Poland, the Parisienne. Page 123. Frontispiece.

THE

BILL-TOPPERS

By ANDRÉ CASTAIGNE

With Illustrations

BY THE AUTHOR

A. L. BURT COMPANY

Publishers New York

Copyright, 1909

The Bobbs-Merrill Company

August

TO MY LITTLE FRIENDS

THE STARS!

THE BILL-TOPPERS

THE BILL-TOPPERS

OVERTURE

All around stretched the great blue sky and the blue sea of the Gulf of Bengal.

Mrs. Clifton lay dozing at full length on a pillowed bench and her husband sat near her and followed his Lily, his daughter, with his eyes: his Lily, eight years old, “that high,” waving among the passengers the white coral necklace which Pa had bought her on leaving Australia; his Lily, his star, his New Zealander on Wheels! His Lily who had had such successes at Melbourne, at Sidney: bouquets, tons and cart-loads of bouquets! And the past would be nothing compared with the future, with the astounding tricks which he was inventing for his Lily. The mere sight of her raised his enthusiasm to boiling-point. And he was going to show them, in Calcutta and elsewhere, if they knew how to make stars in New Zealand or if they were only fit for raising mutton.

Clifton was an artist, an “artiste,” a born artiste: starting as a mere clerk in an office, he had become an amateur cyclist and then a professional on the track. He married an Englishwoman at Wellington and, at Lily’s birth, decided upon a career: the stage, with Lily for a star later on! And he set to work, with vim and vigor, learned a few tricks on his bike, taught his wife the business in less than no time; and Lily’s first memories as a four-year-old were:

“I was sitting on Ma’s shoulders, Ma on Pa’s and Pa on the bike.”

And Lily zigzagged through New Zealand, from east to west and north to south, and Australia after, where she received plenty of applause for her tricks, childish in themselves, but well presented. Her triumphant path wound among tinseled bottles containing paper flowers, with a faultless standstill for the climax, one hand on the handle-bar, the other blowing kisses to the audience. This procured Pa an engagement for India. He ordered a beautiful colored poster, “The Clifton Family, Trick Cyclists,” with a portrait in the corner of his own strong face and bristling mustache—“P. T. Clifton, Manager”—one more rung in the ladder of life mounted, thanks to his Lily.

And Pa smiled to his daughter and, as she ran past him, lifted her on his knee and stroked her fair curls; and the child cuddled up to her Pa, opened her lips to ask questions, but was silent, with her eyes lost in space, puckering her little forehead, in which were heaped so many mingled memories of the stage and the great world outside: the Boxing Kangaroo; tall cliffs; green islands; the bike; Batavia among the trees; Singapore, with its noise and dust. And Lily, wearily, dreamed and murmured things, while the steamer sped on, thud, thud, thud, flat as a stage in its blue “set.”

Lily’s impressions of India were months of jolting and bumping, stops in the dead of night while the tent was pitched, rains, strong smells, oppressive heats—months and months of it, Ma on Pa, Pa on the wheel and she on top, waving flags. Yellow faces on the benches, red flowers and, somewhere, on a river-bank, two eyes glittering in the dark: a tiger, somebody said! And every night the artistes, carrying lanterns, walked in file between the circus and the hotel, with the ladies in the center and Lily clinging to Ma’s skirt.

She did more now, in addition to the bike: a song-and-dance turn. In a piping falsetto, she quavered:

“Star light! Star bright!”

She was spoiled by the ladies, the wives of the officers stationed in those out-of-the-way holes. She played with smart children, was taken for drives, had her social successes! Chocolates, sweets, kisses. And a lady gave her such a pretty dress: his Lily! Pa burst with delighted pride to see her treated like that; and Ma scolded her a bit, for the little flirt that she was, while fondly tying the two satin bows over her ears.

Lily was a regular tomboy, with pranks invented by herself, from ideas which she picked up in traveling: for instance, she would choose her moment and chuck a piece of bacon among the Mohammedans sitting under her window; and she would revel in her own fright at those furious faces suddenly glaring up at her from below! And she would stand with drooping head, one finger in her mouth:

“Oh, so sorry!”

What fun! And as an artiste she was spoiled and petted everywhere. Goa, Bangalore, Tanjore and then Colombo, and a ship with elephants, tigers, camels, children, men, women, wagons, one great mix-up, a circus and menagerie in one, steaming toward South Africa; and Miss Lily of the Clifton Troupe paraded her well-brushed, neatly-parted curls in the midst of it all, gazed open-mouthed at the blue expanse of water until, her eyes drunk and dazed with light, she went and lay in her cabin.... And more and more blue water. And thud, thud, thud. And Cape Town in the mountains. Africa behind it: a country all yellow, where the trains wound in and out of the rocks; villages, up, up, up, or else right low down, on the yellow veldt; and, at night, on the benches, crowds and crowds. Immediately after the show came sleep, troubled by the jolting of the train; and the circus was always there next day, on the right or on the left, with its Chinamen and its niggers driving stakes or tugging at ropes. A bell for dinner, a whistle for the show; and, as soon as the show was over, to bed,—and off again.

Pa made her practice harder now, wanted to make a great artiste of her. And there was a class, too, kept by a “marm” who traveled with the circus and taught spelling and arithmetic and the art of letter-writing, from “Yours to hand with thanks” down to “Believe me to be.” Lily would have been bored to death but for the accidents of travel: sometimes the engine broke down, bringing the train to a dead stop amid the great African silence, near a field of Indian corn, in which the children played hide-and-seek. Or else there were locusts, locusts “that thick,” right inside the carriages. Lily would tie them by the leg and:

“Flip! Flap! Lively now! Jump!”

But funniest of all was the caravan—she couldn’t remember where, in Natal or thereabouts—wagons with ten yoke of oxen. They climbed up endless winding roads. The men shot at birds and prospected for diamonds along the wayside; and at night they took the hay from the mattresses to give to the cattle. Lolling indolence was in the air and plenty in the larder: big fruits, strange game, which they cooked in a makeshift oven consisting of a few stones. Then they rolled themselves up in a blanket, near the elephants tugging at their chains, and slept under the tent in the cool, bright, starry night.

LILY IN INDIA

Months and months passed. Lily was becoming very clever: the New Zealander on Wheels! She was cleverer than Pa, who no longer performed, nor Ma either. On their return to Australia, Lily appeared by herself in the music-halls, and P. T. Clifton, Manager, watched her from the wings, in growing admiration: his Lily was a star now, too good for a circus! And Australia, pooh! Sidney, Melbourne, pooh! What Lily wanted was New York, London, the Hippodromes, the Palaces! He’d show them a star that was a star! And Clifton clenched his fists and pretended not to see when Lily made a blunder on the stage: his Lily missing a trick! Disgracing her Pa like that! He blushed to the eyes at the thought of it! And, when she returned to the wings, he twitted her proudly:

“What next, Lily! An artiste like you!”

And Ma adopted a sarcastic air and congratulated “mademoiselle” as she threw the white wrapper over “mademoiselle’s” shoulders.

Ma detested the stage. She did not think it a nice place for herself; but for a brat like Lily, Lord, it was quite different! And she ought to have tried to please her Pa and Ma. Mrs. Clifton, though she never voiced the wish, had visions of a trip to London, to stagger some relations, a sister-in-law she had there, and sneer at the old country, in the usual colonial fashion, and show them what the new countries can do, countries where you make a fortune in less than no time! And, little by little, smitten with Mr. Clifton’s enthusiasm, she came to believe that, in Lily, they really possessed the infant prodigy, the treasure-child upon whom their fortune depended. And Ma, too, was vexed when Lily missed a trick on the stage.

Lily laughed at their anger. Ma had never raised a hand to her; and, as for Pa, when he scolded, Lily had such a way of looking at him, with lowered head—“Oh, so sorry!”—that Pa simmered down again at once. Lily, a regular “tenter,” shot up freely, grew up a real tomboy, went a bit too far, in fact, Ma said: at Honolulu, for instance, on the road to ’Frisco and New York, where Pa had resolved to go, at all costs, come what might—it was one step nearer London!—at Honolulu—ten days there and such a success!—the child played truant in the gardens teeming with birds and fruit, climbed apple-trees, was caught one day and scampered off at full speed, pursued by Ma, who threatened to give her a sound smacking this time, the little thief! But Pa thought it ridiculous, for the sake of an apple....

“And suppose Lily had broken her leg with her nonsense?” asked Ma indignantly. “Where would your New York be?”

Pa felt himself a conquering hero when they steamed through the Golden Gate: the States at last! And no sooner was his foot on the wharf at ’Frisco than off to the agents at once, with his photographs, his contracts, his posters! But it was her birth-certificate they asked to see. And no babes and sucklings allowed on the stage here. It was all right down yonder, but the law prevented it here.

“Damn your laws!” snapped Pa furiously. “Do you think we make stars to hide them under bushels?”

And whoosh! Off for Mexico, where children are allowed to perform.

Now, in Arizona, near Phœnix, where the train stopped for some hours, owing to an accident to the Rio Gila bridge, Pa happened upon a merrymaking which reminded him of West Australia. Cow-boys, galloping horses, a pretense at fighting, lassoing, revolvers, a track for amateur cyclists and—yes, there, in the desert!—on a platform, right in the middle, what should Pa see but an amazing artiste, riding on the back-wheel, with the other in the air! And such twirls! And the boys shouted to him:

“Hullo, Trampy! Have a drink, Trampy!”

And Trampy accepted:

“With you, my lord! As soon as I’ve done, my lord!”

And off he wheeled, head on the saddle, feet in the air, whistling Yankee Doodle!

It was impossible! Pa rubbed his eyes: what! Was this what they did in the States in the desert? And he who had hoped, with Lily ... why, damn it, Lily knew nothing! He himself, her manager, knew less than nothing! He, who thought he had formed a star! Pa was red with shame. And, suddenly, he had a happy thought: he, too, offered Trampy a drink, something to propose to him....

“All right.”

They shook hands, went to the bar, lit a cigar, like men, by Jove! Clifton loved to talk business, to pull out notebooks, quick, and jot things down with a knowing air. Trampy, a mere boy, easy-going, genial, without a red cent for the time being, didn’t care a hang about business and was soon telling Clifton the story of his life: drummer, reporter, racer; his descent,—“Two whiskies, boy!”—what was he saying? Oh, yes, his descent of a staircase on the bike, yes, siree, with a red-hot stove under his arm—a stove painted to look red-hot—pursued by a policeman, leaping over obstacles on the bike; great success at Duluth and Denver as a tramp cyclist: hence his name of Trampy Wheel-Pad. But those girls, by Jove! Well, he who fights and runs away lives to fight another day. Still, a rolling stone doesn’t climb hills. Here he was, stranded. Go to Mexico? So much a week? Such and such a turn? Teach the child? Cert!

Lily never alluded to Mexico afterward without shaking with anger. My, to listen to her, how badly they treated her in Mexico! Worse than a Dago! To tell the truth, it was hot; and Lily, already tired by those long journeys in varying climates, Lily would have preferred to do nothing and to continue to lead her careless life as a playful filly. But no, poor Lily was caught by the hind-leg in Mexico! Ambition had seized upon Pa, body and soul, and life became a more serious matter for the child.

“Look here!” said Pa, pointing to Trampy. “What he, a man, does, you can do! I’ll see to that!”

Pa arranged for a place in which to practise at their ease. In the evening, on the stage, he watched and studied Trampy’s tricks and, in the morning, quick, out of bed, look alive, the bike! Pa no longer had his open-mouthed admiration for Lily, as in South Africa and Asia: his Lily knew nothing at all! But in three months, six months, if necessary, if it cost him every penny he possessed. And it was:

“Come along, Lily ... to work! Show what you can do!”

Trampy, in this country of mañolas—“Grand, by Jove!”—came round about eleven; and Pa, all out of breath, passed Lily on to him:

“You have a go at her, Trampy! I give up, she won’t do what I say!”

And Trampy put down his cigar, took off his collar and cuffs and it was, “Come along, Lily!” till lunch-time. The child, her eyes blinking with fatigue, fell fast asleep before the end of the meal.

Pa was delighted.

And he confided her to Trampy more and more, with orders not to spare smackings in case of need:

“Eh, Lily? Eh?”

As for him, he had business to do, letters to write, great schemes in his head! for instance, he must try to get permission for Lily to appear in the States.

“Time for a cigar, I guess,” said Trampy, as soon as Clifton was gone.

Work stopped abruptly; a tumbler’s carpet rolled up in a corner formed an inviting lounge; and Lily, panting from her practice, would stretch herself beside him and enjoy a few happy moments, the only really happy moments of the day; for there were matinées in the afternoon and the evening performance at night, till she was ready to drop with weariness. Trampy treated Lily nicely, like a grown-up person, called her by the name of a fruit, or a flower, or a bird, jollied her, called her “little wifie:” it was all one to her. He made her laugh with his funny stories, his fairy tales about himself, his terrible struggle with a snake in the streets of ’Frisco, after a champagne supper: girls, by Jove! He toned down his anecdotes and dished them up for Lily’s entertainment; told her absurd yarns enlivened with mimicry, in which he excelled, like the real mummer that he was, and Lily shrieked with laughter, head thrown back, full-throated.

And there was a spice of fear in it all: was that Pa coming back? No, a carpenter or scene-shifter, perhaps, or else the Martellos, brother and sister, going to practise slack-wire, head and hand balancing. Their father, old Martello, a famous name, lived in London, it appeared, alone with his Bambinis, mere babes still. His other children and his apprentices had all run away, to escape his horsewhip, and the brother in Mexico was continuing the tradition. His brutality, in fact, got him into trouble wherever he went, so much so that the big music-halls were closed to him, for fear of scandal. And he terrorized his sister, Ave Maria, a girl of sixteen, a dark girl with great dark eyes. Ave Maria never spoke to anybody; when she passed through the room where Lily was having fun with Trampy, she fixed a fiery glance upon them, even ventured on a smile, for Trampy in particular, whose lively stories reached her through the partition behind which she dressed. Oh, how she envied Lily! But she passed very quickly, because of her brother.

And this time it was Pa! Lily jumped on to the saddle like mad, played her part to perfection, puffed and panted, as if the last drop of strength were oozing out of her, and Trampy joined in the little comedy of fibbing and dissembling:

“There, like that, Lily, or I’ll smack you!”

“That’s right,” said Pa. “Make her work!”

And, just to show Lily what work meant and that her Pa was not so unkind after all—“It’s for your good, Lily! You’ll thank me one of these days!”—he took her to the stage, where Ave Maria was practising. Now, of course, in the circuses, Lily, occasionally, had seen children knocked and cut about with blows and trained to say, “It was the cat,” when any one asked them about the marks. They were ordinary children; she had rolled about in the sawdust with them, played hide-and-seek with them in the fields of Indian corn; they were children who romped and ran about and laughed. Ave Maria was different. The brother, a savage, scowling brute, was always after her, harrying her with muttered threats. She was in a constant, visible tremble of fear; and, if she slipped on her wire, the fellow snarled as if to bite her in the foot, pinched her black and blue, restored her balance with a blow of the belt, shook the supports to make her fall just to see!...

“Oh, Pa, he’ll kill her!” whispered Lily, when she saw Ave Maria practising.

“It’s none of our damned business,” replied Pa curtly.

Martello’s evil example ended by catching hold of Pa: that’s how artistes were formed, damn it! And, at the thought of the time wasted, he clenched his fists. To have a Lily of his own, all his own, and to have made nothing out of her yet! Still, it was not Lily’s fault. Yes, though, it was her fault, she was so stubborn, so wilful! When he told her to do a thing, why not do it? Instead of bleating:

“Pa, I can’t! Pa, I can’t!”

A brief struggle, in a way, followed between Lily and her Pa. Lily was not built for passive obedience, wasn’t used to it. She no longer knew her Pa. When he came at her with his hand lifted to strike, when he spoke of unbuckling his belt—“Damn those blasted brats!”—Lily eyed him with a look of anguish:

“But Pa, I’m not Ave Maria!” she said. “I’m not a Dago.”

And she raised her little rebellious face to him. He humbled her with a smack on the cheek:

“On the saddle! Up! Quick!”

The child, mastered by her Pa’s strength and energy, ceased to be the spoiled child, became an artiste.... Head on the saddle, back-wheel: just like Trampy! Pooh, Trampy, after a few months of this life, was nowhere, Clifton admired him less and less, Lily was doing all that he did, more than he did; and without a fault, without a hitch, unerring and exact! Pa swelled with pride at the mere sight of his Lily, his four stone ten of flesh and bones fitted to the machine, his Lily, the Lily of his dreams!

“I’ll dress you in velvet and satin!” he said, in his enthusiasm. “I’ll cover you with diamonds.”

Pa, thanks to his indomitable energy, had made something of his Lily, a real artiste, at last! And business was moving, too! He had a contract in his pocket for the States, where Lily would no doubt get permission to do her “childish tricks,” seeing that she was traveling with her Pa and Ma. As for Trampy, Pa had no use for Trampy, made no bones about sacking him on some pretext or other:

“Run away and play with your girls, by Jove! Or whatever you please! Good-by! Ta-ta!”

And off for Denver, whence they were to continue the journey up to Chicago.

It was the dive for good and all into the stuffy atmosphere behind the scenes, which Lily was never again to leave, brick walls, where she waited her turn on the elaborate program of the “continuous performances,” amid the thunder of the orchestra and the lightning of the reflectors. No time to go out, meals consumed in your dressing-room on the top of the basket trunk. In the mornings, new tricks to practise on the stage, in the midst of a herd of girls whom gentlemen in their shirtsleeves were training to sing in chorus and to keep step to the strum of the piano. And ever and ever so many new faces, a tumult of tongues which Lily heard on the stage, in the dressing-room, and even in her room at the hotel, through the thin partition walls: a lingo made up of coarse remarks and thick stories, punctuated with spitting and oaths strong enough to carry a tower of Babel. Lily opened her eyes and ears, heaping it all up, storing it all away behind her stubborn forehead....

And new people, new people: “families,” “brothers,” “sisters,” troupes, troupes, troupes! Or else stars by themselves, “bests,” “uniques:” a female-impersonator, a green-eyed boy who wagged his hips like the very devil and took off the girls; Poland, a Warsaw Jewess, a redheaded, overscented beauty, who did the “Parisienne,” and ever and ever so many others. And Lily, so slender and frail, was the pet of them all. They called her their pretty baby, their petit chéri, and, with their painted mugs, kissed her full on the lips.

Pa detested this “rotten lot” and Pa was not always in a good temper. Lily “under age,”—again! Why, there were even managers who informed the police, so as to be on the safe side; “traveling with her parents; childish tricks; nothing difficult.”... Ma’s indignation knew no bounds: what nonsense to prevent a great big girl of fifteen from earning her living! For she aged Lily as much as she could, to obtain the permission, when no papers were asked for; and she had trained Lily to reply to the indiscreet questions of the officials: was her trick hard? Was she forced into doing it? Lily answered mechanically that she liked the bike very much. And then they allowed her to perform.

As for practising, permission or none, that was nobody’s damned business. And if some old sheep took to bleating—“Poor child, you’ll be the death of her!”—Pa sent the old sheep to eat coke; and it was:

“Up, Lily! Get on your bike! Look alive!”

And the bloomers that Lily wore out! Ma was kept busy in the dressing-room mending the rents at the knees and patching the seats:

“What a tomboy!” Ma cried.

And this went on for months and months. And then came Chicago; a visit of Pa’s to the agents; and a contract with the New York Olympians, a variety-show coming from the West and returning to New York by Columbus and Pittsburg. And new people, new people; stars of every kind: the Para woman, a rheumatic juggler, who was obliged to change her turn and become an exhibitor of performing parrots, a ragged, molting troupe, picked up cheap at second-hand; an infant prodigy who topped the bill, a boy-violinist, leading an orchestra, too, at fourteen, a pretentious little humbug trained to make a few movements, while others did the work. Lily thought him so good-looking she simply couldn’t take her eyes off him. And then she had some big girl-friends who had had love affairs! They were the Three Graces, gymnasts endowed with bodies like so many Apollos, honest German faces and a bewildering amount of strength, pluck and precision....

“What smackings that must have taken!” thought Pa.

But no, their uncle and manager, Mr. Fuchs—a name as famous in its way as Martello’s—was known for his gentleness and adored and coddled and pampered by the Three Graces, who, at a sign from “Nunkie,” as they called him, joyously rushed to practice, taking a pride in pleasing their dear Nunkie.

“The old rogue!” said Pa enviously. “He has an easy time of it; whereas I, with my skinny kitten, damn it ...!”

Well, well, he mustn’t complain, as he himself admitted: one more rung which he had mounted, thanks to his Lily, that engagement with the best variety-show in the States; nothing but big theaters: Orpheums! Dominions! And New York next! And then London! Things were moving, moving! And Pa looked lovingly at his Lily, as she played at being grown up with the Three Graces, in the train on Sunday, traveling from town to town, while Ma was knitting things for her tomboy. He talked to Mr. Fuchs as between equals, as between man and man, as between the manager of a star and the owner of a troupe; and the train rushed on, rushed on, with an indistinct sound of the engine-bell, now and again, when they crossed a street. Mr. Fuchs, heavy-jawed, slow of speech, said that he had had enough of traveling, at his age, if it were not for his dear nieces. He would like to retire to the country, to his little home, and grow his roses, as soon as he had married off his dear nieces, which would not be long, no doubt. As it was, one of them, Thea, the one who did five pullings-up with her left hand, had his permission to receive letters from her sweetheart, a young man at St. Louis, quite well-off. The idyl made good Mr. Fuchs blossom into a genial smile: family life! Simple joys! The only true ones! Worth more than the stage! And Nunkie talked and talked: the Parisienne, a perpetual scandal! And wait a bit: what was that he heard at an agent’s the other day? Yes, the daughter of his old friend Martello, Ave Maria her name was, had left her brother, and run away from Mexico with a man! Tut, tut, the things one saw nowadays!

Pa hardly listened to the old crock, preferred to dream of New York and the success his Lily would achieve there! And Lily, sitting close by, listened with all her ears, puckered her little forehead: love, love.... And Ave Maria, who had run away with a man.... Why with a man? And she squeezed up against Thea, the Grace who was in love ... put question after question.... She talked of her boy-violinist, of Trampy. And they all laughed boisterously, with heads thrown back, full-throated, and Nunkie, very paternally, congratulated Mr. Clifton on his daughter’s niceness.

“For goodness’ sake, don’t go putting it into her head that she’s pretty, the little devil!” protested Ma. “That would be the last straw!”

The arrival in New York was a disappointment to Pa. The authorities insisted on seeing the papers this time. Lily was under age; just as at ’Frisco. What! Why? Because of former scandals, it appeared: Martello and Ave Maria. What had he, a British subject, to do with those Dagoes who spoil the profession? growled Pa. He ended by rebelling against the injustice of it, thought of the Three Graces hard at work rehearsing under Nunkie’s eye, while he, Clifton, had not even the right to set foot on a stage and let Lily practise there. To work, to work, damn it! And he locked her up all day in her room doing her balancings, the boomerang on the front wheel, the standstill on the back-wheel, or the bike upside down, with Lily standing on the pedals, like a convict on the tread-mill. The pack of fools! Because a Dago had whipped his sister, wasn’t a Pa to have the right to bring his own daughter up? To work, to work! And he kept her at it for hours and hours, watched and knit his brows, like a sage pondering for hours over the solution of a problem.

Lily, breathless, would turn a look of entreaty upon her Ma, but Mrs. Clifton, with her nose bent over her work, pretended not to see, obstinately went on cutting out, patching, sewing her tomboy’s bloomers. Lily longed for Trampy....

At night, Pa ran from theater to theater: from Fourteenth Street, where they lodged, to Twenty-third Street; took the elevated to Fifty-eighth Street, to Hundred and-twenty-fifth Street! All theaters at which Lily would have triumphed but for those dirty Dagoes! And the things that were served up to the public, pooh! Clifton laughed with scorn. Troupes of English dancing-girls—the famous Roofers—with movements like stuffed dolls; and cyclists, pooh! Hauptmanns, fat freaks turned out in Berlin: if that was the best they could do, pooh! Oh, if he had only had the right to send his New Zealander on Wheels scooting in among their legs, just to show the public what a star really was! And all the morning he ran about the town talking of “childish tricks—a big girl” to the police and “wonderful tricks—the only girl of her age who can do them” to the agents in the St. James’ Building. Oh, if he could have London! He longed to measure his strength against all those famous names—Marjutti, Laurence, the Pawnees—just to show them his Lily!

And now it was the last stage. All around stretched the dark sea; and the liner sped—thud, thud, thud—through a gloomy set. Three days more and then Liverpool; and London at last! Pa was about to realize his dream. He had signed, at last, for the Castle, in London! It was all right, it was all right! Prospects fine! And Harrasford was on board; it seemed a sign of good luck! He was traveling with his architect. Harrasford, the great English manager—Pa knew them all by name—Harrasford, the man for whom a whole nation of “artistes” toiled and moiled nightly. Pa had caught a glimpse of him.... He would have liked to introduce his Lily to him; no matter, he would know her one day, when she was starring in his halls! And on the Bill and Boom Tour! And elsewhere! She would soon be famous.

Ma, who remained lying in her bunk sucking lemons, would have liked to have her Lily by her, within call, to keep her mother company, that great big girl spoiled by her Pa, even when she was not performing, as in New York; ... a new cloak and boots and gewgaws ... a couple of fools together, that’s what Ma called them! And she needed watching, that tomboy, who would break her leg one of these days, tumbling up and down the companion-way. But Lily preferred to enjoy herself and expended on running about the energies which she no longer had to devote to her practising. Her accumulated weariness disappeared under the influence of the sleep and the good meals, which she had not the boredom of having to get ready, as in Fourteenth Street, where Lily, big girl that she was, had to help her Ma.

She flitted all over the deck, munching candies, showed everybody her new boots and her red cloak, held her head high, was very proud of being looked at. Lily dreamed of the Three Graces; of the boy-violinist; of Trampy. She made conquest upon conquest, down to the electrician of the ship, quite a young lad, who looked as cold as ice.

She sometimes stopped at his door, watched him handling levers, pressing buttons. It was like the switchboard of a theater. She pointed to this and to that. The lad smiled, told the New Zealander on Wheels all about his little world....

As for Lily, she was going to star in London, where her Pa would cover her with diamonds! And she went on to tell him stories, like a little school-girl who has read a book or two: India, two eyes glittering in the dark, gee! And elephants she had known, little birds which she had kept in a cage in Natal, and kangaroos. The lion, who stands up on his hind legs when he’s angry; and the tiger, who lies down flat. And parrots. And starry nights in Africa: stars “that big.” And storms: waves “miles high!” And successes at Gangpur; and in Chicago, where she shared a dressing-room with three girls who, when they were undressed, were all over muscles, just like men. She liked the bike well enough, but those falls: oh, damn it!

