But he was interrupted ... Jimmy here, Jimmy there ... he was wanted ... for the flies, for the roof.... Jimmy flew to the stage, bothered on every side, worried by the Astrarium ... and Lily. Lily! He could not escape her now, do what he might! He had her in his heart, in his brain, everywhere. She lived and existed in his breast, shot up there like a flame! Whatever he had been told about her he no longer knew, did not want to know. And, besides, even if it had been true, oh, he would have forgiven everything! He would have passed over everything! He would have plunged into the abyss to get Lily out of it, whatever she had done; yes! In spite of everything! in spite of everybody! In spite of Trampy, husband or not!
CHAPTER III
To-morrow was to be the great day, the opening of the Astrarium, the first night; and Jimmy, more bustled than ever, forgot Lily ... almost ... on that evening, especially, the evening of the dress-rehearsal: not an ordinary rehearsal, with the band-parts handed to the conductor across the footlights—“A march here, please, a waltz there. ’K you”—no, the whole show, with orchestra and all complete; the stage flooded with light; each turn in its own setting: corridor, wood, room, palace. Jimmy multiplied himself in the final fever. The theater, arranged according to his ideas, was still encumbered with ladders and scaffoldings; but gangs of laborers were hard at work on every side. The obstructions all disappeared like magic, were juggled away. Jimmy had made sure that the roof was ready; he had run from the landing-point, out of sight of the audience, through the door contrived in the wall of the stage, crossed the fly-galleries, come down by the pulley-rope; the whole thing, from roof to stage, had taken him, watch in hand, thirty seconds. And Lily had done it also. It formed part of the turn, a sensational addition to the aerobike. All would be ready, all would go well, provided that Lily was not nervous that evening ... and to-morrow especially! Those confounded crazy little girls! Crazy every one of them: Laurence herself, the bravest of the lot, had just had an awful fall, at Boston, in her excitement at losing her lucky charm. It was the event in the profession, the accident of the day. Lily might be frightened by it. Now it was essential that she should succeed and succeed at the first attempt. His fortune and hers, his future, the success of the Astrarium depended on it. And Jimmy, obsessed by his labors, had hardly time to think of Trampy, in the formidable effort of the eleventh hour. And yet, sometimes, he felt a pain at his heart. That adorable Lily! Would he succeed in making her love him? And now there was that impersonator! Oh, to work, to work! And he went at it, hammer and tongs, to make sure of the aerobike’s success. To make them talk of him ... to achieve fame ... which was as sweet as love! And he was wanted from one end of the theater to the other. Oh, he might well look upon the Astrarium as his creation! Already, a few days before, rumors of a strike were current. The managers were boycotted by the artistes, in England.... Jimmy feared lest the Astrarium should feel the consequences, under the pressure of the Performers’ Association, but he had arranged everything, seen each artiste separately, explained his plans: gala matinées, creation of an asylum, a home of rest ... a glory to help in such a task ... who could tell but that they were working for themselves by adding their stone to the edifice? He quoted the Para-Paras and their wretched end; old Martello, dead without leaving a penny; the Bambinis, homeless; Ave Maria, unprotected. The men listened, with serious faces. As for the girls, his words came straight from the heart. Those decent girls, who earned their living as they knew how and the living of others besides, they understood him at once; and Lily no longer laughed; on the contrary:
“Me? Whatever you like! For nothing, if you like; rely on me, Jimmy!”
And now the hour had come; they were to appear under the critical eye of Harrasford. The acting-manager had arrived from England that same day with the stage-manager, who was “behind.” It made a strange impression, that huge red-and-gold house, glittering with light and sounding curiously empty to the thunder of the band. Everybody was at his post: the tall flunkeys stood motionless at the entrance-doors, in the promenades, as if the audience had been there, whereas there was practically nobody except Harrasford and the manager. And on the stage, which had been cleared of every superfluous piece of property, splendid order reigned: the scene-shifters, up above, had their hands on the windlasses; the two electricians, on their perches, turned the lime-light where it was to fall; the drops rose and fell without a hitch; the scenes slipped into their places, shifted, in the English fashion, by one man. For each turn on the stage, the next was ready to come on, no more; all the rest were in the dressing-rooms. But there, behind the iron curtain, one could picture staircases crowded with people running up and down, passages full of light, a flurried ant-hill, and feel that a ring of bells would be enough to bring tumbling on to the stage a whole glittering, grotesque or radiant world of people, from the monkey-faced comedian to Lily, in her pink tights, an image of Venus. There was electricity in the air of that empty house, in which all felt the presence of the powerful master, harder to please than a crowd! And rays of light ran along the stage, the back-drop seemed a cloud ready to split in the crash of the thunder, under the storm of the raging brasses. On the stage, the turns defiled in their order, under the shimmering lights: the Bambinis, brother and sister, supple grace and strength combined, filled the huge space with the free play of their rosy bodies and the brightness of their genuine gaiety. The Three Graces formed the human cluster, a hanging group of faces, figures, shoulders and glorious lines. The program poured out laughter, harmony, beauty, till, against the blue forest, came the scarlet step-dances of the Roofers. And then silence: the feature of the evening, the aerobike! There was a moment’s anxiety. A net was stretched above the stalls, from the footlights to the opening in the roof. For the audience, at any rate, all danger was removed, even in case of a fall. Then the glass dome above opened, and the curtain rose on the Elysian glimmer of a scene studded with stars; and everything was empty, stage and auditorium. The distance seemed immense: “miles and miles!” The machine was to start out suddenly, rush through space, disappear up above, like a meteor that shoots out from infinity and returns to it.
A few seconds passed, during which Jimmy gave Lily her last instructions:
“You’re not afraid, Lily? Would you like me to do it?”
Afraid! She turned her calm face to him. Oh, she could have accomplished impossible and cruel things, braved torture, walked on burning coals! She felt herself made of supple steel, unerring and exact: