SHE NEVER LOST SIGHT OF LILY
Ma, standing by him, interested herself less in the show and, neglecting the artiste, watched the daughter and the faces she made at the gentlemen: the brazen flapper, whose sole attraction lay in the wickedness in her blood! She never lost sight of Lily and watched her closely, for Ma seemed always to catch her throwing an appealing glance to the seducers in the front boxes, to some St. George in full dress who would dart across the footlights to carry off her daughter.
Thus caught between Pa and Ma, Lily’s situation was hard indeed. As for the audience, she never troubled about it, from custom, like a true professional, who gives her performance mechanically, without minding about the rest. The audience, to Lily, was, behind a streak of flame, in the semi-darkness, a confused mass of black and gray. All this had no existence for Lily or the apprentices. The audience didn’t pay them! The audience wouldn’t give her a whacking if the show went badly! Pa, in the wings, frightened her much more than all the audiences in the world; and Ma was worse still, when a gentleman smiled at her from a box. Then Lily would stare at her Ma with the terrified eye of a parrot contemplating Para’s whip. She even exaggerated, pinched her lips, like a school-girl applying herself to her book for fear of the ferule. Ma did not ask so much as that. Sometimes, when Lily, after a successful trick, threw out her chest to draw breath more easily and rode round the stage with a pretty smile on her lips, Ma saw no harm in it, even rejoiced within herself at her daughter’s beauty. Ma knew how to be just and not to be angry for nothing. But what she could not forgive, what exasperated her was, just that very evening, with her own eyes, to see Lily smile at some person unknown and shoot fiery glances at the front boxes, the little devil, who would bring them to the grave with shame!
For Lily, it must be confessed, flung prudence to the winds that night. Her head was turned with all those love stories. They sang in her ears, they distended her nostrils. Oppressed on every side, she escaped in imagination toward that spacious house, toward the confused mass in which her lover sat hidden. And, in spite of Pa and in spite of Ma, who stood watching her in the wings, Lily searched the audience with her eyes. Was it really Trampy? Had he come back? She had not met him for some time. She wanted to know and he would surely reveal himself. Ma might say what she pleased. Even in the final pyramid, she looked, while, with one apprentice on her shoulders, another forked before her, another standing behind, two others on either side, she twice went round the stage, with flags waving, to the hurricane of the orchestra. And then ting! And darkness anew, the stage suddenly invaded by scene-shifters dragging heavy sets along; and Lily, passing out, was seized by her Ma, who said:
“Who were you laughing at?”
“I wasn’t laughing, Ma!”
“I’ll teach you to make eyes at gentlemen, you baggage you! I saw you this time! I saw you!” grumbled Ma, who had the engagement ring still upon her mind. “You shall pay for this, Lily; we’ll see if I can drive the devil out of you or not!”
And Ma squeezed Lily’s arm as if she meant to break it, but all this noiselessly, in the shadow, behind the scenery, for fear of the stage manager. Besides, it was nobody’s business what a mother thought fit to say to her daughter, and Lily, when people passed, pluckily tried to smile, so as to put them off, not to let them know that she was being beaten, a big girl like her; but, as soon as they were gone, she resumed her rebellious face.
“I wasn’t laughing, I wasn’t laughing, Ma!”
“That’s to teach you to lie!” said Ma, catching her a blow in the back of the neck.