It came as a smack in the jaw to Trampy.

“My pay, my work, mine!”

It meant no more pocket-money with which to lord it at the bar. It meant a cheap cigarette instead of his glorious cigar. It was the end of a beautiful dream; and the awakening was a hard one. At first, he hoped to make Lily jealous by going about openly with the stage-girls; but she no longer paid any attention, seemed to suggest that he had better amuse himself on his side and she on hers:

“What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander,” she said.

Lily would no longer take his orders; and, because he felt his wife escape him, it was he, Trampy, who now became jealous. When, from a distance, among the tables, he saw Lily ride round the stage and all those heads raised toward her, those opera-glasses pointed at her, he followed her with an anxious eye. “Miss Lily!” “Miss Lily” was his wife, after all! Those rounded arms, that lissom figure, those twinkling legs were all his, every bit of them! He was the husband, by Jove! It was not a marriage for fun, as with Ave Maria: it was a marriage for good and all, which had cost him two pounds—“Yes, siree!”—at the Kennington registry-office. And it wasn’t only her flightiness, her smiles at the front boxes, but “my work, my salary, mine” into the bargain! She was acting like a bad wife, forgetting her most sacred duties!

Lily stood on no ceremony with him, took her title of “Miss” seriously: very flattering for him, very flattering, he must say! He no longer knew himself: he who, in the old days, used to answer: “My lord, rely on me!” when a half-tipsy swell invited him to come and drink champagne with some stage-girls, now became furious if men in the audience, not knowing who he was, sized up “Miss Lily” before him—her shoulders, arms and the rest—with reflections such as “I could do with a bit of that!” or, “A nice little supper ...” He felt inclined to shout in their faces that she was no “miss,” but his wife, by Jove!

He became more and more jealous. The thought of Jimmy, especially, kept running in his head. He felt a twinge whenever he heard him mentioned. And Jimmy was often mentioned just at present, for he was said to be preparing a new turn, a turn which would make him famous, unless it killed him.

“If only it would!” Trampy hoped.

Jimmy was Trampy’s bugbear. He had flattered himself that he had snatched Lily from Jimmy by sheer prowess; and not a bit of it! The recollection of that drove him mad, the sense of his powerlessness exasperated him, he had but one idea left: to show Lily ... and Jimmy ... the sort of man he was; to take his revenge. That great scheme of his, that discovery that would show what he was made of, the invention which he had patented in America with Poland’s money—oh, she had revenged herself finely, had that Parisienne!—well, the time to apply himself to that trick had come. Lily had refused to do it. All right, he would do it himself!

But, if he was to succeed, it was necessary that Lily should supply him with money, more money, lots of money. The apparatus was incomplete and had probably got damaged in the London warehouse; it would need repairs, improvements. Now Lily seemed intractable. She was vexed at having to earn money for two, pretended to have none too much for herself; it was her costumes now: six sets of tights, one for each evening, pink, green, red, blue, gray, white and assorted ornaments, silk ribbons....

She didn’t want to kill herself with work for nothing, as she had been doing up to now:

“A lady isn’t a performing dog!” she said.

Trampy swallowed his bitterness when he heard that. Lily was escaping him altogether. Sometimes, he would go on the stage, sit down in a corner and, from there, see Lily, a shawl over her shoulders, her throat wrapped in a scarf, walk up and down, behind the back-drop, like a passenger on the deck of a ship, at one time with a monkey-faced, red-whiskered sketch-comedian; at others, according to the chances of the week, with the female-impersonator, the boy with the green eyes. There was no harm in that: they were at home, among themselves, Lily was no damned lalerperlooser, he wouldn’t have had her so. And Trampy did not dare say anything, for fear of being made a laughing stock and also lest he should offend “Miss Lily.” But he was tormented with jealousy nevertheless, merely at seeing her talk pleasantly with her acquaintances. And yet it was innocent enough, a mere “Hullo, Lily!” “Hullo, old boy!” by way of keeping herself in touch with the news, for Lily hardly ever looked into The Era or Das Program; all those names, all that competition frightened her!

