The artistes’ special left Euston at noon that Sunday. The Three Graces were the first to arrive; then the waiting-rooms, until lately deserted, began to fill with silent groups of five or six persons at a time, who had, no doubt, arranged the night before, at the theater, to travel together and avail themselves of the reduction allowed to members of the M. H. A. R. A.: a reduction of at least a third, provided there were five in the party. They now swarmed into the station from every side: pale faces, under huge feathers; wrists hooped round with bangles; breasts bristling with gollywogs and lucky charms. There were little girls with bows over their ears, dressed in plush and velvet and following their Pas and Mas. There were troupes of carpet acrobats, with low foreheads, broad shoulders and bow legs; and profs, bosses and managers, recognizable by the richness of their watch-chains, looked after the luggage. Theater-vans discharged immense basket trunks, marked with letters a foot high—“Brothers This ... Sisters That ... So-and-so Trio ... Miss Such-and-such”—and bearing on the handles, on the yellow labels of the M. H. A. R. A., addresses of Empires and Palaces and of Grand Opera-Houses and Grand Theaters, too, for there were not only “artistes,” but singers, actresses, “chicken-necks,” “woolly-legs,” who rubbed shoulders with the muscular acrobats. All of them crowded round the booking-office; they handed in professional cards, helped one another, among pros; those who were traveling alone borrowed tickets to enable them to get their over-weight luggage labeled: complicated pieces of apparatus, nickel-plated rods wrapped up in sacking, equilibrists’ perches; the coaches, which were carried by assault, were encumbered with hand-luggage, bags, parcels, picture-frames containing photographs for the doors of the theaters, heaped up in the racks, under the seats, in the corridor; and there was a constant fire of “Hullo, girls! Hullo, boys!”

The Three Graces, standing before the carriage-door, now that their things were settled, watched this tumult sadly, especially Thea. What was it? Nunkie’s absence? No, but poor Lily had been kicked out by her husband, so they heard, and turned out by her mother as well: was it possible? Lily was dead or vanished, they didn’t know which; they were told about it at the theater; a stagehand had met her near St. Martin’s Lane, in a small street, with her hair undone and her hat on the back of her head, crying, biting her handkerchief, drunk, apparently, and running in the direction of the Thames. And, since then, they had had no news of her.

“Poor Lily, what can she have done, what can have happened?” sighed Thea. “Poor Lily, she was always so nice!”

Thea could have cried for sadness.

The start caused a diversion. The collector punched the tickets:

“Blackpool? Glasgow?”

The Three Graces stepped in, the engine whistled. But a porter rushed past, pushing before him, with a rumbling like thunder, a huge trunk on a barrow. Thea turned her head and a name in scarlet letters caught her eyes: “Miss Lily!” And, running after the trunk, magnificently bedecked, in a hat all feathers and gold tassels, who? What? Lily! Lily herself, red and out of breath, leading her bike with one hand, carrying an umbrella in the other, and Glass-Eye, her arms stretched wide with parcels, following in her train! Just time to throw her bike to the porter in the luggage-van and quick, quick, Lily came scudding back, hustled along by the train-master! She would have missed the start, were it not for Thea, who opened the door and, with her arms of steel, gripped her as she passed:

“Hullo, Lily! That’s a good girl! Quick!”

Lily leaped into the carriage with a bound. Glass-Eye, entangled in her parcels, had, amid general laughter, to be dragged by main force, through the narrow doorway, like a piece of luggage. Oof, just in time ... Off they were!

In the railway-carriage was nothing but gaiety and handshaking and ingenuous questions:

“Traveling by yourself? Where’s Trampy? And your Pa and Ma? So you’re not dead, eh?”

“Certainly not,” said Lily. “If they had come to annoy me at the station, I’d have shown them if I was alive or dead! I was ready for them!”

And she brandished her umbrella.

Then she had to make herself comfortable, to find room for all her belongings as best she could. Lily pushed Glass-Eye about, like a fine lady used to being waited on:

“Here, take my hat, Glass-Eye; hang it up. Take my wrist-bag. Wait, give me my handkerchief first!”

