There were pages and pages like this in Lily’s autograph book. The last entry was that of a couple of friends, the dark one and the fair one:

Since Miss Lily’s arrival in Paris, her collection had been increased by the addition of a fervent declaration from her friend, the architect. This had been her welcome in Paris, the good fellow, no doubt, prophesied by the ideal pair of legs; yes, she had hardly reached Paris and already there were people dying of love around her, already a man at her feet.

Lily was delighted to meet this sincere friend again, a friend of her childhood, who, she said, had known her when she was “that high”: one poor devil the more ready to leave wife and children for her sake. The evening before, in her dressing-room, at the Bijou Theater, she had told him the story of her life since leaving her parents. It made her forget to ask about Harrasford and the new theater which he was to open: was it ready? The architect ought to know better than anybody. She would ask him to-night. And Lily lay turning this over, in the morning, in bed, notwithstanding her other cares, for she must get clear somehow, must see the agents that afternoon. She had plenty to do beside her turn. She had to busy herself with those thousand and one details.... She would never have believed that it was so hard to fill her three years’ book. Lily felt half-dead with fatigue before she started:

“Let me sleep!” said Lily, stretching herself in the big double bed which Glass-Eye had just left; “clear out! Let me sleep!”

But Glass-Eye made a rush at Lily, tickled her in the neck, stifled her laughter under the pillow: it was a necessity for them in the morning, those few minutes of horse-play, of thumps and smacks, which rang out on every side. Lily, at last, full-throated, with fluttering nostrils, cried out for mercy. The maid went off, Lily, now quite awake, remained alone, and her worries returned: no more love, no more music, as at the theater, no more purple rays, nothing but gloomy hours, a long day stretching out before her like a gray corridor. It was real life now: letters to write, costumes to mend, last night’s tights to wash in the basin.... Lily, sitting on the edge of her bed, took her purse from where she had hidden it under the bolster—a habit she had acquired in marriage, because of Trampy’s nightly ferretings—and emptied it on the sheets: one blue banknote; one, two, three gold coins. How much did that make in pounds, shillings and pence? Hardly seven pounds. It was all in vain for her to economize, like that Ma of a star, who counted the potatoes. It was all in vain for her to stint in every way, to keep back Glass-Eye’s wages for over a year, saying that she would pay her in a lump: she would have almost nothing left after the purchases which she had to make. It was true that, to-morrow, she would receive her fortnight’s pay; and she hoped for a renewal. She felt sure of it, if only because of the way in which the manager had taken her by the chin. Then a fortnight at the Brussels Alhambra—1 November, Flora, Amsterdam—10 January, Copenhagen—and, for the rest, her three years’ book was empty and each empty page represented months without work—all her profits would be swallowed up by her enforced idleness. She would never clear herself, never be able to pay Jimmy. Oh, she was furious with him because she could not discharge her debt to him once and for all, fling his money in his face, show him if people remained penniless long when they had her talent! That idea comforted Lily. And it was important that she should look nice to-day, to go the round of the agents. Lily dressed quickly, cunningly puffed out her bows, a trick she had learned as a child, and then, before putting on her dress, cooked the food with Glass-Eye, who had just come in with her parcels.

Then a dash of scent on the handkerchief, a touch of rouge on the lips and, leaving the room all untidy, she went out, followed by Glass-Eye, rigged out in a pair of thread mittens and carrying the sunshade and the wrist-bag. Quick, quick! For Lily knew by experience that it is well to be the first at the agent’s or else there’s nothing for you.

She did not dislike those walks through the Paris streets:

“Let’s have some fun,” she said to Glass-Eye.

By this, Lily meant laughing at those “tiny Frenchies”; and, if they ventured to accost her, crushing them with a “Vous hettes oun cochon!” Although, among the people she mixed with, agents, artistes, stage-hands, everybody spoke English, Lily had not come to Paris without learning a few words, “Oui ... Non ... Vous hettes oun cochon!” and so on, which were indispensable, she thought, to a girl who wanted to make herself respected on the continent, a girl alone, especially. And she loved to snub those damned parley-voos who dared to accost ladies. It seemed to lighten those days of visits to the agents, the very prospect of which gave her a headache in advance, because one had to think of everything, lithos, photographs, programs; and, if the agent wasn’t in, ruin one’s self in correspondence; and puff one’s self in every way, rub it into them that one was the cleverest person on earth....

