opening at the Astrarium, aren’t you? I don’t think!”

Which was another way of saying:

“The Astrarium’s no place for you! They’re taking nothing but bill-toppers there!”

The new music-hall, even before it came into existence, was beginning to spread, like the story of the whippings; it would be talked about, all round the world, as something stunning, a more complete show than the Tivoli at Sidney or the New York Hippodrome. Harrasford was credited with designs for a palace in onyx and marble. He had bought or was going to buy a theater with the object of transforming it; names and prices were given. Everybody was interested in it. Just now, especially, when the bioscopes and the gramophones and the singers were taking the bread out of the “artistes’” mouths, it meant twenty turns more to receive princely salaries there; and, every month, that galaxy of stars, which Harrasford would send shooting to Paris, was to disperse toward Brussels, Antwerp, Marseilles, Hamburg: the European Trust, the Moss and Stoll tour of the continent, managed by Harrasford, the great English manager.

To open at the Astrarium meant having work insured and your three years’ book filled for ever so long; meant appearing in public, later, wearing on your chest the medal which they meant to distribute in memory of the opening. Gee, Lily had a pain in her side at the thought of it! The Three Graces, it was said, were on the program. Lily would have consulted them—there was no jealousy about the Graces—but they were not yet in Paris. Oh, Lily was longing and dying to be settled! Who was Harrasford’s agent? If she had to go to London to see him, she would go.

Why, damn it, she would go to Heaven itself to get the Astrarium! Anything, anything to open there! That dream of greatness made her endure her present vexations. Mrs. Trampy ... Mrs. Trampy ... She was addressed as Mrs. Trampy everywhere. Trampy must be telling the story, taking his revenge for the whippings, making little of her in his turn. One night even, the night before her departure for Spain, when the architect was to wait for her at the door of the theater, Lily, who had dressed herself in her best, once more had the humiliation of being accosted by Trampy in front of everybody.