“That little monkey has seen everything in her time,” thought Jimmy, the electrician.

And he mused upon the numberless things which she had seen, the countries, the cities, and all that she would yet see, in her life as a wandering star, while he would remain walled up in his cabin, with his nose to the switchboard.

And the steamer sped—thud, thud, thud—over the dark sea, where the noise of the waves sounded like the roar of multitudes of men. Huge clouds in the east were tinged with red, as though London were about to loom above the horizon in all its glory, filling the vast expanse with its rumors and its lights....

CURTAIN RISES

I

“Lily ... who’s Lily? A New Zealander: really? Ah well, we will look into the matter; it will be settled later on ...”

Clifton, when he returned home that evening, gnawed his mustache and clenched his fists with rage. Ah, he would not soon forget his arrival in London! To get there and be chucked! Was that what he had come from New York for? To see Lily’s place at the Castle filled by another troupe of the Hauptmanns—the Hauptmanns again, those fat freaks!—and nothing to be said or done?

“Engagement not valid. Ought at least to have waited for the London agency’s signed contract before leaving!”

Intent upon his vexations of the moment, he described his day to Mrs. Clifton. What had staggered him, done for him, was his visit to the agent, where they hadn’t seemed to know Lily!

He had rushed at once to others, just to show them who Miss Lily was! But he got the same reply wherever he went:

“Lily? Who’s Lily? A Maori? Let’s see the photograph.”

And would Mrs. Clifton ever believe, asked the indignant Pa, what they said when they handed him back the photograph? Yes, to him, the father, to his face, they said:

“She’s too thin, that Lily of yours!” “If that’s the way they welcome British subjects returning to the mother-country, it’s jolly encouraging, on my word it is!” concluded Clifton.

Ma, among the open boxes, listened and said nothing; she was exasperated. Their entry into the metropolis struck her, too, as anything but triumphal. For all her dislike of those breakneck trades, for all her contempt for the bike, she displayed even more anxiety than Pa. With those fat freaks at the Castle and if engagements continued scarce, how would they manage, later on, lost in that huge London, with no money, and a child to feed? Her vanity was wounded as well. She had dreamed of dazzling her sister-in-law, making them all burst with jealousy over the splendid engagement at the Castle; and now everything was slipping from their hands, on the very day of their arrival, and there was nothing for them but to sit at home and keep quiet.

But Pa, the next day, tore through London like one possessed, grinding his teeth and clenching his fists, railing at everybody, himself included. He thought of Lily, who had lost a week on the voyage and who was now messing about in the house, instead of practising her bike. This idea pursued him, clung to him; but his perseverance was indomitable, his courage ready to face anything or anybody. Lily should perform at the Castle! She had come to perform there and perform there she should! There were more visits to the agents, to this one and that one, to one and all, indefatigable visits. Clifton insisted on his Lily’s merits, pulled out his pocket-book, bursting with press-cuttings, offered to prove his statements. The agent, on his side, had made inquiries. Lily was very clever for her age: a little thin, it was true, but very graceful; and the New Zealander on Wheels ought to get on. Clifton would work up her turn, no doubt. And, at last, Pa obtained a promise in writing—and signed—of an engagement in eight months’ time ... at the Castle, damn it!

An engagement in eight months was better than nothing; but what to do in the meanwhile? It wasn’t the money question that bothered him; Pa had money; but Lily worried him: he wanted work for Lily, bike all the time and hard at it. Now, London was closed to him; he couldn’t let her perform in London before appearing at the Castle; that was in the contract; and there was nothing for the provinces.

His tenacity continued to do him good service. He got a few offers, in the London suburbs; that could do him no harm, he knew, though his Lily did appear at Dulwich, Deptford or West Ham: who would think of going there to discover that shrimp?... damn their impudence! And meantime the shrimp would work and her day would come, you pack of fat freaks, you!

Pa, on the whole, was satisfied. To show Lily, that was all he asked for! He was quieter, now that she could practise. And Lily, also, was delighted and relieved. At first it was jolly, doing nothing; but to be always at home with Ma had its drawbacks; only the other day, because she had asked for a tam-o’-shanter with a feather in it, like those she saw the little girls wear in the street, she had nearly had a box on the ear, the extravagant little beast, who would bring them all to the workhouse!

Better biking with Pa, from morning till night, and only coming home after the show. Besides, away from the work, Pa was nice to her: a packet of sweets here, a bunch of violets there; and then there were the train journeys out of London and back, over the roofs: all those little yellow houses, with white curtains, and those little back yards, no bigger than that—real dolls’ houses, all alike—and such lots of little chimneys, such lots and lots of little chimneys; and those gorgeous posters: Hippodrome, Olympia, Bovril, mustard, elephants, the Hauptmanns. Pa wouldn’t look at them, those fat freaks; but, oh, if he had them here—and a whip—just for five minutes ... and the chance of saying a word or two! To think that they were working at the Castle, while he was puffing out to the suburbs! And he racked his brain, as he traveled over the town—that town which he had to conquer and which was veiled from him between-whiles by the curtain of posters in the railway-stations, on the hoardings, everywhere—again, again; and imperial troupes and royal troupes, endless troupes, arrays of pink tights, lines of legs uplifted amid a flight of scarlet skirts, alternating with Sunlight and Van Houten and national and colonial troupes, loud as a trumpet-blare and with nothing behind them, he dared say....

Those “troupes,” those “families”—he turned it all over in his mind—yes, they judged talent by weight; the public wanted a lot for its money: well, why shouldn’t he have a troupe? Why not? Lily—he had noticed it in the few shows she had given—Lily didn’t cut much of a figure in London: five stone of flesh and bones, a mite, a minnow, a nothing. Well, if Lily wasn’t enough by herself, he’d give them more: a whole troupe, if need be! Why, he’d set about it at once!

With his customary determination, yielding to a fixed idea, he devoted himself to it. And, in the halls, at the agents’, in the bars, at the Internationale Artisten-Klause in Lisle Street, that universal meeting-place, Pa, ever on the watch, strove to make people talk, listened with all his ears, took notes. It was very difficult to get at the real facts; one had to ferret them out; the owners of the troupes jealously concealed their methods, endeavored to put you off, talked of apprentices at five or six shillings a day, plus food and expenses. Pa saw through these tricks and, to arrive at the truth, discounted the six shillings down to sixpence. Lily, her Pa’s own daughter, easily obtained information from the apprentices themselves which she afterward repeated to him. He studied The Era, the paper of the Profession, got the names by heart: the managers, the “Pas”, the “bosses”, the “profs.” He got acquainted with some of them personally. Old Martello, for instance, the father of Ave Maria and the “Bambinis.” Martello could have given Pa hints; but he no longer interested himself in anything except his Bambinis, whom the poor man, grown calm with age and overwork, was now spoiling. The rest left him indifferent; he hardly listened, spoke in short sentences, like a man too old to care:

“Train apprentices? What’s the good? Run a troupe? Pooh, madness!”

Pa thought this exclusive admiration very touching, but it wasn’t what he wanted and, madness or not, damn it, he was resolved to carry out his idea to the end!

There were imperial and royal troupes, “Risleys,” carpet acrobats, pyramids of tumblers, some of them undergoing an apprenticeship of cuffs and thumps. Pa was not interested in these methods, did not approve of them; he had never knocked Lily about, never let her fall on purpose—“Have I, Lily?”—whereas in the imperial and royal they sent the apprentice sprawling on his back, just to teach him, when he started wrong.

Still, all these were boys; and it was the little girls that interested him, for he meant to have only girls among his apprentices. The rest wasn’t his damned business; but the different troupes of Roofer girls, for instance, affected him directly: where did old Roofer fish those girls out? That’s what Pa wanted to know. He had even, in order to visit the school, pretended to bring Lily as a pupil. He had seen the place in Broad Street, where they turned out “sisters” by the gross; had watched the squads in knickerbockers, scattered over the immense room, like recruits drilling in a barrack-yard: groups engaged in club-swinging, juggling, clog-dancing, all together, a tangle of different movements timed “one, two, three!” Roofer chose among the heap, sorted out the sizes, called this lot the Merry Wives, that lot the Crazy Things, christened them after an insect or a flower, packed them up in lots of ten or twelve girls, with snub-noses or Greek profiles, as preferred, despatched them, carriage-paid, C. O. D., with words, music and muslin skirts complete, and received every day a detailed account of his Honeysuckles and Bees, scattered all over the world, from the Klondike to Calcutta.

This superlative organization produced upon Pa the effect of a state affair; it was something beyond him, above him; it interested him especially from the recruiting point of view; and what stimulated him above all was the troupes of trick cyclists. He had seen plenty of them in America, but then, wholly occupied as he was with his Lily, they did not interest him, whereas now he was seeking to fathom their lives, so that he might know. Some of them, who went cheap, slept three in a bed, niggers and whites all mixed; others, who were well paid, lived easily and comfortably and put themselves forward with less work and for more money than Lily, Lily who possessed artistic talent, and who had toiled harder than all the rest of them put together! Patience, his turn would come ... when she was a bit less thin. And he would have the troupe of troupes, he’d show them, jolly soon!

Mrs. Clifton was terrified at her husband’s boldness, but dared not protest; however, she observed that it was a big undertaking.

“We shall have five apprentices,” interrupted Clifton, “six including Lily. We must find lodgings.”

“But, dear...!”

“Don’t you think...?”

“Yes, dear.”

As for the apprentices, he would see to that to-morrow. Ma suggested that her sister-in-law’s daughter might do, but Pa wouldn’t have relatives at any price—blubbering for a smacking bestowed upon their daughters—he knew all about them, thank you. Let such sheep bleat elsewhere. No, give him strangers. He could be freer with them and get as many as he wished. An advertisement in The Daily Mail—“Wanted, young girls for trick cycling,” followed by the address—fetched them the same day. The pavement before the house was blocked with white aprons, sailor-hats and tam-o’-shanters. There were consumptive-looking girls, long hanks of girls, chunky girls, all crowding outside the door, until the landlady drove them away with her broom and threatened to do as much for Pa and Ma if all the street-arabs of London were to go on soiling her nice white steps.

Pa, for that matter, found nothing in the bunch, not one in twenty that was any good; or else they made exhorbitant demands—two shillings a day those guttersnipes expected—as though shillings were to be had for the asking! But why look so far? There were girls, sometimes, at the back entrances of the theaters: stage-struck kids who devoured Lily with their eyes and looked at Pa as though to say, “Take me, take me!” That’s what he wanted, damn it, girls who had the business in their blood and who wouldn’t go whining over a professional slap or two, which he dared say he’d have to distribute to make up for lost time.

“TAKE ME, TAKE ME!”

The first girl whom he engaged he had already seen gazing ecstatically at Lily, as they left the theater, far away down the Mile End Road, and he saw her again, one morning, in front of his house in the very heart of London! He could not believe his eyes. She must have followed his scent, slept on the threshold like a lost dog. Her Pa? Gone away. Her Ma? Dead. Her name? Maud. Her age? Didn’t know. Born somewhere in the immensity of Whitechapel, towheaded, round-faced. Nothing to eat for two days. She’d do! He would go to the police-court, get the license later; meantime, he netted her and that was one!

As regards the others, he had to make a selection. He chose them by preference in families which were overstocked with brats, so that one more or less, in the heap, made no difference. He got one this way; that made two! Next, a “local girl,” seized with ambition, came and offered herself. Three! He found two others: a little Beak Street shop-girl and a Shoreditch Jewess. That made five. It did not take him long to judge the girls. He gave them a few days’ trial before signing a contract; and what an anxiety for them, Mr. Clifton’s final decision! If one trembled too much, was caught holding Pa’s shoulder for no reason, for fear of falling, or blubbered because of a scratch on the skin, her fate was settled.

“Pack up, my lady,” Pa would say quite calmly.

There was no getting out of it: off she had to go, before dinner, and home she went, through the gloomy streets, after a brief glimpse of paradise.

He had to replace some of them: they were slack; or else, independent at times, they looked at him for the least push, as if they would fly at his throat. He asked himself whether he wouldn’t be compelled to get some over from Germany or else to pick up on the highroads, in the Gipsies’ caravans, children with skins tanned like donkeys’, a troupe of blackamoors on wheels, who, perched up on the handle-bars of the bikes, would have looked like cockroaches mounted as brooches, damn it!

However, by dint of selection, he ended by having only good ones left; and then he made a contract in due form with the parents for three years, or even five, such was his faith in the future. A few pence a week to the family, a few pence to the baggage herself: he to dress, lodge and board her and engage to make an artiste of her. Everything was provided for: during the training, just the board and the rest; when she began to work, a shilling a day in addition. Over and above, she would be looked after by a lady, Mrs. Clifton. Was that all right? Both parties signed; the girl was an artiste, became a New Zealander.

They brought their little wardrobe: one spare chemise, on the average, one pair of stockings; their only protection against the weather was the dress they had on, a factory-girl’s ulster and a tam-o’-shanter. Later on, when performing, they would be entitled to a celluloid collar, satinette knickers and pumps.

Pa, though at first he took one extra room and then two in the same house and though he also made his apprentices sleep three in a bed, Pa soon found himself cramped. It would have been nice to have a little house somewhere in good air, next door to the country. But there was one thing which made Pa decide to remain in the West Central district. Jimmy, the young electrician with whom Lily used to chat on shipboard, had given up traveling. Harrasford and his architect had noticed him on board and the great man had engaged him to manage the electric installation of his theaters. Jimmy had taken possession of a lodging in Gresse Street, Tottenham Court Road. He slept over the shop, which, for the rest, served him rather as a place in which to keep the tools for his outside work. Pa often ran upon him in the neighborhood and had a nodding acquaintance with him which turned out to be useful, as Jimmy, being in Harrasford’s employment, was more or less at home in the variety-theaters and nothing was easier than for him to obtain leave for Clifton to practise on the stage. This it was that persuaded Clifton to settle in the west end. In any case, it would be cheaper than dragging the six girls and himself daily from one end of London to the other. The house in which he took up his quarters, in Rathbone Place, quite close to Jimmy, was small and dark, but not dear. The upper story was occupied by people who were out all day and the basement served as a lumber room. They would feel quite at home here ... with no old sheep to listen at the keyholes.

TOM, THE SHOEBLACK

And then he would have slept in the parks, if necessary, anywhere, rather than waste more precious time! His Lily, his troupe, before everything. What he had to do was to get a move on. He went so far as to engage a boy, a shoeblack at the corner of Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road for the rest of the time, to attend to the bikes and the girls at practice.

Pa gave his mind to the gear, the expenses, the general business. Ma saw to good order, to domestic discipline. It was no longer the quiet life of a Pa and Ma trotting round the world in the company of their one and only bread-winning star. As for Lily, the daughter of the boss and manager, she owed a good example to one and all. In the morning, with Maud, she went down to the kitchen, lit the stove, made the coffee. Next, she carried up the breakfast to Pa and Ma in bed, then distributed their rations to the famished girls. And off they went, all six of them, with Pa following at their heels.

The stage-door gave the apprentices a thrill the first day they entered. The passage, gently sloping, tall and wide, because of the scenery, smelt of elephants and cheap scent. It was blocked with properties, with queer-shaped cases, flat as a slab or round as a ball. There were long, narrow boxes, for the horizontal bars; sometimes a row of wicker coffins, with a ventriloquist’s figures inside. And labels from everywhere—Melbourne, Chicago, Berlin, Lisbon—and “Rlys.” and “S. S.” that made you feel in the hold of a liner, off to foreign ports.

At the end, beyond an iron door, was the stage, very dark, pricked here and there with electric lamps. There were things that glittered with spangles. To the girls it seemed like the Kingdom of Puss-in-Boots or Blue-Beard; but to Lily it was an old story. She was a little like the school-girl in the good days long past, for whom the master was always waiting, cane in hand. The rest she didn’t care about.

Nevertheless, huge as the stage was, there was not always room to practise: ponies or elephants would monopolize it for hours at a time. Or else, when Roofer was supplying a ballet, he took up the whole stage, all day long: Lily, secretly delighted, sat down modestly in a corner, so as to be in no one’s way. Roofer made his collection of calves and ankles flutter about, followed the new dances with an expert eye, throwing his hat back on his head, mopping his forehead, grumbling, finding fault:

“Don’t eat chocolates while you’re dancing, you, Eva! Hi, you, Gwendolen!”

And, to emphasize his remarks, he threw his felt hat at them.

“Silly old ass!” thought Pa, with a grin. “To think you can train artistes like that. You’ll use up fifty hats, you old fool, while my belt remains as good as new!”

For that was now Pa’s system, the strap—“à la Mexico!”—not that he used it often nor very hard; but he terrorized Lily with it and the other girls were afraid of it, too, though they never got more than the threat, seeing that they were apprentices, who might have run away if he had struck out.

All this did not prevent them from working with a will—trot, trot, trot—when there was no Roofer on the stage and no elephants or ponies: yoop, on to the bikes and the fun began! The sight of Pa training his star made the apprentices shake in their knickers. Lily was to do everything and to do it very well: Pa ran after her, in a never-ending circle, and, from the corner of his eye, watched Tom, who held the girls and made them work, upon his instructions; and when they got off their bikes to wipe their foreheads:

“Bravo, Miss Woolly-legs!” said Pa sarcastically. “Tired, eh? Dead, eh? Suppose you tried to get up again ... and be quick about it! And as for you, Tom, don’t let them fall, or I’ll catch you one on the side of the head!”

For Pa already knew by experience that their little ladyships shirked work; that they shook with fright; that they lost confidence after a bad fall; and that then it was finished, nothing to be done with them: they’d let themselves be killed sooner.

Maud, for instance, that Jonah, ever after one day she had seen her blood flow, trembled before her bike like a sheep that scents the slaughter-house. It was no use Pa’s threatening her with his belt: she wouldn’t let herself go, on the contrary, held on to everything, no matter what, for fear of falling. He ought to have sent her away long ago; he would pack her off that very night ... and made no bones about telling her so, that Jonah!

Then Pa, giving Lily a rest, occupied himself with the girls: taught them the principle of the standstill, of side-riding, of the “swan,” of the “frog.” And,—quickly!—the indefatigable Pa went back to Lily, made her begin a trick ten times, twenty times over, so great was his rage at the lost time, the elephants, the Hauptmanns, Roofer. He pulled faces, clenched his fists:

“Why don’t you do as I say when I tell you, damn it!”

“But, Pa, I can’t!” protested Lily.

“You can, if you like,” said Pa, exasperated this time and unbuckling his belt.

Crash! A heap behind him, a medley of limbs and steel fittings! Maud, who was still trying, on her bike, startled by Pa’s threatening movement, had fallen flat down.

“Maud again! That damned Jonah!” cried Pa, going up to her. “Well, Miss Woolly-legs, do you mean to stay there all night?”

But she did not move; and, when they had disentangled her from the bike, Pa saw an eye that was quite red and a little stream of blood trickling down her cheek.

“Let’s look!” said Pa anxiously.

A spoke sprung from the felly had scratched her eye.

It was a serious accident. Sprained wrists, barked shins didn’t count; but a spoke in the eye.... Luckily, Maud had no relations; there was no claim to be feared: not a vestige of old sheep on the mother’s side. Pa said all this to himself as he ran to the chemist, and Lily consoled poor Maud as best she could, said that, after all, it was part of the game: she’d know better another time, eh? She’d be a great star yet, eh, Maud?

The poor maimed thing lifted her face to Lily, stammered through her tears that it was nothing ... all right again now ... Pa’s fault, with his belt.

“For a little thing like that!” said Lily, laughing. “Fancy falling from your bike for that! Why, I’d rather have twenty ‘contracts on the back’ than lose an eye.”

For that was what it amounted to. Pa realized it, after he had dressed the wound. Clifton’s mind was not at ease: a glass eye was not a very difficult matter ... but, who knows, some callous person might inform Harrasford, who stood no nonsense on that subject. Fortunately the artistes present had not paid much attention ... had hardly noticed anything, in the dim light of the stage....

And soon after the New Zealanders were walking back to Rathbone place with Maud in their midst, her head a roll of bandages, leaning on Lily’s arm.

It was a pathetic home-coming. Ma had told them what would happen! That would teach them to take in vagabonds from the streets. Mrs. Clifton thought that, in a respectable house....

“That’ll do,” said Pa, dropping into the easy-chair in the dining-room. “I’m worn out. If you’d been like me, Mrs. Clifton, running after those Woolly-legs all the morning”—and he pointed to the apprentices standing round the table—“gee, you wouldn’t talk so much! I’ll take Maud to the hospital this afternoon; it’s only a trifle. Is dinner ready?”

“Yes, dear.”

“Come along, then, all of you Woolly-legs,” said Pa jovially.

Pa was sorry for poor Maud, as a rule, but he felt a need to shed a little gaiety, to extenuate the accident as far as possible, to turn it into a joke, so as to prevent his girls from being panic-stricken. He talked of heads smashed to a jelly, of legs in smithereens, of a bicyclist who had had not one, but both eyes caught in the chain. As for himself, when he was a small boy—that was in the time when they brought up artistes, real ones, mind you; not, as nowadays, on sugar and sweets; no, real ones, on the whip and the stick, damn it!—why, the accidents which he’d seen! Yes, he himself, to go no farther, he could have shown them, here, there, there, here, damn it, all over his body, scars deep enough to put your finger in!

“Eh? Frightens you, does it? Never fear,” added Pa, in a good-humored voice, “that sort of thing won’t happen to any of you Woolley-legs; a good Irish stew is better than a kick of the pedal, eh?”

And Pa, after a last cup of strong tea, dismissed the girls, lit his pipe, threw himself into the easy-chair, with his legs long out in front of him; but soon:

“Well, Maud, what is it? What are you crying for now? I tell you, I’ll buy you a glass one,” said Pa, at the sight of Maud, who blubbered silently and sat glued to her chair instead of getting up to go.

Poor lost dog! Clifton, at the theater, had threatened to send her away. She knew what that meant: leaving Miss Lily, losing those good meals....

Maud faltered something about packing up; pain in her eye; not her fault.

“So what you want is to stay with us?” asked Pa.

“Oh!” gasped Maud.

“Well, then, stay! But no more bike; you shall be Lily’s lady’s maid,” said Pa, puffing at his pipe.

It went down so well, as an effort of dry humor, that Ma could not help laughing. But Mr. Clifton was talking seriously. Then Ma, amazed, protested: what, a servant in her house! A lady’s maid for Lily! He would end by giving her the moon! And what would Lily do all day? She’d sit twiddling her thumbs! Had Mr. Clifton thought of that?

Yes, Mr. Clifton had thought of it. He was too tired to explain his reasons; but take it from him, it was best like that. Pa, in fact, feared lest that smashed eye might prove a worry to him: the papers weren’t in order. He had made no declaration to the police; there was the Workmen’s Compensation Act.... Much better keep Maud safe in the house, for a while ...

“Lily won’t sit twiddling her thumbs for all that, will you, Lily?” continued Pa, smiling to his star.

A touch of the brush and comb, a stroll through the streets with the girls, by leave of Pa, who wished Lily to take the air, then home again, more housework.... The apprentices, who did not yet perform in public, were sent to bed early, while Lily, escorted by Pa, went off to East, West, South or North London. An hour to get there; then undress, dress, appear on the stage under Pa’s eye, undress and dress again; another hour to get back; a morsel of cold Irish stew, a cup of tea; and drowsily up to her room and bed....

CHAPTER II

“Lily!”

Ma’s voice woke her with a start in the morning. Lily dressed quickly and quickly ran down-stairs to the kitchen, where Maud had gone before her; and it was the same thing every day, except on tour, when discipline was less strict. It had gone on for months and months, for two years, ever since they came to London. Pa, with his iron will, had overcome everything. He felt at home in the old country, at last. After his engagements in the London suburbs, he had obtained a triumph at the Castle, a Bill and Boom tour of forty weeks, a season at Blackpool, the Harrasford tour now, successes everywhere. Before his boyish little girls, before his own particular troupe, the fat freaks trembled in their knickers! For Clifton, the new-comer, but yesterday unknown, it was an unhoped-for success and fame and fortune.

Ma nearly always remained in London with Maud. Lily was not big enough yet to need the supervision of a Ma. Therefore, on tour,—when she was not practising with her Pa,—Lily did the catering, saw to the porridge and the Irish stew; Pa was not hard to please. Provided Lily was “great” on the stage, he asked for nothing more. Dishes burned for want of butter, salad mixed in the wash-hand basin: he swallowed everything with an appetite, ate standing, with his plate on the trunk, or else seated with the girls round a little table hardly large enough for three. This Bohemian life pleased him. He loved youth, gaiety and good fellowship. He was fond of a laugh, took Lily on his knee after dinner, played with her, praised her home-made cakes, her tough chops, and then began talking bike to Lily ... who hated bikes, and who got something different from a hat flung at her, when she missed a trick.

No matter, hard as it was, she preferred touring to staying in London. The work was the same, but, at least, it was a change. She was spoiled by every one, down to that landlady who cried when she left.... After all there were many worse off than she, everlastingly set about by “profs,” confined to their rooms all day to practise their balancing; she had had a taste of it in New York; no, thank you! She preferred having good times with the girls, practical jokes, boxing-matches even, scrimmages, pillow-fights. In the boarding-houses, they flirted with the boys; they kept pet pigeons, white mice, a lizard; they exchanged secrets, stories of every country, professionals all! Sometimes, they consoled one another; promised to send kisses—x x x—on post-cards. And then there were new faces, always; a week in each town, no longer; a real life of adventure from one end of England to the other. Now it wasn’t like that in London; she felt less free there. Ma was particular and hard to please; there were no pillow-fights, no romps; Ma hated those ways. The stage, yes, she put up with that because it was Lily’s profession; but one came in contact with all sorts there; and that little devil of a Lily was wicked enough already! It took all the home influence to thwart the bad examples which she received outside; and it was Ma’s business to see to it.

The house in Rathbone Place had been smartened up. There was a dining-room which was used only for meals and which never had a bed put into it at night. There were things on what-nots: little photograph-frames, loose photographs, lucky charms, china cups; all shining and bright, thanks to the adjunction of a lady’s maid, as Pa called Maud, in his funny way. At first, after the accident, it was terrible. Her natural awkwardness was made worse by a glass eye; she could not tell one side from the other, spilt the tea on the cloth, broke the crockery. Maud did the heavy work, washed and scrubbed all day long. When the girls were in London, she went with them to the theater, as dresser. Maud stood in the wings and admired the New Zealanders whirling about in the light. She stretched out her face in ecstasy toward Lily: that Lily who had traveled everywhere, who was born so far away, in a land full of monkeys and parrots. She followed Lily to her dressing-room, trotted after her like a dog, worshiped her open-mouthed.

