"How do you do, Lily? Delighted to see you."

"Glass-Eye," said Lily, opening the door of her dressing-room, "Glass-Eye, my bag ... the key of my trunk ... get out the bike first. One can't turn in this rotten hole," she added, as she entered.

And, as Glass-Eye seemed all day releasing the bike from the hooked-up skirts and tights hanging from the wall, to say nothing of the kicks which she received from the pedals, Lily, grumbling, snatched it out of her hands, and ordered her maid to go and wait for her in the street, great good-for-nothing that she was!

"So you refuse to speak to me?" asked Jimmy.

Lily lowered her head, took no more notice of him than if he had not been there, collected her clothes, pulled the gollywog from the wall without the slightest regard, heaped up everything promiscuously in the trunk, thumping it down with her fists, as though eager to have done with it.

"Come, Lily, are you still angry with me?" asked Jimmy, quite at a loss. "When you took me by surprise that day, at Whitcomb Mansions ..."

"A lot I care for your love!" growled Lily contemptuously.

"But my friendship, Lily ..."

"Your friendship," said Lily, "your friendship ... a rag! I'll show you how I value your friendship!" she said, flinging a dirty towel on the floor and stamping on it in her rage.

"And that Daisy Woolly-legs!" resumed Lily, with an unspeakable expression of scorn on her face.

"What do you mean?" asked Jimmy, who did not understand.

"Giving that shop to the New Trickers!" she continued violently. "You who always used to talk of my talent! Giving a shop like that to those New Trickers, who haven't as much talent among the six of them as I have in my little finger!... You! To treat me like that!... When I think," cried Lily, beside herself, "when I think that Pa and Ma will be here ... with tricks stolen from me! footy rotter that you are!"

Jimmy understood that the engagement of the New Trickers exasperated Lily: a question of outraged pride, of professional jealousy. He tried to explain: she had already performed in Paris and Harrasford insisted on that. He, Jimmy, wasn't altogether the master. The New Trickers were very clever, very original, very new ...

"And I'm only fit to throw to the dogs, eh?" cried Lily furiously. "And that rot about having performed in Paris. The Graces have performed in Paris and they're to be at the Astrarium and why not I? Because you're my friend, perhaps. Such a friend! When it would have been so easy for you to give me that pleasure. But no one will ever do anything to please me! Yes, strangers, gentlemen in the front boxes; but not friends like you! You always bore me a grudge for marrying Trampy.... And who knows what people say of me behind my back!... that I cut my turn ... that I do less than I might. You know what I can do, damn it! But it's work I want, do you hear, work! I'm not what you think!... One of those ... not I! I'd rather chew glass than take any of that!"

And Lily spoke with nervous movements of the shoulder and fiery glances and she forced Jimmy to lower his eyes and she told him what she thought of him straight out, told him all her heaped-up, rankling spite, told him all she had at heart, in words round and solid enough to build a tower of Babel on!

"And I would have given my life, yes, given my life to perform here! However, it's done now, isn't it? And it can't be undone," said Lily, more calmly, and two tears sprang to her eyelids.... Then, while Jimmy, plunged in his own thoughts, watched her without speaking and listened to her like a judge, "You've nothing to say to me, eh?" she continued, closing her trunk with a thump of the fist. "Nor I either. Then help me to carry down my hamper: you haven't helped me to get into the Astrarium; at least you can help me to get out of it. No? You refuse? And you so generous!" she said, with a scornful laugh. "Well, then, help me take it on my shoulders. No? Not even that? Then I must try by myself ... and never mind if I do get crushed! That's all I care for my life now!" added Lily, snapping her fingers.

"But, Lily," said Jimmy, taking up the hamper. "You're going out of your sense; you know that ..."

Jimmy could find nothing to say. He was pained to the bottom of his heart ... for the grief which he was causing her. The tone of feverish banter which Lily was adopting upset him more than her anger had done. He felt himself filled with pity for that poor little creature standing at bay.

With a turn of the hip, Jimmy jerked to his shoulder the great basket trunk which contained all Lily's fortune. It was not very heavy: tights, spangled skirts, faded flowers. And, in the passage down-stairs, the astounded stage-doorkeeper saw the famous bill-topper submissively carrying the trunk of the bicyclist, who walked in front of him, wheeling her machine beside her.



CHAPTER VI

The fortnight that followed upon this meeting was such a strenuous one for Jimmy, with eighteen hours out of the twenty-four spent at the Astrarium, among the day and night gangs; his life was such a slavery that he had hardly time to think of Lily. But he did think of her, for all that. He seemed to hear her still. Yes, he confessed to himself, he had, perhaps, believed ... he had, in fact, been told that Lily was Lily no longer ... But he had just been admiring her magnificent anger. He had seen her eaten up with ambition, quivering from head to foot, and that brave face lifted up to his. Twenty times over he was on the point of saying something to her; but he must see first ... Would she herself be willing? Even though she had seemed resolved to do anything?

"Meanwhile," thought Jimmy, as on the former occasion, when she was ill, in Berlin, "how are we to help her out of this ... how?"

And he was caught in the whirlwind again: it was Jimmy here, Jimmy there. He had to be in ten places at once. Not that he was manager or stage-manager: his was a special case. Since his return from America, Jimmy possessed an even more thorough knowledge of all the machinery of the theater. He had his memorandum-books filled with notes, his head crammed with new ideas. He had a smattering of everything, a vast amount of experience picked up in rushing about the world. After his triumphs with "Bridging the Abyss," the managers, knowing that he had prepared something different, something strange and terrible, without knowing exactly what, the managers had bombarded him with offers: Chicago, Berlin, London. A conversation with Harrasford, whom the Astrarium held body and soul, had determined the matter otherwise: he would open the Astrarium with Jimmy and remodel the theater from top to bottom in view of the new trick, the most sensational that had ever been seen. And Jimmy should make the necessary alterations, he should have a free hand.

Jimmy accepted. To open in a theater made for himself seemed preferable to Jimmy to launching his new invention in a closed hall, such as the London Hippodrome, for instance, which did not provide the aperture in the roof, the door opening on to the stars, which he required to obtain his effect upon the crowd. And that was why, in the work at the Astrarium, everything turned upon Jimmy. He was responsible to both Harrasford and himself. For that matter, he was fully equal to the interests at stake. Harrasford, a great judge of men, intrusted everything to Jimmy, the sensational bill-topper, removed above all jealousy; and he left it to his experience to construct the program. Harrasford himself, the chief and master, rarely left London; he managed all his theaters from his office, with the 'phone at his ear, or else flew like the wind in every direction, buying a theater here, picking up a star there, on the wing. It was not until the third week that he came to see for himself how the work was doing and to discuss the accounts. His broad back was seen, followed by Jimmy, to plunge down the plastery corridors, to pass under the

scaffoldings. He looked like a conqueror, tracing with his finger the plan of the palace that was to rise upon the ruins of the destroyed city; or else he would point out things with a jerk of the chin:

"The proscenium pushed forward to here, eh, Jimmy? A cluster of electric lights here. Another there. And what about your trick, Jimmy?"

"You must imagine the house in darkness," said Jimmy, "and blue and green rays falling on the stage from above. Through the blue, we send a great dazzling beam, from over there, lighting up every inch of the house, a terrific light, the light of the Last Judgment...."

"Good!" said Harrasford. "We want two or three fits of hysterics at the opening, real ones, not hired at two bob a night," he added, with a wink. "They're working, up there," he continued, a piece of old plastering falling on his shoulder, as they crossed the floor of the house, denuded of its seats.

"It's the opening in the roof," said Jimmy. "I should have liked to show you ... the staircase is blocked with scaffoldings ..."

But Harrasford, at the risk of breaking his neck, had already grasped the rungs of a provisional ladder, made of spokes stuck through one of the four beams which rose from the floor to the ceiling and supported it, while the whole of the space between them was being opened. The architect was there when Harrasford came out on the roof. He showed him four piers of strong masonry which were being built against the outer walls, explained that two T irons of considerable strength would rest with their ends on the piers and run across the roofing from wall to wall. Two other irons, also parallel, but running lengthwise, would be bolted to the first two. This arrangement would make a horizontal frame of twenty by thirty feet. They would then remove the beams which supported the roof during the operations. When the plastering was finished and the gilding applied, this would form, as seen from below, a handsome frame to the sky. The architect also explained how the truncated roof would be secured to the frame, forming a whole as firm as a rock, and how a light iron sash, completely glazed, could be drawn along the two transverse T irons, thus opening or closing the hall as desired.

"The whole thing's worked from below by electricity," said Jimmy.

"How long will it take?" asked Harrasford.

"It's all ready. It's only got to be fixed up," said the architect.

"And how much? Give me the detailed account to-night, at the station. I'll study it on my way to Berlin." And, turning to the workmen, "Faites vite! Depechez!"

They were the only words of French he knew, a vocabulary no more extensive than Lily's, but of a different kind.

"And the lights?" asked Harrasford, before he went down again.

"Here, there," said Jimmy, "on steel rods, connected by electric wires."

"That'll dish the Berlin Winter Garden, with its stars set in black velvet," said Harrasford.

And he followed Jimmy toward the stage wall, which stood out above the roof of the auditorium. Here some other workmen were cutting a doorway.

"Let's go and see the floor now."

And Harrasford plunged through the door, followed by Jimmy. They crossed the fly-galleries and

made for the blocked staircases. Before they went down, Jimmy called his attention to a pulley which was being fixed to the ceiling and which was to carry a rope with a stirrup for the performer's foot, to enable him to reach the stage in a few seconds, after doing the trick.