To look at Lily, all fresh and rosy, one would never have suspected the trials she had passed through, but a few days ago. Still quite flustered with that hurried departure, she smiled as she watched the Three Graces, who, on their side, were carefully folding up their cloaks. And the train rushed on, rushed on through deep cuttings, dashed through deserted stations ... and then, suddenly, entered a tunnel. Lily, but for the noise of the wheels, would have seen herself as she had been that night. Oh, she would never forget it! It clutched at her heart. She clenched her fists with anger. Turned out by Trampy! Insulted by her Ma! Flouted by Jimmy, that mean cur! Oh, when she left his place, a few days ago, she felt like a madwoman! Her first idea was to disappear, to take a header into the black water! But, ugh, the mud, the cold! And then the hospital, with those people who cut you up! She must also show Pa and Ma whether it was through her gentlemen friends that she meant to earn more by herself alone than they and all their rotten troupe put together. Perhaps Pa and Ma would come to her, one day, to beg their bread! But Ma must first ask Lily’s pardon on her knees. On her knees, damn it! And, in despair, inwardly raging, her chest aching with grief and spite, Lily, penniless, but brave for all that and ready for the fray, returned to her hotel, where, to her great surprise, she found some one waiting for her, with a parcel in her hand.

Lily recognized Glass-Eye.

It was, indeed, poor Glass-Eye. When she heard what had happened and that Lily would starve in London and a jolly good thing too, that she could sleep in Leicester Square for all they cared: when she heard this behind the door, Glass-Eye almost fainted. Without a word to a soul, she had packed up her parcel and gone to join Lily; and Lily, in her misery, cried for joy when she saw the decent girl, who offered her her savings, twelve shillings in all, saying:

“Take me with you, Miss Lily; I’ll wait on you for nothing. Take me, take me!”

Oh, not to feel alone, to have some one beside you who loves you: that had consoled Lily....

The next day, accompanied by Glass-Eye, she called on the agents, in the Leicester Square quarter, at the risk of meeting Pa, or Trampy, or Jimmy; but who cared? With her umbrella in her hand, she feared nobody and did not give a fig for any of them.

Nothing for her at Harrasford’s, where the Warwicks were starring. Very well, she’d come back again some other time! And straight on to Bill and Boom’s in Whitcomb Mansions, below Jimmy. As she climbed the stairs, Lily screwed up her eyes, like a short-sighted person, for fear of meeting Jimmy, prepared a haughty attitude; but she saw no one. She was not kept waiting, was shown in at once to Boom’s office. Lily Clifton? the New Zealander on Wheels? Straight away a contract! And Lily left with twenty music-halls in her pocket! Liverpool, Birmingham, Sheffield and so on: a week in each town, beginning on Monday next. And that was how she got engagements through her gentlemen friends!

The next day, she borrowed some money on her contracts from the Brixton financier: “loans from five pounds upward, in the strictest confidence.” Then, proposed and seconded by two artistes, she joined the Variety Artistes’ Federation and, in return for ten shillings, received the red card of membership. She paid another ten shillings and the same for Glass-Eye, her maid, to the M. H. A. R. A. and obtained the right, for one year, to travel at reduced fares, including an insurance against accidents: five hundred pounds to her heirs in case of death—her heirs!—and two hundred and fifty pounds if she lost a hand or foot in a railway accident; and one hundred and fifty for a serious injury. Then she bought a big gollywog, for her dressing-room, and a little lucky charm for her watch-chain—a closed black hand, with the thumb between the fingers, as a preservative against falls—and with that and her bike she would have set out for India and Australia as calmly as she might have taken the omnibus to Earl’s Court.

Oh yes, she had done a deal in those few days and, above all, she had got out of her difficulties, thanks, to a certain extent, to Glass-Eye, who had comforted her. And besides, hang it, that was all over now! The worries were forgotten, and, as the train emerged from the tunnel, Lily, with her arm round Glass-Eye’s waist, was patting that decent girl and Glass-Eye lifted her one good eye to Lily, while the other, the glass one, gazing fixedly at the door, reflected the thinly scattered houses and the beginning of the country.

Lily, when she had recovered a little from her mad rush, lay down at full length among her bags, parcels and bandboxes. She laughed with the Three Graces; and there was no one there to interfere with them; there they were, by themselves, among themselves, alone in the compartment, a regular, rollicking school-girls’ picnic. Lily made them scream by telling them about her life since they had last seen her. She felt a need for a reaction of gaiety, after her sadness of the days just past. The Graces fixed their round eyes upon her, upon that Lily who was so thoroughly up in all sorts of things which they knew only by hearsay: men, love. A life fit to kill a horse; and a very nice girl, for all that: a kind of forbidden fruit, pink and fair-haired, soft to the touch; and no jealousy between them, friendship rather, a rare thing, in the “Profession”....