“If you’re too modest,” said Lily, “they’ll take you at your word!”

And the pay would drop, in consequence.

“Never tell your salary!” was another of Lily’s favorite maxims.

She gave out that she made heaps, that a little star like her, the Marie Loyd of the bike, was only to be obtained for untold gold. But, at the agent’s, she had to cut her prices: there was no hiding anything from them; it was like going to the doctor.

“And, when you’re in work, everybody wants you; and, when you’re out of work, they have nothing for you: it’s help yourself as best you may!” she said.

She had to help herself now; and it was delicate business dealing with people who have only one idea in their heads, to swindle you, in order to curry favor with the managers by getting them cheap turns. They would have skinned you alive:

“Two pounds a week. Do you accept?”

“Go to Halifax!” Lily would reply in such cases, looking them straight in the face. It took courage to do that: the agent might grow bigger, become an enemy. She didn’t care! She wasn’t going to lower her price for anybody! And the commission she had to pay them was a torment to Lily; calculating the percentage made her head split—not to speak of the complicated nature of the contracts, worse than insurance policies. The poor artiste was bound down on every side, at the mercy of the manager; everything was foreseen, down to the prohibition of black tights, which concealed one’s poverty. And it was bad enough in England; but in the Dago countries, on the continent, it was worse.

“Can you understand a word of it, Glass-Eye?” asked Lily, explaining to her maid the tricks which the artiste had to fight against. “I don’t know how the small turns manage,” she concluded, in the tone of a woman who towers above all that.

Lily’s prettiness made the people in the street turn round to look at her. They would gaze at her cheeky feather, whisper, “You pretty, pretty darling!” in her ear. Lily, secretly delighted, held herself ready to crush the saucy rascal with a “How dare you?” like a lady who knows how to appreciate a compliment, without permitting the least familiarity. And when she approached the agency, she insisted on Glass-Eye’s keeping by her side, asked for things: her wrist-bag, her embroidered handkerchief. And her way of walking in! Lily pretended to be short-sighted, so as to see no one in the rotten lot. She sent in her card, sat down in the waiting-room. It reminded her of the dentist’s, with those pale people sitting on benches; those serio-comics, all over-fat; loud-voiced topical singers, who took the place of the real artistes, just like the bioscopes and cinematographs! There were also little families—small turns that had struggled hard to learn a few tricks—nobody wanted them, because they had no “chic” costumes, sometimes, or no lithos....

Those were received like dogs: a wretched couple was just coming out, a man and a woman, sad with a humility accustomed to rebuffs; and the agent drove them toward the door, with his voice:

“Eccentric mashers? No opening for you. Call again.”

Lily got a good reception, in the agent’s room; but there was nothing for her. And the agent saw her to the door, with a satisfied air and a knowing wink, as though to make the others believe ... Lily didn’t like that kind—her short-sightedness did not prevent her noticing it and blushing at it—but she was very pleased, all the same, to be seen to the door, before those small turns who were received like dogs....

On the pavement outside, the wretched couple came up to her shyly:

“Don’t you know us, Miss Lily? The Para-Paras.”

She had to listen to a pitiful tale. She heard nothing but that, when she went on her rounds of visits to the agents. Oh, the distress which she beheld there! It made Lily feel quite ill at night. A little more and she would have said her prayers, before getting into bed, to thank God that she hadn’t come to that. Poor Paras! Starving, no doubt, remaining for weeks in their garret, pretending that they had been performing in the provinces ... abroad.... Lily pictured them passing the stage-doorkeepers to whom they had sold their parrots and being greeted with a “What’s for breakfast, Polly?”

“Miss Lily,” they confessed, in a whisper, “you know such a lot of people: if ever you hear of anything for us, never mind where ...”

“Poor beggars!” thought Lily.

And her Ma had prophesied to her that, one day, she would be worse off than they! No, she would never be half so badly off! Why, she could have had anything she wanted, motor-cars, Paris gowns, for the asking.

“Glass-Eye, my bag!” And, handing a small gold coin to the wretched couple, “There ... between artistes, you know ... give it back when you can; good-by. Did you notice, Glass-Eye,” asked Lily, as she walked away, “how flattered they were when I said, ‘Between artistes?’ They looked quite touched.”