"Very good," said Harrasford.

In half an hour, he had visited everything: the roof, the flies, the cellar, the auditorium, the front entrance. Workmen were hurrying everywhere. Harrasford encouraged them with a slap on the shoulder:

"Depechez! Faites vite!"

They were working at everything at once, from the new installation of electric light and the steam-heating apparatus, in the basement, to the emergency exits and the main lobby. Upholsterers were taking measurements in the front boxes. The sound of the hammer rang out from top to bottom, amid a cloud of dust; men climbed the scaffoldings, hoisted up things; and the sight of all this activity gave the impression of a plan thought out in advance, executed with great certainty, but incomprehensible to any one not in the secret. There could be no doubt but that the spectacle which was being prepared would be of a sensational character: even the back-wall of the stage, which was empty at that moment, had been altered. By clearing away a few dressing-rooms, they had raised the floor and ceiling of the huge property-entrance. It had been closed up at the back and fitted with a sliding door in front.

"The bird's cage," said Jimmy, with a smile.

"And how does he get out?" asked Harrasford.

"Windlasses here ... a rope up above ... hooks," said Jimmy.

"And when will it be fixed?"

"Finished next week, everything's ready, the trials have been made. It will only need a little practice, here, on the spot, calculating the effort, getting used to the distance."

"House packed for six months!" said the manager. "Here's a cigar to your success, Jimmy! Come and let's have a drink at the bar; we'll settle the program over there."

A moment later, the two entered the bar where, a fortnight earlier, Lily had handed round the hat a second time for old Martello and his Bambinis and where the artistes, who had already dispersed toward the four corners of Europe, had raised their glasses to the success of the Astrarium. And there, in the little back room, which was deserted by the artistes, now that the theater was closed, but which would soon again be the intersecting point of so many vagabond existences ... where the nigger cake-walker from Chicago would play poker with the equilibrist from Japan ... where the profs and the bosses would exchange complaints about the strictness of the regulations concerning the work of apprentices ... where little girls, worth their weight in gold, would come, coyly, encompassed by Pas and Mas, but with glances askance at flight; in that corner where funny men would swallow mixed drinks and talk through their noses; there, under the frames containing row upon row of signed photographs of artistes: human pyramids, girls in a knot, foaming muslins, Apollos and Venuses all muscles; there, in Pros' Corner, Harrasford, the man for whom all those people toiled and moiled, head down or feet in the air, the man from whom one thousand persons drew salaries night after night, Harrasford lit his cigar and sat down at a table with Jimmy, over a

bottle of beer, and, forthwith, pencil and note-book in hand:

"Let's see the program."

Jimmy, on his side, took a written list from his pocket and laid it on the table.

It goes without saying that the select turns which they were about to discuss had long been engaged for Harrasford's different music-halls, some of them two or three years ahead, as often happens in the case of the great bill-toppers, and the question was to choose among the best, so as to insure the triumph of the opening night. For Harrasford, who had as yet appointed no one as manager or stage-manager, the thing was to settle a program which would discourage any attempt at competition, to have none appearing except stars, without counting those whom he held in reserve for the following month, before distributing them over his variety-theaters in England, or, later, to any part of Europe, in the "Great Powers Tour" which he proposed to create and of which the Astrarium would be a sort of "commodore" music-hall, or headquarters. Jimmy only gave his opinion, after which Harrasford would decide.

Harrasford's dream was a model music-hall, something, in its own way, like the Grand Opera in Paris: a palatial edifice, in a new style of architecture, with friezes displaying bodies in contortion, caryatids, cast from life, supporting the springers of the arches, mixed groups of loins and chests with swelling muscles, under the electric lights, and, in the lobbies, a lavish display of African onyx, Scotch granite and Russian porphyry. The crowd would pass in between Venus and Apollo, holding flowers and lights; and there would be music everywhere; gaiety, noise, red and gold everywhere; all cares would be laid aside and forgotten on entering; it would be a hall containing every modern convenience, like the Iroquois at Buffalo or a 'Frisco sky-scraper: newspapers, cafe, bars, smoking-room, barbers' saloon, telegraph-office, telephone-office, messenger-boys, ticket-office, private rooms in which phonographs would shout out the latest news illustrated with telesteriography, from eight o'clock till midnight. The idea was to create, thirty years ahead of its time, the great popular music-hall, with its ball-rooms, as at Blackpool, its side-shows, a palm-garden, a roof-garden; to draw to the theater those who, on getting up from dinner, go to the cafe and stay there; to give them an atmosphere of mirth and jollity, of comforting lights, a sort of night forum, of People's Palace, with, in the middle, in the sumptuous hall, facing the furnace that was the stage, a long thrill of three hours' duration.

And he would realize it next year, but he was in a hurry to open now, to plant his flag of victory:

"Faites vite! Depechez!"

Dare Devil had won the place for him and Jimmy was bringing him the sensational attraction, the inspired godsend which would pack the Astrarium for six months and fill its till and spread its name far and wide over Europe.

Harrasford thought of this with a puff at his cigar, after glancing at the photographs on the wall, and then, suddenly:

"Let's see the program."

"Nothing but bill-toppers," said Jimmy. "Picked turns from the first to the last ..."

"Which will be you," Harrasford broke in.

"Yes ... I ... or somebody else ..."

"What do you mean, somebody else?"

"Perhaps," said Jimmy, "to heighten the effect of my turn ... for reasons which I'll explain to you ... perhaps it would be better to have a woman ... better for the success of the attraction!" he hastened to add, at an astonished gesture of Harrasford's.

"And ... are you sure?" asked the other.

"I think so," said Jimmy.

"The program first," said Harrasford, returning to his notes.

"We open with a gallery in marble and gold, something showy and quaint, in the Potsdam style, with a negress inside."

"I know. Light of Asia, eh? The armless Chinese girl whom I discovered at Poplar.... Music of cymbals and triangles, eh?"

"No," said Jimmy. "I have something better ... more aesthetic, less cruel ... a Soudanese woman from Chicago. She walks on to the stage in a low-necked dress ... a magnificent woman ... a creamy complexion, with a touch of pink ... and golden hair ..."

"You said a negress," interrupted Harrasford.

"Wait ... a splendid voice ... classical music ... then a wild African melody.... She feels a flutter of homesickness; the perspiration streams down her face; she presses the sponge soaked in water, hidden beneath her wig,—and the enamel, the white of the shoulders, the pink cheeks all trickle away and, finally she appears black as ebony, and, to the growl of the kettle-drums, does a disheveled dance, kicking up her legs like a puppet on a string ... Patti-Patty ... talent and absurdity mixed ... a crazy toy ... movement and noise, while the hall fills."

"Next?" asked Harrasford.

"Next, without any interval," continued Jimmy, "directly after that performance by the court fool before his majesty the audience, the curtain rises upon a park ... and the New Trickers chasing one another among the trees."

"The New Trickers!" said Harrasford. "Bicyclists: that's very stale. And, besides, what about you?"

"Has one ever," asked Jimmy, "seen a music-hall give two similar special turns, two bicycle turns, for instance, in the same show?"

"Absurd!" said Harrasford. "Explain yourself."

"It's to differentiate between my invention and trick-riding from the very first," replied Jimmy, "to show, once and for all, that mine has nothing in common with the ordinary turns you see on the stage: 'Bridging the Abyss' or 'Looping the Loop.'"

"You may be right," said Harrasford, "it will prevent confusion; yours is purely scientific. And the New Trickers: tights? Bloomers?"

"Skirts, all in white, Warwick style," said Jimmy. "A school-girls' spree: see-saw on the bike ... somersaults over the benches ... waltzes, lively tunes: an impression of gaiety and happiness. The star is a statue on a pedestal in the park. The others throw flowers to her. She wakes; steps down: 'Hullo, a bike!' And then a special tune for the star and a waltz on the back-wheel, amid the admiring circle of school-girls."

"All right," said Harrasford. "And what's the price of the New Trickers?"

"So much."

And he jotted it down in his note-book, near the prices of Dare Devil and Cataplasm.

Jimmy also took notes, mentioned the names of the great serio, the great comic singer, with their figures:

"So much."

"They earn their money pretty easily, those two!" grunted Harrasford. "But I've got to submit to it, I suppose. Next?"

Jimmy only described the spectacular turns. Harrasford listened, saw it in his head: a corner of untamed nature, a valley in the mountains, blue distances, sunshine in the foreground. The Three Graces arrive all out of breath.

"You understand," said Jimmy, "they are supposed to have been chasing the deer or hunting butterflies. As a matter of fact, Mr. Fuchs will have made them do their Sandow, before going on, to bring the blood to their cheeks; he's full of ideas, is Mr. Fuchs. On arriving, a moment's rest, an adorable group in all the splendor of the nude ... sweet, solemn music ... and then a glorious performance, a sort of human cluster hanging from the trapezes, something healthy and robust."

"All right," said Harrasford, putting a cross in his note-book opposite the Three Graces. "And next?"

With Harrasford it was always "And next?" like a man who never has more than just so many minutes to spare, because his train's waiting.

It was a curious sight to see the two talking together in low voices, with an occasional glance at the door when some indiscreet person looked in. They might have been taken for a pair of conspirators plotting a move; no one would ever have suspected that they were composing a performance, unique of its sort, which would be famous to-morrow. Everything was provided for: scenery, music, the color of the dresses, effects of light, the alternate doses of laughter or grace or terror to be served up to the audience; everything was discussed then and there, in all its details, down to those two sketch-comedians, with faces streaked red and white, against a back-drop representing an old English street, two drunken sports, with hats mashed in, coats turned inside out, ten minutes of mad tricks and inhuman cries; for the audience must have its pittance of the grotesque as well.