Lily had ripened out, was becoming more beautiful, more of a woman daily, despite the fact that her Pa still treated her like a kid. She no longer looked at things from the point of view of the child-girl who had been delighted with a satin hair-ribbon in India; now her pride was not appeased with such trifles. Ma, according to Lily, seemed ashamed of her, dressed her badly: an odd skirt here, an odd frock there, of a cheap make. That was not what Lily wanted. She was an artiste: she wanted a hat with big feathers and a gown with gold braid to it; but, when she showed Ma a dress which she liked in the shop windows, Ma would exclaim:

“What do you want with that? My poor Lily, you must be mad! That’s for rich little girls, girls who have time to be pretty; it wouldn’t suit you at all. Why, if we listened to you, we’d soon be in the workhouse!”

P.T. CLIFTON, MANAGER

Ma always said no, pretending that she had no money; whereas Lily knew to the contrary. She knew that the troupe earned a great deal and that the troupe was herself. The other day, at the theater, she had heard her aunt, who felt bitter that Mr. Clifton had not accepted her daughter Daisy—who could have learned the business and later on have starred by herself!—she had heard that “old sheep” say, speaking of her:

“What a shame to dress her like that! A girl who brings them in capital to invest!”

So Pa was investing capital. She didn’t exactly know what investing capital meant; no doubt it meant making a lot of money. She asked for none of it! Children belong to their parents! But she would have liked to be treated with more consideration, to be spoiled; to get presents, nice things. She had plenty from her Pa, true enough: presents, my! But they were cheap gifts, for all that.... She was always having promises made her of more important things; and the promises were never kept: that big gold watch, for instance. She had a thirsting for luxury. It seemed to her that she was being treated like a performing dog, not a bit better. Ma, without exactly knowing, but with an infallible instinct, saw all this budding under that obstinate brow. Mr. Clifton might see nothing in it; but it was not so easy to take in a mother! Was there a love affair beneath it all, Ma asked herself. No, not yet; it might come later on, as with that apprentice who had run away, or that other one whom she had had to send packing for being too free with men. But Lily would not leave them like that.

She did not let her go out. “Glass-eye Maud” ran the errands and Lily stayed at home, like a good little girl of whom her mother wished to make a lady. When she did happen to go out, she must not be long, or else it was, “Where have you been? Tell me at once!” At the theater, when Pa lost his temper, she could reckon on a mighty fillip, and then it was over: Pa was sorry, rather than otherwise. Ma, on the contrary, would nag for hours; muttered inarticulate phrases about “devil,” “wild bull,” and “taming her;” there was no end to it. Lily champed the bit! A star, indeed! Was that being a star? She thought differently! She had seen others drive up to the theater in their motors, accompanied by gentlemen carrying flowers, like that famous “M’dlle” at the Palace. Yes, those were stars: they dined at the Horse Shoe and did not spend their time in useless housework. Oh, she was quite sick and tired of that life! She’d had enough of it. Meanwhile, the days passed and the weeks and it was always the same thing: housework and stage-work; work, work, work....

It was late that morning; they were not practising. Pa had run down on the previous day to see a troupe of cyclists, the famous Pawnees, who were back from the Continent, on their way to New York, and performing that week at the Brighton Hippodrome. Lily was in her room later than usual, as Ma was not awake. Maud had gone down to the kitchen. The apprentices were getting up, joking with one another, like tom-boys used to sharing the same bed at home, the same room at the theater, to dressing, undressing, splashing about naked in the same bath-tub.

“Get up, Lily,” said one of them, laughing and raising her sturdy little hand. “Get up, or....”

“No,” said Lily, “let me alone, I’m dead.”

As it happened, on the day before there had been a general tumble, six in a row, on the back-wheel; one of them, losing her balance, had dragged the others with her and the lot had fallen flat in a tangle of steel and flesh. Bucking Horse, Old Jigger, Street Donkey—the nicknames they gave their bikes—had kicked them to the raw. They showed one another the bruises on their limbs: “Oh, don’t it hurt, just!” “What about mine?” “Look here!” like young recruits bragging of their wounds after the skirmish.

“Lily!”

“Yes, Ma!”

And Lily washed quickly, put on her frock and ran down-stairs to prepare the coffee, but her Ma stopped her on her way.

“Lily, you light the fire.”

“What about Maud?” said Lily. “Why can’t Maud do it?”

“You young impudence,” ... said Ma; “Maud has gone to Jimmy’s to take the bike which Tom couldn’t get to him yesterday; he was shut. It’s the bike you spoiled, you little bedlamite!”

Lily had to laugh at the thought of Maud struggling with Old Jigger: Maud, who couldn’t lead the machine by the handle-bar, or even walk beside it, without barking her shins.

“Why!” cried Lily. “She’ll explain everything wrong to Jimmy, and the bike will be no use!”

“Well, then, go yourself,” said Ma, after a pause. “And mind you, come back quickly; don’t go loitering in the street; and don’t stay long with that drunkard.”

“Yes, Ma.”

Gresse Street, where Jimmy lived, was quite as dreary as Rathbone Place: here and there, a few posters on the walls; some low-fronted shops, displaying sweets and candies, or else a dazzling case of oranges on the muddy pavement; alleys, stables, cab-yards....

It was here that Jimmy had his workshop, or rather his tool-store, for he did not do much work there. The time which his occupation at the theater left him he devoted to improving himself. Electricity and its manifold uses held his interest. There was no doubt that, had he given all his time to it, he would have become very clever, for he had an inventor’s brain and, moreover, possessed an astonishing manual skill for altering and perfecting things. He worked in copper and steel, was glad to make and repair bikes for a few customers, the New Zealanders, among others. While working, he brewed all manner of plans in his brain. They all revealed a practical intelligence. Saddle-supports which reduced the shaking on a bike, improved carriage-springs and so on; and, on the stage, inventions to dispense with men in the flies and wings; to work everything—scenery, curtain, lime-light—by means of the switchboard; and ever so many other things....

Since joining the theater, Jimmy had naturally undergone the influence of the stage. It had affected his ideas, with all its new-fangled “turns,” which owed their success to a maximum of daring—or bluff—coupled with a minimum of scientific knowledge: illusionists basing their effects upon the reflections of invisible mirrors and the cunning use of combined lights; “looping the loop,” “circles of death,” in which sheer weight did the cyclist’s work for him, his arrival at a given point depending upon his accelerated and calculated speed. From seeing so many of this sort scouring the world—erstwhile acrobats, former laboratory-students, who now, venturing all and risking all, topped the bills at the music-halls—Jimmy, greatly interested in this scientific side, had himself made researches in that direction. Engineering and other journals had printed some of his schemes, including that of an apparatus based upon the notion of exterior ballistics: the resistance of the air proportional to the square of the velocity and, according to this velocity, the exact proportion of the angle of incidence to the angle of projection. Theoretically, it was perfect; in reality there might be some unexpected hitch. It was a question for the venturesome performer, who allowed himself to be projected by a series of powerful springs, to fall accurately from pedestal to pedestal, preserving a faultless balance; in a word, to risk his life six times in as many seconds. The daring of a Laurence and the agility of a Lily combined would not have been enough for the task; and so Jimmy had prudently contented himself with pinning his diagrams on the walls of the workshop and dismissing the idea from his mind. Not that he was afraid, rather not; but simply because it appeared impossible to him.

Other plans had interested him, besides; flying machines, for instance, etc. He was a real enthusiast about flying machines! One day, perhaps, when he knew more ... to say nothing of the theater, which did not leave him much leisure; yet he managed, somehow, for he took but little sleep and the rest of the time he devoted to study.

This was the Jimmy of whom Ma made a bugbear to Lily—in Lily’s interest—for he was one of the few men whom she saw often; and you can never tell ... with those devils of the stage....

Meanwhile, Lily, as soon as she had turned the corner of the street, drew herself up and, with a light step, went down Percy Street and Tottenham Court Road, instead of keeping straight on. It took her only five minutes longer and it suggested luxury, fine shops, handsome furniture, patent-leather shoes. She adored shopping, even if it was only with the eyes, through the plate-glass windows.

She loved to pass in front of the Horse Shoe, where stars lived, real ones, not performing dogs. And then, round a piece of waste land, there was a hoarding covered with advertisements that interested her: the Hippodrome, the Kingdom, the Castle were displayed between extract of beef and mustard; and there were always new programs; always new names; and elephants, horses, lions; and tights....

Lily looked at this for a few seconds. And, suddenly, she felt a thrill; on a scarlet poster, dazzling as the sun, she read:

“Great success! Trampy Wheel-Pad!! At the Kingdom!!!” Trampy in London!

Not that Lily was astonished: it seemed to her quite simple that he should be there, as simple as for her to be in Chicago, Bombay or Capetown; people do sometimes meet on tour, it all depends: you can be separated for years and then perform at the same theater for months. No, she was not in the least astonished: a little excited, that was all, without exactly knowing why....

“But, if I should meet him,” she thought, “what shall I say to him? What will he say to me? Will he think me grown prettier or uglier?”

Lily came to herself again and continued on her errand; crossed Tottenham Court Road, plunged into a labyrinth of blocked alleys, of dark courts, and, suddenly, was at Jimmy’s.

Lily did not like him much; she considered him good-looking, for a man, but too shy. He never paid her a compliment. He seemed to think her ugly, whereas many others admired her and made no bones about telling her so, especially since the last few months; but he was ashamed of himself, no doubt: a drunkard, as Ma said.

Poor Lily had no luck. She would have been so happy to be courted, to relieve her boredom. But nothing disgusted her so much as drink. And yet it didn’t show in Jimmy. He always walked straight, never fell, like that head-balancer who, the other night, had come tumbling down from his perch. Besides, that one had an excuse; he drank because he was crossed in love; to forget, they said. Lily forgave everything the moment there was love in it; but an icicle like Jimmy, who loved nobody and who drank for the sake of drinking ... ugh!

Jimmy was at work when Lily entered. The small, dark shop, crammed with things in steel, with loose wheels, queer-shaped objects, reminded Lily of a property store, only it was dirtier. There were tools everywhere; designs for machinery pinned on the walls; it was all very ugly.

And Jimmy’s greeting was none too engaging either. A curt smile—“Glad to see you, Miss Lily”—and, as for the bike, he hadn’t understood a word of what the one-eyed creature who had just left had tried to say.

“I thought as much,” said Lily, laughing. “That’s why I came.”

And, in a few words, she explained what she wanted. First, repair the twisted frame; next, a slight alteration for a new trick; a step here, another there.

“Always fresh tricks, Lily?”

“Always, Jimmy. No end of bruises, I tell you!”

“It’s part of the game,” said Jimmy.

“I should like to see you try it,” retorted Lily contemptuously, “squeezing through the frame while it’s going, with that pedal barking your back,” and she rubbed herself as she spoke. “Only yesterday I got a kick; gee! It’s like those new tricks in which I don’t feel safe: riding with one foot on the saddle and the other on the bar and playing a banjo; it makes me shiver as I go past the footlights; and Pa watching me, you know; and, if I lose my balance, I get black and blue somewhere.”

“Pooh!” said Jimmy. “One can’t expect a white skin at the game.”

Lily didn’t care for this. If she couldn’t be courted, at least she liked to be pitied: that flattered her pride.... It was all very well for Pa to say, “It’s part of the game, my little lady.” But that josser of a Jimmy, talking like that at his ease!

“I’m glad I’m not your daughter!” she said. “My! You’d be harder than Pa.”

“Your Pa is hard, sometimes; but he’s very fond of you, for all that.”

“Of course,” said Lily, “he wouldn’t like me to break my neck; I bring him in too much for that, eh?”

“Come,” interrupted Jimmy, “don’t talk nonsense. It’s not right to speak as you’re doing. You’ll be sorry for it, I’m sure. Tell me, rather: you were saying you wanted a step here, another there; do you mean like this?”

And he rummaged among his tools, looked for loose pieces, showed them to Lily, while thinking of other things:

“Look here,” he went on, “do you think you’re the only one that’s got to work? Suppose you were shut up all day in a factory? Have you ever been to a factory? Do you know the life of a metal-buffer girl at Sheffield, standing in front of her wheel, from morning till night, and work, work, work?”

“But I’m not a work-girl, you great silly! You know I’m an artiste! And, now, shall I tell you what I think of you, Jimmy?” said Lily, pouting. “You’re a bad man, that’s what you are!”

And thereupon she put out her tongue, turned her back on him and began to look at the walls, the diagrams, the drawings, an illustration out of Engineering.

There was a pause.

Jimmy, while handling the bike, gazed at Lily. There was no sentimentality about Jimmy, but his lively imagination made him see things through and through; and, whatever he might be, Jimmy was not bad. That little Lily: to think that, among all the girls of her own age, she was the only one to do that trick! He pitied her and all child prodigies. To his mind, there was something unsportsmanlike about it; something like a race won by a one-year-old, with jockey, whip and spurs. He did not believe all he heard, of course. He knew, he lived with them, he was one of them. He knew the peculiar mania of the music-hall, the instinctive lie, uttered as if to discourage competition by giving it a fright at the start. To listen to them, it meant the horsewhip, the belt, all day long; going “through the mill,” all the time. Among the people with the painted faces, it was a shot at martyrdom, a chance for professional boasting. The most commonplace, the most coddled lives were made more interesting by means of imaginary wounds and scars, like those explorers, in the books, who cross Africa without food or drink, barefooted, with a crocodile snapping at their heels.

He took good care not to exaggerate. Life in the halls was no worse than anywhere else, thank God! It had its good side and its bad side and its professional risks. The “pros,” taking them all round, were as good as the “jossers.” He wanted to be just. He had seen many who were very happy; one could get anything done by firm kindness. He could also understand, in the terrible struggle for bread, that a man went on toiling hard in the trade in which he was born. A pro could not make a blue-stocking of his daughter; some were born duchesses, on satin; others artistes on the boards. One trade was as good as another; but dangerous practicings, bruised flesh, seamed skins: no, he didn’t approve of that. He had seen the Laurences, mad with ambition, beginning all over again, in spite of falls calculated to stave in the stage; had seen girls who “do knots” lying in the dressing-rooms, gasping, exhausted. Even when professional vanity alone prompted such excesses, Jimmy protested within himself; and then there were so many abuses.... Besides, the stage so often spoiled a woman: every branch of the stage, from the highest to the lowest. All that coaxing familiarity! What he said was, if Lily had been his daughter, she should not be on the stage; but there she was and he couldn’t help it; and, as it was her natural place to be there, he would not be guilty of the meanness of disgusting a poor girl with the profession which she had been at pains to learn. He preferred to let her call him “a bad man.” And that required a certain courage; for it was no longer a child talking to him, but an exquisitely pretty girl. Jimmy could not believe his eyes. What a change! Was it possible? Having been away from London, on Harrasford’s service, he had not seen her for many months, except the day before, just in time to shake hands behind the scenes, in the dusk; but here, in his shop, he hardly recognized her, he could not exactly say why. One thing was certain: he had left her a child and he now found her a beautiful girl.

“Tush!” he said to himself. “She’s a child for all that. Only, if she keeps on like this, what a handsome woman she will be!”

That familiarity on the stage: he reproached himself for thinking of it; it seemed to him an insult to Lily. And he began to talk to her of different things, kindly and pleasantly, changing from subject to subject. He explained his drawings on the wall, his ideas: exterior ballistics; the resistance of the air; risking his life six times in as many seconds....

“He’s drunk,” thought Lily.

And, to stop this flow of words, as though talking to herself, Lily said she did not complain; no, she would quite like the bike, if she hadn’t got to practise so hard; she only complained that they didn’t treat her “fair” at home:

“And look how I’m dressed! I’ve had the same toque two years. And what do you think of this frock? The material cost four-three a yard. I look like a tenter in it.”

Jimmy did not share Lily’s indignation. He thought her neatly and nicely dressed, in spite of her performing-dog’s toque, as she said. It all suited her so well. But, on examining that clear-cut little face, lifted toward him with a rebellious air, he felt that the fatigue, even the blows didn’t count; that the hardest thing, for Lily, was to be “badly dressed;” that she would never swallow that.

“But, look here,” said Jimmy, “all this isn’t worth making a fuss for; you get cross about nothing at all; when you came, you were all smiles; and now ...”

“That’s because,” Lily began, with a sly laugh—oh, she was exasperated with Jimmy’s coldness! She’d show him, the icicle, and have a bit of fun with him—“on my way here, Jimmy, I met ... now you won’t give me away, Jimmy? ... I met my ... sweetheart.”

“A sweetheart? You? Lily?”

“Yes, yes, yes,” said Lily, nodding her head and looking at him archly, for she could see, by Jimmy’s expression, that he was caught.

“And your father and mother know nothing about it?” insisted Jimmy, nonplussed.

“No, no; it doesn’t concern them: at my age, a girl earns a living for her Pa and Ma; I have as much right to a sweetheart as any one else, I suppose.”

And, greatly amused, she fixed Jimmy with her mocking eyes.

Jimmy stared at her in amazement.

Then she understood that it was not a thing to joke about and that what she had just said was terrible. And, suddenly:

“No, it’s not true, Jimmy! I was only laughing! Oh, Jimmy, you’re going to give me away!” cried Lily, squeezing Jimmy’s arm with a convulsive little hand. “Oh, Jimmy, don’t tell Ma, please, please, Jimmy!”

And there was something so sincere in her voice that Jimmy saw that she was speaking the truth, that it was only the jest of a flapper used to the manners of the stage.

“No,” he said briskly, “I shan’t tell; don’t be afraid, Lily; only ...”

“Ah, that’s nice of you,” said Lily, much relieved. “Marriage! If you only knew! And what would become of the troupe? I shall never marry. I think....”

“Still, some day, it’s bound to come,” said Jimmy, interrupting her. “You won’t spend all your life on a bike. You are sure to marry some day....”

“Don’t talk to me about marriage! No, not that. Gee!”

“But—”

“Love stories! With men! I! And you believed it,” said Lily, drawing back her shoulder and raising her hand. “I could smack you, you great silly!” And, all of a sudden, “I must go,” she cried, “I’ve stayed too long; Ma will be waiting for me with her broom!”

And Lily rushed outside, without giving Jimmy time to answer. He could just see her turn the corner of the street.

Jimmy went back to his work, silently, wrapped up in his thoughts. That nice little Lily! She could be easy in her mind. No, he would never be a cause of worry to her....

Meanwhile, Lily ran home as fast as she could and, on entering, saw that it was no use; her Ma was waiting for her, furious.

“Where have you been?”

“Why, I’ve come straight from Jimmy’s, Ma.”

“That’s a lie! The butcher’s boy, who has just left, saw you outside the Horse Shoe. Who were you waiting for?”

“I wasn’t waiting for any one!” cried Lily, her eyes blazing with anger.

“You devil!” said Ma, looking round for a stick, an umbrella....

And, when she saw nothing within reach, her anger increased. Then she stiffened her arm and made for Lily, who sprang behind the table....

But Ma, tripping on the carpet, fell at full length, dragging down with her the table-cloth and two cups that were on it.

“My two china cups! You viper!” she yelled.

At that moment, the door opened; Clifton entered. He seemed preoccupied; looked at his watch:

“Nine o’clock. We ought to be at the theater! Where are the girls? And what ... what’s all this?” he asked, on seeing the disorder, Mrs. Clifton scrambling up from the floor, Lily scowling in a corner.

Ma grunted an explanation. Two cups broken, Lily a gadabout who would bring them to the grave with shame!

“But, Pa, I was only looking at the posters.”

“Posters?” repeated Clifton. “Which posters? What’s all this nonsense?”

And, when Ma had told him, interrupted by despairing “But, Pas,” and “No, Pas,” from Lily, he very calmly asked, was he going to have peace in his own house, or was he not? All this fuss about two broken cups; beating Lily for nothing!

Never, in any circumstances, would Clifton have snubbed Mrs. Clifton like this before Lily. He would have waited until she had gone. But to come upon all this rot when there were so many serious things to discuss! The sisters Pawnee whom he had seen last night: Polly, Edith, Lillian. Yes, that Lillian, damn it, a winged rose! And the things they did on their bike without seeming to touch it!

“My poor Lily,” Pa went on, going up to his daughter and stroking her hair. “I’m not saying it to vex you; but you’re not in it with the Pawnees! Come on! Beg your Ma’s pardon; and let’s be off to the theater. I’m in form this morning. We shall have a great practice.”

CHAPTER III

A few minutes later, Pa was hustling his herd before him:

“Quicker, my Woolly-legs! No time to lose!”

He thought of the tricks which he had jotted down the evening before in his note-book. Lily would learn them quick enough: she was as clever as the Pawnees, when all was said, only less graceful. She had the balancing power all right; but grace, grace, damn it, to do a thing like that as though it were child’s play: that’s what she hadn’t got! You saw the effort. And the apprentices had no precision in their groupings. Now the fat freaks had. To combine German discipline with English gracefulness, that was the question; to have the troupe of troupes; to have a Lily who would be worth more by herself than Polly, Edith and Lillian put together. But that meant work and going through the mill! This last made Pa think of the old sheep and their bleatings. He gave a nervous little laugh and his hand had a convulsive movement, as though to strangle those pests.

Pa had recovered his good humor and was grinning by the time they reached the theater. Merely by his way of taking the key of his dressing-room from the stage-doorkeeper one recognized the owner of a troupe, the man with a “permanent address,” the manager, the boss, the prof, the Pa. On entering the lobby, he, with his six girls, took possession of the theater. He nodded to the staff; growled a “Lazybones!” as the Roofers passed out two by two, always two by two: a fair one with made-up eyes, a dark one with kiss-me-quick lips; sniffed their cheap perfumes amid the tarry smell of the packages marked Sidney, New York, Paris....

“QUICKER, MY WOOLLY-LEGS!”

On reaching the stage, Pa first gave a glance to make sure that there were no elephants, or ponies, or Merry Wives, that they could practise at their ease, without having to burrow in a corner, like rats. The stage was almost empty. After the live street, it was a pallid light, in which ghosts moved. The New Zealanders, it need not be said, no longer fancied themselves in the cavern of Bluebeard or Puss-in-Boots; they had seen too many stages during the past two years. The slant of the floor, the roughness or smoothness of the boards was what interested them, for fear of falls and barked shins. Pa hurried them to their dressing-room to get into their knickers, while he took off his jacket and turned up his trousers, so as to run better. No more time to lose, with his Lily! He was still in a fever from seeing those Pawnees last night. As for the stage and the boards, a lot he cared, slanting or straight, rough or smooth! To work! to work! And he got ready the bikes, which Tom had brought down, without a glance around him.

To a poet, to a painter, that glance would have been worth the taking. The iron curtain was raised, the house loomed vaguely; the balconies, covered with cloth, stood out like cliffs; the pit, with its seats under a gray drugget, because of the dust, lifted toward the stage its rows of motionless waves. The stage itself was strange: a sort of huge cave, with strips of scenery hanging like stalactites; near the wall, a metal pedestal, with a red velvet platform, looked like a blood-stained scaffold; one suspected the presence of properties: wheels, iron implements, tangled ropes, like so many instruments of torture. At the New Zealanders’ feet, half-naked bodies, suggesting the souls of the damned, were tumbling, practising falls; a woman in a white wrap hovered round; and, near the proscenium, a pack of trained seals, lying in their moist boxes, raised their frightened heads, as who should say corpses cast up on the shores of hell by the silent waves of the pit.

But three slender forms, spinning on their trapeze almost above Pa’s head, sprang lightly to the stage, near an old fellow in spectacles.

“Why, Mr. Fuchs and the Three Graces! Here’s a surprise!” said Pa, who had not seen them since the New York Olympians. “When did you get here? Yesterday?”

There was a general shaking of hands. Fuchs congratulated Pa on his success, said he had followed his progress in the papers. Pa owned a troupe now and had a name.

“So this is your Lily,” said Fuchs, tapping her on the cheek as she joined the group. “A real lady! And good, eh?”

The Three Graces also congratulated Pa ... kissed Lily:

“How sweet you’ve grown! Why, Lily, how pretty you are!”

Lily was so surprised, so pleased; and her Pa was very proud. He thanked Mr. Fuchs, complimented the Three Graces in his turn, to their delight:

“What arms! What muscles!” Then, “Excuse us, eh? Lily must get ready. We shall meet again presently, after practice.”

The Graces had gone back to it already. Pa tested the bikes; took a hurried turn at the pumps; and, when the apprentices and Lily returned:

“Yoop, up with you!”

The round began. Tom looked to the girls, constantly; ran after them; kept an eye on their falls. Pa, constantly, hung on to Lily. Nothing else existed when he was handling his star. His wish to do well, his love of art for art’s sake worked him up, stimulated him, made him hit out but not in anger: it was the spark of enthusiasm, of which the apprentices caught the reflection.

“Hi, you there, Mary! I’ll pull your ear! Birdie, if I take my belt to you!”

But his Lily above all; his Lily! his seven stone of flesh and bones! Pa was an artiste; he had thought of a thousand things since his trip to Brighton. New and astounding tricks; and easy at that ... if Lily only would! Oh, he’d soon make her graceful! But, for that, she would have to obey, to let go the handle-bar at a sign, instead of endlessly seeking her balance. For instance, Pa held her rein to prevent falls—there was nothing spiteful about Pa, he never let you fall on purpose—and Lily—“One! Two!—Count together, Lily!”—put one foot on the saddle, the other on the handle-bar: “Three!” That’s where she had to let go her hands, smartly, and stand erect as she rode. The machine slipped under her. Lily, shaking with fear, stooped to seize the handle-bar.

“Stand up, Lily! Show pluck, Lily!” said Pa.

Lily, accustomed to obeying blindly, drew herself up again. But, sometimes, crash! The whole came tumbling down. Notwithstanding the rein, Lily fell to the ground; and the bike, in addition, caught her a kick in passing.

“Nothing broken? A tiny scratch; it’s nothing. Tom, the white stuff!”

Tom left his Woolley-legs, brought a bottle of embrocation; a few drops of that on the skin, a bit of sticking-plaster; there, that was all right.

“You see, Lily, you’re not dead yet! Nothing to be frightened about. Come, try again!”

The great thing was to hustle. Pa displayed so much enthusiasm—“Those Pawnees, damn it!”—that Lily, for all her fears, was smitten in her turn, ended by becoming exasperated against those Pawnees, felt a longing to wring their necks!