But there was no time to waste in nonsense, on a day when she was calling on the agents. The thing was to get there first; and Lily consulted her addresses....

She was exasperated at being obliged, with her talent, to climb all those stairs, to hang about in the waiting-room, she, Lily Clifton! And it reeked of vice, stunk with the trashy scent of the “not-up-to-muches:” merely to look at them suggested faces seen in Piccadilly at night or in the Burlington Arcade.

Lily sent in her card, threw a short-sighted glance around her and remained standing, like a lady who is never kept waiting and who is sure to be received at once. And, with her head bent down and her chin in her gold-spotted tie, she turned over the pages of Le Courrier des CafÉs Concerts on the table ... names which she didn’t know ... the small “numbers” of the continent ... so much the better ... all the more chance for her. But the engagement which she dreamed of did not offer this time either. What the agent did propose to her, almost without lowering his voice, with the door open, before everybody, was the grated private boxes of South America ... the private rooms of Russia ... accompanied, at a startled movement on Lily’s part, by this concession:

“You needn’t sleep there, you know!”

To talk like that to a lady! Lily felt stifled. Was that what she had learned the bike for? To exhibit herself after the show, at the customers’ disposal? Lily could have fainted on the stairs, as she went down.

“One of those!” she said. “Not I!”

And she continued her weary pilgrimage of stairs, from agent to agent.

“I must have six months filled up in my book before to-night!” she said, determined to visit them all, small and large, rather than go back empty-handed.

There were some who suggested to her that ten per cent. was really very little....

“I like their style!” thought Lily. “They want an extra sop thrown to them: one might as well work for nothing!”

She thanked them, nevertheless, so as not to make enemies of them—one never knows—and the agent doesn’t matter so much; but the assistant, who happens to have known you when you were “that high” ... better give him a tip, lest he should round on you.

She also saw a former artiste, a friend of Pa’s, who had become an agent.

“Miss Lily? Lily Clifton? What are you doing now? Won’t you see my secretary? Leave your address with him.”

“Fellows whom Pa helped!” she grumbled angrily, as she went down the stairs. “They’re the worst of all! They make you pay for the humiliation of their own failure on the stage!”

Presently, she came to an agent who practised almost in the street, in an arcade somewhat like the Burlington, an agent for everything ... circus, music-hall, theater ... artistes formed in a week ... white flesh at famine salaries. There were all sorts of people there, a moving heap of frayed velvet and shabby plush. Lily passed by with great dignity. Next, she came to the big agent, with offices in Berlin and London ... the ting-ting of telephones, the tick-tack of typewriters all day ... business pure and simple, an exchange for supple loins, swelling biceps, muslin skirts, pigeon’s eggs ... a sheaf of stars who, from there, radiated over Australia, America, England, the Eastern and Western Trusts, Bill and Boom, Harrasford, the continent. Lily felt a little ill at ease as she entered—she had a pain in the pit of her stomach, as when she used to expect a smacking—and again in the private office crammed with papers and registers, when alone with the agent, who looked at her card, he seated, she standing. Then, suddenly:

“Lily? Miss Lily? Your price is two hundred francs a week, I believe.”

“What!” said Lily. “With a bike and a maid?”

“It’s what you had at Maidstone, so I was told.”

“What a lie!” said Lily. “Three hundred francs is the lowest I’ve ever had. I’ll show you my contracts.”

“Don’t trouble,” said the agent. “I thought ... we can get plenty at that price, you know ... in your style....”

“In my style, perhaps ... but not me.”

“Pooh, the audience doesn’t know the difference.” And he started looking through a register, turning over the pages and repeating mechanically, like a refrain or a lullaby, “The audience doesn’t care a hang; it’s all the same to the audience.” And, suddenly, with his hand flat on the open book and the other ready to take up the pen, with a piercing eye fixed upon Lily, “I can give you a month at a thousand francs ... they want a girl in tights ... at Lisbon.”

“Lisbon?” said Lily. “That’s at the Colosseo. A thousand francs to go to the Colosseo, with one’s luggage and a maid?”