She had learned nothing new about Pa, except that the troupe still existed, but in quite a small way, of course. Her Pa was in favor of soft treatment, now, so they said; he had changed his manner. “Too late!” murmured Lily thoughtfully; but she was much amused when she heard that Tom, in addition to keeping up his trade as a shoeblack, was learning boxing, with bulldog obstinacy, in order to give Pa back his blow on the nose and beat him in a square fight. And didn’t some one say that Tom was stage-struck, too? Tom, that dwarf, with his short arms, on the stage! Crazy! every one of them!

And then they were always talking of Jimmy: Jimmy here, Jimmy there. It was becoming serious, Lily couldn’t get over it. She wondered what old Martello would say if he heard that: Jimmy an artiste! Pooh! Nonsense! And it was true, mind you! It was repeated from mouth to mouth, his fame was spreading, his fame, that is to say, in the bars, in the wings, among pros; you heard his name mentioned together with a hundred others; but that already was a great deal, that one could say, Butt Snyders, Laurence, Jimmy, Marjutti, all mixed up, as though he were their equal, he who had done nothing! But he would “do,” it was in the air: some stroke of luck, who could tell? And Lily knew him to be ambitious. Lady or no lady, she was an artiste first and foremost and hated competition. She had been whipped for her rivals, Lillian, Edith and Polly, had caught it for Laurence and for the fat freaks, too, and she depended on her work for her bread. When she saw a new troupe come to the front it made her anxious: even children “that high,” who played bike in between the pillars of the stage, she felt inclined to stamp upon; and if people ever asked her advice, she did not hesitate to tell them wrong. Men especially were disastrous competitors, even the ignorant ones. You never knew where you were with them, they dared do anything! She could not help getting mad when she thought of it. One more to take the bread out of her mouth! For it was all very well to treat him as a simpleton, to talk of his crotchets—he had views concerning a stage-apprentices’ fund, a home of rest for superannuated artistes and so on—Lily considered him dangerous. He was not a silly Glass-Eye or a stage-struck Tom; he was an ambitious Jimmy. But all the same, how absurd! A hypocrite like that was fit to write to Pa and get a poor girl in trouble, but was not the man to risk his skin! She laughed, not a stage smile, no, a real laugh, head thrown back, full-throated. An artiste, O Lord! Yes, like a heap of bluffers who were to do this and that, all sorts of wonderful things! and who ended by making a laughing stock of themselves, the whole business was so childish, faked up with ropes and weights, nursery-toys, Punch-and-Judy rubbish. It would be just like that with Jimmy, sure: lots of noise and then ... nothing! And he would have lost his place as manager and he would starve, the josser: that would teach him to be spiteful! And where was Jimmy? He might be very clever, in his shed in London, swinging from his rope, like a monkey on a string, but to do that before an audience was different. There would be no Jimmy left!

She liked to talk to herself like that. Miss Lily avoided thinking of a possible stroke of luck, she who had taken such pains to attain so little, just to become Mrs. Trampy, to have the honor of working for Trampy and feeding Trampy. Oh, she was tired of it, did all she could to find him work, to spur him on! She even wanted him to practise. And she mentioned Tom and Jimmy to him, all those beginners, all the others who were coming on.

“She thinks more of him than of me,” he said to himself.

And time passed and passed. It was now eight months that they had been traveling through Germany: and then, at last, came Berlin, the center of the agencies, like the plunge into Chicago, after the Western Tour, or New York, after the Eastern, or Paris, or London. Lily asked herself for what part of the world she would sign contracts. She would have liked Australia, South Africa, the States, so as to leave her husband in Europe, sitting up on his hind-quarters, like a trained dog, waiting for his “missis” to come back:

“If I could have the Kolossal in the meantime,” Lily thought. “A month there would do me nicely! I’d like to beat the fat freaks in their own country and show Pa that I don’t need his old troupe to star with!”

And Lily had some hope: an agent had given her to understand that she would be engaged, without a doubt, at that famous music-hall. But no! She learned that the Kolossal was not wanting cyclists, it had an attraction for next month, something sensational, it was said. And, in fact, suddenly, in the space of a night, the walls of the capital were covered with huge posters—“Bridging the Abyss!”—at the Kolossal!

“What’s that?” Lily asked herself.

And she was thunderstruck when she learned that this was Jimmy’s new trick! She had no doubt left when, looking into a bookseller’s window, she saw Jimmy’s portrait in Die Illustrirte Zeitung, the popular illustrated paper in Berlin.