She obeyed her Pa like an automaton, in her anxiety to do well.

“More graceful! That’s it! Not so stiff!” said Pa.

“But, Pa, I can’t!” protested Lily, soaked in perspiration.

“But you’ve got to, my little lady!”

They passed from one practice to another, almost without resting. Lily was worn out, Pa seemed indefatigable.

Sometimes, practising was marked by interruptions. Maud’s gouged eye remained the typical accident. Another time, a girl lay fainting for ten minutes after falling on her head; or else the stage was invaded by a ballet. There was no end to it. On this particular day, they had a visit from Harrasford himself, Harrasford the chief and master, who came along with Jimmy; a visit which was the more sensational for being quite rare. Pa, now that he was the owner of a troupe and sure of his position, would not have been sorry to be noticed by Harrasford, just to impress Mr. Fuchs and show him what they thought of Lily in London.

“Do your best, my Lily,” said Pa. “He’s watching us.”

But bill-toppers, New Zealanders though they might be, were nobodies to “him;” Lily—one of a thousand, among all those of both sexes who performed in his theaters. There might have been ten cycling rhinoceroses on the boards; he might have seen Lily swallow her bike, and change into a butterfly: he would have paid no attention. Those were details that concerned the stage-manager. He hurried across the stage to the fly-ladder, made Jimmy explain things, took notes as he went, wanted to see for himself, pointed to the first batten, to the electric switches.

“How much for so many lamps? And that? What does that come to, roughly?”

And he stopped for a second in his course, his ear stretched toward Jimmy to catch his answer flying; then both of them went on again, quickly.

Jimmy was now following Harrasford along the bridges, with the whole stage below him, in the ruddy semi-darkness; at one side, the half-naked bodies fell with a heavy thud after their somersaults; or else it was the sharp sound of a bike skidding; and distant voices rose up to him:

“But, Pa, I can’t!”

“But you’ve got to, my little lady!”

“Poor little thing!” thought Jimmy, disappearing in the flies, toward the side-rails, at Harrasford’s heels. And Lily went on riding and Pa running after her, round and round and round. She seemed to be fleeing madly, pursued by a devil. Suddenly, Pa stopped, having exhausted his strength, and Lily fell rather than sat upon a hamper by the wall.

“Here, Lily, put this over your shoulders,” said Pa, giving her his jacket. “You’ll catch cold, darling. Oof, let’s take breath a bit!”

But a glad voice burst through the silence: it came from the Three Graces, who always worked on stubbornly, even during the absence of Nunkie, who had been out for a smoke. Thea greeted his return with a cry of triumph:

“Ten pullings-up with one arm, Nunkie! Ten without stopping!”

“Well done! I’m very pleased with you,” said Mr. Fuchs; and he crowned their excitement by declaring that, as a reward, he would that very day buy Thea the sleeve-links which he had promised her ever since last year.

“Dear Nunkie!”

A spasm of vanity made them rush back to their work; and soon the three of them formed, in mid-air, an involved group of ropes, bars and hardened limbs.

Lily, in spite of her fatigue, was amused at those mad girls. To take all that trouble for the sake of a pair of sleeve-links! Her shoulders shook with nervous laughter, in spite of Pa’s presence. He quieted her with a gesture, scolded her under his breath, kindly:

“Shut up, Lily!... Aren’t you ashamed of yourself, Lily?”

And he looked at Nunkie with an air of saying:

“You old rogue!”

As for the Three Graces, it was a pleasure to watch them: their pluck was infectious.

“To work!” said Pa. “Let’s have a somersault, eh?”

And, at a sign from him, two of the apprentices, assisted by Tom, fixed a little steel-legged table in the middle of the stage, bore down upon it with all their weight. The bike, set at full speed, stopped short as it struck the table; and Lily, carried on by the impulse, continued her whirl, full on her back, and, carrying the machine with her, came to the ground on the other side of the table and went on riding. But that shook her, in her stomach, her heart, everywhere. Each time, she was nearly succeeding, but it wasn’t quite right.

“I can see,” said Pa, “you want to make me lose my temper!”

“But, Pa, it hurts!”

“Oh, those blasted little brats!” shouted Pa angrily. “Rickety machines, every one of them: no more energy than a sparrow and lazy into the bargain!”

Then, suddenly, Lily succeeded magnificently.

“You see you can do it when you like, you obstinate little wretch!” said Pa. “Now try not to miss it again, next time! That will do for to-day,” he added, seeing Lily out of breath. “Go and get dressed, my Lily.”

The Three Graces were finishing also. Good old Nunkie wiped the perspiration from their foreheads with his big checked handkerchief, invited Clifton to come with Lily and choose the sleeve-links and suggested that they could have a chat at the restaurant.

“Would you like to, Lily?” asked Pa.

“Yes, Pa.”

“Very well, then.”

The girls would go back alone. Tom, having carried up the bikes, was told to run home and fetch Miss Lily’s new dress and boots, Mrs. Clifton’s brooch and big hat. And, half an hour later, Lily, who had crawled up to her dressing-room stiff-legged, exhausted, feeling sixty, came tripping down the stairs all freshly dressed, wearing the great hat of her mother, and a pair of creaking boots. She soon recovered when she was dressed out. She drew up her dainty figure, so as to be level with the imposing group of Pa, Nunkie and the Three Graces.

Lily, very proud of herself, spun out the pleasure of drawing on her gloves to go shopping with those big girls, who had had love stories. Then they discussed what restaurant.... Nunkie, long ago—“Zæo’s year at the Aquarium:—that doesn’t make me any younger, eh?”—had discovered a little German place....

Lily would have liked to propose the Horse Shoe, to walk in there with her big hat and creaking boots as though the place belonged to her. But they decided upon a “Lyons” in Wardour Street. At the table, it was touching to watch the attentions which the Three Graces lavished upon their Nunkie, the respect they showed him. Pa was not sorry that Lily should see that, but Lily took no notice at all: she just removed her gloves, held her knife and fork with the tips of her fingers, let Pa help her, thanked him with a pretty “’K you.” From the corner of her eye, she watched other groups, to pick up good manners. She seemed to have frequented smart restaurants all her life: beside her, Nunkie and the Three Graces, who cut their bread with their knives and made a noise when eating, looked like a family of small farmers on a visit to London town. Pa was greatly amused, enjoyed his daughter’s aristocratic ways, admired her refined air. When they went out, in obedience to a look from Lily, he bought her a bunch of violets, which he pinned to her bodice himself:

“Well, Lily, are you happy? Do you love your Pa? Tell me you love your Pa,” and he looked at her gently as if in regret at having been so harsh at practice.

“It’s for your good, my Lily, you’ll thank me one of these days. I’ll give you lovely dresses, I’ll cover you with diamonds!”

“Why not to-day?” asked Lily, with a comic pout.

Then both of them laughed and Lily forgot everything, even the blow with the fist, at being treated so like a lady.

“If I was married,” she said to the Three Graces, “I should like to go shopping all day long and have fine dresses, a gold watch and no bike!”

The Three Graces, with their heroic strength, had no thought of such luxuries. Thea told Lily of her successes in America:

“Five pullings-up with one arm at Boston. Six at ’Frisco. Eight when we got back to New York! Eight, Lily! And to-day....”

“And your lover in America, tell me about your lover ...” interrupted Lily, pressing Thea’s arm.

“Talk low,” said Thea, looking back at Nunkie, who was walking behind with Pa. “Nunkie is furious with him. If he ever meets him! He says it’s disgraceful, not writing to me, after asking leave to. It’s an insult that ought to disgust me with men for good and all, Nunkie says.”

She told Lily everything, her unhappiness at first, for she loved him. Lily, with her little nose in the air, sniffed those love stories, gulped them down, so to speak, with an instinctive movement of the lips.

“And did you write to him?”

“I wrote to him, but he never answered. Oh, if Nunkie knew! He forbids us to write, because writing, you know, Lily, puts out the muscles of the arms, interferes with the pullings-up, Nunkie says....”

NUNKIE

But they turned into Regent Street: to Lily it was the entrance to the paradise of shops. The huge curve displayed its window fronts; and ladies and gentlemen and little girls: not dressed in their Ma’s leavings, these last, but a superior branch of mankind, similar to that in the front boxes.

Nunkie blinked his eyes behind his spectacles: all this luxury terrified him; he had almost forgotten the sleeve-links, talking with Clifton of people they had known:

“The boy-violinist? Not up to much. Ave Maria? A disgrace: married, deserted, I don’t know what. Poland, the Parisienne? A scandal!” As for him, he had but one wish, after getting his girls married: to retire to his home, grow his roses, look after his pigeons; simple joys, the only ones....

“Look, Thea!” Lily broke in, pointing through the plate-glass to a heap of imitation jewelry, lying, among watches, on red and black velvet.

“Come on!” said Mr. Fuchs.

But, when Thea saw the prices—ten shillings, twelve shilling’s—she refused to go in, saying she could have it just as pretty in Wardour Street and ever so much cheaper.

“Just as you please, my darling. I’ll do whatever you like. I don’t know anything about it!”

Clifton felt something rise in revolt within him, he was unable to resist it; a case of showing that old curmudgeon what a Pa was and that his little girl, too, did pullings-up in her way and that he knew how to treat her as a Pa should:

“Your watch, Lily,” he said, opening the door and pushing her in. “Now’s the chance to get it. Come, choose for yourself!”

“Oh, Pa! Do you really mean it, Pa?” she said incredulously.

“Now look here, I’ll smack you, Lily! When your Pa tells you a thing!”

Lily seemed a princess, with her way of saying, “’K you,” of touching the ornaments, the watches, like a little creature thirsting for luxury and yielding to her inclination at the first opportunity. There was so great a look of happiness in her eyes; and Clifton was so proud of his Lily, that he offered her a chain as well, to go with the watch. Lily refused at first, for form’s sake, and then took courage—like a poor little martyr who did not like to disoblige her Pa—and chose a very pretty watch-chain, to the great wonderment of the Three Graces and of Nunkie, who thought, as they left the shop, that the children of to-day ... upon his word ... the parents of to-day ... it was all very different in his time....

Clifton laughed to himself at that old curmudgeon as he left him to go home, with his star. Lily hung heavily on her father’s arm, passed the draper’s shops with a serious air.

“No, another time!” said Pa, who felt what she was after.

And he hurried his daughter off, for he might have yielded, she was so nice.

Lily set her watch in Piccadilly, as they passed; then at the Café de l’Europe, by the big clock at the back; and again, twenty steps farther, at the bar of the Crown. Lily looked at the time and Pa showed his Lily off. He was proud to be seen with her in the neighborhood of Lisle Street, where everybody knew him. True, he seemed to have the name of being hard with Lily. But, come, was he hard? Did she look like a martyr? It was preposterous, all those stories. And he redoubled his attentions to his daughter, who talked a heap of nonsense, asked funny questions:

“Why should writing a letter interfere with the trapeze, when a girl has arms harder than a horse’s hocks?”

“What? What?” asked Pa, taken aback, and when he understood, he would have held his sides for laughing, if he had been at home:

“Oh, the old rogue!” he said admiringly. “He loves his dear girls, does Nunkie!”

He was still laughing when they reached Tottenham Court Road; and, as they passed the Horse Shoe, a voice, which Lily seemed to remember, called to them from behind:

“Hullo, Clifton!”

Pa turned his head in surprise:

“Hullo, Trampy!”

For he recognized him at once, though he was much changed. Besides, he knew him to be in London. But it was a prosperous and gorgeous Trampy, quite unlike the old days; and forthwith Trampy explained: a champagne supper last night, just come from the bar; glass of Vichy water, you know. Huge success in London. Girls, by Jove! And then, pretending not to know Lily:

“I congratulate you, Clifton; what a dear little wife!”

Pa, greatly amused, protested: not his wife, no, his Lily! Then Trampy went into ecstasies: how pretty she had grown, one of the handsomest girls in London, sure! And in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland! And in all the British dominions beyond the seas, by Jove! And what a change since Mexico! She was a woman now, a peach, a regular peach!

Lily seemed fascinated by Trampy, examined him, his shiny hat, his gold rings, his patent-leather shoes. A swell, Trampy, a toff, a gentleman like those in the front boxes.

“Yes, Lily,” said Trampy, guessing her thoughts, “yes, that’s the way it is; one’s not always hard up. I’ve struck oil since leaving America. Heaps of money! Eh, what!” he continued, offering Clifton an expensive cigar. “You wouldn’t have thought it, would you, when you left me stranded in Mexico? That was a nice dirty trick you played me! Come and have a drain, old man, to drink Miss Lily’s health and show there’s no ill feeling!”

“No, another time,” said Clifton, vexed at this recollection of Mexico, now that he was the established owner of a troupe, a man whose word was as good as gold. “I’m in a hurry to get home: a very nice home, Trampy, a real good one. Come and see us some day. Au revoir.”

But Trampy was so pleased at meeting them, he never stopped shaking them by the hand. Lily had to accept a bag of cakes to share with the troupe when they had their tea. Then, at last:

“Au revoir, old man; au revoir, my love, my little peach!”

Lily’s head was quite turned by this jolly day: it made her forget six months of worries. To think that, for some people, every day was like that! However, she mustn’t complain: a watch, a chain as well, the somersault pulled off, compliments from Trampy....

Ma’s reception of them, when they got home, was icy. Pa looked a little like a school-boy caught at fault; and Lily, none too easy in her mind, put the cakes on the sideboard, and hastened to take off her mother’s big hat. Ma grumbled, under her breath: it was nothing but going out, now. Old Cinderella could stay at home, bareheaded, while my lady went shopping! A fine thing, my word, for a great sensible girl to abuse her Pa’s weakness! There was nothing to do at home, of course! Well, if it pleased Mr. Clifton, she had no more to say!... And, while she grumbled, Ma prepared the tea and shot glances at Lily, a Lily with red cheeks and bright eyes and looking so pretty that Ma, full of mixed pride and anxiety, felt sudden longings to eat her up with kisses, “ugly” that she was!

Pa did his best to calm Mrs. Clifton, tried to amuse her with the story of the sleeve-links, of the horse’s hocks, and Pa laughed, my!

“He laughs best who laughs last,” growled Ma.

“Just think, Ma,” said Lily, taking courage from Pa’s merriment. “That old rogue forbids his daughter to write, he pretends that....”

“And quite right too!” said Ma. “What do girls want with writing? And who do you mean? What old rogue? You don’t mean Mr. Fuchs, I suppose?”

“Why, yes, Ma, old Fuchs.”

“Old Fuchs! You chit, to talk like that of respectable people! Go to your room, impudence! Dry bread for you!”

“But, Ma...!” said Lily rebelliously.

“That’s what comes of it,” said Mrs. Clifton, addressing her husband, “when a mother no longer has the right to correct her daughter.”

And she pointed to Lily, who persisted in remaining, who was even beginning an explanation:

“But, Pa ... but....”

“Obey your mother first,” said Clifton.

“Yes, Pa.”

And Lily went out, very anxious at the turn which things had taken.

Clifton realized that he had perhaps been wrong that morning to blame Mrs. Clifton in Lily’s presence. He was wrong also to laugh at old Fuchs before Lily. But, all the same, that old rogue ... and they had believed it, those Graces! That wouldn’t go down with Lily!

“It’s an example you ought to follow, instead of laughing at it, Mr. Clifton!”

“Upon my word, I’m very proud of my Lily; she works well, she really does,” said Pa, stretching himself in the easy-chair. “I’m pleased with her; you know as well as I do, a girl is not a boy. She can do with a little spoiling. And only just now I made Lily a present of a gold watch and chain.”

“Then I give up!” said Ma, in a voice of exasperation. “Then I give up! Why should I take all this trouble bringing up your daughter? A little spendthrift who will bring us all to the workhouse! And a good thing when she does!”

But Pa wanted peace in his own house. That was enough of it! Peace was what he wanted, damn it, and not a monkey-and-parrot life!

And, jumping up from his chair, he opened the door and shouted up the staircase:

“Come down, my Lily! Your Ma says you may! The cakes are on the table.”

CHAPTER IV

Pa would have covered his Lily with diamonds, if he had the money ... and if Ma had allowed it! But, on this special point, she ventured to oppose him. She had been Lily’s age herself, had Ma, and she enlarged upon the necessity of keeping a tight rein on Lily.

Ma enumerated the fugitives: Ave Maria, and this one, and that one, and ever so many others who had bolted; and troupes ruined by the flight,—or the marriage,—of the star....

“Lily has changed a good deal lately, dear, are you sure she hasn’t a man in her mind?”

“There we are again!” said Pa. “Always the same old story! But just tell me, who does she see? Who does she know? Jimmy? You don’t mean him, I suppose? Very well! Trampy, then? A married man, divorced, married again, goodness knows what! and then ... and then ... Oh, well, let’s have peace at home, at any rate! Damn it, Lily may be a bit of a flirt: why shouldn’t she be, a pretty girl like that? Beauty, in the profession, is half the battle.”

And Pa entered into details, comforted Ma with good news: a fresh contract signed with Bill and Boom, after that, the Harrasford tour: big salaries now....

“No, dear, this isn’t the time to worry Lily about trifles. And I don’t want her to be bothered with useless work, either.”

“Call home work useless! A woman’s greatest charm!” exclaimed Ma.

Lily was a subject of friendly discussion to them. Both adored her equally: both were proud of her at heart. For Lily was growing very beautiful; everybody said so at the theater: the stage-manager; the acting manager, down to Jimmy, who stammered things. It was an endless series of compliments; Harrasford’s friend, the architect, who had not seen her for a long time, fell into raptures when he met her on the stage:

“Magneeficent!” he exclaimed, in his Franco-Belgian accent. “How old is she: sixteen? seventeen?”

“Fourteen,” said Ma, with a mincing air, for to that damned “parley-voo” she was as anxious to make Lily out a child now, in order to keep a firmer hold of her, as she had been to increase her age in America, so as to make her work.

“What, fourteen, Ma!” protested Lily.

“Yes, fourteen, of course; do you think you know better than your mother, you little fool? Can’t you see everybody’s laughing at you?”

Ma dreaded those irresponsible jossers, who filled Lily’s head with a pack of false notions, and kept a good watch, in her growing anxiety.

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!

That took down Lily’s cheek a bit; but her luxurious ideas returned, nevertheless. For instance, from admiring the Three Graces or the Gilson girl, who looked like Venuses in their silk tights and whose entrance on the stage caused every opera-glass to glint upon them, the wish to appear in tights began to grow on Lily. Oh, not the plain tights of living statues; no, but with flowers and leaves embroidered here and there and jet braid laced about the right arm. She was tired of bloomers and told Pa so, straight out, when the apprentices had left the room and Pa, stretched in his easy-chair, seemed in a good temper. Pa thought this notion about tights, silly:

“They’re very nice, those bloomers; those little shirts. Ask your mother.”

“Oh, yes,” said Ma sarcastically, “but bloomers are made at home, in the afternoon; you have to stitch them yourself, dear. Tights, which you buy ready-made and which cost just ten times as much and last only half as long, are much more convenient, aren’t they, Lily? To say nothing of the absurdity of an ugly girl like you showing yourself in tights!”

“And the troupe,” said Pa. “What would the troupe look like? Might as well not have a troupe; there’d be no one but you!”

“Well, what harm would that do? I am the troupe!” said Lily, tossing her obstinate forehead. “And all the money you give them you could give me!”

“Lily,” said Pa, alarmed, “you deserve to be smacked for that!”

“Oh, Pa, what an idea!” said Lily, who was just arranging her fringe before the glass. “A Pa to beat his Lily for a little thing like that, away from work!” And, darting a bright smile at Pa, “You never would, Pa, would you?” she ventured.

Clifton, taken aback, looked at his Lily, as if to say that she was right, damn it! But Ma, in her fury, cried:

“Wait a bit! You shall see if I would!”

Bang! A box on the ears, followed by an order to go to her room, on dry bread and water, impudence! And practise her banjo till the evening!

The blow itself was nothing, but what an humiliation for Lily, who, only yesterday, had been told that she had the sweetest nose in the world, cheeks to cover with kisses, eyes, lovely eyes: there wasn’t a girl in a hundred with eyes like that, by Jove! And those lovely eyes were only fit to cry with! And those pretty cheeks Ma had covered with smacks! When she thought of it, she felt inclined to kick over the traces. Did they think her such a kid, then, her Pa and Ma? She’d show Ma if she was fourteen! She’d be off like the others. Lily, at this idea, felt her heart come into her mouth: no, no; she would never dare; she never would. She swore it to herself; took the great oath of the stage: three fingers of her right hand uplifted, the left hand on her lucky charm. And yet, one day, she would marry. She didn’t lack chances, if she wanted them. And a gentleman, too! And her Pa and Ma, to disgust her, of course, pretended that he was married! They must take her for an idiot: how could Trampy be married, considering that he had suggested ... suggested different things to her?...

Lily brooded like this, reviewing the tiny events of which her life was made up. Then a gleam of sunshine came to change her thoughts. She amused herself by breathing on the window-pane, making a circle ... wrote a name with her finger and quickly licked it out with her tongue ... and Lily brooded ... brooded....

But Ma’s voice made her jump:

“What are you doing there, you good-for-nothing? I told you to take your banjo!”

“Yes, Ma,” Lily replied mechanically, with her nose glued to the window.

“Do you hear, Mr. Clifton?” said Ma furiously. “That’s the way she obeys!”

Mrs. Clifton had no doubt whatever that there was a man at the bottom of it ... a flirtation ... something or other. It was useless for Ma to provide for everything, to do her best to oppose Mr. Clifton’s weakness. There was Lily now, taking up an independent attitude. She thought herself pretty, no doubt; some booby must have been stuffing her up, making love to her, to laugh at her later on! If she, Mrs. Clifton, had been a man, she would certainly never look at that ill-mannered baggage; but the London jossers liked that brazen type! And to think that time was passing ... passing!... Oh, Ma would have liked to get hold of the man who invented the law about girls coming of age ... and love ... and marriage! A fierce jealousy seized upon her at the thought. Lily would have bouquets, champagne suppers; Lily would be loved by gentlemen! Tell Lily that she was pretty and, in less than six months the little hussy would think herself a fine lady! And, on that day, Mrs. Clifton would wash her hands of her!

These continued attacks ended by shaking Pa. He didn’t quite know what to say; there was a certain amount of truth in it:

“But,” he persisted, “why should she go? She has everything she wants here?”

But he was more and more annoyed; yes, he admitted, he was wrong to laugh at Mr. Fuchs: you must never set children a bad example. And, from that moment, once his attention had been called to the matter, he daily discovered fresh causes for uneasiness: where the devil did she get that love of dress from? And who sent her that bouquet behind the scenes the other night? Why, Lily wanted to have it handed to her across the footlights, like a singer!

And Pa and Ma watched Lily like a bag of money on which one keeps one’s hand, for fear of pickpockets. Ma doubled her precautions.

The gentlemen in the front boxes, especially, alarmed her, even more than the Jim Crows: creatures apart, devilish creatures, the gentlemen in the front boxes! She fancied she saw a reflection of hell in the eye-glass of every one of them. If ever Lily dared to smile to them, she knew what awaited her! Ma would get angry for nothing at all; she even scolded Lily for allowing herself to be approached on the stage by a contributor to The Piccadilly Magazine, which was publishing articles on The Little Favorites of the Public.

“I am sure you only told him a lot of nonsense,” said Ma. “A girl should call her mother in a case like that. What have you to do with the public? Aren’t you ashamed?”

No, Lily was not ashamed. She was exasperated rather. And she had not told the journalist any lies: just the plain truth, in her own little way. Sweat and blood! Broken legs! Broken arms! And here, there, there, all over her body, scars deep enough to put your finger in! That would revenge her a bit for the way in which she was treated. She knew that, when the article appeared, she would catch it at Pa’s hands; but never mind! She had told everything, everything, in revenge; just as she might have flung her bike at their heads in a fit of anger!

CHAPTER V

There had been a terrible scene at home that day. Ma had searched Lily’s trunk and had not, it is true, discovered the love letters which she believed to be hidden there, but she had found a ring! It was Trampy’s ring, which Lily, who usually concealed it about her person, had left by accident in the trunk among her things. Ma’s face was a sight, when she came down to the dining-room. She was so upset that Pa asked her:

“Are you ill, dear?”

Ma, without answering the question, pushed the ring under his nose and screamed that she had told him so:

“An engagement ring, dear; an engagement ring! Perhaps you’ll believe me now!”

Pa and Ma, when they had recovered from their surprise, had time to lay their heads together and replace the ring, pretending to know nothing, to be watching more closely than ever ... and then Pa had gone out; for, if Lily, who was walking with the apprentices, had come home just then, he could not have resisted the temptation to smack her face. It was better to go out and postpone the explanation until later. He had, indeed, resolved never to beat his daughter again ... but still! And he clenched his fists and ground his teeth when he reached the theater.

On the stage, he looked round for Tom, who should have been there to mend a tire. He saw nothing at first: only a few electric lamps studding the darkness; a faint glimmer lighting up a number of properties; farther on, the dull gleam of stacked-up bikes; and, lastly, Tom, with his cap cocked back and trousers turned up, trying—brrr!—to do a clog-dance!

“Bravo, Tom!” shouted Clifton, the moment he saw him. “Just you wait a bit. I’ll teach you to dance: with the clogs on your hands and your head downwards, damn it! Here, take this to go on with!” continued Pa, fetching him a clout on the shoulder. “And get to the bikes and hurry up, or I’ll smash your jaw in!”

Meanwhile, Jimmy had also come, unseen by Pa. And the great batten lit up: the stage came to life again. Right up above, in the galleries from which the ropes were worked, mysterious forms moved to and fro. The iron curtain rose ... there was a clash of orchestra ... Jimmy, with his back against the drop-scene and his face to the stage, gave sharp orders....

Pa watched the scene vaguely from the wings. He gnawed his mustache: the apprentices would be there soon, with his Lily. And he had something to say to the stage-manager; something of a delicate character.

But Clifton was surprised to see Jimmy instead of the usual stage-manager:

“Hullo! So it’s you now,” he couldn’t help saying.

“Why, yes, Mr. Clifton; since this morning. The other chap’s ill, you know. Harrasford asked me to take his place ... for a few days, I suppose ... or perhaps longer. Do you want to speak to me, Mr. Clifton?” added Jimmy, observing Pa’s look of embarrassment. “Just a minute and I am yours.”

Two tall footmen, caparisoned in velvet and gold, disappeared behind the curtain with the number of the next turn. They came back in a few seconds. Jimmy pressed a button. The stage filled with light and noise, the turn marked on the program entered and, suddenly, under the dazzling light, it was a series of somersaults, of flights from shoulder to shoulder, and the muffled fall of feet on the thick carpet.

