Ting! A crescendo in the orchestra and, bowing to the audience across the footlights, the Three Graces made their exit, their smiles suddenly hollowed out into tired wrinkles, but cheerful nevertheless. And Nunkie wiped their foreheads with his checked handkerchief, helped them on with their big cloaks; and the three goddesses were now just a wrapped-up group, limping off to the staircase, like gouty patients at a spa.
Ting! A forest scene is let down, the wings are shifted. A click of chains, a flash of steel. The bikes in the shadow, the apprentices mounted, Lily leading.
“And try to do your best, my Lily.”
“Yes, Pa.”
“And try to behave.”
“Yes, Ma.”
Ting!
Lily gave a nervous smile. She always felt a little thrill before going on. Then, quick, in Indian file, two and two, three and three, the New Zealanders whirled round in the light, to the roar of a triumphal air.
Pa ground his teeth and clenched his fists the moment he heard his music: at the mere sight of his Lily, his seven stone of flesh and bones adapted to the machine, unerring and exact, an immense intoxication exalted his pride, gladness dilated his heart. At last! He was there now: German discipline! English gracefulness! Everything! He, too, would have his London home, with a lawn behind the house and a plot of rose-trees. He would learn the meaning of family joys, as Nunkie understood them, with texts along the staircase: “Welcome!” and “God bless our home!” And, more and more excited, he built up his dream; his imagination gave itself scope amid the unreal scenery, the forest depths, the green and gold sky and his Lily, his faultless Lily, haloed in light! Every hope was permissible when he looked at his Lily, his joy, his handiwork! His New Zealander on Wheels! That india-rubber suppleness, those little nerves of iron, his Lily, his glory, his star, his own star! He romanced about her, dreamed of an imperial tour, a steamer of his own, a floating Barnum’s show, with Roofers, elephants, rhinoceroses, Ave Marias, dogs, monkeys, the whole boiling; and Lily starring on her bike, stopping in every port, from Liverpool to Suez, from Suez to Yokohama: down to the desert, damn it, to show the whole world what an artiste he, Clifton, he, the father, had made of his Lily! And he looked at her with loving eyes, applauded her with a smile, restored her self-possession with a twitch of the eyebrow and counted her twirls on the back-wheel—O pride unspeakable!—a dozen!