“Well?” broke in the agent. “And what do you want a maid for, you extravagant little beast? Why not your maid’s family while you’re about it? A thousand francs: will you take it? I’ve got some one who will, if you don’t.”

Lily had to say yes or no quickly. Her forehead was wrinkled with the effort of turning the francs into shillings, the shillings into pounds. She consulted her book, like an artiste who doesn’t know, who may not be free, for a whole month. She lowered her chin in her tie, but without smiling ... had a cramp in her stomach, rather ... at a pinch, by leaving Glass-Eye in Paris.... After Lisbon, one generally had Madrid and Barcelona and returned by Marseilles and Lyons. Friends of hers had done well like that. But to accept a lower salary once meant accepting it always, in establishments of the same class; it meant reducing her price, for always, by two pounds a week, at least.

“A thousand francs: will you have it?”

And Lily:

“No, it’s impossible! I can’t take less than twelve pounds a week.” And she began to sum up her proofs: “Look here, at the Hippodrome, Glasgow ... at the Palace, Leeds....”

But the agent wouldn’t listen, shut up the register, was sorry:

“Can’t do it ... bad season ... cyclists to be had for the asking. Good-by.”

“Good-by.”

And Lily went out, went down the stairs, feeling half-inclined to go back and accept; but no! Lower her prices? Never! Oh, those cheap artistes, those black-legs deserved to be hanged! Great lazybones who learn a few baby tricks on the bike or the tight-rope, back-shop acrobats, slop-shop Lilies, who practise at a safe distance, by watching you on the stage, through an opera-glass. They cut your prices by half; they would work for a handful of rice, like a monkey. They deserved to have the iron curtain come down on them, and flatten them out like black-beetles, the wind-bags!

“I say, Glass-Eye, perhaps it’s they who fell into the orchestra, was it, when I got my thighs full of lamp-glass from the footlights, eh? They copy you, think themselves artistes.... What! Yes? You say they are, Glass-Eye? Damn it, I’ll have your eye out!”

And Lily had a fit of laughing when she saw Glass-Eye, who hadn’t said a word, raise her elbow in affright to ward off the blow.

Lily held the banister with one hand, leaned on Maud’s shoulder with the other and laughed and laughed, only to see her maid’s terrified face, a regular fat freak shrinking before the belt. My! She would have fallen with laughing, if Glass-Eye had not held her up; she plugged her lips with her scented handkerchief, slapped her thighs. She had never laughed so much in her life. She already felt consoled for all her bothers:

“Watch me, Glass-Eye! This is the way to go down-stairs!”

And, nimbly as a bird, Lily hopped on the banister, with her back to the wall, and—w-w-w-w-whew!—slid down to the bottom, keeping her balance faultlessly, sprang to her feet on the last stair and, with a wave of the hand, as after a successful trick:

“There! What do you think of that?”

Lily was not given to long spells of sadness. Reaction always followed immediately upon her worries, made the thousand and one vexations of a day like this easier for her to bear. The compliments which caught her ear in the street comforted her too:

“You pretty, pretty ...”

But she had no time to listen. Six months in her book before night! As time passed, Lily would have been content with less. And trot, trot, trot: while she was at it; then she would end by seeing whether they would get her for a handful of rice.

This idea amused her. Lily had confidence in her talent and continued her visits. She saw them all: other agents, former bosses or profs, who had sucked apprentices dry to the marrow and who continued their evil practices in their offices; this sort sized you up with the eye of a slave-dealer. There was also the lucky agent, who had started a sensational attraction, a Laurence or a Light of Asia. This agent had a touch of pride about him, with his eternal, “I gave her her first start!” as though to say:

“They’ll never find another like her, never! They don’t turn them out like that now!”

And all this was a pretext for offering you ridiculous terms, because you were neither Light of Asia nor Laurence. It was no use Lily’s boasting of having declined Bill and Boom and Harrasford, pretending to be an artiste for whom the managers were competing against one another with sheaves of banknotes. There was nothing for her at this one’s ... nothing for her at the others’, either ... only a scrap of news of her family, through an artiste. The New Trickers were all the rage in Scotland, it seemed; an engagement in London, at the Palace, was waiting for them. When Lily heard that, she turned pale with envy: so it was on their account that she had been refused that tour in England, so that they might have it! Patience! Her

LILY