“There will be eight minutes of this,” said Jimmy, taking out his watch. “What have you to say to me, Mr. Clifton?”

Oh, what he had to say was very simple; he wouldn’t have mentioned it himself, but Mrs. Clifton had asked him to. To cut a long story short, wasn’t it a shame that gentlemen should throw bouquets on the stage when Lily was giving her show? Like last night, for instance: why, it was making game of a child, putting ideas into her head! Lily, of course, paid no attention to it. However, was it or was it not allowed to throw or send bouquets on the stage?

“Why, you know it is!” said Jimmy. “How would you have me prevent it?”

If he could have prevented it, he would. To begin with, Jimmy realized the bothers which it brought down upon Lily. Moreover, Jimmy, who was vaguely uneasy himself, wondered who that ardent admirer could be. Some of Roofer’s girls thought they had recognized Trampy, from the stage, in the front seats. What Jimmy had heard of Trampy did not inspire him with confidence. And Trampy, it appeared, was making love to Lily. Mr. Fuchs had met them at the corner of Oxford Street and Newman Street. The story was quite definite.

Jimmy was astonished at the audacity of a Trampy: what could he say to her? he asked himself, what could he propose to her? Marriage? He was married, they said, in America. To run away with him? His scandalous life, his habit of easy conquest made this very likely. Jimmy had seen plenty of others, big ones who topped the bill and who did not despise a girl’s companionship—on the contrary—and six months later, a year, two years later, left the girl in a hole, stranded, undone; mustard and game for Jim Crow. And he grew more and more anxious on Lily’s behalf: not that Lily would come to that! Yet he had seen plenty of them, since he had frequented the stage, plenty of Lilies who had taken to flight for injuries often less serious than hers. He could have mentioned names: his head was full of those who let their anger, or their folly, get the better of them and escaped at random, and who went back to every-day life—through the door of scandal—sometimes to meet with worse: martyrdom of the heart, base exploitation in the name of love. Oh, he pitied them from the bottom of his soul! No, Lily shouldn’t run away: it was impossible! But what a pity, all the same, that he could think of it! And what chance, what meeting would settle her fate and make her—who could say?—the companion of a loving heart, or a prey to some footy rotter? Oh, how he would have liked to go for Trampy, to break his jaw for him, to teach him to mind his business and leave Lily alone! And what Jimmy wanted to do he was never far from doing! And, then, oh, if he could procure a good position for Clifton, as an equivalent for his star and make Lily love him, marry him: that would be better still!

This idea, perhaps, without his knowing it, dominated his present life, doubled his power of work: to invent something! To get himself talked about! To make money, plenty of money, become somebody! Others before him had risen from nothing. Harrasford, to go no farther ... a chap who had climbed every rung of the ladder: a small music-hall first; then two; then a big one; then two; then ten. And a whole army now toiling and moiling for him every night, for him the chief and master.

“Oh!” thought Jimmy. “If I could only climb the ladder too!”

First of all, he must choose his line, for his efforts to tell. And, since chance had given him a start at the theater, why not go on? Here his scientific luggage would be of use to him. It was only a question of adding pluck to it. He was the man to do so and now more than ever. Things which used to seem impossible to him, such as his invention published in Engineering, appeared quite feasible, now that he had watched Lily do her wonderful feats of balancing on the stage. It was only a question of courage and hard practice. Another line suggested itself: to find capital and start a theater. As regards the stage itself, by this time he understood the management of it from grid to cellar. He seemed to take in at a glance that huge entirety, from the flies with their windlasses, their bridges, the labyrinth of stairs, the maze of passages, down to the dressing-rooms and the painted faces that filled them: here, a Lily; there, a buck nigger; farther on, a living-picture girl. He felt all this rustle round him, carried it all in his head: he knew it all, from the porter’s box at the stage-door to the glittering front of the house, with its palm-trees and its liveried chuckers-out. Jimmy knew what to think of the enchantments of the stage, those luminous visions which the audience admired to the tune of the orchestra: jealousies, vanities, hatreds to knock up against and calm down; recruits to put through their paces; and the whole day of it—and the whole night, too—for a few pounds a week, including the tips received from the artistes, twenty-five to forty shillings a month.

But Jimmy had his idea: he was determined to obtain a thorough grasp of the business; he had already taken possession of the stage-manager’s room and of his desk with the many compartments: photographs, programs, contracts, electric light, staff, scenery. A whole small people depended upon him, and asked his advice, bragged of its successes or told him of its misfortunes. And here again was Clifton continuing his jeremiads: they would drive his daughter silly by making game of her, pretending to be in love with her, at her age! Jimmy listened attentively, with one eye on the stage and the other on his watch:

“Tut!” he said, trying to arrange things. “There’s no great harm in receiving bouquets on the stage. However, as you object, if any more of them come, they shall be handed to you, to dispose of as you please. That’s all that I can do.”

It was gradually filling up behind Clifton and Jimmy; the iron door was constantly slamming upon the passage; knowing-looking Roofer girls passed, two by two, always two by two, joked for a moment with the scene shifters, shook hands here and there, disappeared up the dressing-room staircase. There was life, swarming life, everywhere, in the corners, behind the back-cloth. The New Zealanders arrived, with Lily and her Ma, for Ma never left her now, for fear of the gentlemen who prowled around like famished hyenas: villains who did not hesitate to throw bouquets on the stage to make ugly girls think they were pretty!

Lily seemed sad. She stopped for a moment. A haunting serenade droned across the stage, a Spanish melody sung by soft tremolo voices, with tapping of tambourines. It reminded her of Mexico: everything reminded her of that time now. She compared herself with Ave Maria. Oh, she would have liked to tell the whole world how she was treated, just the plain truth!—in her own little way. But no one cared, not even that rotten josser of a journalist, with his article published in The Piccadilly Magazine. It made her out a spoiled child, who had learned to ride in the country-lanes, with her French governess, and who had surprised her father and mother by coming home one day with her head on the saddle of her bicycle and her feet in the air, thereby causing an unparalleled scandal in that old Yorkshire family. Since then, they had been obliged to yield to her fancies and allow her to go on the stage with her little troupe of friends. Her salary? Ten pounds a night. Her recreation? The banjo....

“Rotten josser of a journalist!” thought Lily.

Nevertheless, she was flattered at heart because of the ten pounds a night and the governess.

But things happened to distract her thoughts: the Three Graces entered in their turn, followed by Nunkie; they stood talking for a few moments, while the apprentices went and dressed; and Lily soon followed them, after a last glance at a little woman and her “partner,” who were getting things ready for their performance—-some little hoops, two cardboard bottles, gilt balls—and then waited humbly in the shadow.

Lily recognized Para, who used to exhibit a troupe of parrots; somebody had put her “in his show,” no doubt, the Para-Paras, a new turn.

“How poor she looks!” Lily could not help whispering to Ma.

“You’ll be worse off yourself, some day,” said Ma, “if you go on as you’re doing! Don’t laugh at other people.”

Lily had dressed quickly and had come down to the stage with the Three Graces and they had ten minutes of joking behind the scenes, while Ma was still up-stairs, busy with the girls. Thea walked on tip-toe to restore the circulation to her legs; Kala practised back-bendings: Lily applauded with the tip of her thumbnail, flung back her head and laughed and, from time to time, looked round over her shoulder to see if Ma was coming down.

She amused herself also by feeling Thea’s arms, all those little muscles which stood out, man’s arms: she would have liked to nestle in them, to feel herself squeezed till she cried out. And everything around them savored of love: there were lots of Roofers; little intrigues were embarked upon; there were stifled fits of laughter and cries of “Hands off!” and “Stop!” Amorous speeches and stories of romantic adventures were exchanged in whispers; the flight of the Gilson girl, the other day, at Liverpool, was told in full detail; a Roofer, it seemed, giving a high kick the day before, had sent her slipper flying into the audience; it was returned to her filled with chocolate creams; and to-day there was a boquet with a letter in it.

Ting! The curtain, the light; and, on the stage, the Roofers were glittering with gold and silver and their boyish voices came in gusts, punctuated by the jerky flights of their short skirts.

“Your old sweetheart, eh, Lily?” said Thea, pointing to the boy-violinist, who had just arrived.

Lily had only a careless glance for the boy-violinist, who was wiping his eye-glasses and pulling at his cuffs, while a call-boy was adjusting the false seat into which two bulldogs would presently dig their teeth. All the fascination was gone for Lily: it was no longer the child prodigy; a grotesque Orpheus, in a laurel and parsley crown, he now introduced his music-hating dogs, who interrupted his performance with plaintive and angry howls and ended by leaping at the seat of his trousers in a mad rush across the stage.

Lily, who had “gone through the mill,” looked upon him as a mere josser, had for him the instinctive contempt entertained by the real artiste for those fiddlers, those singers, those dancers and other drones brought up with blows of the hat.

“Pooh! I have some one better than that,” exclaimed Lily, excited by the proximity of the Roofers.

“If you have any one better than that and he loves you,” said Thea, in a dreamy voice, “love him, Lily, keep him; as for me, I no longer risk having to do with men.”

“I do!” Lily whispered, with a frightened glance around her. “As much as I can! I love talking to men! Why, Thea, and don’t you like love letters and p.-c.’s?”

Ting! Ting! Orpheus left the stage, with his bulldogs hanging to him.

Ting! It was dark again; ropes, plated rings were let down from the flies; the Three Graces, like quivering marble statues, took one another by the hand to make their entrance.

Ting! From their perches on either side, two electricians sent the lime-light beating down on an involved group of ropes, bars and hardened limbs.

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!

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.

The door of the staircase had swung to behind them; and, in the empty passage, the thumps continued all the way to the dressing-room, which the apprentices had not yet reached. Then, once inside, Ma pushed the bolt and made a rush at Lily. And Lily raised her elbow in vain: accompanied by a furious series of grunts—“Ugh! Ugh! Ugh!”—Ma’s diligent fist “signed a contract on her back”:

“And don’t you dare to cry out, or I’ll give it you twice as hard!”

Lily, bruised all over, felt inclined to scratch her mother, like a wildcat; but the apprentices were coming. So she cooled her head in a basin of cold water and dressed with all speed, assisted by Ma, who perhaps regretted having been so hasty; but you had to be, with devils like that! And Ma’s anger returned when, on reaching the stage again, she was herself, in accordance with Jimmy’s orders, handed a bouquet intended for Miss Lily. What, another! Lily, following her down the stairs with the New Zealanders, saw Ma take the bouquet and toss it through the open door.

“Come along,” said Ma. “Give me your arm, Lily.”

And the New Zealanders walked away from the brightly lit-up music-hall, plunged through the drifting crowd, crossed the eddy of cabs, motors, ’buses and, on the pavements, through the windows, had visions of elegant couples at sumptuous tables. Then they all went through the dark streets; and Lily, escorted by Pa and Ma, followed the herd of girls. Her face was hard and, from an angry brow, she shot glances askance at flight.

CHAPTER VI

Now Trampy—even if he had to marry her for it, by Jove!—had set his mind on having Lily, at any cost; and that not only because of her prettiness, but also that he might play Clifton a damned good trick and teach him that he must smart for treating a gentleman as he had treated him in Mexico. It would be paying him out with interest to take his Lily from him. Besides, think of the credit it would give Trampy in the profession to have for his wife the prettiest, the cleverest girl on the boards, each of whose shows, when she performed alone, would be worth at least three pounds, as much as a whole troupe! He suspected in her the ripe fruit that was bound to drop; and he shook the tree to hasten the fall. He considered his reputation at stake: he, the man with the thirty-six girls, as he was called at the music-hall. He got caught in his own toils and wanted Lily madly, out of revenge and pride ... and jealousy too, for he suspected that Jimmy was courting her; and the idea that he had a rival inflamed his ardor.

In the evening, pen in hand, in his dressing-room, or else at a table in a café, after a second and a third glass of old port, he prepared his batteries: letters, post-cards, he excelled in everything, was careful about his phrases, with the vanity of an author whose writings are widely quoted. Lily was “fascinating” and “bewildering;” he compared her to “those strange Indian poppies whose scent intoxicates a man and sometimes gives him death.” Gee, but that set Lily dreaming! Fancy having all that in her! Who on earth would have thought it? Never mind, it was very nice.

And the way in which she received her correspondence amused her as much as the rest. Trampy, it goes without saying, did not write direct: a few pence to Tom, who hated Clifton, and Lily received the cards in secret, devoured them when she was alone and then quickly tore them into little pieces and sent them flying through the window.

Her trouble was how to answer. She really did not know what to say:

“Pa was so angry with the girls yesterday. I got a kick of the pedal on my shin. Otherwise I am quite well. Excuse more for the present. I must now conclude.

“Lily.”

By return of post, she received “a thousand kisses on her rosy cheeks, on her fair tresses, everywhere,” kisses without end.

“He’s mad,” thought Lily.

But she was greatly flattered by Trampy’s attentions. He treated her as a woman, not as a child, as Pa and Ma went out of their way to do. Her life, after all, would be more agreeable if she was Trampy’s wife; and he was delivering the attack in person, since his return from Lancashire, where he had traveled about with his property red-hot stove. He overwhelmed her with bouquets, even as a general bombards a bastion before the final assault, and he managed to meet her now. He dazzled Lily with his big gold watch-chain and the diamond in his tie. When he was able to whisper a word to her, it was always the same thing—“Motor-cars! Paris gowns! Jewels! Flowers!”—until Lily thought she saw all the shop-windows in Regent Street poured out at her feet.

Jimmy made but a sorry lover, compared with Trampy. He never promised anything, silk dresses, diamonds or jewels. “The husband at work, the wife at home.” Gee, there were no ostrich-feathers in that! But he adored her all the same, as Lily was well able to see; and she had many occasions to talk to both of them. Not that Lily was less closely watched. She never went out alone, but it was not always Ma who was at her heels: it was sometimes Glass-Eye. With faithful Glass-Eye, things took their own course and the interviews with Trampy became easy. As for Jimmy, he saw her every day at practice and he took that opportunity to tell her of his ideas, his plans for the future.

“I shall succeed, you will see, Lily,” he said. “I shall do something some day. I’m a bit of a mechanic, a bit of an electrician, that is to say, a bit of a wizard. Others have started lower down and climbed very high.”

“Yes,” replied Lily, “I know. It’s like Pa. He wasn’t much before he got me into shape; and look at him now!”

This was said with an artless candor that enraptured Jimmy.

“What a dear little girlie you are!” he said. “What an adorable kid!”

“That’s right,” retorted Lily. “Why not a baby, while you’re about it, a school-girl in the biking-class and so on? Some people treat me as a woman, Jimmy, and propose to marry me!”

“What’s that?”

“What I say, Jimmy.”

“And this man making up to you is worthy of you, I suppose? And do you love him?” asked Jimmy, greatly upset.

“Pooh!” said Lily. “I’m not quite sure.”

“But you wouldn’t marry him unless you loved him?”

“I should marry him to change my life.”

“A change, Lily,” said Jimmy, with feeling, “is not always a change for the better! And your life is a little pleasanter now, you told me so yourself. Your mother is sorry. You’re getting pocket-money; ten shillings a week, eh? Why, Lily, that’s splendid!”

“Well; and I earn it, I suppose,” said Lily. “And Ma isn’t a bit sorry. Pa said he wouldn’t have it, that’s all. They were afraid of my running away if it went on. I am no longer a child!”

“No,” said Jimmy, taking her hands, “an adorable girl; that’s what you are. Oh, a man whom you would love should do great things! He would love you with all his heart! And your life would be different then! No, you would not be a performing dog, as you call it; you would be a darling little wife. It’s all very well to rove about the world, from theater to theater, riding round and round on your bike....”

“I adore the stage, for all that!” interrupted Lily.

“But that can’t go on for ever,” continued Jimmy. “You’re entitled to have a nicer life: a home of your own, Lily; you have the making of a lady in you, if you were taught. In a year or two, Lily, you would be the equal of any lady in the land.”

“Learning, more learning, always learning! I’ve had enough of it in my life!” muttered Lily, affected, nevertheless, by Jimmy’s intense excitement, and lowering her eyes under his glance.

“Why, yes, Lily, always learning, that’s life!” said Jimmy. “But the other chap, of course, promises you the earth! Some millionaire, I suppose: an admirer in the front boxes?”

“He’s an artiste,” said Lily.

“Why,” said Jimmy, stepping back, without letting go of her. “But, no, it’s impossible; you’re not thinking of Trampy!”

“Why not?” said Lily angrily, trying to release herself from Jimmy’s passionate grasp.

“Why, because ... because he’s a drunkard ... a ... The other day I saw him at the bar of the Crown, as I was passing. He was blind-drunk.”

“What’s the good of talking?” said Lily. “He’s miserable. He worships me. He drinks to forget. He told me so himself!”

“But they say he’s married,” said Jimmy. “Why ...”

“It’s mean and jealous of you to say that,” said Lily, suddenly withdrawing her hands. “You deserve a smacking! How can he be married, when he wants to marry me?”

And with that she left him and went up to the dressing-room.

Jimmy was heartbroken.

“It’s a joke of Lily’s ... as in my shop, some months ago, when she pretended to have a sweetheart, though she hadn’t!”

But, argue as he would, Jimmy thought with terror of Trampy’s habits of conquest, of his reputation in the profession as a Don Juan. He bitterly regretted waiting so long to speak to Lily. He had thought that he was pleasing her by keeping in the background, for fear of causing her annoyance at home: was his sole offense now that of coming too late?

Oh, if he had only had evidence to hand! But Trampy’s marriage was one of those vague rumors. One could say nothing for certain. However, the danger, no doubt, was not yet imminent. And Jimmy had a friend who was doing America in the theaters of the Eastern and Western Trust: he resolved to write to him; the friend would receive his letter at the Majestic, Houston, Texas, or at the Denver Orpheum. The thing had happened over there; they would probably remember it in the theaters he passed through; he could make inquiries, perhaps even obtain proofs. That exquisite Lily, that masterpiece of grace: what a darling wife she would make! And all for Trampy! Jimmy was determined to do everything to prevent it.

He did not despair of supplying Lily, before long, with the proof that Trampy was married; he would give the name, the date; he would compel Trampy to admit it. But he was not sure enough yet to accuse him openly: Lily would have seen nothing in it but a ridiculous jealousy and would never have forgiven him.

Then Jimmy was worried: people came to him for this, for that, for the thousand details of the stage.

Lily, on her side, left the theater. That day, she was accompanied by Maud, who fixed her with her glass eye, while the other was engaged in watching the flies. Of course, Trampy was prowling round the theater to see her part of the way home; for he, too, had decided to carry things with a high hand. And he set to work at a quicker pace than ever.

He had none of Jimmy’s scruples; he was not afraid of exaggerating: far from it. Lily always left him under the impression of a glimpse of paradise. This time, however, she failed to smile when Trampy vowed that she was “the sweetest little thing that one could lay eyes on, by Jove!” For a long time, but especially since that morning, she had been burning to put a question to him. Possibly she had no intention of marrying him, but she wouldn’t allow him to make a fool of her; and she interrupted him in his compliments to ask if what they said was true.

“Who says so? It’s a lie!” Trampy hastened to answer.

“I mean your marriage,” replied Lily.

“I thought as much,” said Trampy.

“Tell me the truth,” persisted Lily innocently, looking him straight in the eyes.

“If I was married, Lily, would I want to marry you?”

“Of course not,” said Lily, already shaken.

“Who’s been talking to you about that?” asked Trampy. “Your Pa, eh? And Jimmy: I’ll bet that Jimmy ...?”

“Jimmy too.”

“If I don’t box that fellow’s ears!” shouted Trampy. “Can’t you see that he’s jealous? Why? He didn’t even give you my bouquets! He handed them to your Ma! And so I’ve been married, eh? Whereabouts? In America, I’ll wager?”

“Yes, somewhere on the Western Tour.”

“Of course,” said Trampy. “That’s what I’ve heard myself. Still, it seems to me that, if I had a wife, I ought to be the first to know it; don’t you think so, Lily?”

This was proof positive. Lily could find nothing to answer.

“Come and have a drink, Lily?”

“They’re waiting for me at home,” said Lily.

Trampy went into the bar alone, in a desperate state of love which made him call for a port and another, by Jove! Then he sat down at a table in a corner, lit a cigar and examined his glass, as though truth lay at the bottom. For he could not tell for certain. Was he married or was he not? That’s what he himself would like to know! According to him, upon his soul and conscience, he was not a married man; he did himself that justice. Opportunities, certainly, had not been wanting ... with all the girls he had known ... enough to fill a dozen beauty-shows. Sometimes even he had had a narrow escape, as in that damned town in the West, in one of those states where you can’t so much as take a girl to supper without finding yourself married to her in the morning, all for entering yourself in the hotel book as “Mr. and Mrs. Trampy,” in other words, as man and wife. And yet he couldn’t ask the girl who adored him to sleep on the mat! Yes, a poor girl who had found glowing words in which to tell him her love, one night in Mexico, words which had set Trampy quivering with longing compassion: was he to be reproached with that? He had made her happy, after all; and, on the whole, this lark was one of his pleasantest memories; it hadn’t lasted too long: a matter of a few weeks at most. He had left Mexico, taking the girl with him, and played Trampy Wheel-Pad in the Western States, with any amount of success, by Jove! Encores, packets of tobacco, a new suit of clothes! And, by way of entr’acte, the girl—“Tramp Wheel-Pad’s Jumping Flea,” as she was called—turned somersaults and flip-flaps. But she would have killed him, this dark girl with great dark eyes,—this girl with a boy’s figure, all muscle and sinew, keeping him awake all night and talking of nothing but smackings, as though she had never learned anything else. And so much in love that she would bite and scratch: a very tigress. Any one but himself would have wearied of it. And then, one fine morning, for coupling their names in the visitors’ book, they found themselves married, in the name of the law! And that was what people called a marriage! So little married were they, according to him, that he had given her the slip then and there, leaving her all the money he possessed, however: he was not the man to look at fifteen dollars, when honor demanded it. Trampy had had more stories of this kind in his life; they left as much impression on his mind as the recollection of a “schooner” swallowed at a bar on a summer night.

It was dishonest, he considered, to pretend that he was married. Not that he was perfect: far from it! He did not set up as a model. He had had scandals in his life: he admitted it humbly; and, if some jealous person, some Jimmy, for instance, wanted to do him harm, all he had to do was to dig in the heap, instead of hawking round that story of an imaginary marriage.

His differences with Poland, the Parisienne, for instance: a regular Mrs. Potiphar, that one. He had found it a hard job to get away from her. And ever and ever so many others! He couldn’t remember. People were always talking ill of him. There was more than that, however: he, too, was capable of manly ambition; he, too, had taken a breakneck risk. He had perfected and patented at Washington an invention of which he had seen a drawing, by accident, in a scientific journal—Engineering, or another—a purely theoretical invention. The inventor himself, a young London electrician, declared it to be unrealizable. Well, he, Trampy—Poland had helped him with her purse; she was very nice about it—he, Trampy, had had the thing made. He had deposited the models at the Patent Office; and the apparatus itself was now in a London storage. He would get it out, some day, and show them all what he was capable of.

Now he was wrong, perhaps, in abandoning Poland, after accepting her services; but, after all, those were matters which concerned nobody but himself. It was not fair play to tell Lily about them: she, he felt, would always be the girl of his heart, the thirty-seventh and last, and it would take a better man than Jimmy to snatch her from him!

Already, it was much to have pacified Lily on that incident of the marriage: Lily believed him. One thing, however, disquieted Trampy: bigamy, all the same, meant doing time. Now, if some jealous person produced the proof of that marriage, contracted under the Western law ... suppose it were valid ... really valid? H’m! Was he going to lose Lily for that? And his liberty into the bargain? That Lily who was worth her weight in gold, love and fortune in one!

Trampy resolved to broach this delicate subject:

“Suppose I was married,” he hinted, one day, “that wouldn’t matter. Couldn’t we ... live together ... eh?”

“I like your style!” said Lily, feeling slightly indignant at such a proposal. “What do you take me for?”

“I was only joking,” Trampy hastened to say. “If you want to be married, I’m quite agreeable.”

“I insist upon it!”

“So then you prefer to take strangers into our confidence?”

“What strangers?” asked Lily, in surprise.

“Why, the quill-drivers at Somerset House and those damned fire-escapes.”

Lily had enough religion to know that the fire-escape was the clergyman:

“As for that,” she said, “we shall see later; but I want the registrar’s office. If I’m to be your little wife, I want to be so for good and all: marriage or nothing!”

“I shall be delighted, Lily!”

“And I’m determined!”

Lily was the more bent upon it, because marriage made her free: that was the essential point. If she were not married, her parents could make her come back, she thought ... keep her with them ... gee! It gave her cold shivers down the back! Once married, she was protected by law; Pa and Ma had nothing to say; and so she was very keen upon marriage.

“What a dear little wife she’ll make!” thought Trampy. “And how she loves me!”

That, however, did not advance matters. It was all very well for him to put his arm round her waist, to talk softly to her, to whisper those words which had already won him so many conquests:—one day, even, he had kissed her on the lips,—Lily thought that very nice; it was all very well for him to cut a dash at the bar, to stand her a claret and a biscuit; it was all very well for him to sing his love-litany: all this did not help him; at the rate at which he was going, he wouldn’t get anywhere in six months.

Lily, between those two jossers, amused herself immensely. How lucky she was! Two men, at her age! They irritated her, sometimes; when they went too far—Trampy, especially, who got excited at the game—anyhow, it was a homage paid to her beauty. Between that and going away with him there was all the difference in the world! To leave home was quite another matter. Why, goodness, if things went on as they were, she could do without marriage at all!

CHAPTER VII

“Lily, come down!” Pa’s voice thundered from below.

Lily was out of bed in a bound. She could hardly tie her skirt-strings for trembling. Why was Pa in such a rage?

The moment Lily entered her parents’ room, she realized what it was. Pa was holding a letter in his hand and scowling at her.

“These are nice stories I hear!” he cried. “You let men kiss you? You’ve got a love affair? Come, Lily, is this true?”

“It’s Jimmy’s doing,” thought Lily. “The mean cur! He’s given me away!”

Pa went on hotly:

“And you’re going to marry, are you? To marry Trampy? Here, read that!”

Lily felt hopeless. She took the letter, but did not attempt to read it. White with fear, could she have sprung through the window and fled, she would have done so.

“Well,” Pa went on apace, growing more and more excited, “is all this true? All that they tell me: about your receiving letters, post-cards, jewelry ... and that ring! I’ve seen it! You’re going to marry Trampy, are you? Oh, the man who writes to me knows all about it, saw you with him at the corner of Oxford Street and Newman Street. Is that true, miss? What did you have to tell him, pray? Speak out!”

