The Bill-Toppers

CHAPTER II. "lily!"

"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!"

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...."

Continue reading The Bill-Toppers free in the Wunder reader →