Lily grew excited in talking, told of her successes, the receptions, the teas she used to give in her drawing-room, in Berlin, when she was ill. Jossers, according to her, would have paid any price to have been there! It would form a subject of conversation over there for many a long day to come. And then her journeys, her impressions of the continent—“Jam with your meat, my dear!”—and such clean dressing-rooms in Germany; very severe managers, though: gee, harder than Pas. But very good to her, all the same. The Battenberg at Leipzig: nothing but leading turns; and she had topped the bill at Leipzig! And to see all those people eating, during the show, when you were hungry yourself, had a very funny effect upon you. By the way, she didn’t like that system of being lodged and boarded by the management; it was all very well for those people; but none of that for her: give her a nice flat in town or a smart hotel! Once she was started, Lily never stopped, called Glass-Eye to witness, went on telling of her life in Berlin; how Jimmy had fallen in love with her when he saw her on the stage, and he had the cheek to want her to run away with him; but who got a box on the ear that day, eh? She perhaps: yes, rather, over the left! And Jimmy and Trampy had fought for her! So had all the pros, worse than dogs in September!

“What a rotten lot!” concluded Lily.

“My, how you’ve changed!” said Thea. “You used to be so fond of men.”

“I give it them where they deserve,” said Lily, slapping her firm, round hips.

And they laughed noisily at Lily’s anger when, with her shoulder drawn back and her arm ready to strike, she spoke of breaking the jaws of those two scoundrels.

“Go it! Hit me!” said Thea, putting forward her deltoid muscle. “Hit away! You’ll only smash your wrist!”

And then those Spartans calmed down, asked one another for news of absent friends, talked about different people they had known, all over the place, on the stage: their conversation always came round to the profession. Lily, with greater refinement, sometimes tried to discuss dress: tulle ruches were to be worn this year, she heard; feather boas. The Graces knew nothing about that, stuck to their “Did you ever know...? Do you remember...?” And every part of the world was mixed up in their talk: India, Tasmania, Mexico, South Wales, New South Wales, York, New York, Hampshire, New Hampshire.

“Did you know Ave Maria?” asked Lily.

“No.”

But they mentioned other friends, like school-girls living in the same quarter; only, for them, the school, the quarter was San Francisco, Chicago, Berlin, and the schoolmates were the girl in a knot, who had sold her skeleton in advance to the Medical College: Marjutti, the double-knotted girl, to whom the South Kensington Museum offered five hundred pounds for a cast of her figure; the Pawnees, who had just won a treble beauty prize; and the Laurence girl, whose cruelly daring performance was forbidden by the Manchester police; and heaps of others whom they had known and who, at that moment, were asleep at the antipodes, right under your feet, or waking up in the Far West, or going to bed in the Far East, or pitching on the ocean, or rolling in express trains toward the five corners of the earth. And their own traveling adventures, the Graces’ and Lily’s: broken railway-bridges! ships on fire at sea! towns blazing up in the night! ropes breaking, falls head-first, my! One would have thought that these girls of seventeen to twenty were South Sea pirates, talking of hangings and tortures, or, rather, children playing at frightening one another. Lily, for instance, in India: two eyes glaring at her in the dark, gee! And, in New York, a fall into a mirror; all over blood; half dead. She grew excited, in her desire to outdo Laurence and Crack-o’-Whip: the steel-buckled belt, the kicks in the ribs! Stories of brutal treatment picked up on every side—from the Gilson girl, from Ave Maria, from all the boys and all the girls and all the monkeys who had been through the mill—she made every one of them her own, served them up hot and hot to the astounded Graces, talked of whole days spent in practising on rough, uneven boards—“And given no food, was I, Glass-Eye?”—so much so that she would sometimes get up in the night and go and pick up the crusts under the table, gee! Lily reveled in the pitying expressions of the Three Graces and her heart swelled with pride when Thea, greatly touched, remarked that, in such cases, it would have been better not to be born.

“You’re quite right,” said Lily, with a drooping air; but she burst into a peal of fresh, young laughter when she saw Glass-Eye overcome with emotion. “What’s that?” asked Lily, giving her a thump in the ribs. “Crying? You silly cuckoo!”

If it hadn’t been for her Ma’s insults and Jimmy’s and Trampy’s—when it all came back to her, it was like a needle stuck in her heart!—Lily would have been in the seventh heaven! No more Pa, no more Ma, no more anybody; no boss, no prof, no husband, nothing, all alone ... with her maid! Certainly, there would be the worry of business, looking for her “digs,” seeing the agents, writing letters and so on; but she would know how to put herself forward, how to make the most of her work; and she smiled as she reflected how little all those worries meant, compared with her past life: and she would be free, free, free at last. She was going to earn money, to enjoy life.