Lily, terror-stricken, could only droop her head.

“It’s true then that you want to get married, you baggage!”

“Pa!” cried Lily.

But he, with an “Ah!” of rage, sprang upon her, clutched her mass of hair, banged her head against the wall:

“On your knees! Say, ‘I—beg—your—par—don—’”

And, Bang! Bang! Bang! The phrase was punctuated with thumps.

“Oh, Clifton,” implored Ma, “stop! Not so hard!”

“Beg—par—don! Beg—par—don!” continued Pa, without relenting.

Lily was half-stunned, the world throbbed before her eyes, and, delirious with wrath, she hissed:

“Never!”

“But I say, I say you shall not marry him! I’ll kill you first!”

“Yes, I will marry him, yes, yes, I will marry him! kill me, if you like! God is my witness that I had not thought of getting married, but, as you say so, I will!”

His fist closed her mouth. She clasped her arms about her head, to protect herself as best she could, but soon sank to the floor, fainting....

For three days she was in bed, broken, dazed—then, no sooner on her feet, than off to the theater, guarded by Pa and Ma. If they could, they would have padlocked a chain to her ankle and a collar about her neck. Ma chilled Lily with her scornful pity, or racked her with repeated insults:

“A disgrace to the family! You’ll be the death of us!”

She would shower cuffs upon Lily, throw books at her head, or whatever came readiest to hand. Lily hid the books, the umbrellas, shrank into corners, longing to cry; but the tears refused to come. She was too angry. And, with head down, but eyes alert, she crouched like a dog rebelling under blows, with lips drawn back above her teeth, ready to bite.

“I’m going out, or I’ll kill her!” growled Pa, slamming the door behind him.

Pa was thoroughly upset: for Lily to leave him! Just when Hauptmann was starting a fifth troupe; when Pawnee was drawing full houses with his three stars; when competition was increasing and threatening: it meant disaster, certain ruin, the disbanding of his troupe, his contracts canceled. He seethed with indignation; or else, in despair, felt like taking Lily in his arms, seating her on his knee, begging her to tell him that it was all a nightmare, that she would never marry, never marry that Trampy: his good little Lily ... whom her Pa would cover with diamonds! She should have all she wished, and everything, if only she would assure him that it was not true that Trampy, that ungrateful cur, whom he, Pa, had picked out of the gutter, was going to steal his Lily! That damned Jim Crow! Pa, in his fury, bought a revolver to scatter the footy rotter’s brains with, but Trampy received the tip from Tom and vanished, hey, presto, leaving no trace, allowing no sign of himself to crop up anywhere. Pa’s rage was vented on his daughter.

Happily for her, Lily now was a model of conduct. She felt thoroughly calm. Peace seemed to reign in the house. Lily was such a gentle little thing! One day—the very day on which Tom passed her a note from Trampy and she made a package of her new dress and of her photographs, and souvenirs—that evening, as she kissed her father and mother, tears came to her eyes. Then, instead of going to the kitchen, she fetched her bundle, stealthily opened the street-door and ran to the corner, where Trampy was waiting in a hansom, and hi, off for the holidays, the champagne, the long-dreamed-of Paradise!

PLAYING ’EM IN

I

They were seated on the basket trunk marked, “Trampy Wheel-Pad,” in big black letters. The steamer had left Harwich and was making for Holland. The English coast was disappearing in the mist. On the deck, a heap of luggage and parcels made a sort of nest for them. Trampy, with his dear little wife by his side, was thinking of the future ... so many things which he had flashed before Lily’s eyes and which he could not give her ... not directly, at least ... but, pooh, she’d get used to it by degrees. The great thing, to Trampy, was that he had his Lily! He was going to stuff himself to the throat with love and, first of all, to seek a shelter for his sweet wife and himself. England was no place for them. Pa was prowling round and Jimmy, too. Once their anger was over and they found themselves face to face with the irreparable, everything would calm down; meantime, the wisest thing for Trampy and Lily was to be prudent and run away as fast as they could. Trampy had his plan, he had seen the agents: Holland and Belgium first; then a performance at Ludwig’s Concert House, in Hamburg, and a brilliant first appearance before a hall filled with managers. Already he saw himself in the famous little room of the Café Grüber, where so many contracts were signed during the few days that the hearing-season lasted, and then he would have the whole continent, from St. Petersburg to Lisbon, make heaps of money, treat Lily like the little peach she was and cover her with diamonds, by Jove! Trampy, meanwhile, was none too easy in his mind: funds were low; the two pounds paid at the registrar’s office had lightened his purse still more. Fortunately, the fire-escape had not had his seven-and-six-pence: that was so much saved.

“A poor consolation,” thought Trampy. “The price of a dog-license.”

But he was gay, nevertheless, in his wife’s company. He forgot his thirty-six girls. He told Lily stories, made her squirm with laughter, played with her, dazzled her with the champagne suppers ... which they would have later on. Or else, like the consummate mummer that he was, he put on the gloomy countenance of a man about to reveal the secret of his heart:

“I’m a wretch,” he muttered, while Lily, in her innocence—Lily, who had been living on tenter-hooks since her flight from home a few days before—turned her frightened eyes upon him. “A miserable wretch ... married. Yes, it’s true; I’m married, Lily.”

“It’s true what they said? You’re married?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Oh, I knew it!” said Lily, in despair. “But then ... if you are ... I’m not!”

“You silly little thing!” said Trampy, kissing her and taking her on his knee. “Yes, I’m married; yes; and no one shall separate us. Haven’t I the prettiest little wife—here, on my knee—my little Lily?”

“Oh, how you frightened me!” said Lily, nestling against him. “Oh, don’t ever let us part!”

With a wife like that, said Trampy to himself, a little discomfort more or less made no difference. As long as she had her dear husband, she would be happy. She would have eyes for nothing but him and would not care a fig for all the rest.

Now she loved him: there was no doubt about that. She had left everything for him! He could even have had her without marriage, by Jove, and saved two pounds, if he had insisted! So he thought, at least, and he put a conquering arm round Lily’s waist, while she, with her head on his shoulder, dreamed and dreamed, her eyes fixed upon the horizon. She was married! She had dared! She would be, at last, the little lady she had always been by instinct! And Lily went on building her castles in Spain until, after the smooth crossing, arriving at the Hook of Holland, she would not have been surprised to find her own motor-car and servants waiting for her on the quay. But no, she had to carry her bag herself, under the fine drizzle, upon the slippery pavement, to the train ... and third-class to Rotterdam. It was all very well for Trampy to adopt a triumphant air, but Lily was greatly vexed at the idea of going with her husband to a little hotel frequented by artistes, bill-toppers though they were. She would have liked something different.

Trampy observed that, with her Pa....

“With Pa,” said Lily, “it was not the same thing ... and I’m not with Pa now.”

Trampy showed himself accommodating. That evening, Lily had the proud satisfaction of walking into a smart hotel, with waiters in the hall, as at the Horse Shoe. She carried her head high, conscious of being looked at. She would have liked always to shine like that—to sit down to meals amid the rustling of silk dresses ... but she felt uneasy in her modest attire. Trampy would be only too pleased to give her a new outfit, later on, yes; but as he explained to Lily, he had had so many expenses recently, wouldn’t it be better to take rooms somewhere, in a sort of place like Lisle Street, or St. Pauli, at Hamburg? Lily yielded to these arguments, she had to; but it was a bitter grief for her to leave that fine hotel, where everybody saw her as a lady ... perhaps because of her big hat, on which a bird, flat-spread, opened wide its wings and held in its beak a diamond the size of an egg.

And, thenceforth, the mean life returned: Lily relapsed among the potatoes and the wash-hand-basin salads. There were occasional revolts, tart words, sudden disputes, which, at times, wrinkled her forehead with anger....

Nevertheless, she had her good moments: she enjoyed the sensation of being a lady who does no work, of wearing gloves and a big hat and of looking at the time on her fine gold watch while her husband is on the stage. It seemed pleasant to her no longer to appear before the audience doing her performing-dog tricks, with Pa scrutinizing her from the wings. It was her turn now to make one of the small nation: pas, mas, profs, bosses, brothers, sisters, sons, daughters, all watching their bread-winners on the boards. She mingled with them, or else sat down prettily in a corner, talked to the artistes: other Martellos, other Nunkies; new faces every week, according to the theaters they were at: owners of troupes; sketch comedians, serio-comics; dancers of the Roofer class; laced-up, glittering “Mdlles.;” or else, from time to time, some josser, a friend of the manager’s or an agent, prowling around among the flesh-colored tights. Lily had seen all this a hundred times, a thousand times before, when she was with her parents; and the mere thought of Ma made her talk nicely, from bravado, to all of them, though she was married now. Lily bore Pa no malice, in spite of the buckled belt. Pa was a man, with hair on his chest and harsh like all of them ... no, not all ... and not so bad, perhaps ... not always ... no; however, a man.... But her Ma, a lady, ought to have stood up for her! If Ma could see her now, gee! Lily felt a lump in her throat at the notion. And it was their fault that she had run away! It served them right! She was much happier, now, when she was a lady in her turn. Her talent and her beauty received the homage due to them. Lily Clifton, the New Zealander, what ho! A famous name in the profession! She was one of those whom the stage people point out to one another:

“Gee!” she sometimes heard a voice say behind her. “Fancy owning a girl like that and not having the sense to keep her!”

Lily was flattered to the core at hearing her parents blamed; she felt inclined to rise and say, “’K you,” with the great stage bow: her right hand on her heart, the other raising her dress, her body bent forward in a sweeping curtsey.

She took part in the conversations: she knew a little Spanish, which she had learned in Mexico, and a little German, which she had picked up in America from the Three Graces; and besides they all jabbered English, they were all “families,” “misses,” “the’s,” with impossible accents, suggesting some of those cosmopolitan towns beyond the “Rockies.” In this medley, she was at her ease; but she did not at all like being called Lily, now that she was a lady:

“Call me Mrs. Trampy,” she said.

After the show, she would sit in the restaurant with Trampy. There, amid clouds of tobacco-smoke, they all supped in a crowd. There were separate tables, at which silent little parties gobbled down their cutlets and compote in ten minutes and then slipped away quietly. Sometimes, a whole band of girls would swoop down at once, like a flight of thrushes, or exchange funny remarks over other people’s heads and blow volleys of kisses in every direction.

Trampy, always full of good stuff, amused the company. He lorded it in the select corner, the corner of the stage-manager and the pretty girls. After supper, he cocked a cigar between his teeth and told thick stories in the midst of an admiring throng. Lily followed with her lips, so as not to lose a word, but, when the final point was at hand, she blushed in advance, turned away her head, as though tired of listening without understanding, and talked to her neighbor, like a lady who respects herself. Or, sometimes, it was more than she could help and Lily would laugh and laugh:

“Oh, dear! Oh, my!”

Then they would “talk shop” among pros, they passed one another the papers: Der Artist, The Era, Das Program, they discussed engagements, quoted personal anecdotes: the Ma who made her star go down to the kitchen, lest the landlady, when peeling the potatoes, should slip one into her pocket. Yes, her own daughter, a star who brought her in a hundred marks a day!

“That’s just like it!” thought Lily.

They made fun of that prof who pinched his apprentices till the blood came, while pretending to smile, or clawed them like a monkey. And the company laughed and laughed, especially when Trampy put out his hand to Lily to show her how the monkeys ... Lily would jump back and the crowd roared with laughter. And the glasses of beer and Moselwein accumulated on the table; and round backs were bent over interminable games of cards....

And then, gradually, the room emptied; the girls went away and Lily, waiting for her husband, sank into her chair and yawned as though her jaws would drop. As they left, she reproached Trampy for his coarseness: those horrid stories which made her blush before everybody’s eyes. Her Pa would never have permitted himself ... She was not accustomed ...

“That didn’t keep you from splitting your sides with laughter,” said Trampy.

“What an idea!” replied Lily, in a vexed tone. “Do you think I’m going to play the goody goody ‘lalerperlooser’? One has to do as others do and not make one’s self conspicuous.”

“Quite right!” said Trampy.

But she turned crimson with rage when Trampy, some other night, forgot himself so far as to monkey-claw the girls. There were short violent scenes when they returned home, chairs upset, angry words. Trampy could not understand this jealousy. When he was confronted with these outbursts, he was greatly surprised, sought for a reason, muttered Jimmy’s name—that was his sensitive point: he thought of it in spite of himself—ironically inquired of Lily if it was Jimmy who had put all that nonsense into her head. Lily was sorry to see the conversation take this turn. She flung her arms round her husband’s neck, loved him, kissed him prettily, the great silly: he knew better; he knew she never thought of Jimmy:

“Kiss me, darling! I wish you would make me happy,” said Lily, moved to pity for herself. “I want to be a good little wife!”

Thereupon they made it up. Lily did not feel, with her husband, that thrill which she had often noticed in other women: but she wanted to love him, stubbornly pursued the idea, fagged away at her love like a little school-girl only too anxious to learn. Trampy, on his side, could be amiable when he liked. He became the old Trampy again at times and treated Lily like a little playfellow. They would both run about in the Biergarten, in the morning, at practice-time, larking like children, hiding behind the tables, and their laughter enlivened the empty place, still soiled with the remnants of last night’s meal and littered with programs and cigar-stumps.

And time passed like this for weeks ... it was months now ... an existence like another, with good in it and bad ... and monotonous and common....

“I should have been better off, perhaps, at home,” she thought. “If this is marriage, it’s not much.”

For, she saw it quite clearly, that wasn’t love; Trampy didn’t understand her. A “girl” and a wife were all the same to Trampy: a mere pastime, both of them. He spoke of it lightly, through the smoke of his cigar. She learned to know him, heard him boast of his prowess, caught passing words:

“Girls, girls, my!”

She would have laughed, she would even have felt flattered at being chosen among so many, if he had put an end to his conquests. But he continued to prowl round the stage-girls, as he used to do before he was married. If even he had shone upon the stage, she would have understood that he had got “swelled head,” that he was yielding to temptation; but his success was only middling. He had not made a hit at Hamburg. The manager of Ludwig’s had told him flatly that he would do well to practise and practise a great deal. Trampy posed as a victim of jealousy, spoke of showing them—all of them, if once he put his back to it!—a new turn, a discovery that would show what he was made of! Meanwhile he had a new idea, as a sketch comedian, with a make-up of his own invention, the face painted white on one side and red on the other, with wrinkles cunningly drawn—a laughing Johnny and a crying Johnny, two men in one. He pestered Lily with his plans, made her cut out dresses for him, came back from the old-clothes shop laden with uniforms in rags, into which Lily had to put patches. And shoes, in particular, ran in his head; shoes of which the soles and the uppers yawned like lips; talking shoes, which said, “Papa!” and “Mamma!” This last suggestion made Lily laugh.

Trampy haunted the bazaars, bought children’s toys, took the stomachs out of the cardboard dogs and rabbits to make his quackers, sought about for his right note, pursued inspiration to the bottom of the glasses.

Lily was sometimes driven to exasperation. This tramp-cyclist, this sketch-comedian was making her, Lily Clifton, patch up his dresses! And her husband rewarded her for it by making love to the girls, poor idiot! Oh, if Pa and Ma had not been so harsh with her! Lily always harked back to that, stiffened herself with the thought, remembered the Marjutti girl, in whom love of art produced wonders and whose Pa and Ma were so gentle and kind.

“They should have treated me like that,” she concluded, “and I should have been at home still!”

She regretted her marriage. And there were some who pitied her for belonging to Trampy: they looked upon him as not worthy of her, blamed him for openly carrying on with girls. Others asked, as though it did not matter, was she really married or were they just “living together?”

“What? Am I married? Is that what they think about me?” she said, a little annoyed. “Of course I am! At the Kennington registry-office!”

And yet a doubt entered her mind too. Was she really married, after all? Lily did not know much about it. Had the banns been published? And those two witnesses picked up in the street ... a ceremony that took just five minutes ... like a conjuring trick. If it was true that they were “living together” without her knowing it, she would not stay with him. She would go back home at once. Marriage, certainly, was never intended for her. This she realized now. When she thought of the Gilson girl, mad on her man, and of others whom she sometimes caught in the dressing-rooms and passages eating each other up with kisses, she was at a loss to understand. How could they make so much fuss about it?

Poor little wife, with so little love for her husband and no admiration at all! As an artiste she thought him lamentable. Trampy, who had seemed so great to her in Mexico ... why, she had shot miles ahead of him since! She felt that he was getting second-rate. He himself was well aware of it, for that matter; blamed everybody: suspected a hoodoo somewhere: some son of a gun bringing him ill-luck. And he was always casting about for an easy means of success ... another new plan ... always something new ... a high-sounding title: “Rusty Bike,” an old jigger which, at each turn of the wheel, would grate like a cart, “Crrrra! Crrrra!” and bring the house down with laughter, while Lily, in the wings, was to sound an accompaniment on a grating rattle:

“Crrrra! Crrrra!”

“All that set-out for nothing!” said Lily to herself. “It would be much simpler to have a little talent.”

She felt herself overcome with contempt for her husband: what a sorry bread-winner he made! Why take a wife, when you had only that to keep her on? Lily did not know whether to laugh or to cry when she saw Trampy come down from his dressing-room, proud as a peacock, his chest swelling at the sight of so many girls at a time, a treat of which he never wearied. He was magnificent, was Trampy, against that background of shoulders, thighs and calves: in his element as a fish in water. Nor did he make any bones about smiling to them or monkey-clawing them as they came off the stage. The presence of his wife did not hinder him. He was sure of her love: he knew she must adore him, as all the others did. And, leaving Lily in a corner, in the shade of a pillar, with his eyes he devoured all that powdered flesh, all those coarse wigs.

Lily hated him at such times. She could have boxed his ears. She had enough of it, at last. One evening, she caught hold of his arm to take him away, furious that a gentleman could find a pleasure in making his wife look so ridiculous! And Trampy, more or less flattered at what he considered a fond wife’s jealousy, was turning to go, when a lady with plumes on her head and a woolly dog under her arm greeted him with:

“Hullo, old boy! Glad to see you, Trampy!”

Lily—it was a distant memory, but no matter—recognized Poland, the Parisienne, with the painted face and the violent scent. Trampy took a step backward. He expected a scene, though he owed her nothing, after all; but she did not seem angry, no. On the contrary, she looked at him with a roguish eye. She knew of Trampy’s marriage, no doubt, as she knew of his conquests, having been his victim herself.

“Hullo, old boy!” repeated Poland, sizing up Lily with an appraising glance and then fixing her eyes upon Trampy. “Still having your successes, old boy? Is this your number thirty? Thirty-six? Thirty-eight, eh?”

“What!” Lily broke in, astounded at these manners. “What number thirty-six, thirty-eight?”

“Ugh! A number in a lottery,” said Trampy, looking quite vain between those two women in love with him. “Yes, a number ... with which I drew a prize!... Why, by Jove,” he continued, addressing Poland, “this is my wife!... Lily Clifton! ... the New Zealander on Wheels.”

“Oh, yes,” said Poland to Lily. “I did hear that you ran away: tired of this, eh?”

And, tapping the back of her left hand with the palm of her right, she made the professional gesture that denotes a whipping.

“Yes, I was a bit,” said Lily, feeling rather proud than otherwise. “I’ve been through the mill, I have!”

“You’ve had your fair share, eh?” insisted Poland. “You’re not the first that has left her family to escape being whipped. You did quite right,” she concluded.

Trampy was dumfounded and utterly floored by the revelation. What! He! He! Lily had married him because of that! Because ... And people said it! And talked about it!

“Come along, Lily,” said Trampy. “Let’s go home.”

And, giving no further heed to Poland, who followed him with a mocking smile, he took Lily by the arm and went out with her.

Lily felt her arm shake. Trampy was furious, evidently. She saw her mistake, too late. There would be a stormy scene when they got in. Well, who cared? She was resolved, under that obstinate forehead of hers, to face the facts. She had had enough of this husband. And she meant to know, that very moment, if she was married or not ... because with him one never knew. When she admitted that she had married him because of “that,” Trampy, in his humiliation would put her out of doors at once; if the marriage wasn’t valid, he would get rid of her. There was no doubt about it.

And she did not have to wait, for Trampy, even before they were out of the theater, in the passage, among the trunks and properties, Trampy, unable to restrain himself any longer, seized her by the wrists and looked her straight in the face:

“Is it true?” he asked, in a voice trembling with rage.

Lily, without replying, lowered her eyes as though to say yes, like a good little wife, oh, so sorry to offend her husband!

“And,” said Trampy, choking with shame, “you married me for ‘that:’ me, Trampy!”

“Yes,” said Lily confusedly.

“Damn you!” cried Trampy. “Oh, if we weren’t married for good, wouldn’t I just make you sleep out to-night!”

CHAPTER II

Poor Lily! She was Trampy’s little wife, his little wife for ever! And life, monotonous and common, followed its usual course: a week here, a week there; and the theater every night at the fixed time, according to the scene-plot which they went and consulted on reaching the stage: “X, Corridor, 9.5; Z, Wood, 10.17; Y, Palace, 11.10,” and so on. And for Trampy it was an everlasting grumbling at his ill-luck, a dull anger at “playing ’em in,” so sure was he of seeing his name first, always—“Garden, 8.30, Trampy Wheel-Pad”—he who had had such a success in England with his red-hot stove. It was no use his saying to himself that it wouldn’t last, that it would be better next week. It was just as though done on purpose. He played ’em in, always, from Bremen to Brunswick, from Leipzig to Madgeburg:

“I wish I knew the son of a gun who has his knife into me!” growled Trampy, persuaded that he was the victim of an agent’s jealousy, or else the stage-managers didn’t understand their business.

“If you had more talent,” thought Lily to herself, “that sort of thing wouldn’t happen. I’d like to see you with Pa: he’d show you, he’d make you stir your stumps, you rusty biker!”

However, she was careful not to say so to him, for fear of blows; and Lily knew that, if ever she received them once, twice, without returning them, it was all up with her, she would lapse under the yoke again, it would become a habit: there would be nothing for it but to leave her husband, if she wished to avoid slaps, just as she had left her family, to avoid whippings.

That would have been too grotesque. She did not want to give Pa and Ma the satisfaction of seeing her unhappily married. Lily armed herself with patience; and she needed it! Trampy was in a frightful temper, said that he would have been the ideal husband, if she had been the little wife he had dreamed of: but to think that she had married him for “that!”

Now it was the constant allusion to “that” which made him die with shame. Everywhere, on the stages of the different music-halls, people had for Lily that sort of sympathetic pity which they feel for a performing dog: they approved of her running away; everybody seemed to know about it. Poland, it must be said, scored a fine revenge against Trampy, without counting the artistes who had seen Lily practising and who knew what harsh treatment meant, the Munich Roofers, among others, real ones, with their blows of the hat, gee!

Among them, it became the fashion, when they saw Lily, to tap the back of their hands, and then to applaud with the tip of the nail, as though to approve her flight. Lily at first was annoyed at the reputation for cruelty which they were giving her Pa. He was right to hit her, she thought, sometimes. She was also annoyed on her own account. She was an artiste, damn it! It was not only a question of smackings! Why, if she hadn’t had it in her...! It was a gift! But, on the other hand, to excuse the folly of her marriage, she let them talk, without protesting, like a poor little thing who would still be with her Pa and Ma if she had been treated “fair.”

And there were always angry disputes between her and Trampy. They were seen to disappear through the stage-entrance, Lily with an arrogant air, Trampy drooping his head, his lips distorted with stinging replies. Lily, though she was not performing at the theater, sometimes received a letter there. When there was one for her in the heap of envelopes, bearing the stamps of all countries, which had been round the world prior to “waiting arrival” in the doorkeeper’s pigeonholes, Trampy looked at her furiously, wanted to know. Lily refused. Forthwith, in the passages, or on the stage, endless disputes went on between them ... oh, not in the least tragic in appearance and interlarded with “Hullo, boys!” and “Hullo, girls!” to left and right, whenever they passed any acquaintances. And in a low voice, abruptly:

“Show it to me, you wench!”

“Shut up, you footy rotter!”

Trampy could not forgive Lily for marrying him on that account. He, who had only to choose among the crowd that walks the boards or flutters about in muslin skirts, suffered from Lily’s scorn, looked upon himself as a sultan dethroned before the eyes of his harem. In order to infuriate Lily, though he did not feel in the least like laughing, he exaggerated his conquering ways. It ended by affecting his work. Only the night before, he had got drunk with two “sisters” out of ten: the fourth and seventh from the right. Result: he was still in bed when the matinée began. And his performance went so badly that they had to drop the curtain on him. That would pass for once: an illness was allowable; but it couldn’t go on at that rate. He was becoming worse than the head-balancer who tumbled off his perch, without having his excuse of sorrow, the loss of a beloved wife, seeing that he, Trampy, had a dear little wife and very much alive, this one!

Lily, in her calmer moments, foresaw that they would soon have to face hard times, flat poverty. She felt her contempt for Trampy increase. Those sketch-comedians, those tramp cyclists, pooh, they were less than nothing, bluff, that’s all, as old Martello said!

She saw her dreams flung to the ground. At first, it had been charming for her, so full of novelty, but, after all, she had only changed masters. She ended by considering herself more unhappy than she had been with Pa and Ma. To begin with, Pa always had money. She brought them in a lot. She lived much less comfortably with Trampy. She used to think that being a married woman would change everything, whereas—not a bit of it!—there was no change at all: potatoes, coal, all sorts of dirty, messy things; and no Maud to help her. And it was always as in the old days: damp sheets, dirty glasses, rickety tables, beds with worn-out mattresses; and the nights were dull as ditch-water. Trampy had hoped for something different, expected to find a whole harem in Lily, his thirty-six girls in one, including Ave Maria, with her body like a wildcat’s. Alas, it was far from that!

