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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Show it to me, you wench!”

“Shut up, you footy rotter!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I know of one for sale.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Will you make Miss Lily do it?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Singing?” asked Lily.

“No, something to do with the bike.”

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

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

“Those jossers!” exclaimed Lily scornfully.

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

“What rot!”

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

“And the troupe?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lily did not even answer.

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

“Yes, I know; that’ll do,” said Lily.

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

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

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

“That’s none of your business!”

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

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

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

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

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

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