And the train rushed on, rushed on through the fields. Glass-Eye, with her nose glued to the window, was astonished to find everything so large outside of London: red villages decked the green country-side; and then came empty railway stations. Sometimes the train slowed down:—a large silent town lay spread in the valley, white smoke rose from the endless roofs; homes, more homes; the air of rest, the empty streets and the indistinct chimes of the church-bells proclaimed to the pale heavens the majesty of prayer. Lily listened with a dreamy air; it all reminded her of things:

“It’s like the American engines,” she said to the Three Graces, “that used to ring their bells when they passed through Syracuse.”

But the train rushed on, rushed on.... And they again began to talk shop, as always: with, here and there, an excursion into the cost of food. The Graces, just then, were unpacking their lunch; and Lily fetched her traveling provisions from her bag in the corridor. There was a sound of clattering plates from end to end of the train, in a mist of tobacco-smoke. Lily rejoined the party very quickly, to avoid coming in contact with the pros, and, waited on by Glass-Eye, attacked her meal and broke her bread so heartily that the crusts flew to the ceiling. They drank out of the same cup, took their meat in their hands, Lily saying that fingers were made before forks. They chattered noisily, with the time-honored jokes about apples and bananas. They made Glass-Eye talk a lot of nonsense. Lily, flinging back her head, laughed full-throated, held her sides.

“My!” said the Graces. “What a pity that we are separating! It would have been so nice to travel together; one’s never bored with you. What a tomboy!”

“’K you!” said Lily, greatly flattered, with a stage curtsey.

Unfortunately, they would have to part at Warrington. The Graces were going on to Glasgow, Lily was changing for Liverpool; a few moments more and it was good-by, until chance....

At Lily’s request, the Graces gave her a few last words of advice, explained the system of the pass-book of the Artistes’ Federation: the sixpenny stamp to be stuck in the little square every week; the extra stamp at each death of a member, for the benefit of the heirs. They talked to her of the Friday meetings at Manchester, at which every artiste can speak and see himself printed afterward in the London Performer.

“Good!” thought Lily. “I may have things to say. There will be news for somebody!”

The Graces had a “three years’ book,” the professional agenda, with nothing but Mondays marked on it for the weekly engagement: 8 January, 15 January and so on.

“Yes, I know,” said Lily. “Mine’s full for months ahead!”

They showed her, on theirs, the last pages containing portrait advertisements of famous artistes: the Pawnees, Marjutti, Laurence.

“Oh, if I could get there one day!” thought Lily. “I’d post it to Pa; it would be the death of him!”

And then followed the thousand and one details of the wandering life: your name on the red list, the list handed in at the station; the journeys at reduced fares; the music for twelve instruments, forty executants, sent on to the theater a fortnight in advance.

“And matinÉes are paid for now. And you know, Lily, in the Federation you can get a solicitor free.”

“That’s a good thing to know,” thought Lily, “for my divorce from that rusty biker!”

Oh, how she hated pros, now! The sight of them in the corridor, looking at her with glistening eyes, made her want to put out her tongue at them! But she preferred not to see:

“I don’t like to seem stuck-up with them, it’s not polite,” she observed.

Nevertheless, she shrugged her shoulders when one of them who, no doubt, had known her when she was “that high,” blew kisses to her from the tips of his fingers, with a gesture straight at her heart, through the window.

And the train rushed on, rushed on. They were nearing Warrington. The slopes, on either side, bristled with chimneys and houses, houses, endless roofs ... a Lancashire rid of its black smoke, like an extinct and silent crater ... Warrington!

A few minutes’ wait. There was a general hustle, pros stretching their legs, running to the refreshment-room for a drink, some seeking seats in the train, others saying good-by:

“Write to me, eh? Cathedral Hotel, Melbourne.”

And a shake of the hand; so long; perhaps for ever. More basket trunks were being trundled down the platform. A wife was leaving her husband: six months, twelve months, without meeting; who could tell? Or else, perhaps, between two trains, as the luck of the tours would have it; and they seemed very fond of each other, too; Lily thought it very pretty. But she had other things to do than sentimentalize. She handed out her parcels to Glass-Eye and then, standing on the platform, said good-by to the Three Graces:

“Hope you’ll have a good journey! Au revoir! Send me some post-cards,” said Lily. “Address them to the theater, I love that! Good-by! Ta-ta!”

The train started. Lily waved her handkerchief to the Three Graces.

One more separation; one more little rent: Lily had had so many in her life. As far back as she could remember there had been heads at the carriage-window, like that; ships standing out to sea; trains rushing into the night. But, this time, she was alone, with her maid. And she drew herself up proudly, like a lady who had a sense of her responsibilities. A new life was opening before Lily, as before a girl just coming out. Poor Lily, a girl still, in her way, yes, with, for her portion, a feather in her hat, a gollywog in her trunk, a pair of supple legs and nerves of steel, unerring and exact, trained to turn round and round....