Lily loathed those nights. Love, yes, but not that, not that! Sacred love, not profane love (Lily had seen paintings of it in museums and remembered the title). Love, that is to say, to lie ever so nicely on the breast of the dear one, yes, as with Glass-Eye, and dream of hats and diamonds. No doubt, it was ambitious to want so much. She, who had seen everything, had never come across that; but it was what she wanted, what she had been promised, damn it! Things were going from bad to worse. Memories of her childhood moved her almost to tears, when she thought of it: those happy times in Africa, on the straw beside the horses, the stars seen through the tent and the smell of the elephants. When she was there, perhaps that had seemed less sweet to her: the hard ground, the noise of the chains; but everything was made more poetic by remembrance: it was the past, what! Nights sweet as milk, far from a man reeking of tobacco. And not only her early childhood, but her life of yesterday returned to her: touring with the troupe, the oatmeal porridge and the cakes she made—bricks!—but Pa laughed at them, took them good-humoredly, whereas Trampy lost his temper. In those days, it is true, she wasn’t a lady, she used to work; but they had good fun, all the same, in the dressing-rooms; they had tea at the theater, romps in the passages, or else did crochet-work, to pass the time; and all those practical jokes, intensified by distance: hustling Glass-Eye into the hamper; coaxing the black cat into the dressing-room, for luck; or making the pantomime lady speak her tag; or going in to the Roofers, on some pretext, and giving a whistle which made them all rush out, dressed or undressed or half-dressed, never mind, and spin round three times to ward off the ill omen: all those memories touched her till she felt inclined to cry. Oh, if she had been with her Pa now, she would have sat down on his knee and begged his pardon!

At such times, if Trampy became affectionate and tried to kiss his little wife, Lily would simply turn her back on him. Poor Trampy! And he could not play the master! For, call on the agents as he might and write as many fine letters as he pleased—an art in which he excelled—work was becoming scarce. He no longer had any money. One pay-day, Trampy was obliged to confess that he had had his salary in advance and spent it; a money-lender held his contract and kept back three-quarters of his pay. Trampy, tormented by urgent needs, had let himself in with a Brixton “financier,” a specialist in “loans from five pounds upward, music-hall artistes treated with the strictest confidence,” who pocketed nearly the whole. Now Lily just happened to want a new dress, a new petticoat and a tiny mother-of-pearl lucky charm. Trampy had to own that he couldn’t afford these fancies and Lily had a fit of temper! But then why promise so many things to a poor little wife who deserved better than that?

“A poor little wife,” said Trampy, “should marry her husband for love and not to escape whippings! There are ups and downs in the profession. It was your own lookout; you shouldn’t have married a star!”

“A star!” cried Lily, with a nervous laugh. “You a star! A damned comedian! A nice sort of star, indeed! A music-hall could have twenty black cats in it and you’d turn them into a white elephant!”

In other words, Trampy, according to her, was a Jonah, good only for playing the people in, if that!

“A wife has no right to speak to her husband as you do!” exclaimed Trampy, leaping up under the insult. “You deserve a good thrashing!”

“None of that!” said Lily angrily, ready to fly at his throat.

“A wife,” resumed Trampy, with great dignity, “helps her husband, instead of insulting him.”

“We’re in for it, I suppose!” said Lily.

“Certainly, we’re in for it! I have no engagement now, but that’s no reason why you shouldn’t find one. Look for one and work!”

Lily was in for it, knee-deep, as she said. She was not excessively astonished: it was the inevitable end! Not that she disliked to work: her idleness, on the contrary, was beginning to pall upon her; but it was the humiliation of going back to it after putting on so much side and posing as the lady. She had worked for Pa; now she would work for Trampy; it was natural and proper. There were exceptions—the wife at home, as Jimmy said, that josser!—but they were rare.

“Take up your bike again,” said Trampy, after a pause. “Be a good little wife, help me out of this. I have something in my mind, a scheme which will make us rich; you’ll see later on.”

“But,” said Lily, “I haven’t a stage bike, and yours is really too ugly.”

“I know of one for sale.”

“Very well, I’ll work,” said Lily. “I’ll make them give me this tour which they promised you and didn’t sign for; and to-morrow you shall see!”

At heart, Lily was not sorry to show her husband how people got out of a scrape, when they had talent; and, the next day, she went to an agent, accompanied by Trampy, looking very dignified. Her cheeky feather was made to dance attendance for a moment; and then she was shown into the office. Lily Clifton? The New Zealander on Wheels? Straight away a contract, signed in duplicate! A week in each town; later on, perhaps, a month in Berlin, at the Kolossal. Lily displayed wonderful tact, did not triumph too openly over Trampy. She acted to perfection the part of the little lady who takes up the bike again just for fun—as in the time of her “French governess”—or rather of a dear little thing wholly wrapped up now in her wifely duty: her poor husband ill, she herself needing exercise, just for fun, you know.

On leaving the agent’s, she bought some material, then ran home, cut out stage dresses. In the evening, Lily was still hemming and stitching, indefatigably, seized once more with professional pride after her excursions into private life. And, all night, under the lamp, she contrived, cut out and sewed. Then came practice, without Pa. In an hour, in spite of the new machine, which put her out, she had picked up her “times” again. She felt as if she had been spinning round the night before, under Pa’s eye, so absolutely at her ease was she, with her head on the saddle or twirling on the back-wheel.

And, on the following Monday, her first appearance, her name on the walls: “Miss Lily” in big letters, right at the top of the posters, “Miss Lily,” not “Mrs.” or “Madame.” Had she had ten children, two husbands and three divorces, she would still have been “Miss,” everywhere and always, as a further attraction for the swells in the front boxes and as a certificate of youth. Mighty few husbands, on the continent especially; not more men of any kind than could be helped, on the stage, except a few noted “profs,” standing by the perches of velvet and steel or under the trapezes, displaying, beside the pink-silk tights, against the “palace” back-drop, the faultless correctness of their full-dress suits. But, for the rest, people preferred to ignore husbands, brothers and “friends;” Lily had known some who never showed themselves at all, who remained squatting at home, so as not to stand in their wives’ way.

Trampy, for that matter, knew better than to parade himself with Lily. And he preferred it so. He could have wished one thing to the exclusion of all others: that people should not know of his marriage, that they should cease to speak of it. Unfortunately, this was not to be. The story of the whippings was enlivening Lisle Street, exaggerated, as usual. The Bill and Boom tour, the Harrasford tour were beginning to spread it on every stage in England; before six months were over, it would have made the round of the world from the Klondike to Calcutta. What a disgrace for Trampy! Yet no sooner had he put his New Zealander on her wheels again than Trampy blossomed out once more. After all, who cared if people were seen to smack the back of their hands? He wasn’t to be put out by a little thing like that:

“Just so,” he seemed to say. “We are married, whippings or no whippings, and I am the master; I have set her to work again; and there you are!”

Trampy’s reputation, so far from suffering, increased; all his compeers now envied him from the bottom of their hearts; the bosses, the profs, the managers, the Pas, the Mas treated him, in their own minds, as a lucky dog, all the more inasmuch as Trampy was not uppish and gladly stood drinks, while his wife, “Miss Lily,” made money for him with her breakneck tricks. It was much smarter than doing it for one’s self: the great thing was to have a “girl” like that! Trampy was having his revenge: he had been laughed at; he now had the laugh on them! and Trampy knew glorious times, in the Biergarten, or lounging at street-corners, near the stage-door, chaffing the girls, hat cocked back, hands deep in his pockets, a cigar stuck between his teeth. He told the story of his life, not without pride; said that he must write it one day, sell it to The New York Standard for a thousand dollars. The girls he’d had: whew! His love adventures: all over the world, by Jove! And his marriage with Lily Clifton, the New Zealander on Wheels, a dear little wife, so gentle, so obedient. No, he had no reason to complain of his life. He would write it, mark his words! To say nothing of a scheme he had in mind:

“Just you wait and see! It’s a trick to make a millionaire of you or break your neck.”

“Will you make Miss Lily do it?”

“I’ll see, I’ll think it over,” said Trampy, in a lordly tone.

The directors, the stage-managers took no notice of him; but, among the artistes, Trampy Wheel-Pad was some one, he enjoyed his leisure, recovered his self-assurance: if, in addition, he could have destroyed the legend of the whippings, he would have been perfectly happy. He would turn the conversation on the subject of smackings in the music-hall generally, in the hope of hearing them contradicted or made little of; but it was no use; every one believed in them: all, boys and girls, even the most spoiled, quoted facts: blows which they had received! my! blows hard enough to split the front of a music-hall from top to bottom! The nation with the painted faces, the blue-chins seemed to vie with one another as to who had been most through the mill.

“You’re exaggerating,” said Trampy. “It may be true, to a certain extent, in your case. But, Miss Lily, for instance: do you mean to say you believe all she tells?”

“Oh, quite!” said two Roofer girls who were there.

They had seen Lily practising. And they knew what it meant. They had had their share, too: old Roofer, gee! And Lily had done quite right to run away from her whippings.

“There you go again!” said Trampy. “Can’t you see she’s humbugging you?”

TRAMPY ENJOYED HIS LEISURE

But he pulled himself up suddenly, if Lily arrived, for, in spite of his big airs, he was all submission in her presence.

“Oh, really! Glass-Eye caught it instead of me, I suppose,” said Lily, drawing back her shoulder as though threatening to smack him, “when Pa went for me with his leather belt. And I have witnesses. I’ve been through the mill, if anybody has: that much I can say!”

Lily, after this burst of pride, would lower her head, a trifle embarrassed, like a dear little thing, all wrapped up in her duties as a wife, a wife whom her husband would cause to break her back one of these days, perhaps.

This created a circle of admirers around her: all, besides, agreed in saying that you had to have the business “rubbed into your skin” to be as clever as she was.

“’K you!” said Lily, with a stage bow.

It was certain that she made a hit. They wanted her everywhere. She was asked to appear in tights. The engagements grew better and better. “Miss Lily” was more and more talked about. It was no longer a Trampy Wheel-Pad on a rusty bike: it was grace, youth ... and stage-smiles fit to turn the heads in the front boxes. When Lily appeared on the stage, she transfixed every white shirt-front, every opera-glass. She took a real delight in it all. Her beauty captivated the audience. In her pink tights, Lily turned and turned and turned, to the hum of the orchestra, against the “wood” back-drop of purple and gold. Then she returned to the wings, all excited by her show, received bouquets, chatted freely with the comrades. She met old friends: the green-eyed female-impersonator, for instance, pressed her closely. He, too, was touring Germany: a week here, a week there. Chance brought them together again. He was enraptured by Lily: how lovely she had grown! He would have liked to adopt her.... Lily threw her head back, laughed and repelled him with a thump in the ribs when he tried to kiss her.

Another time, she saw the Bambinis, who were playing, by a lucky accident, at matinées only and by special permission, because of their age. She larked with them like a child. Elsewhere, it was Nunkie Fuchs, on his way to Vienna, where he was going to see to the building of his pigeon-house, leaving the Three Graces for a few weeks on the Harrasford tour. He had seen Lily’s name on the posters and had come to say, “How do you do?” to her.

And, amid the thunder of the band or the lull of the entr’actes, Lily received tidings of her Pa and Ma and details of what happened after her flight, as reported by Glass-Eye Maud. After Lily’s departure, they had hunted everywhere. Then Ma thought of looking in the trunk: the pretty dress was gone. Then they had rushed to the theater: no Lily. Then they had guessed: Lily had run away. Ma fell on her knees and cried and cried. Pa seized his revolver and spoke of going to shoot the man who had robbed him of his child! His little Lily gone! And the contracts had to be canceled and Pa did not go out for a week and the house remained still and silent for a month. Pa, thoroughly upset, cried whenever Lily’s name was mentioned and was near dying of shame when he felt himself blamed, even by those who used to congratulate him on his way of turning out an artiste. And Nunkie himself maintained that one must know how to handle young girls: gentleness above all.

Lily bit her lips when she heard that. Her little nose tingled. She hardened her features, wrinkled her obstinate forehead, lest she also should cry:

“If I had to do it again, I would!” she said quickly, just like that, without reflecting, in the way one says a thing to one’s self which one knows to be untrue.

They also told her things that made her laugh. Glass-Eye Maud no longer left her hole, cried like a tap, so much so that one day, Ma, noticing an insipid taste in the porridge, threatened her with the sack if that sort of thing went on.

As for business, people did not know exactly. Pa, they said, had written to a Hauptmann’s “fat freak” to take Lily’s place. The reply ran:

“No, thanks, I’m all right where I am.

“Fat Freak.”

The signature was underlined, for people had ended by knowing about Pa’s disrespectful remarks. Lily laughed when she heard this: my!

“I will come ... when you take to wearing braces!” another had answered.

This was an allusion to the blows with the belt; and Lily, with head thrown back, full-throated, her hand on her heart, laughed ... laughed ... laughed:

“Bravo, girls!” she said, applauding with her thumbnail.

And Tom? Tom had had the boot, with a bang on the nose, for carrying letters to Lily. For Pa ended by learning all: some one had told him.

“Jimmy, that son of a gun!” said Lily.

And Jimmy himself, what had become of that josser? Jimmy was no longer stage-manager. He had left everything after Lily’s flight. He, too, had flown into a terrible rage when he heard about it ... spoke of Trampy as a thief in the night ... would have killed him, if he had met him ... and he was going to star in his turn.

“Singing?” asked Lily.

“No, something to do with the bike.”

“What a fool!” thought Lily. “Fancies himself an artiste because he used to mend my bike for me!”

Jimmy, it seemed, had hired a huge shed and there, all alone, fitted up some apparatus of a complicated kind. He never went out by day. He worked and worked. A trick to break your neck at, it appeared, or make your fortune.

“Those jossers!” exclaimed Lily scornfully.

And what was he going to do on his bike? Nobody knew. There was something published in the papers, they said. It was something on the back-wheel.

“What rot!”

Lily laughed open-mouthed, laughed with all her muscles, twisting her hips, splitting her sides, smacking her thighs. What! Jimmy on the back-wheel! He! He! He cutting twirls, that josser!

“And the troupe?”

The troupe nobody knew about: dispersed, most likely; the troupe, after all, was Lily. When she went, everything was bound to fall to pieces. Pa didn’t care either; told any one who would listen to him that he was going to retire to Kennington, that he was well off now ... thousands of pounds in the bank ... made his fortune ... meant to live on his dividends.

“I knew it,” said Lily; “I knew I had made his fortune! Thousands of pounds, damn it!”

“Lily, don’t swear like that!” said Nunkie Fuchs. “It’s not right!”

Lily lowered her head, taken aback; excused herself, like a lady who knows her manners:

“And yet,” she said to herself, “if he had had my troubles, that old rogue, perhaps he would have sworn, too!”

For Trampy was becoming terrible: life was impossible with him. All the money which Lily earned went on champagne ... and on girls, probably; and the more she earned the greedier he grew. He wanted money, heaps of money; Lily had nothing left for herself. Trampy sought out new tricks, invented balancing-feats, made her practise them, in the morning, on the stage, with his sleeves turned back and his trousers turned up, absolutely like a Pa. Lily, accustomed to yield obedience, relapsed under the yoke. Bike in the morning, bike at the matinée, bike in the evening; and, with that, the cooking, the washing-up ... and not a farthing in her pocket, though she had made a fortune for her Pa, damn it! Pa living on his income at Kennington, while she continued her life of slavery! Wasn’t it enough to make her send everybody to the devil, and Nunkie, that old rogue, with the rest? A pack of nigger drivers, that’s what they were, every one of them! And what an idiot she was, to keep on barking her shins for other people! Would she go on doing it until she was fifty? And if she didn’t begin now to put money by, who would do it for her later? Not that worthless husband, surely! He, who, that very morning, had dared, the loafer, to tell her of a scheme—a sort of a risky trick which she was to perform, a thing calculated to break your head or make a millionaire of you—for him, of course, just as for Pa! It had come to this, that her turn wasn’t good enough, that it had to be more sensational; and she was expected to make it so for a man she didn’t love! Oh, she had put him nicely in his place! Rather! Thank you for nothing: none of that for her! In the evening Lily was still trembling, with her two elbows on the table, as she sat facing her glass in her dressing-room; angrily she crushed the grease-paint on to her cheeks, which were pale with rage.

Ting! Straight on to the stage, turning round and round, fifty rounds from habit, mechanically, without any “go” in them: an indolent performance, which would have earned her a good smacking in Pa’s time.

“You were shockingly bad!” said Trampy, who was waiting for her in the bar, after watching her from the front. “What’s the matter with you? Are you ill?”

Lily did not even answer.

“I’m speaking to you,” said Trampy crossly. “You did nothing right to-night.”

“Yes, I know; that’ll do,” said Lily.

“It’s not a question of ‘Yes, I know,’ but of doing better next time,” said Trampy.

“I’m not taking any orders to-night,” said Lily.

“No, darling, but there was an agent in the house. He must have thought you bad.”

“That’s none of your business!”

“And, if you don’t get engagements, what’s to become of us?”

“I don’t care a hang,” said Lily. “I can always manage.”

“You ... you ... and what about me? We’re married, aren’t we?”

“But the money I earn’s mine,” said Lily. “I mean to buy dresses and whatever I want to, with my money. You’ll be wanting to come on the stage next, in evening-dress, to stand over me while I do my turn, and getting out your belt. Do you take me for your daughter, tell me?”

“What I’m saying,” said Trampy, aghast, “is for your good, from the point of view of the business, the salary.”

“My business, my salary, damn it!” cried Lily. “Mine, mine, do you understand? And it concerns nobody but myself!”

CHAPTER III

It came as a smack in the jaw to Trampy.

“My pay, my work, mine!”

It meant no more pocket-money with which to lord it at the bar. It meant a cheap cigarette instead of his glorious cigar. It was the end of a beautiful dream; and the awakening was a hard one. At first, he hoped to make Lily jealous by going about openly with the stage-girls; but she no longer paid any attention, seemed to suggest that he had better amuse himself on his side and she on hers:

“What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander,” she said.

Lily would no longer take his orders; and, because he felt his wife escape him, it was he, Trampy, who now became jealous. When, from a distance, among the tables, he saw Lily ride round the stage and all those heads raised toward her, those opera-glasses pointed at her, he followed her with an anxious eye. “Miss Lily!” “Miss Lily” was his wife, after all! Those rounded arms, that lissom figure, those twinkling legs were all his, every bit of them! He was the husband, by Jove! It was not a marriage for fun, as with Ave Maria: it was a marriage for good and all, which had cost him two pounds—“Yes, siree!”—at the Kennington registry-office. And it wasn’t only her flightiness, her smiles at the front boxes, but “my work, my salary, mine” into the bargain! She was acting like a bad wife, forgetting her most sacred duties!

Lily stood on no ceremony with him, took her title of “Miss” seriously: very flattering for him, very flattering, he must say! He no longer knew himself: he who, in the old days, used to answer: “My lord, rely on me!” when a half-tipsy swell invited him to come and drink champagne with some stage-girls, now became furious if men in the audience, not knowing who he was, sized up “Miss Lily” before him—her shoulders, arms and the rest—with reflections such as “I could do with a bit of that!” or, “A nice little supper ...” He felt inclined to shout in their faces that she was no “miss,” but his wife, by Jove!

He became more and more jealous. The thought of Jimmy, especially, kept running in his head. He felt a twinge whenever he heard him mentioned. And Jimmy was often mentioned just at present, for he was said to be preparing a new turn, a turn which would make him famous, unless it killed him.

“If only it would!” Trampy hoped.

Jimmy was Trampy’s bugbear. He had flattered himself that he had snatched Lily from Jimmy by sheer prowess; and not a bit of it! The recollection of that drove him mad, the sense of his powerlessness exasperated him, he had but one idea left: to show Lily ... and Jimmy ... the sort of man he was; to take his revenge. That great scheme of his, that discovery that would show what he was made of, the invention which he had patented in America with Poland’s money—oh, she had revenged herself finely, had that Parisienne!—well, the time to apply himself to that trick had come. Lily had refused to do it. All right, he would do it himself!

But, if he was to succeed, it was necessary that Lily should supply him with money, more money, lots of money. The apparatus was incomplete and had probably got damaged in the London warehouse; it would need repairs, improvements. Now Lily seemed intractable. She was vexed at having to earn money for two, pretended to have none too much for herself; it was her costumes now: six sets of tights, one for each evening, pink, green, red, blue, gray, white and assorted ornaments, silk ribbons....

She didn’t want to kill herself with work for nothing, as she had been doing up to now:

“A lady isn’t a performing dog!” she said.

Trampy swallowed his bitterness when he heard that. Lily was escaping him altogether. Sometimes, he would go on the stage, sit down in a corner and, from there, see Lily, a shawl over her shoulders, her throat wrapped in a scarf, walk up and down, behind the back-drop, like a passenger on the deck of a ship, at one time with a monkey-faced, red-whiskered sketch-comedian; at others, according to the chances of the week, with the female-impersonator, the boy with the green eyes. There was no harm in that: they were at home, among themselves, Lily was no damned lalerperlooser, he wouldn’t have had her so. And Trampy did not dare say anything, for fear of being made a laughing stock and also lest he should offend “Miss Lily.” But he was tormented with jealousy nevertheless, merely at seeing her talk pleasantly with her acquaintances. And yet it was innocent enough, a mere “Hullo, Lily!” “Hullo, old boy!” by way of keeping herself in touch with the news, for Lily hardly ever looked into The Era or Das Program; all those names, all that competition frightened her!

THE BOY WITH THE GREEN EYES

She had learned nothing new about Pa, except that the troupe still existed, but in quite a small way, of course. Her Pa was in favor of soft treatment, now, so they said; he had changed his manner. “Too late!” murmured Lily thoughtfully; but she was much amused when she heard that Tom, in addition to keeping up his trade as a shoeblack, was learning boxing, with bulldog obstinacy, in order to give Pa back his blow on the nose and beat him in a square fight. And didn’t some one say that Tom was stage-struck, too? Tom, that dwarf, with his short arms, on the stage! Crazy! every one of them!

And then they were always talking of Jimmy: Jimmy here, Jimmy there. It was becoming serious, Lily couldn’t get over it. She wondered what old Martello would say if he heard that: Jimmy an artiste! Pooh! Nonsense! And it was true, mind you! It was repeated from mouth to mouth, his fame was spreading, his fame, that is to say, in the bars, in the wings, among pros; you heard his name mentioned together with a hundred others; but that already was a great deal, that one could say, Butt Snyders, Laurence, Jimmy, Marjutti, all mixed up, as though he were their equal, he who had done nothing! But he would “do,” it was in the air: some stroke of luck, who could tell? And Lily knew him to be ambitious. Lady or no lady, she was an artiste first and foremost and hated competition. She had been whipped for her rivals, Lillian, Edith and Polly, had caught it for Laurence and for the fat freaks, too, and she depended on her work for her bread. When she saw a new troupe come to the front it made her anxious: even children “that high,” who played bike in between the pillars of the stage, she felt inclined to stamp upon; and if people ever asked her advice, she did not hesitate to tell them wrong. Men especially were disastrous competitors, even the ignorant ones. You never knew where you were with them, they dared do anything! She could not help getting mad when she thought of it. One more to take the bread out of her mouth! For it was all very well to treat him as a simpleton, to talk of his crotchets—he had views concerning a stage-apprentices’ fund, a home of rest for superannuated artistes and so on—Lily considered him dangerous. He was not a silly Glass-Eye or a stage-struck Tom; he was an ambitious Jimmy. But all the same, how absurd! A hypocrite like that was fit to write to Pa and get a poor girl in trouble, but was not the man to risk his skin! She laughed, not a stage smile, no, a real laugh, head thrown back, full-throated. An artiste, O Lord! Yes, like a heap of bluffers who were to do this and that, all sorts of wonderful things! and who ended by making a laughing stock of themselves, the whole business was so childish, faked up with ropes and weights, nursery-toys, Punch-and-Judy rubbish. It would be just like that with Jimmy, sure: lots of noise and then ... nothing! And he would have lost his place as manager and he would starve, the josser: that would teach him to be spiteful! And where was Jimmy? He might be very clever, in his shed in London, swinging from his rope, like a monkey on a string, but to do that before an audience was different. There would be no Jimmy left!

She liked to talk to herself like that. Miss Lily avoided thinking of a possible stroke of luck, she who had taken such pains to attain so little, just to become Mrs. Trampy, to have the honor of working for Trampy and feeding Trampy. Oh, she was tired of it, did all she could to find him work, to spur him on! She even wanted him to practise. And she mentioned Tom and Jimmy to him, all those beginners, all the others who were coming on.

“She thinks more of him than of me,” he said to himself.

And time passed and passed. It was now eight months that they had been traveling through Germany: and then, at last, came Berlin, the center of the agencies, like the plunge into Chicago, after the Western Tour, or New York, after the Eastern, or Paris, or London. Lily asked herself for what part of the world she would sign contracts. She would have liked Australia, South Africa, the States, so as to leave her husband in Europe, sitting up on his hind-quarters, like a trained dog, waiting for his “missis” to come back:

“If I could have the Kolossal in the meantime,” Lily thought. “A month there would do me nicely! I’d like to beat the fat freaks in their own country and show Pa that I don’t need his old troupe to star with!”

And Lily had some hope: an agent had given her to understand that she would be engaged, without a doubt, at that famous music-hall. But no! She learned that the Kolossal was not wanting cyclists, it had an attraction for next month, something sensational, it was said. And, in fact, suddenly, in the space of a night, the walls of the capital were covered with huge posters—“Bridging the Abyss!”—at the Kolossal!

“What’s that?” Lily asked herself.

And she was thunderstruck when she learned that this was Jimmy’s new trick! She had no doubt left when, looking into a bookseller’s window, she saw Jimmy’s portrait in Die Illustrirte Zeitung, the popular illustrated paper in Berlin.

Her arms fell to her sides! What, she thought, already? All this advertisement for that Jimmy? She had lost the Kolossal because of him. Already Jimmy was taking the bread out of her mouth! She could have wrung his neck!

Never had the New Zealanders, or the Hauptmanns, or the Pawnees, or any one, or anybody known such advertising as that, except the great breakneck performers, Laurence, the Loopers, the Motor Girl; and even then the girl was packed up in her machine like a sausage. But “Bridging the Abyss,” the papers said, required art: everything depended on the exact impetus, the faultless balance. The press was filled with clever puffs, biographies, descriptions of the apparatus, the cool daring which it needed to try that without a rope, to risk the performer’s life six times in six seconds. London and Paris were both said to have wanted the attraction; and Berlin was to have it first; and hoch for the Kolossal!

Trampy also was flabbergasted, when he read about this:

“But ... but ... but it’s my apparatus and nothing else! Why, I patented it in America! Do you understand now,” he asked, without, however, entering into technical explanations, “do you understand now, when I wanted you to help me? It wasn’t a question of the rusty bike! You’ve made me miss fame and fortune! And to think that I have an apparatus rotting away in London, in a warehouse, and that, if you’d listened to me, I should have been at the Kolossal now ... and covering you with diamonds!”

“I like your style!” said Lily. “You’d have made me break my back in your stead! I know you!”

“Oh, but I shan’t swallow that,” said Trampy, in his exasperation. “We shall see! I have my rights. I shall enforce them!”

“Don’t make a fool of yourself,” said Lily. “When a thing has to be done, it gets done without all that talk: look at Jimmy!”