There was a herd of comic elephants, five enormous animals in a Hindoo setting; and no master on the stage, no boss, no prof: they all obeyed a whistle blown in the wings. And, conducting the orchestra with an air of unspeakable gravity, a monkey, Mozart II., a caricature of an infant prodigy, made the huge brutes perform their evolutions, to the Soldiers' Chorus from Faust. Then, in his enthusiasm, Mozart sent his desk flying into the air, followed by his coat, his shoes, his conductor's baton, and ended by seizing his tail in his hand and beating time with that.

"That dishes Orpheus and Mad-darewski," said Harrasford. "And next?"

The entr'acte came next, with portraits and biographies of the artistes distributed among the audience.

"Yes, yes," said Harrasford, laughing. "Old English families ... clergymen's daughters...."

"Learned all that with their governesses, as a surprise for their Pa and Ma!" continued Jimmy. "Mozart II., a favorite of the king of Lahore; Patti-Patty, a descendant of the Queen of Sheba: we've got to do it. There's no getting away from it."

"We must hide the bruises," said Harrasford. "And next?"

"Next, I hope to have the Bambinis: ten minutes of rosy mirth; real biographical babies, born with that in their blood, brother and sister, two marvels. I shall obtain permission for them to appear, though they're under the age; the old father is dying, the famous Martello."

"We must engage them for my tour," said Harrasford.

"If the old man doesn't die first; in that case, there's a brother who will come and claim them, it seems. They're a fortune, the two Bambinis, to whomever secures them."

"One dress-coat more on the stage," said Harrasford. "And next?"

"Topsy Turvy Tom."

"Oh, yes, I know!" said Harrasford, laughing. "The fellow who used to wear leaden armlets to harden his muscles and smash Clifton's jaw."

"That's the one," said Jimmy, laughing in his turn. "A threat of Clifton's, who said that he would 'make him dance the hornpipe on his hands, damn it!' suggested the idea of a turn to him, so they say. He set to work with superhuman energy—and now he is a bill-topper...."

"Well done!" cried Harrasford, banging his fist on the table. "There's no country but old England can turn out bulldogs like that, lads who jump from the gutter to the top of the bill! That's what I call a man! And what's his turn like?"

"A scene of his own: the front of a palace. A pink marble figure, naked down to the waist, supports a huge cornice. A thunder of big drums, a flash of lime-light and the palace splits from top to bottom. The figure staggers, falls on its hands and gives a stupendous acrobatic performance: somersaults on the hands; waltzing; treading the ball: the 'hornpipe, damn it!' And then Tom stands on his feet, all in shadow. A powerful ray of light is thrown upon him, and you see the muscles of the abdomen slowly moving, the pectoral muscles quivering, the deltoids leaping and starting, the biceps swelling; and, when he turns round, the rhomboids hollowing out, the muscles of the back rolling: the triumph of the human machine ... and of Tom."

"And of will," said Harrasford. "How much?"

"So much."

"It's worth it. And next?"

"Roofers, high-kickers: the Merry Wives. We begin with dancing and end with dancing. The puppets make their bow to the public before being put away in their boxes ... the curtain falls ... and good night!"

"And then you come!"

"Then I come," said Jimmy. "Or she."

"Your invention," said Harrasford seriously, "is not a music-hall entertainment. It is, undoubtedly, the greatest of all scientific toys, a marvel of modern ingenuity. Do you really want a pair of tights on the top of that? And, first of all, where will you find the woman who will dare?"

"That's the question, obviously," admitted Jimmy.

Not that Jimmy must have been in love with Lily, to think of her! It had first just passed through his head, no more. But, on reflecting, it had appeared to him that, in the theater, the beauty of a Lily would add greatly to the success of his attraction. To work his invention in public was different from experimenting with it in his shed in London. It was leaving the laboratory to take its place in life; and it would be a triumph to see the daring trick succeed, every day, at the fixed hour, within a restricted compass; to see it go through the opening above; to see that machine worked by a young girl in whom one would have suspected neither the strength nor the nerve: it would make the public infer the excellence of the engine. Now Jimmy was possessed, above all, of scientific enthusiasm. His machine before everything; not his personal triumph, his machine. He dreamed of giving that added grace to his diagrams; and he considered that there was no disadvantage in allowing science to be introduced by youth and beauty. Moreover, Jimmy was a little heavy for an apparatus in which he had even suppressed the motor, in order to make it more easily manageable ... a lighter body would perhaps be better ... Lily, Lily was the ideal operator; but was she capable of it? Jimmy had confidence in her. Jimmy, certainly, did not allow sentiment to mix in his affairs; there was the weight of his responsibility to consider. But then there was also his meeting with Lily in the dressing-room passage. And he had understood her mental agony. He had seen the gleam in her eyes and so great a display of energy in her face that Jimmy had resolved to try her; and he would judge her much better by the way in which she should face death.

That is what Jimmy explained to the manager, leaving a good deal untold, of course, and Harrasford retired behind the smoke of his cigar, listened, approved.

"It's your affair, when all is said and done. All you want is success, I suppose? And will you arrange with her ... with your ... what did you say her name was?"

"Lily."

"There are so many Lilies; and, if somebody has to break his or her back, I had rather it was a Lily, one out of the bunch, than you."

Lily, meanwhile, was loitering outside. Harrasford and Jimmy had no notion that the girl about whom they were talking was quite close to them, thinking of them. Lily had heard an artiste say that Harrasford was visiting the Astrarium. She had come in all haste, impelled by some vague hope. Chance would have it that she was still in Paris. Everything, besides, seemed to be keeping her there: an agent, the day after her interview with Jimmy, had advised her to stay a few days longer; there might be something important for her. Lily could not understand in what way; however, she had stayed, though she was almost without means of support. She began by trying to sell her jewels, the fifty-pound diamond, among others, which that lord had given her in England: the jeweler handed it back to her, saying that it might be worth eight francs! That meant destitution. And yet hope always returned to her in one way or another. She had even received three blue banknotes, three hundred francs, in an envelope! Her fortnight at the Bijou! No doubt about it, they were paying the artistes' salaries; perhaps the Federation had taken the matter up? Three hundred francs; not enough to pay Glass-Eye or to give to Jimmy, but just sufficient to settle her small debts, buy some new dresses and go to London to play the darky at Earl's Court. Oh, what a ridiculous come-down! And so, when she learned that Harrasford was at the Astrarium, she took her courage in both hands: she would see Harrasford. She would try the fascination of her smile upon him. She would be settled at once and for ever.... When she thought of the New Trickers, her blood seemed to stand still in her veins: the New Trickers at the Astrarium! And Jimmy, the mean cur, not to have got her that shop, when she had such a splendid idea: Lady Godiva on a bike! And a scene of her own: the front of Peeping Tom's club, with all the boys at the windows!

Just then, Harrasford came out of the bar. She hurried up to him and introduced herself:

"Miss Lily."

"Which one?" said Harrasford. "Excuse me; no time now. See Jimmy, will you?"

And he plunged into a cab and shouted an address to his driver.

Lily stood stupefied, as she watched the cab disappear. This time it was finished, quite finished.... She gave a last glance at the Astrarium and sighed....

"Lily!" It was Jimmy coming out and crossing the street. "Hullo, Lily!"

She did not reply.

"Listen, Lily," said Jimmy, gently and gravely. "You wanted to get there the other day, didn't you? You told me you would do anything for that."

"To take the place of the New Trickers, yes!" exclaimed Lily. "I'd have risked my life!"

"The New Trickers are there," said Jimmy, "and are going to remain. Listen to me, what I have to propose to you is very serious: it's something else."

"What else? You know that's all I'm good for ... to go round and round ... you know it quite well!" cried Lily, her face drawn with impotent anger. "I know what you can do. Look here: would you like to be above the New Trickers? Would you like to top the bill? Are you ready to do everything for that?"

"May God forgive you for mocking at me!"

"Will you top the bill?" asked Jimmy again, in an accent that sent a thrill down her back. "Answer me: yes or no?"

"Yes," cried Lily. "My life, everything, damn it!"



AMONG THE STARS

I

Jimmy was greatly excited when Lily had given him her answer and he led her to the Astrarium. To understand his feelings fully, one would have to know his life since the evening when, at Whitcomb Mansions, he had looked Lily in the face and told her no. He realized then, from the emotion which he experienced, how great a place Lily had filled in his heart, the little passenger from New York to Liverpool; the girl who came to see him in his shop in Gresse Street; the Lily whom he dreamed of "helping out of that" when he saw her on the stage, from up in the fly-galleries; the one whom he had tried to take away from Trampy; the poor sick girl in Berlin; those Lilies whom he felt moving inside him, around him, like a breath of April; all those Lilies, he had broken with them all! Oh, it was hard! Lily should never, never know what courage he had needed to keep silent, he, the man she thought so cold, nor what a tempest ... oh, if she could only have seen into him! And then ... he had not met her again....

He, after his engagement at the Hippodrome, went off to America; Lily traveled on her part. Also, he was a prey to his fixed idea, his great project, always: his ambition increased, the same longing for success which, formerly, in Gresse Street, had made him spend nights in study after days of toil, at the time when, under Lily's influence, his roaming thoughts built castles in the air, when he felt awakening within himself his racial instinct as an heroic seeker after profitable adventures.

And his ambition took great strides forward, was not limited, as in Clifton's case, to upsetting the fat freaks or training New Zealanders to spin round and round. He dreamed of a useful life, based upon his own efforts. He wished to found his future upon a discovery of his own, which had long haunted him and which had ripened in Berlin, between his flights in "Bridging the Abyss," a thing at which he worked incessantly in Whitcomb Mansions; and, this time, the stage prowlers, should not steal his idea. To begin with, apart from a few pieces of technical advice which he received from a friend of his, an engineer, nobody knew about it; and Jimmy felt sure that, even when the apparatus was at work, he would not fall a victim to the confraternity who, ever on the watch for new tricks, study them, judge of the weak points, copy whatever suits them, including scenery and music, and, sometimes, succeed in earning more money than the inventor himself; he would have nothing to fear from the Trampies, the pirates, the plagiarists, those plagues of the profession. Certainly, there were great bill-toppers, creators of sensations who discovered new things—terrifying feats of gyroscopic balancing, or flights through space, based upon principles of ballistics, assisted by the spiral spring—daring risk-alls, nerve-shakers, purveyors of thrills, turning to intelligent account the seductive power which dangerous feats exercise upon the public. Jimmy knew all about that. He was not the only one; but, this time, it was a question of a scientific application which would, beyond a doubt, place him at the head of that pick of the music-hall. It would be pure science and patient calculation: an algebraical hippogriff, with pluck in the saddle.

Jimmy's plans resulted from intuition rather than real knowledge; but learning has nothing to do with the creative spirit. Now Jimmy, although he was unaware of it, possessed the genius that invents; and his comparative ignorance did him no great harm: his imagination, unhampered by theories, was all the freer for it. Jimmy had the higher instinct of the born machinist, who is content to use a bit of string where a school-bred engineer will cram every manner of gear, chains, pulleys and windlasses. It is true that he was assisted in his research by many experiments already tried elsewhere; but he dreamed of something different and, in the calm of Whitcomb Mansions, had studied without respite.

"Pooh!" he reflected. "All those sails, all that weight! Boxes heaped one on the top of the other—cubes to catch the air—a man sitting inert in a basket, with his hand on a lever and a crank: it's as though one tried to make a stuffed bird fly! And what becomes of the man in all that: the back push, the daring stroke? The man has got to be the backbone of the machine, with his quick balancings, his bendings, which are worth more than any wheelwork."

And, always, his inventive imagination built on without respite, pulled down, built up again.

His daily success at the Hippodrome did not divert him from the end he had in view. "Bridging the Abyss," for him, was but a means of making money, to enable him to climb higher. He thought of nothing but that: getting on, climbing higher; and this obsession of the future made him scorn or rather overlook the temptations of the stage. He would only have had to choose among the lot. All, down to the great Parisienne, would have jumped at a champagne supper with Jimmy, the famous bill-topper, the man who looked like the swells in the front boxes and who made such a "pile." But Jimmy knew all about that: he left the theater in the quietest way, took a glass of ale with the boys or girls at the Crown, had a light supper and went home. And sometimes a frenzy for work made him rush to his table, as though the band of the Hippodrome were shaking his nerves:

"Get to work," he would growl, "get to work, cheesy brain!"

"But, Pa, I can't!"

"But you've got to, my little siree!" he insisted, with a flickering smile.

And he read treatises, made diagrams; took up his compasses again ... or else stayed as he was, with his chin in his hand, plunged in his thoughts, his mind soaring above London.... He seemed to fly over the huge city, whose distant rumbling rose up to him, similar to the roar of the sea.... Oh, he would succeed, he knew he would! And he felt within himself an increasing will of so tenacious a character that he could have swung it, so it seemed to him, like a battering-ram against the obstacle to be overcome and then:

"Damn it!" he would growl, banging his fist on the table. "That thief in the night! What a sweet wife he got hold of! Poor Lily, to fall into such hands! Ah, yes, she would have done better to stay at home!"

And Jimmy got to work again, to forget Lily; and he kept on thinking of her:

"Damn that girl!"

What on earth did he think of her for ... when he didn't love her, after all?

Even during his triumphal tour of the Eastern and Western Trust, that Lily, whom he did not love, haunted his memory. At first, he hoped to forget her in his life of excessive activity. And he saw so many theaters, as many as Lily did in England: so many artistes, on so many stages ... faces whom he had already met in England: fair wigs, scarlet legs, boyish voices; "Roofers," "brothers" and "sisters," returning from London, Manchester, or Glasgow. He would have ended by seeing them all again in time. There were other Lilies shooting up, Lilies "that high," elbowed by every vice, petted by every hand, kissed by every pair of lips. His sympathy went out to them all; and Lily had lived amid all that; it was just her life. He found something to remind him of her at every turn, on those stages on which she had performed. He seemed to see her near him, with her light walk, in her little black dress, looking so nice in her "performing-dog" toque: the poor little silly thing, running away with that thief in the night and left alone now, quite alone, it appeared, among the "rotten lot." The thought drove him mad:

"Damn that girl!" he said to himself. "I don't love her. Then why am I always thinking about her?"

And he rushed into work, into danger, when he thought of that; risked terrible leaps in "Bridging the Abyss." He sometimes felt as though he were rushing toward oblivion, into the jaws of death! And his great project also nearly outweighed Lily's influence:

"What are the leaps in 'Bridging the Abyss,'" he thought, "if not a fractional flight? If I had two flat surfaces, one on either side, and a motor behind me, it seems to me that I should continue to go upward; and the best rudder would be the man riding it, with his flexible body, his springy back: a live weight is less heavy than a dead weight. How many hundred volts does pluck stand for ... or skill ... or hatred ... or love?"

By dint of composing his machine in his head and studying it on paper, Jimmy grew calmer. He thought less about Lily, or, at least, thought about her only in her interest, not his. For instance, in that little town in the West which was not on his tour, but in which Trampy had appeared, Jimmy tried to obtain information. He went out of his way in order to make inquiries. A marriage with Trampy Wheel-Pad? It was impossible to discover anything; and he would not be able to make Lily the magnificent present which he had dreamed of: her divorce from Trampy!

And "Miss Lily," Miss Lily, always; he was not satisfied with thinking of her, he heard her name mentioned. Boys and girls who had seen Lily in England and whom the chances of travel brought across his path in America told him with many amplifications, of her outrageous adventures, her passion for flirting. She no longer did all her turn. She paid more attention to her dresses than to her performance. She was extravagant, traveled with her maid, put up at the big hotels. She received bouquets, my, as big as cabs, and invitations to supper and post-cards covered with x x x x! She had an autograph-book full of declarations of love. Motor-cars, furnished houses: she was offered everything. The son of a lord had ruined himself in jewelry for her, the impersonator was nearly off his head for love of her, gee, she did have a good time! She spent her life receiving chocolates and sweets and distributing her photograph as Lady Godiva, with her signature. Lily, according to them, laid waste every heart; men had left wife and children for her sake; her love affairs were going the round of the world, like her whippings. Lily was the thing; and game and mustard for Jim Crow.

These tales left Jimmy very sad. He made allowances for professional exaggeration in matters of love as of smackings, but, nevertheless, there must be some truth in what they said, for it reached him from various sides. Oh, he pitied that dear little Lily from the bottom of his heart! The harm was done, the theater had spoiled the woman. This time, he felt that it was finished, between her and him.... He, no doubt—who could tell?—would continue his forward progress, and, one day, he would have a wife of his own, a woman without a past, and he would take his stand firmly on the earth, with a home and love; and Lily, soon, would be little more than a dead memory....

Meanwhile, his brain, redoubling in vigor amid those stormy squalls, took in everything, seized everything in a wide sense, became steeped in life, rejected bitterness and retained enthusiasm. He heaped up personal observations which he noted every evening, enough to build the ideal music-hall one day. Harrasford, he knew, was cherishing that plan. Perhaps they would realize it together? And the retreat for the aged and the home of rest for the sick, and, in each capital or large town, a local artistes' home—like the Sailors' Home—a little corner of England, providing comfort for the man and protection for the girl. And his scheme, his scheme was ripe now, the bold stroke which would enable him to realize all the rest later. He felt the strength within him, if not to succeed, at least to dare everything: "Brass Heart," as he had been christened at 'Frisco. He had served an apprenticeship to will-power: he had bruised his ribs with a vengeance in a fall at the Columbia Theater at Cincinnati; he had nearly split his skull at the Milwaukee Majestic; he had shed his blood at the Washington Orpheum; and he was going to risk more with his new invention. No matter, he had now but one idea, to return to England, in spite of magnificent offers from Australia.

The moment he reached London, he set to work. And he fixed up the whole apparatus at his leisure, in the shed which he had kept, notwithstanding the expense: a sort of large hall in which he had already rehearsed his "Bridging the Abyss." Here, with a couple of confidential assistants who had traveled with him in America, he worked from morning till night, correcting, revising, improving, in the midst of stretched cords and nets. And then came his interview with Harrasford, his engagement at the Astrarium, his meeting with Lily, in the dressing-room passage....

And it was untrue! What they had said about her was a lie! Lily had not fallen! Jimmy, merely at that moment's sight of her, would have sworn it in the face of the whole world: the tales about Lily, due probably to professional boasting on her own part,—were false! He knew it, because he had seen her magnificent anger and the flash from her chaste eyes. And he would give Lily that joy—he owed at least as much as that to his dead love—and he would see that it was all right. It would not be a question of:

"Pa, I can't!"

