The Bill-Toppers

by J. André Castaigne

Ma, in the early days of their arrival in London, had been terribly obsessed by the dread of being left without means in the huge city. Lily had got them out of that difficulty. And now she was earning such a lot of money: one day, who knows, they would have made enough to assure their independence for good and all! When she thought of this possibility, Ma’s eyes lit up with yellow gleams; she felt like catching hold of Lily and locking her up in a safe.

Pa was less eager for gain, less ant-like in his economies; he was an artiste, above all; he knew how to make allowances; there was a time for work and a time for play. He often treated himself to the pleasure of taking Lily out; and, each time, as usual, she got a nice little present—he liked to pass for a Pa who spoiled his daughter, loved to hear himself so described, and took a wicked delight in repeating it all to Mrs. Clifton.

Lily was the gainer by the difference in opinion; she felt herself a little freer. When she went out in the morning, she considered herself at liberty to walk less fast, and no longer trembled on returning. She loved to loiter in the Tottenham Court Road; her little person assumed an air of importance; if, after practice, some artiste passed her in the street and gave her a smile, she believed that he was waiting for her; a “comic quartet,” the Out-of-Tune Musicals, happening to come out of a bar and blow a kiss to her, were there on her account, she thought—four lovers at a swoop!

It was almost impossible that she should not meet Trampy, who was always prowling about from bar to bar, between Oxford Street and Leicester Square. She did meet him, in fact. Trampy, that day, wore a felt hat, a blue suit, a red tie, with a sixpenny Murias cocked in the corner of his mouth, and he greeted her with a triumphant “Hullo, peach!” as she passed. Lily was quite excited, stopped just long enough to refuse a drink and then left him very quickly. She was afraid it showed on her face, when she got home, and his words still rang in her ears, that she was awfully pretty, the prettiest girl on the stage, a peach, a duck, a pearl, a daisy, a bird.

All that she had seen and heard in her jostled existence, now came back to her, grew and sprouted in her ... now that Lily was being made love to by gentlemen, not the monkey-faces or the blue-chins, but men like Trampy, her craving for admiration oozed out of her at every pore....

Trampy! Lily did not care for Trampy; but she thought him amiable, polite with the girls.... She was grateful to him for being there to say pretty things to her when she passed. She preferred that type to men like Jimmy, for instance, savages who always seemed on the point of speaking and never opened their mouths; with them, she thought, a wife would be bored to death. Besides, Jimmy, pooh, a common workman, a josser! While Trampy was an artiste, a bill-topper and rich, no doubt. You had only to listen to Trampy to see that he was very well off! Chocolates, sweets, jewelry, ostrich-feathers, patent-leather boots, everything! He would have loaded her with presents, if she had let him, but she had never accepted anything except a little gold ring, which she hid in her pocket when she came in, for, if Ma had caught sight of it, gee, what a smacking!

Trampy often met her; he seemed almost to do so on purpose; he found pretty speeches, compliments which he had already uttered a score of times to ever so many girls, on ever so many stages, like a real Don Juan who had been all over the world and everywhere picked up love-speeches and jokes to “fetch” the ladies with. He tickled her vanity, told her that a dear little girl like her was cut out for dress, that a big hat with ostrich feathers would go well with her fair hair and that men, by Jove, ought to go on their knees whenever they spoke to her!

All this hummed and buzzed in her head. At night, when she fell asleep in Maud’s arms, she dreamed of big hats and fine dresses and referred to it during the day. Pa hardly knew what to think; if she did as well as last night—three encores—Lily could have half a sovereign, to buy a new hat in the Tottenham Court Road with, said Pa.

“Oh, Pa, I shall do all right, you’ll see. Will you be very nice? Then get me that one at two guineas, you know, in Regent Street.”

“But you’re mad, Lily!” said Pa, without attaching too much importance to it, for he had other cares: agents to see, letters to write, business, damn it!