“Hang your Jimmy!”

“It’s not a question of my Jimmy,” retorted Lily, “but of my money. I should simply have flung it away! You, do a thing like that! You risk your skin! Rot!”

Trampy, in his rage, would have boxed Lily’s ears, had it not been for her nails, which she held ready to scratch his face, and he went out fuming. He ran off to the agents, but there was nothing for him. And yet Trampy knew or, at least, supposed that they must want an opposition show to “Bridging the Abyss.” They must, surely! Why, everywhere, in all the great centers, every music-hall had its rival opposite or beside it: everywhere, each establishment strove to inflict empty houses upon its rival by offering more sensational or more breakneck tricks. At the Kaiserin, the rival of the Kolossal, they were, without a doubt, looking for something to set against “Bridging the Abyss” and they had nothing, or else Trampy would have known it: among pros such matters were always known long beforehand. Oh, Trampy was prepared to do anything to escape his wife’s sarcasm!

And, one evening, behold Trampy returning in triumph to the café where Lily awaited him:

“I knew it!” he cried. “I knew it wouldn’t go like that!”

“Well, what?” asked Lily. “Have you got a number thirty-seven? Thirty-eight? A fresh conquest? Something quite out of the common?”

“Laugh away, Lily! That son of a gun shall hear me talked about yet, by Jove! And everybody else will, too. You must be prepared for anything, Lily, when you marry an artiste!”

“Why, what’s happened?” asked Lily, much surprised.

This had happened: the two music-halls had fought. Jimmy, who was unable, it seemed, to get London or Paris, had offered his “Bridging the Abyss” to the Kaiserin, but his price was considered too high. From there he went to the Kolossal and made the same proposal. Now, times were hard for the music-halls, sucked dry by the enormous salaries that had to be paid. The managers were standing shoulder to shoulder, in the presence of the common enemy, the artiste and, more particularly, the originator of sensations, who is indispensable and who makes you an offer with a pistol at your head, like a highwayman demanding your money or your life.

But a turn like that meant an assured success; and the Kolossal offered Jimmy five hundred marks a night, so as to spike the Kaiserin’s guns by getting hold of a unique turn and one not easy to replace; a piece of underhand work involving two months’ empty houses at the Kaiserin, which, as it was, had only a second-rate troupe by way of “sisters,” while at the Kolossal they had Roofers engaged by the year, real ones, the complete dozen, words and music guaranteed. And now the Kolossal would make huge money with “Bridging the Abyss” and sink its rival; it was a master-stroke. But they knew everything at the Kaiserin. The Kaiserin also wanted a “Bridging the Abyss.” It would have one, a better one, with a finer title: “Arching the Gulf!” And they would get it for three hundred marks! And they must be ready, quick, quick, before the Kolossal, and it was just possible: they had twenty days yet; the apparatus would be made; they knew the plans, the dimensions; the house would be fixed up accordingly; they must succeed at all costs and not let themselves be strangled without defense! It was a struggle to the death! They would fight with corpses, if need be! Other people had broken their backs for them before now; there would be no difficulty in finding one more to risk his life six times in six seconds for three hundred marks a night.

And it was at that moment that Trampy offered himself. They had heard his name:

“Trampy Wheel-Pad, the tramp cyclist with the red-hot stove?”

“That’s me,” said Trampy.

And, full of self-assurance, he explained the object of his visit:

“I was the first to construct it; I patented it myself at Washington; I will produce the documents!”

It will be understood why Trampy wore his air of conquest when he returned home that day. He had his engagement in his pocket! He displayed it victoriously to Lily, passed it over her face, reveled in his revenge. At last he was going to show Lily whether he was able to keep a wife or not; and champagne suppers every evening, by Jove, with girls—no damned lalerperloosers—just to show her!

That same evening, he left for London, with an advance from the management, and came back to Berlin with the apparatus, the whole set up and repaired in a week, a gang of men working night and day. Followed practice with the rope, on a movable pulley, from early dawn, like a man determined to accomplish his breakneck feat, alive or dead; for Trampy would have done, no matter what, for Lily to cease being “Miss” Lily, to admit herself married and married for love and not to escape whippings, to cease being ashamed of him, to show herself proud of him, on the contrary, especially before Jimmy!

Trampy, in his less enthusiastic moments, felt a certain uneasiness: Jimmy’s proximity, his own patents far away, in America. But he assumed a bold face, declared himself the inventor, practised unrelentingly, with hatred of his rival in his heart. This hatred seemed to increase his powers of work. He practised, practised. He had a lively intelligence, if his heart was a trifle flabby. And he was very skilful, besides, when he condescended to take the trouble. He was a quick worker: in less than twenty days everything was ready, and “Arching the Gulf” sprawled over the hoardings of Berlin, side by side with “Bridging the Abyss.” One saw nothing else; and the Kaiserin opened its doors forty-eight hours before Jimmy. It was a huge success. Trampy received an ovation when, after the release of the terrible springs which flung the bike from one pedestal to another, in five seconds he fell on the mattresses outspread to receive him, behind a cloth.

It goes without saying that Jimmy was present at the show. He was smashed before he had even begun! There, before his eyes, was his own invention worked by another! He had expected competition, of course; it was impossible, he knew, to discover anything that wasn’t copied at once; snatchers of ideas, who prowl around artistes, plagiarists, pirates, swarmed as thick as any other sort of thieves. And, as ill luck would have it, though his turn was difficult to perform, the apparatus, at least, was simple to construct: four powerful springs, screwed down with a jack, which the weight of the leaping cyclist, as he fell upon each pedestal, released one after the other, causing him to take enormous jumps forward. It was an ideal breakneck machine, easy to carry about; only the calculations had been difficult. They had cost him a lot of trouble to establish; and now another was profiting by them! Perhaps some one had patented the invention before him! For he, too, before showing it in public, had patented it in England and Germany; and his anger knew no bounds, his energy was increased fourfold when he learned the name of the plagiarist: Trampy again! Trampy, who had stolen his love, who had stolen his Lily ... and who was now stealing his idea ... robbing him of the fruit of his labor! Jimmy, in spite of his fury, resolved to keep calm: the law first. He was protected by the law, unless—and that was impossible—unless Trampy had had the same idea as himself before him and taken out his patents before the publication in Engineering. Jimmy showed a prompt decision, a feverish activity. First of all, he must put the law in motion, bring an action against Trampy, telegraph to the patent office at Washington to ascertain the date. Meanwhile, he made his first appearance on the day fixed for it. His success was even greater than Trampy’s; his leaps were twice as wide, more in accordance with his courage. The way in which he “bridged the abyss,” in the huge hall where he gave his show, was enough to prove that he was the inventor, the creator, the great, typical, daring performer, who, disclaiming death, marches to glory and fortune even as heroes, flag in hand, rush to the assault under fire.

It was a bolt from the blue for the Kaiserin when the little paper arrived, the injunction against “Arching the Gulf.” A steamer caught in a cyclone would undergo much the same disablement, under a sea sweeping her from stem to stern, swamping the saloons, drowning the very rats in the hold. Jimmy’s active inquiries had not taken long: telegram followed upon telegram; the British consul woke up. The law at Washington was formal and precise: nothing could be patented that had been known, or used, or published before the patent was applied for. Now the article in Engineering, of course, appeared prior to the step taken by Trampy. And in Germany, also, Jimmy won his case; the court found in favor of the absolute novelty of the invention. The Kaiserin could not give its performance short of paying five hundred marks a night to its rival, the Kolossal. This meant the wreck of “Arching the Gulf;” and Trampy came down with it. For a few days, he led a terrible life, a desperate struggle, made efforts in every direction; but, at last, worried, hustled, driven to bay, Trampy disappeared into the darkness, while Jimmy, freed from this enervating opposition and feeling sure of himself henceforward, gained fresh courage, added another arch to “Bridging the Abyss.”

It was done, he had made his start, he had a name, he was the man who draws crowds; he received brilliant proposals from all sides, from the Western Trust, among others. He felt himself somebody; and money also was coming in. He could at last realize what he had in his head ... in the absence of love there would be fame ... oh, something a thousand times more sensational than “Bridging the Abyss,” more modern, more scientific, something which he confided to nobody, which he kept locked up in his brain, in his heart, like a love passion, a thing which would be his alone, this time, which no one could take from him! For it would not be a question of a spring and a click, only. The thing moved in his breast, lived in his brain. When he thought of it, his cheeks became hollow with ambition, his eyes lit up. He seemed to tower over immense perspectives; and, from that height, Trampy appeared to him so small, so small, so really small that he felt his anger decrease. And then there was Lily! To send Trampy to his wife with a black eye or a bloody nose, to turn the husband into an object of ridicule to his wife, that was impossible for him; it would have shown lack of respect for Lily, poor darling; he would not humiliate her in her man! She loved him, perhaps, in the illusion of her seventeen years! Hurt her? Never! Jimmy wiped the episode from the slate; hard as it was, he forgave that highway robber, in the name of his dead love.

Ah, if he could have seen Lily when Trampy was driven to confess his discomfiture to her! He would have been revenged offhand! Lily seethed with rage against her husband, that footy rotter! What! Was that his great scheme? Did he call that an idea? How often had not Jimmy spoken to her about it! It was pinned on the wall, it lay about in the Gresse Street workshop for months. She remembered seeing the plans, the diagrams, the drawings in the papers. Jimmy had explained everything to her at the time when he was still a josser. And Trampy had stolen it from him, stolen it, stolen it! Oh, he would make her die of shame!

It was a terrible dispute, a real “playing humanity,” with threats, clenched fists, broken crockery strewing the floor.

“To humiliate me like that before Jimmy!” said Lily, furious.

“Drop that about Jimmy!” snarled Trampy, green with jealousy. “I won’t have you mention him!”

“I shall mention him if I like! Jimmy is a son of a gun! Very well! But he’s a man! He’s worth two of you.”

Trampy strode up to her with his fist raised.

“If you touch me,” cried Lily, seizing the lamp, “if you touch me, I’ll smash it over your head!”

CHAPTER IV

When Trampy received the visit of the Gerichtsdiener, with the bill of costs to pay—for the Kolossal sued the Kaiserin for damages and the Kaiserin came down upon Trampy—when Trampy learned that, he became a limp rag. Already he saw himself dragged before the courts, his whole past laid bare: two wives on his hands, for all he knew; Lily crushing him with her scorn; Jimmy triumphant.

Trampy had a moment of real despair. Lily preferred him like that, humbled at her feet. She seemed to understand her husband, a man spoiled by easy conquests, a boozer, a rake, who had taken too much upon himself when he wedded a wife. Trampy was certainly not made for marriage: having a wife was a different thing from having thirty-six girls. His heart, weakened with premature enjoyment, was no longer made for real love. All this he too now perceived; and, in spite of himself, realizing his unworthiness, he felt overcome by an ever-increasing jealousy.

Those were melancholy weeks in the small room. He sat for hours brooding over his disgrace. Lily silently turned this time of rest to account and mended her costumes, sewed spangles on her bodices, beside the earthenware stove, on which the stew was bubbling; and then came the meal, on the table hastily cleared of the mass of ribbons, thread and needles, to make room for the plates. Trampy choked as he swallowed that dinner which he had not earned, sighed sadly for the good cheer of his dreams, the champagne suppers with girls. He gulped down his meagre fare in silence, he who had known the gay junketings, the noisy laughter and the “Roman nights!” To go from there and drown his sorrows in the bar next door was but a step. And Trampy had sorrows outside his recent defeat: sorrows which were even more bitter. He felt that, this time, he was losing Lily.

Lily was surrounded with sympathy. When she went the round of the agencies, the pros courted her. They looked upon Lily in the light of a wife tired of her husband. They prowled round that possible prey. A Lily was worth the having, meant an assured income for whoever succeeded in winning her affections and managing her properly: not with brutality, no, rather not; home joys, like Mr. Fuchs! Who was destined one day to own those full-blown seventeen years, those twinkling legs, that lissom body, trained to spin round and round, unerring and exact? What lucky dog would have her for himself, would succeed in making her love him? They pitied Lily openly, to disgust her with her husband and hasten on the catastrophe. Trampy? He was no husband for her! They, ah, yes, now that was a different matter! And they talked of the dangers attendant upon Trampy’s mode of life; the impersonator told her of the terrible diseases brought on by constant tippling; they exaggerated it all on purpose, amused themselves by frightening her; until Lily, sometimes, would look upon herself as a pretty little gazelle chained to a mangy bear.

Trampy suspected all this, having himself, in the old days, in the time of his glory, been one of those who hovered round wives ready for divorce, helping them, if need be. He could have smashed the face of that green-eyed impersonator. There was also that architect, that theater-builder, Harrasford’s friend: he was passing through Berlin and Lily had taken his fancy the other evening, at the café; he had patted her cheek gaily:

“I knew you when you were ‘that high.’ You used to sit on my knee. How beautiful you’ve grown!”

There appeared to be an infinity of people who had known Lily when she was “that high.” They paid her more and more attention ... and then they believed her to be looked after by Jimmy. That again was a friendship dating back to her childhood, they said: Jimmy, the bill-topper. He, too, had known her when she was “that high.”

The greater part of this talk reached Trampy’s ears. Oh, he could have killed that Jimmy! But he was obliged to hold his tongue. Jimmy had him under his heel, with that crushing lawsuit.

They did not even dare speak of it, so painful was the subject. The little table by the earthenware stove separated them like a wall; and there was one thing always between them: Jimmy. Trampy never mentioned his name now. He would have had too much to say.... And there were continual summonses, always; and lawyers, always; and costs, always. Money melted away, like butter in the sun. Lily was tired of it; and an agony overcame her at the thought of leading a life like that for the rest of her days:

“Oh,” she said, “he’s taking the very bread from our mouths, with his lawsuit! And I haven’t a decent hat to wear.”

“He’ll drive us to the workhouse,” grumbled Trampy, staring before him, with folded arms.

“It’s your fault!” Lily began, but soon stopped: the subject led to a surfeit of quarreling.

But, in her own mind:

“That son of a gun of a Jimmy!” she thought. “All the same, who would ever have believed it of him? Can he guess that all of this falls upon me?”

“Suppose you were to go and see him,” said Trampy, at his wits’ end, one day when he had exhausted himself in stormy explanations with the manager of the Kaiserin.

“I go and see Jimmy?” exclaimed Lily. “What for?”

“To try and arrange things,” replied Trampy, dropping his head. “No one but you could ...”

“I’ll think about it, I’ll see,” said Lily.

But she had to get used by degrees to the idea of going and seeing that Jimmy who was now ruining her. A strange curiosity, nevertheless, drove her toward that conqueror, once a bike-cleaning workman, who was now topping the bill at Berlin and making as much money by himself as a whole program put together. He would receive her kindly, she was sure of that. Oh and then she wanted to tell him that she had had nothing to do with that business of the patents ... that she did not approve of Trampy’s conduct ...! And then he could give her news of Pa and Ma, as he had come from London, where he must have seen them! And she was dying to know! The idea was increasing with her that life with Trampy had become impossible. And, in case she should leave him, she dreaded finding herself alone. Already there were all those offers being made to her, a married woman, driving her mad! She, Lily Clifton, was treated like a “Parisienne”: she hated that sort! To walk about the stage, two by two, might pass; but it was possible to go too far, like the conductor of the orchestra, who, the other day, tried to kiss her in her dressing-room, married woman though she was! Then what would it be when she traveled alone! On the continent, too! Oh, she would have liked to be a good little wife! But, as that could not be, better go back to her Pa and Ma and have a home, a real one, with a servant in it. She was yearning for a home. But how would she be received in that case? Would they put the blame on her? Had they forgiven her? Had she a Pa and Ma still? That was what she wanted to know.

Lily would have liked to look handsome and elegant on the day when she went to Jimmy, so as to show him that he was not the only one who made a lot of money; but she felt very small and terribly excited. The hotel itself, the great clock, the waiters, everything made an impression on her, so different from her boarding-house in the Akerstrasse. She felt like running away after knocking at his door; and Jimmy opened it with the preoccupied air of a man who is disturbed at an inconvenient moment. But suddenly he put out his hand in hearty greeting:

“Hullo, Lily! Come in.”

Lily entered a bright sitting-room, neatly furnished with a sofa and comfortable chairs; no bed; a room which served only for that. She at once felt more at her ease. Jimmy motioned her to a seat near a table covered with papers, full of marks and signs which she did not understand, and books, rulers and compasses. She tried to be simple and dignified; apologized for interrupting him:

“Brain-work, I see,” she said, pointing to the papers. “That’s hard, too, I suppose,” she added, to say something, for a start, like talking about the weather.

“A matter of habit, like the bike,” said Jimmy, in a tone of conviction. “Sit down, Lily, there in that big arm-chair; you’re not disturbing me.”

“’K you,” said Lily, sitting down, feeling reassured by his cordial welcome and thinking that, at least, he was polite.

“I am glad to see you again, Lily,” Jimmy went on, taking a chair himself. “Always glad to see you. And how are you? Keeping well?”

“’K you,” said Lily.

“I’m very glad to hear it,” said Jimmy, scrutinizing Lily with great kindness and trying not to see her preoccupied expression. “I know what brings you here, Lily. You’re a dear little thing, a kid, eh? A real kid at heart, aren’t you? I bet you I guess. I’ve come from London. You want to hear the latest news of your Pa and Ma, eh? You’re not angry with them, I hope? Oh, it would be wrong of you to be angry with them still! They’re very fond of you, you know. They cried when you went away, Lily. Your ... going away,” Jimmy insisted, with a quaver in his voice, “was ... a great blow ... to them ... too.”

“How do they get on without me?” asked Lily eagerly, not wishing to break down and cry before Jimmy. “Poor Pa! Yes, he was fond of me. He never let me fall on purpose. He did not force me to work when I was ill.”

“Your Pa!” Jimmy broke in, glad of the chance to give a fresh turn to the conversation. “Why, there’s no harm in him! Your Pa’s an artiste in love with his art, that’s all! I shouldn’t be surprised if the troupe made a hit yet. It’s had a success of a sort already—in the small halls—at Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells. Your Pa just does without you as well as he can. He runs after his pupils all day long, damn it!” said Jimmy, with a laugh. “Your cousin stars.”

COUSIN DAISY

“Who stars?” asked Lily.

“Your cousin Daisy. She came as soon as you ... as you went away and offered to take your place. Pa Clifton sent her to the right-about, treated her like a ... like an I don’t know what, but she returned to the charge. She’s doing very well now. She tries to be like you.”

“No! Impossible!” exclaimed Lily. “What, that fat freak?”

“And your Pa will succeed,” Jimmy hastened to add. “You’ll see. You ought to be proud of having a Pa like that.”

“Yes, in a sense,” said Lily, who felt a certain satisfaction at being the daughter of her Pa.

He was a bit harsh at times; but a man like her Pa, or like Jimmy, was much better than her loafer of a tramp cyclist!

“And ... Ma?” asked Lily.

“Your Ma,” said Jimmy, in a lower voice, “cried ... oh, how she cried when she found that you had gone! No doubt, she exaggerated any wrong she had done you. It seems she fell upon her knees and prayed and asked for forgiveness.”

“Forgiveness? What for? Of whom?” Lily inquired.

“Why,” said Jimmy, in a serious tone, “of whom do you think people ask forgiveness, when they are alone, on their knees?”

“Oh,” said Lily, greatly touched, “I understand! So they didn’t put the blame on me?”

“What blame?”

“For my marriage,” said Lily, lowering her eyes.

“No ... if you had gone off to live with him ... oh, not you, not you, I know!” protested Jimmy, seeing a gesture of Lily’s. “But marriage is different, I suppose. You had the right, you were old enough to go away with the man you loved.”

Jimmy turned pale as he said this; but Lily, hanging her head and red with shame, did not notice it.

“What!” said Jimmy. “You’re blushing! Do you regret it?”

Lily did not reply.

“Then,” continued Jimmy slowly, “what they said—I wouldn’t believe it, but you know they say a lot of things—is it true?”

She nodded yes and raised her eyes to him with a sad, weary smile.

“He doesn’t love you? And ... and ... you, Lily,” asked Jimmy, taking her hand in his, “don’t you love him?”

“Certainly not!” said Lily, with such an accent of conviction and such a look of disgust that Jimmy was, at one and the same time, delighted to the bottom of his heart and pained to the verge of tears.

Poor Lily! He now noticed her pallor, the dark rims round her eyes, that exquisite face refined by inmost grief. Lily, upon whom, since her visit to the shop in Gresse Street, he had built his hopes of happiness! It seemed to him like yesterday and already it was the distant past. Was that what her rebellion, her bid for freedom had ended in? Was that the crowning point of her hard life? Lily, fashioned to be the companion of a loving heart, was the prey of a footy rotter! Oh, if Jimmy had not controlled himself, if he had not clenched his teeth, for fear of talking! If he had listened to his anger, let loose the storm that raged within him, shouted out what he felt! But what would be the good of telling her his love? Why add to Lily’s sorrows by letting her know what might have been and thus cause trouble in her household, when he wished for one thing only, Lily’s happiness? Suppose she did not love her husband: Trampy, alas, unworthy though he was, remained her husband, nevertheless! And there was no hope of breaking the chain. The letters from Denver and Houston were anything but encouraging. No proofs, no recollections of Trampy’s marriage over there. So there seemed no way out.

Nor did he wish to incense Trampy’s jealousy. Lily would have had to bear the brunt of it ... as in the old days, with Ma’s temper. Oh, there was no doubt about it: Jimmy, to hold his tongue now, needed more courage than when risking his life six times in six seconds! But what was the use of fighting against fate? Better submit, when there was no remedy, and strive for peace!

“Everything gets straight sooner or later,” Jimmy went on. “Many lives that once seemed spoiled have become quite endurable. Time is the great healer. Trampy, no doubt, will get over his faults. He will learn to appreciate you. Have patience. Don’t exaggerate your bothers, Lily. There are others unhappier than yourself. You have a claim to happiness. You will know it yet. Just think. You’re so young, you have all your life before you.”

“The simpleton!” thought Lily. “It’s easy for him to talk. But then ... why was he so jealous? Why did he tell Pa about me? But for him, I should be at home now!”

It was certain that, notwithstanding his kindly reception, Jimmy now seemed to be taking Trampy’s part, as formerly he had sided with Pa and Ma. And he was lalerperlooser enough to ask Lily if her husband knew that she had come to see him:

“I hope he knows, Lily. We must have no secrets: did you tell him?”

“He sent me,” she said, resolving to tell everything frankly, since that was what she had come for and not, after all, to talk about love ... money, only, and business ... it was a question of bread and butter to her.

“Ah! He did!” said Jimmy, a little surprised.

“Yes,” said Lily, “it’s about that lawsuit.”

“Speak quite frankly, Lily. Tell me everything,” said Jimmy, very calm.

“Well,” said Lily, yielding before his air of candor, “Trampy is at the end of his tether; he has no money”—she colored up to the eyes—“no money, no work; the law-costs ...”

“And whose fault is that?” interrupted Jimmy, rising and picking up a cigarette, so as to have something to fumble at with his fingers. “Whose fault is it, Lily, if not that ... well, if not Trampy’s? Isn’t it fair that he should pay for it? It would really become too easy, else, to steal other people’s ideas! You know quite well, Lily—you saw it at my place, on the wall—is it my invention or is it not? And here comes Trampy,” he continued, crunching up his cigarette with a nervous gesture, “and patents it ... as if it were his own. It’s a bit too much, you know!”

“Jimmy,” cried Lily, starting up from her chair, “I swear to you that I had nothing to do with it! If I had known, Jimmy, I would have stopped it! I call it stealing, as you do.”

“Oh, I’m quite sure of that, Lily! I never thought it was you! Calm yourself; sit down, do,” said Jimmy, relieved at the sight of Lily’s indignation, as she stood before him with blazing eyes and her face crimson with shame.

“Important tricks like that!” went on Lily, sitting down again. “No, those have no right to be copied. It’s brain-work. You designed it yourself.”

“Yes, but about the present,” said Jimmy, with a serious air. “I can’t give in to Trampy. I’m bound to defend myself. You came to see me about my action, Lily. I can’t say anything on the subject. It’s ... Trampy’s business, I suppose! Why, what would you do in my place, Lily?”

“I should do as you’re doing, Jimmy, you’re perfectly right,” said Lily, very low, without raising her head. “But couldn’t one come to terms ... avoid a lawsuit ... and not waste all that money on jossers? What do you gain by it yourself? We can’t pay up, Jimmy: those costs are breaking us.”

“What do you mean by ‘us’?”

“Trampy isn’t working,” continued Lily. “He hasn’t done anything for a long time.”

“But then,” asked Jimmy, stopping in front of her, “how does he live?”

“I ... I’m earning money,” explained Lily, blushing, ashamed to own her distress.

Oh, it was hard for her, Lily Clifton, to have no money and to confess it to Jimmy, that josser, who was making his five hundred marks a day! Jimmy saw her before him, huddled in her chair ... her faded hat, her mean gown. He took in everything at a glance. Poor Lily, who used to dream of dresses, to be reduced to that! Then he understood. Pity moved him at the sight of that poor Lily. It was all very well for him to say, just now, “Business is business,” and to ask, “What would you do in my place?” He knew what he would do. A lawsuit was not a question of sentiment, everybody knew that; but still, it was no longer between men....

“Listen, Lily,” he said, putting his hand kindly on her shoulder, “if all this is to fall upon you, we must see how we can arrange matters. Sorry you didn’t come sooner; I don’t want to add to your burdens, Lily, heaven knows I don’t! I never thought of that. I ought to have suspected, perhaps. However, I will withdraw the case. I’ll manage. And the costs ... well, I’ll pay them myself, if necessary, for you, Lily, for you; because I knew you when you were ‘that high’ ... no, not quite so small; how old were you? Thirteen ... and such a little thing, such a dear little wee thing. Do you remember when I made night and day in your cabin, by just touching my levers? And then it seems to me that I always knew you: in Mexico, in India, in South Africa, at the time of the elephants and the tiny birds. And then later, that other Lily, the London one: the one of only a few months ago. The one for whom ...” continued Jimmy, in a voice smothered with emotion. “The Lily of Rathbone Place. The Lily of Gresse Street. That little toque, which suited you so well and which you complained of ... you poor little Lily!... You poor silly little thing! There, go home now and make your mind easy, as far as I’m concerned, Lily. None of your troubles shall come from me. Besides, as they say, a bad settlement is better than the best lawsuit. I’m doing it for your sake. Well, is that all right?”

“Oh, how kind you are!” she said, raising her eyes to him, with a tear in them. “Why, Jimmy, you’re not so bad, after all!”