"But you've got to, my little lady!"

She would have to dare of her own accord, with a will of adamant, and Lily would do it, Jimmy was sure of that. He had found the partner wanted for his success and he rejoiced to the bottom of his heart as he led Lily to the stage of the Astrarium.

Lily, on the other hand, felt an anxiety which made her sides ache and her heart beat:

"What on earth can it be?" she asked herself.

But, whatever it was, she would do it if it cost her her skin! And Lily did not even take the stage oath, so sincere and spontaneous was her resolve.

"I'll show you, Lily," said Jimmy, seeing her look at the hall and the opening in the ceiling as she passed. "It's a new trick."

"Yes," said Lily, "new: it'll be like the last, they'll take it from you as soon as it's out. It's like me, the tricks which Pa invented and which the fat freaks cribbed from me. Tricks are always copied, you know they are," continued Lily, who trembled at the thought of seeing others beside herself topping the bill with that.

"You needn't be afraid," said Jimmy, "they won't take this one from me; and yet I hope, in a few years' time, to see it all over the place."

"You hope to have it taken from you in a few years only, eh? But why?"

"For all the world to profit by it."

"All the world on the back-wheel!" protested Lily, who was always thinking bikes. "Then what will become of the artistes?"

"In a few years, Lily, people won't go about on wheels," said Jimmy jokingly.

"What will they do then?"

"They'll fly!"

Lily would have burst out laughing, in other circumstances; but they had now reached the stage. The iron curtain was down. She looked round with scared eyes for something out of the common. Jimmy, after making sure that they were quite alone, walked up to the monster's cage, slid back the door ...

The aerobike, with wings wide open, seemed to loom out of the darkness.

"My!" cried Lily. "It's a bird! So that was your brain-work in Berlin and in ... What is it?"

It was, in any case, a strange creature, with two inclined planes, one on either side, that looked like wings; and, at the back, it showed a screw-propeller sticking up in the air, like a tail. The whole thing rested on two wheels.

"And it's a bike, too! I knew it!" cried Lily, clapping her hands. "Well done, Jimmy! And do you want me to get up on it? Come along! Just wait till I take my hat off," she went on, drawing out the hat-pins from under her big feathers.

"Not so fast!" said Jimmy, laughing. "Keep calm! We'll start next week. There are a good many little things to make sure of first; and then I must put up a cable in case of a fall."

"I don't care a hang for a fall," cried Lily, immensely excited. "You'll soon see if I'm afraid!"

"Be serious, Lily. Listen to me," replied Jimmy. "Yes, you will have to stand on the back-wheel, but not to ride round the stage. You will have to start up at full speed and then go up and up, straight up, into space and then shoot out through a hole which they are making in the roof."

"Yes," said Lily, "I saw. . . . My, that makes a good distance! And, when I'm through the hole, what do I do up there? Go on...!"

"I'll explain all that to you," said Jimmy.

"Dive into the street, eh?" asked Lily, in her Spartan voice. "Well, I don't care! Anything! I'll do anything! And I'll show them," she added, to herself, "if you can do that through your gentlemen friends!"

But she calmed herself: after all, she was going to top the bill; have her name in all the papers, with her portrait; see the walls covered with her posters. What a revenge for her! That was enough, for the moment. She did not want to appear surprised before Jimmy. The right thing was to take it as something very natural, like a lady who is used to the best.

Jimmy, meanwhile, was explaining his trick:

"We shan't fly at once," he said. "We shall practise on the stand to learn how the handles work. Oh, you'll have to think of everything during the few seconds that the flight lasts! The machine isn't perfect, it's a first attempt, it can only be ridden by a professional and a very clever one. Look here," he continued, "it's the principle of the back-wheel; you'll have to keep your side-balance and front and back, but you'll do it, I'm sure. I've done it."

"What you can do, a man," Lily interrupted, "I can do too. One can do anything on the bike!"

The machine which Jimmy explained to Lily in detail was a bike just like another, with a few differences in its general construction, bearing upon the services which it was expected to perform. The saddle, for instance, was made to slide backward and forward, so that the center of equilibrium could be shifted with a push of the rider's back. The stability of the apparatus did not depend upon that alone. The ascensional rudder or screw-propeller, which was able to impart a speed of thirty miles an hour to the machine, was in the extension of the horizontal bar of the frame. It was fitted to a long piece of bent steel, pinned below the saddle, which, running beside the frame, ended by forming a pedal, so that, with a pressure of the foot, the rider could move it downward, at will, within an arc of some ten degrees. This propeller, which was small in dimensions, but endowed with enormous speed, was, in its normal position, perpendicular to the frame. The pressure of the foot raised it to its highest point. In this position, the propeller turned at full speed and therefore tended to descend and, consequently, to point the front of the aerobike upward. When brought still lower, its ascensional force increased and the front of the aerobike pitched downward. These two extremes would obviously serve only in sudden movements. In reality, the rider's skill would consist in moving the propeller only very slightly, in order to maintain a horizontal flight. As for the machine itself, Jimmy had rejected the cumbersome system of cells, which he compared to boxes:

"The shape of a fish for the ship, the shape of a bird for the flying-machine," he said.

He stuck to that principle and therefore he had added two enormous wings, one on each side. He had first experimented with reduced models, shaped like a bird, sending them up anyhow, to see, and he had ended by constructing one which preserved its stability when gliding over the atmospheric layers. He had thus been led to construct wings with a slightly rounded surface whose coefficient of yield was nearly double that of wings with flat surfaces. The width of these wings was about five feet and their length about sixteen. They tapered a little, were drawn out in front and widened at the opposite end, so as to get a more powerful hold of the air. They were made of double-milled canvas, stretched on curved ash and fastened to the sections by aluminum stays riveted with copper and clenched. They were as light as they were stiff. These two wings pointed slightly upward in front, parallel to the machine, and were fastened to it in the middle by means of an axis below the saddle-pillar, which brought their axis to the center of gravity. Other ingenious and quite individual arrangements made the apparatus very manageable. The resistance of the air, combined with the propelling power of the screw, exercised all its force in vain: the wings remained stationary. Their lines were carefully studied to facilitate the flow of the air, on the principle of Langley's kite: and the two of them presented a carrying surface of forty-nine square feet.

"It's not much," Jimmy explained to Lily, who listened attentively. "If I carried my motor," he said, "I should have a bigger surface. The machine ought then, theoretically speaking, to rise when it is going at a rate of thirty miles an hour; with a good back push the front-wheel would leave the ground and continue its course upward. But, on the stage, we have no room to acquire speed: we shall get it from an inclined plane, as at the start of 'Looping the Loop.' As for the side steering, the front wheel has spokes fitted with canvas and offers resistance to the air: it will steer the aerobike to left or right at a touch of the handle-bar, as in ordinary riding, and there you are, Lily."

"My!" said Lily, bewildered by all this complicated apparatus. "Did you work it all out on paper? It's enough to drive one mad!"

"When you're on it, Lily," said Jimmy, smiling, "you'll have to work also, I promise you. But, with your talent, ... you'll manage better than I should. And to-morrow," he added, "I will give you something on account of your salary."

"No, I have money," said Lily, very proudly and fearing lest she should wear out her luck by adding that to it, by being paid for doing nothing....

Lily spent the whole week in a fever of expectation; she did not know where she was for joy. But she stifled that within herself. And it was owing to her talent, all owing to her talent! When people wanted a difficult trick done, they did not go to Daisy or the fat freaks, no, they came to little Lily! And it was settled, she wanted no more familiarity, now that she was going to top the bill at the Astrarium! A lady should be more reserved in her friendships: she would make herself very short-sighted, so short-sighted as to be almost blind, when she met the rotten lot! Resolved, that she would give up saying, "Damn it!" give up talking of smackings and using vulgar expressions:

"Do you hear, Glass-Eye?" she said, calling her maid to witness. "You're to box my ears if you catch me at it again!"

The thought of having to handle that delicate machine increased Lily's importance in her own eyes. She had noticed that Poland, apart from an inordinate love of champagne suppers, had very nice manners: Lily would profit by her example and become more refined; she would show Pa and Ma the kind of Lily they had lost and she would crush them with the amount of her salary! She would earn more by herself than the whole troupe. She would let them know it, even if she had to do the trick for nothing, for glory, to see her Ma beg her pardon on her knees! She had recovered all the pride of her eighteen years, all her freshness, in a day: the touch of bitterness about her lips had changed into a smile. It would have taken very little more to make her dance for joy. But she restrained herself, dared not believe in her happiness; and she was quite decided not to accept anything from Jimmy before earning it. It was bad enough to owe him that thousand marks. She made herself a nice practising dress and spent the morning in bed reading a novel of fashionable life, of which the heroine was called Lily, like herself! And she, too, would become a society-girl, just to show them, damn it! But, suddenly, catching herself at fault, she laughed and asked Glass-Eye for a box on the ear; and a desperate pillow-fight ensued, in which they indulged whole-heartedly, like two regular tom-boys who loved to wrestle and punch each other. And it put her in a good humor for the rest of the day. She went shopping through the windows, only bought herself a spray of roses to fasten to her bodice. She went to the Astrarium, walked in as though the place belonged to her, followed by her maid. She examined the works with the eye of an expert. Three days, three days more and she would begin to rehearse! Her legs were itching to commence!

The alterations to the stage especially interested her. The door of the cage remained closed and Lily looked at the auditorium:

"Is it possible, after all?" she thought.

And she measured the distance with her eye. It seemed enormous to her, but never mind, she'd do it! And she grew wildly enthusiastic in the midst of all that activity, of a theater which was being rearranged for her: "For me, Glass-Eye! All of it for me! From here," she said, stamping her foot on the stage, "from here to right up there!" And she pointed to the hole in the sky. "All that on the bike! A somersault miles high!"



Glass-Eye opened two terrified eyes, wondered if Lily was going mad....

Glass-Eye had become dulled through constant obedience, had lost her memory, mixed up her yeses and noes, like those actors who forget their parts through playing them too frequently; her recent life had excited her too much, and never a sou in her pocket, only barely enough to eat ... it was ten times worse than in Rathbone Place.... And then that new crotchet of Lily's.

"Can I fly, Glass-Eye, or can't I? Am I a bird or am I not?" It was enough to make Glass-Eye lose her head....

Glass-Eye was obliged to answer yes ... and that very quickly. But she kept on trotting behind Lily, who, realizing that she would soon be taken up with her rehearsals, took advantage of her last days of liberty to pay visits and show herself a little, accompanied by her maid, like the fine lady that she was. She went and took the Bambinis some candies. Poor kids! Their games and laughter no longer filled the hotel with mirth and gaiety: old Martello was getting worse and worse and was now not able to leave his room at all. Lily found a kind word for everybody and was grieved at not having any money, which would have allowed her to be generous. That would come later. She worked out a scheme for occupying herself with the children when the old man was gone, for having them always with her, like two dear little lucky charms. It was impossible, of course: never mind, it was the idea of a lady, which she would not have had in the old days, and Lily was pleased with herself for having entertained it.

"I will speak about you to Jimmy," she said to the Bambinis. "I'll get you engaged at the Astrarium, eh?"

And the old man trembled with delight, stammered out his thanks, tried to accompany her to the door, like a princess; and the little boy, to thank her, promised to teach her a way of standing on your head which he had learned all by himself!

"Poor darlings!" thought Lily, as she left them. "If ever they fall into their brother's hands! They would be better dead! Luckily for them, he has disappeared for good; and his Ave Maria with him, unluckily for me!"

For Lily understood how badly her position as a lady went with that name of Mrs. Trampy. It was like dragging a tin kettle at her skirts, to make the people in the street turn round and look at her.

And, more than ever before, Trampy posed as a faithful husband. Nothing sufficed to take down his arrogance. Always the same old Trampy: great, by Jove! And, with his red lips, his glittering eye and the cigar stuck in the corner of his mouth, he made love to second-rate "sisters," inferior Roofers in red calico skirts. His glamorous title as the bill-topper's husband still won him a few conquests. And Trampy, especially since Jimmy's return, plumed himself more and more on the fact that he was the husband of his dear little wife!

Lily knew all this and it made her fume with rage at heart; but she showed nothing, pretended, on the contrary, to treat it as a little matter of no account. For instance, after her visit to the Bambinis, as she passed an artistes' bar, quite close, there stood Trampy, lording it on the pavement, among a lot of unemployed pros. Lily made herself short-sighted to the point of absolute blindness. Trampy caught her, as she passed, with a:

"Hullo, Lily! Hullo, my dear little wife!"

But Lily behaved like a real fine lady who knows how to put people in their place without calling them names:

"Hullo, Mr. Trampy!" she replied, in a sarcastic tone. "Still got your red-hot stove, Mr. Trampy? Still a success with the girls? Kind regards, Mr. Trampy!"



CHAPTER II

But Lily was grandest of all at the rehearsals. She was now no longer a lady: she once more became the Spartan, bare-necked, her hair undone, her body streaming with perspiration, and to work, to work, to make up for lost time! In the mornings, alone on the deserted stage, she practised and practised....

"Come on!" said Jimmy. "And mind you do your work properly," he added, with a laugh, "or else, you know ..."

And he patted the back of his hand.

"I don't care!" said Lily.

"You may break your head, you know," continued Jimmy, to try her.

"It's none of your damned business if I do! Show me your tricks. To work!"

And Jimmy showed her a movement to execute on her bike, which she had brought with her: balancings, as in "Bridging the Abyss," an excellent training for the aerobike. And Lily went about it clear-eyed, hard-cheeked, with all the little muscles contracted on her stubborn forehead, ready to butt at the obstacle. A few falls to begin with, but she jumped up again nimbly:

"That's all right!" she said. "It's part of the game!"

"But stop, stop," insisted Jimmy. "Be careful!"

They were sometimes on the stage for hours at a time, but to Lily, all wrapped in her work, it seemed so many minutes. She understood the jerk which she was to give at the moment when, after rolling along the inclined plane, she should shoot out into space for the soaring flight of fifty yards:

"The start, that's the great thing with the back-wheel," she observed. "The rest goes of itself."

"Don't cry till you're out of the wood!" said Jimmy. "It'll be different when you're riding the aerobike."

Lily was longing to begin that famous practice! And, a few days later, she at last had that delight, took that further step toward triumph. Jimmy removed the bird from the cage, fixed it on a stand. When Lily sat in the saddle, she was crimson with pleasure, prouder than a princess sitting on a throne for the first time:

"There," she said. "Here I am! And what next?"

Jimmy explained the complicated touches—"Press your left foot, there, like that, to make it point upward"—and showed how, explained why; then he passed to the working of the handle-bar—"There, like that, to turn it, there"—and how and why the saddle slipped backward and forward.

"And then?"

"That's all."

"That's all?" repeated Lily. "That won't want any smackings! Let's see, like this, eh? Then that. Suppose I'm coming down at full speed. I throw myself backward, a back push, there, like that. A kick, gently, there, that's it. I'll do it as soon as you like! This minute, if necessary!"

But Jimmy, without replying to these sallies, proceeded methodically. He made her practise again, standing still, with the motor going at half-speed. This was a different impulse: the displacement of the air raised a stormy wind, the dust flew, the scenery hanging from the flies waved to and fro and Lily shook in her saddle under the vibration of the propeller.

"Well, Lily?" said Jimmy. "That shakes you up, eh? That complicates matters?"

"Pooh!" said Lily. "And what about the boards? There are some of them that are pretty rough, too! At Pittsburg, you know, it's like riding over cobblestones. I prefer that to a stage that's too smooth: it's less treacherous."

A few days later, Jimmy ran up a steel cable from the stage to the opening in the ceiling, which was now finished and covered with a tarpaulin; and Lily was to try the flying. At the time for practice, there was no one in the theater, from which the scaffoldings had been removed. There were no seats on the floor or in the boxes: everything was being made outside, and would be put in place in a day or two. In the afternoon, when there was no practice, the house was filled with workmen, painters, upholsterers, carpenters, whose places were taken by others at night, working by electric light. Ten days more and they would have the triumphal opening; already Paris was covered with picture placards: you saw Tom, as a caryatid, supporting the weight of a palace; the Three Graces entwined in their radiant nudity; the impersonator standing, like a Don Juan, surrounded by a bevy of women: the ballet-girl, the shop-girl, the fine lady; then, besides those, the New Trickers—"My idea!" thought Lily, but she didn't care a jot now—the New Trickers fluttered round Daisy. You saw the elephants; the monkey; Patti-Patty, the white negress; all, all, down to the Bambinis, whom Lily had "got" engaged. The whole program was reverberated on the walls and hoardings, like a thousand-voiced echo. An even larger poster than the others, all blue, strewn with stars, displayed the aerobike in full flight in the sky; and a human figure, seated upon it, lifted a hand filled with rays.

The mere sight of the posters was enough to stimulate Lily to the maddest feats of daring. She felt herself firmer than steel, when she thought of the New Trickers and of Pa and Ma, who were coming with Daisy, their farthing dip!

When everything was ready, Jimmy hung the aerobike to the steel cable by two ropes, ten feet long, ending in pulleys which ran along the cable. Each of these two ropes was looped up and the loop secured with thin twine: this was an infallible way of ascertaining if the aerobike weighed down upon them or if it was supporting itself in the air; the two cords acted as a spring balance registering the tension in the rope. Should the twine break, because the aerobike rested on the ropes, then the ropes would unloop and the machine remain hanging without any danger for Lily. This was the way in which Jimmy had worked when learning "his trade as a bird," as he called it; and Lily, he had no doubt, would succeed even better than he did, being more supple, lighter and quite as plucky.

Oh, the rapture with which Lily bestrode the aerobike for the first flight!

Jimmy and two confidential assistants hauled up the machine to the top of the inclined plane that gave it its impetus. Jimmy spent an endless time in verifying and testing everything. The electric wire that set the propeller in motion also caused him uneasiness. It had to unroll behind and follow the aerobike without weighing upon it, without retarding its flight; for the machine, which was necessarily a small one, to be able to move within a confined space, did not carry the additional load of a motor, but only a wire, as wireless transmission of power was not yet available. At last, when everything was provided for, Jimmy allowed Lily to make her trial. He trembled; not that she ran any danger, for a fall was impossible: the machine was stopped, up above, automatically, by a cable stretched crosswise and fastened to a strong spring, which slowed and stayed the flight within the space of a few yards. But if the two pieces of twine broke suddenly and if this happened several times in succession, the shocks might come to frighten Lily, for all her self-control.

And Jimmy went on explaining.

"I know," said Lily. "I quite understand. It's like this, like this, yes, I know. It's only a matter of trying! It's a trick I've got to do and that's all about it! Daisy would kill herself on it and so would the fat freaks, but I shan't! I shall succeed."

"Well, then, steady!" cried Jimmy, and his voice rang through the empty theater. "Go!"

The machine ran down with a swoop, the propeller whirred, Lily gave a magnificent back push, when she reached the bottom of the inclined plane; then she went straight up and the two pieces of twine snapped in two. Lily found herself hanging fifty feet in the air, the two pulleys glided slowly backward toward the stage. Jimmy stopped the machine.

"That's wrong!" cried Lily. "Let's try again. I see what it was: I forgot to push down my foot to point the machine up. It was a slip."

However, at the next attempt, it went better. The twine broke each time, but Lily rectified her movements:

"It's my back push! It's the propeller! It's the front-wheel!"

And, in fact, that was what it was. Jimmy and his assistants, who followed her with their eyes, had noted the fault and Lily, too, had observed it, in spite of the giddy flight. She was extraordinarily plucky and cool, her eight stone of flesh and bone, unerring and exact, seemed made for the aerobike.

"Bravo, Lily! Hurrah!" cried Jimmy.

She could have screamed for joy in the street, as she went out.

Her unparalleled stroke of luck in being chosen tickled her heart. She felt her sense of responsibility increase and also her wish to do well; no sooner had she left off practising than she was seized with but one idea, to begin again:

"Eight days more!" she thought.

At night, she dreamed of backward jerks, of turning the handle-bar, pushing the pedal. Poor Glass-Eye, cowering in a corner of the bed, had terrible nightmares, and, in the morning, after Lily's kicks, she rose with her ribs smarting and her shins all black and blue. That was all her profit, for Lily had hardly any money left and was not yet drawing a salary.

Lily submitted to all sorts of privation with a proud dignity. She would be beholden to nobody. Soon her whole fortune would consist of her box of lucky halfpence and a franc which she had won by turning a cartwheel, for a bet, among artistes, in the country, to stagger the jossers. And so their little evening meal was a scanty one. A sausage, a little fruit, a cup of tea ... and then to bed. That was better than listening to the owner of the Hours and all those men who propose things to you. Never, never! Her work, her work! Lord, after what she had seen of Poland and the Hours, it was much simpler to work, to be self-reliant. At night, sometimes, Lily would lie awake and think ... where did that three hundred francs of the Bijou come from? Not from the Bijou: Cataplasm's defeat had swallowed up everything and the theater had long been without a penny; they used to fill the house with paper distributed among the staff, with orders to get rid of it anyhow. They were not far short of inviting soldiers from the barracks. There had never been more than two hundred seats paid for of an evening; it meant flat bankruptcy. And she was the only one who had received anything: why? How? Then it must have been some admirer, but who? Not the architect, surely, that josser! Who then? And why had Jimmy engaged the Bambinis, when she asked him to? He did everything to please her. He was letting her top the bill: why? She made a heap of guesses, without getting at the exact truth ... Jimmy ... Jimmy ... that man, with his coldness, interested her. While so many others were prowling around her, he alone seemed indifferent. She would have liked to see him in love with her ... to make him suffer a little in his turn! All the beauty-shows which Lily had seen, all the exhibitions of painted Hours had not spoiled her good taste: Jimmy pleased her, with that strong face of his. What an endless pity that she had married Trampy! She gave a scornful pout when she thought of it: she married to Trampy! Married to that soaker: she, a woman made for a man, a creature of flesh and blood, who admired fine muscles, rough sport and virile smackings! Gee, if she had been a man, it seemed to her that she would have enjoyed spoiling a little Lily: outside working hours, of course! And, if a little Lily had asked her, "Do you love me, yes or no?" she would never have answered no. To-day, she would have bitten off her own tongue rather than put that question to Jimmy! And yet Jimmy had a dignity about him that pleased her. She could see into the game of the others. The architect, for instance, would give her just a smile in passing, a pleasant word, as one performs a social duty, between two pieces of business. A little amusement, no more: that was all she was to him ... and to all of them. Jimmy seemed different. But, still, if he loved her, why hadn't he the courage to tell her so? And, besides, when all was said, she was sick and tired of men! Some of them ran after you like dogs; others, damn it, were icicles! A girl could have Marjutti's figure, Thea's arms, Nancy's legs, Lillian's or Laurence's face ... and still they would not be satisfied! And thereupon Lily pursed her brows, asked herself how and why and went to sleep like a baby.

And the rehearsals continued every day, without respite. Lily became terrible the nearer she drew to success: her indomitable spirit mounted to her heart. Jimmy had difficulty in holding her in. She made twenty flights, thirty flights ... and the twine no longer broke. From that moment, she was sure of succeeding, always. When you have once succeeded, even if it be but once, you have no right ever to fail again. She had been brought up in those principles, had had them rubbed into her skin. She could not fail now, it was impossible! Even in her flight to the opening up above! She had learned her "times," she knew how to aim exactly at the right spot. Jimmy hastened to have the roof arranged for the final exit, when the aerobike would disappear before the eyes of the audience, in the star-strewn sky. All that remained was to get everything ready for the final rehearsal: the complete show, with all lights lit, as for a gala night. Lily seemed to see it all beforehand. On the day when she realized that no accident was possible, that it was a trick of which she was certain, she stifled a cry of triumph in her throat. She was afraid to believe in it herself, so greatly did it surpass her dreams. She would have stayed for days on the aerobike to experience the delight of the leap into space. It seemed to her as though she were becoming a bird and about to hover in mid-air and leave them all behind her, in the crowd below ... all, all ... and be a little Lily, flying away on the back-wheel before their noses.

"You'll make yourself ill," said Jimmy. "Take a rest; there's no need to tire yourself; you do it as well as I."

For Jimmy, of course, had done the thing too, if only to show Lily; besides, it was easy for him, who had had so much practice in London and who knew his machine from end to end. And he appreciated the difficulty all the more. He admired Lily's incredible pluck, her all-devouring ambition and that splendid determination to get out of her scrape, to be a little Lily earning her bread as she knew how, by her work, even if she had to break her neck in the doing of it! And proud to her finger-tips, in spite of the dog's life she had led.

"If I had not procured her this delight," thought Jimmy, "I should never have forgiven myself to the end of my days."

And, from working with her for hours and hours, from holding her by the waist at the first trials, from feeling that little body quiver under his hand, from seeing Lily rush at danger, Jimmy became madly in love with her again ... if he had ever ceased to be so! Ah, if Trampy...! But Lily was married ... the divorce depended on the husband ... and the husband wouldn't have it ... at any price: not for a million, he said, by Jove, would he be separated from a little wife whom he adored!

"Poor Lily!" thought Jimmy sadly. "Will she always be doomed to drag that dead weight about with her?"

During the intervals for rest, while Lily wiped the perspiration from her forehead, Jimmy talked to her ... at first, of insignificant things ... the name "Astrarium," for instance ... a place devoted to planets, to stars: as a palmarium is to palms. Stars ... that was to say, bill-toppers: the Three Graces; the Laurences; the Lillians; the Marjuttis; the Lilies ... yes, the Lilies! Then he pitied her for belonging to Trampy; and what a good little Lily she would have been if she had remained with her family!

"But I am a good little Lily!" she said, with a display of childish vehemence. "What more do you want? We artistes do what we jolly well please, and we don't care a damn for the rest!" And she had half a mind to tell him that it was all his fault! "I had to do a silly thing and I did it," she continued, with an expression of regret on her face. "I married without love, but lovers, my! I've had, I may say, as many as I wanted ... from the son of a lord down."

And Lily, to excite him, told him the long array of her love affairs, as it was told everywhere, on the Bill and Boom Tour, on the Harrasford, on the Eastern and Western Tours, like the whippings and the rest.

"Yes, I know," replied Jimmy, very coldly.

"What, you don't believe me!" exclaimed Lily. "There were men who would have left wife and child for me! ... heaps of lovers, tons of them!"

"My poor Lily, having so many is the same as having none at all," added Jimmy dreamily.

But still he did not declare his love: besides, he had constantly to leave her, to go and give orders, or climb up on the roof, or look at the heating-apparatus, below.

Lily watched him go, followed him with a sphinx-like glance, while a vague smile flickered about her lips....

But she hardly had time to think of all this: the assistants replaced the bird in its cage, locked the door, opened that leading to the dressing-room passage and the artistes arrived and took up their places on their carpets.

Lily had seen it a hundred times, a thousand times, "millions of times!" She never wearied of it. She spent the day there, among the groups of bloomers: the Three Graces, bare-armed, went to work, practised the human cluster; Nunkie kept an eye on his dear nieces and rehearsed the Bambinis, now that old Martello was keeping his room for good. Lily, who was almost reduced to eating dry bread, but who remained the fine lady nevertheless, brought them bags of sweets. Calmed by her work, she sat down in a corner, laughed, her head thrown back, full-throated, applauded the others with her thumbnail, shook hands with new-comers, made herself liked by all. And it was:

"Hullo, girls! Hullo, boys! Dear old Blackpool! What's the news at the Palace? Who's topping the bill at the Hippodrome?"

Lily, on her rickety chair, made as it were a little center at which the news was exchanged; to think that, instead of being there, at the top of the profession, she might have been at Glasgow, some twopenny theater, where ladies are admitted without shoes or stockings, or playing the darky at Earl's Court! Yes, but for Jimmy, that's where she would have been! Or else the Parisienne, in Russia! She, an English girl, my! And Lily fervently touched her lucky charm: oh, work, work, thank goodness for it! And Lily rendered homage to work and sprang from her chair to shake hands with Tom, who had come to see his palace unpacked:

"Good morning, Tom! Welcome!"

This Tom, who now topped the bill everywhere and had a permanent address and his own scenery: wasn't it wonderful? He was no longer her Pa's old servant: genius removes all distances; a man is what he makes himself! And they shook hands warmly, like equals.

Lily, as a sensational bill-topper and a friend of Jimmy's, was always in great request. She talked nicely, without pose of any kind, like a woman who is sure of herself and knows things. The Astrarium ... the Astrarium ... what did that mean? They asked Lily:

"It's like ... a palmarium," she explained, "with sunflowers in it, all sorts of things ... girls ... stars ..."

She described her journeys, storms, gee! Weren't there, Glass-Eye? People who had never been outside Europe and the States had no idea! Lily talked of India, Africa, Australia; talked of lions, which stand on their hind-legs when they're angry, and tigers, which lie down flat; mentioned stage friendships between elephants and camels and herself in the midst of it all: "That high!" lowering her hand to six inches from the floor; talked of animal-training: dogs, cats, sea-lions and that "great, big, wicked Australian rabbit" which boxed like a man. She was a well-informed person, was Lily. And a providence for her family also, to listen to her. When any one brought news of her Pa and the New Trickers, with Daisy as a statue on her pedestal, one of the successes of the year:

"Yes," Lily replied, in a patronizing tone, "I know. It was my idea. I gave it to them!"

They thought it very nice of her. She listened with great dignity to what they said about the New Trickers. They would not be at the Astrarium on the opening night. They were finishing an engagement on the Bill and Boom that same evening. They would be in Paris the next day. Mr. Clifton was reckoning on this appearance for the final triumph of his troupe ... and he deserved it. What a man, Mr. Clifton, what a man! "Not easy to please, eh, Lily?" And the inevitable gesture followed. But Lily would have none of that now, she would not hear her Pa spoken of as a brute! Did they take her for a performing dog? One was born with the gift or else one remained all one's life a Daisy or a fat freak! She was proud to have a Pa like hers. She wasn't a mountebank picked up on the road! Lily had a Pa and a Ma: a Ma of her own, a Ma whom she was certain about. She bore a well-known name. She belonged to the "father and son" aristocracy of the music-hall. She had never needed "that" to make her practice, she an artiste, brought up like a lady:

"Wasn't I, Glass-Eye? Tom, wasn't I?"

And the jewelry and the sweets her Pa bought her, my! Tons of it! Of course, he would stand no nonsense about behavior; and Lily made them all laugh till the tears came about that footy rotter who made love to her in London, before the time when drink made him look so disgusting, and, when she loitered in the street with him, Pa, the moment she reached the door, caught her such a blow that she took all the steps to the basement at one jump; and there found her Ma waiting for her ... gee!

"And they were quite right, too! And ... do they know that I'm going to top the bill at the Astrarium?" she asked.

"No, they think you're in Spain or somewhere."

"Somewhere!" said Lily to herself, with a thrill at her heart. "I'll show them!"

She choked with joy at the idea of the startled look on the faces of Pa and Ma when they saw her on the aerobike. An exuberant gladness filled her heart. And that feverish work, those laborers everywhere, the opening in the roof, the terrace up above, those posters all over Paris and there, behind the iron door, in the dark, the bird! It was all for her: a theater for herself! And she felt a need to leap, to laugh, to spread gaiety all around her; and she rushed about madly with the Bambinis, romped with them behind the pillars, rolled with them on the floor of her dressing-room, became once again the Lily who had played truant all around the world, inventing practical jokes in India and climbing apple-trees in Honolulu. She crossed the combs and tooth-brushes on the Roofer girls' tables, rushed into their room when they were undressed, drove the trembling herd of them distracted, talked of the thousand dangers that awaited them if they didn't mend their ways, made them fly to their lucky charms to ward off ill-luck, when she offered them a yellow flower, with great pomp, or some broken glass in a jewel-box. Then she talked to the Three Graces, those big girls who always astonished her with their cloistered existence—Nunkie before everything—and who amused themselves by measuring one another round the biceps, round the chest, or else, with their elbows on the table, played at who should first bend back the other's wrist. Lily sat down for a moment with them, then stopped, breathless with larking and talking, and went back to her dressing-room:

"I shall have months to spend in here!" she thought.



And, assisted by Glass-Eye, she pinned up bits of stuff, tied a silk bow to the back of the chair, put up nails for her costumes, laid out on her table long rows of post-cards, photographs of friends, all dispersed to the four quarters of the globe, some dead, others done for, all the poor witnesses of her life. Then she took her black gollywog from her trunk and kissed it passionately—"Darling! Darling! Darling!"—before hanging it up on the wall. And along the dressing-room passage and through the window came the sound of voices ... snatches of homesick tunes: From Rangoon to Mandalay or Way down upon the Suwanee River ... and "Hullo, Lily! Hullo, old boy!"... The female-impersonator walked into her room as though it were his own, sat down on the basket trunk, plunging his green eyes into hers.

And sometimes Jimmy passed, always at a run: something had gone wrong somewhere, the heating apparatus, the electric light....

"Hullo, Lily!" And he stopped for a moment, frowned at the sight of the impersonator. "Always busy?" he asked, seeing Lily, bare-armed, washing something in her basin.

"Have to be," said Lily. "I always wash my little blouses; we do everything ourselves, don't we, Glass-Eye? And, when I'm performing, I have two pairs of tights to wash a day!"

"Two pairs of tights!"

"Why, of course, matinee and night! You have no idea, Jimmy ... the nickel ... when I sit on the handle-bar, it makes a great mark ... just here, look!"

And she laughed at Jimmy over her shoulder while she pointed to the place ... and then blushed, like a frolicsome child that has been found out and is, oh, so sorry!

"Every one's got to keep to his own dressing-room!" said Jimmy, feeling very uncomfortable, to the man with the green eyes. "You can't stay here; it's against the rules!"

"We're doing no harm, please, Mr. Jimmy," retorted Lily, sitting down beside the impersonator and slipping her arm round his waist.

"Poor Jimmy!" said the impersonator, when the other had left the room in a rage. "He's jealous, isn't he, darling?"

"He jealous? Then why doesn't he say so? One can't guess a thing like that! When you're a man, you speak out!"

And the architect appeared in his turn, he, too, running from one end of the theater to the other. He wore a bandage over one eye:

"Knocked up against a beam ... a little accident. Have you seen Jimmy?"

"He's over there, I think," replied Lily, without troubling to look at him.

There was no jealousy about the architect. He stayed for a moment, sniffed at the scent-bottle, smiled at the photographs on the wall. A green-eyed impersonator, a blue-eyed impersonator: the room could have been full of impersonators, for all he cared. Dark girls, yellow girls, fair girls, so many playthings to distract him from his rules and compasses. He was bored at once; turned to another at once; and it was all so amusing! He was the typical lover of the woman of the stage, with his little surface passions. And very amiable withal, knowing them all, and friendly with them, a great purveyor of anecdotes:

"The Para-Paras, you know, Lily, committed suicide in their room ... awful poverty. The wife wasn't ... Tottie enough ... and the husband was teaching the English accent to continental clowns! Poland? A magnificent engagement in Russia. Old Martello hasn't three days to live. Oh ... and Nunkie! There's news among the Three Graces! The troupe's done for this time!"

And he told how, last night, poor Thea, while mending her uncle's overcoat, found in the lining an old letter from America ... from some swain she had had over there ... a letter glowing with love and regret. Yes, Nunkie knew how to hold his nieces, the architect explained, laughing ... watched them like a Spanish duenna, confiscated the letters that came for them, if necessary, the old rogue, and calmed their ardors with a few drops of bromide in a glass of water, every evening, on the pretense of keeping them from catching cold in the drafts. Oh, the old rogue! And Thea had almost fainted with grief in her dressing-room when she read the letter.

"Quite a business, Lily! A scandal in their little home! Very funny, eh?" he added, as he ogled Lily's pigeon's eggs and rolled a cigarette.

Lily, who had seen poor Thea cry before and who knew to what extent her lover's treachery had humiliated her, was secretly furious to hear that josser talk carelessly of things like that: did he imagine, the idiot, that they weren't built like other people, in the profession, that they had no feelings? What need had the public to know about their lives? It was among themselves, quite among themselves, all that!

"Get out of my sight, you damned josser!" said Lily. "Go and eat coke!"

But the other, greatly amused, described his latest discovery, a pearl, in an out-of-the-way neighborhood ... at Vaugirard fair ... an extraordinary girl, showing off on a couple of trestles in front of a canvas booth, in which her man lifted weights to the light of the Argand burners:

"Picture this girl, Lily," said the enthusiastic josser, "picture this girl on her trestles, doing weights, balancings, all sorts of things. A body like a boy's, all muscle, and thin: whew! Not that much fat on her, no hips, arms and shoulders, like Michael Angelo's flayed model. And I talked to her afterward! And her man gave me a queer look you know ... I got a blow...."

"Well done!" cried Lily, clapping her hands. "The beam, eh? That'll teach you to meddle in other people's business! Oh, you don't know those tenters! One of these days you'll be picked up with your face smashed in, or shot through the chest with a revolver."

"I say, though," the architect interrupted, "that girl ... I don't know how we came to speak of you ... she knows you, Lily!"

"That's right! Now I have mountebanks among my acquaintances!" said Lily, with an air of disgust. "Get out of this, I say!... You wanted Jimmy; there he is, look!"