CHAPTER V
There was a crowd in front of the Bijou when she arrived. They were commenting on a notice pasted on the door:
“Fermé.”
What could that mean? Lily had not provided for this in her vocabulary of the French language; but the theater was closed until new arrangements could be made. It meant complete ruin, enforced idleness....
“The rotten lot!” growled Lily. “Money, damn it, money! Pay up, you pack of thieves!”
But Lily soon recovered herself, when she saw that there was nothing to be done. She had been through worse than that, when the iron curtain all but smashed her to a jelly, at Milwaukee, and when she tumbled into the orchestra, at Glasgow! Notwithstanding the anguish that wrung her inside and heralded the coming hunger, Lily put a good face on the matter before all those people, like a lady who is above that sort of thing: a disappointment, that was all.
“But how will those small artistes manage?” she seemed to say. “Those families with babies?”
Lily declared that it was very sad, called Glass-Eye to witness, as usual; but poor Glass-Eye remained dumb, reflected that she would never, never be paid, if this went on. Lily owed her eighteen months’ wages now! True, she got enough to eat, or nearly; she traveled with Lily; and she wore her old hats.
Meanwhile, the door opened; the artistes were allowed to take away the implements of their work, before the final closing. The move began: they fetched out basket trunks, hoisted packing-cases on to cabs. It was a heartrending sight, all those things, made for the glitter of the footlights, now displayed in the street. And everybody made such haste as he could, under the eyes of the inquisitive passers-by, for fear of a general execution, with every door sealed up and days to wait before one could recover one’s property. Fellow-artistes from other theaters came to look on. Some were indignant that the Artistes’ Federation could not take up the matter and hurl the experience of its lawyers at the heads of the proprietor or syndicate responsible, to say nothing of the moral weight of its five thousand members, who had already made the English music-halls come to terms by means of a wholesale strike. Others observed that it was a private theater, one of those theaters run, for the fun of it, by some prosperous gambler or lucky bookmaker; a sort of harem theater, with almost empty houses, but with swells on the stage, among the swarm of half-naked women; and no one responsible, the old boy ruined, the treasury empty, bankruptcy; couldn’t be helped; take in your belt a peg, that’s all!
“What do you think of this, eh, Lily?” asked a voice. “Only yesterday we were passing the hat for others!”