Her arms fell to her sides! What, she thought, already? All this advertisement for that Jimmy? She had lost the Kolossal because of him. Already Jimmy was taking the bread out of her mouth! She could have wrung his neck!

Never had the New Zealanders, or the Hauptmanns, or the Pawnees, or any one, or anybody known such advertising as that, except the great breakneck performers, Laurence, the Loopers, the Motor Girl; and even then the girl was packed up in her machine like a sausage. But “Bridging the Abyss,” the papers said, required art: everything depended on the exact impetus, the faultless balance. The press was filled with clever puffs, biographies, descriptions of the apparatus, the cool daring which it needed to try that without a rope, to risk the performer’s life six times in six seconds. London and Paris were both said to have wanted the attraction; and Berlin was to have it first; and hoch for the Kolossal!

Trampy also was flabbergasted, when he read about this:

“But ... but ... but it’s my apparatus and nothing else! Why, I patented it in America! Do you understand now,” he asked, without, however, entering into technical explanations, “do you understand now, when I wanted you to help me? It wasn’t a question of the rusty bike! You’ve made me miss fame and fortune! And to think that I have an apparatus rotting away in London, in a warehouse, and that, if you’d listened to me, I should have been at the Kolossal now ... and covering you with diamonds!”

“I like your style!” said Lily. “You’d have made me break my back in your stead! I know you!”

“Oh, but I shan’t swallow that,” said Trampy, in his exasperation. “We shall see! I have my rights. I shall enforce them!”

“Don’t make a fool of yourself,” said Lily. “When a thing has to be done, it gets done without all that talk: look at Jimmy!”

“Hang your Jimmy!”

“It’s not a question of my Jimmy,” retorted Lily, “but of my money. I should simply have flung it away! You, do a thing like that! You risk your skin! Rot!”

Trampy, in his rage, would have boxed Lily’s ears, had it not been for her nails, which she held ready to scratch his face, and he went out fuming. He ran off to the agents, but there was nothing for him. And yet Trampy knew or, at least, supposed that they must want an opposition show to “Bridging the Abyss.” They must, surely! Why, everywhere, in all the great centers, every music-hall had its rival opposite or beside it: everywhere, each establishment strove to inflict empty houses upon its rival by offering more sensational or more breakneck tricks. At the Kaiserin, the rival of the Kolossal, they were, without a doubt, looking for something to set against “Bridging the Abyss” and they had nothing, or else Trampy would have known it: among pros such matters were always known long beforehand. Oh, Trampy was prepared to do anything to escape his wife’s sarcasm!

And, one evening, behold Trampy returning in triumph to the cafÉ where Lily awaited him:

“I knew it!” he cried. “I knew it wouldn’t go like that!”

“Well, what?” asked Lily. “Have you got a number thirty-seven? Thirty-eight? A fresh conquest? Something quite out of the common?”

“Laugh away, Lily! That son of a gun shall hear me talked about yet, by Jove! And everybody else will, too. You must be prepared for anything, Lily, when you marry an artiste!”

“Why, what’s happened?” asked Lily, much surprised.

This had happened: the two music-halls had fought. Jimmy, who was unable, it seemed, to get London or Paris, had offered his “Bridging the Abyss” to the Kaiserin, but his price was considered too high. From there he went to the Kolossal and made the same proposal. Now, times were hard for the music-halls, sucked dry by the enormous salaries that had to be paid. The managers were standing shoulder to shoulder, in the presence of the common enemy, the artiste and, more particularly, the originator of sensations, who is indispensable and who makes you an offer with a pistol at your head, like a highwayman demanding your money or your life.

But a turn like that meant an assured success; and the Kolossal offered Jimmy five hundred marks a night, so as to spike the Kaiserin’s guns by getting hold of a unique turn and one not easy to replace; a piece of underhand work involving two months’ empty houses at the Kaiserin, which, as it was, had only a second-rate troupe by way of “sisters,” while at the Kolossal they had Roofers engaged by the year, real ones, the complete dozen, words and music guaranteed. And now the Kolossal would make huge money with “Bridging the Abyss” and sink its rival; it was a master-stroke. But they knew everything at the Kaiserin. The Kaiserin also wanted a “Bridging the Abyss.” It would have one, a better one, with a finer title: “Arching the Gulf!” And they would get it for three hundred marks! And they must be ready, quick, quick, before the Kolossal, and it was just possible: they had twenty days yet; the apparatus would be made; they knew the plans, the dimensions; the house would be fixed up accordingly; they must succeed at all costs and not let themselves be strangled without defense! It was a struggle to the death! They would fight with corpses, if need be! Other people had broken their backs for them before now; there would be no difficulty in finding one more to risk his life six times in six seconds for three hundred marks a night.

And it was at that moment that Trampy offered himself. They had heard his name:

“Trampy Wheel-Pad, the tramp cyclist with the red-hot stove?”

“That’s me,” said Trampy.

And, full of self-assurance, he explained the object of his visit:

“I was the first to construct it; I patented it myself at Washington; I will produce the documents!”

It will be understood why Trampy wore his air of conquest when he returned home that day. He had his engagement in his pocket! He displayed it victoriously to Lily, passed it over her face, reveled in his revenge. At last he was going to show Lily whether he was able to keep a wife or not; and champagne suppers every evening, by Jove, with girls—no damned lalerperloosers—just to show her!

That same evening, he left for London, with an advance from the management, and came back to Berlin with the apparatus, the whole set up and repaired in a week, a gang of men working night and day. Followed practice with the rope, on a movable pulley, from early dawn, like a man determined to accomplish his breakneck feat, alive or dead; for Trampy would have done, no matter what, for Lily to cease being “Miss” Lily, to admit herself married and married for love and not to escape whippings, to cease being ashamed of him, to show herself proud of him, on the contrary, especially before Jimmy!

Trampy, in his less enthusiastic moments, felt a certain uneasiness: Jimmy’s proximity, his own patents far away, in America. But he assumed a bold face, declared himself the inventor, practised unrelentingly, with hatred of his rival in his heart. This hatred seemed to increase his powers of work. He practised, practised. He had a lively intelligence, if his heart was a trifle flabby. And he was very skilful, besides, when he condescended to take the trouble. He was a quick worker: in less than twenty days everything was ready, and “Arching the Gulf” sprawled over the hoardings of Berlin, side by side with “Bridging the Abyss.” One saw nothing else; and the Kaiserin opened its doors forty-eight hours before Jimmy. It was a huge success. Trampy received an ovation when, after the release of the terrible springs which flung the bike from one pedestal to another, in five seconds he fell on the mattresses outspread to receive him, behind a cloth.

It goes without saying that Jimmy was present at the show. He was smashed before he had even begun! There, before his eyes, was his own invention worked by another! He had expected competition, of course; it was impossible, he knew, to discover anything that wasn’t copied at once; snatchers of ideas, who prowl around artistes, plagiarists, pirates, swarmed as thick as any other sort of thieves. And, as ill luck would have it, though his turn was difficult to perform, the apparatus, at least, was simple to construct: four powerful springs, screwed down with a jack, which the weight of the leaping cyclist, as he fell upon each pedestal, released one after the other, causing him to take enormous jumps forward. It was an ideal breakneck machine, easy to carry about; only the calculations had been difficult. They had cost him a lot of trouble to establish; and now another was profiting by them! Perhaps some one had patented the invention before him! For he, too, before showing it in public, had patented it in England and Germany; and his anger knew no bounds, his energy was increased fourfold when he learned the name of the plagiarist: Trampy again! Trampy, who had stolen his love, who had stolen his Lily ... and who was now stealing his idea ... robbing him of the fruit of his labor! Jimmy, in spite of his fury, resolved to keep calm: the law first. He was protected by the law, unless—and that was impossible—unless Trampy had had the same idea as himself before him and taken out his patents before the publication in Engineering. Jimmy showed a prompt decision, a feverish activity. First of all, he must put the law in motion, bring an action against Trampy, telegraph to the patent office at Washington to ascertain the date. Meanwhile, he made his first appearance on the day fixed for it. His success was even greater than Trampy’s; his leaps were twice as wide, more in accordance with his courage. The way in which he “bridged the abyss,” in the huge hall where he gave his show, was enough to prove that he was the inventor, the creator, the great, typical, daring performer, who, disclaiming death, marches to glory and fortune even as heroes, flag in hand, rush to the assault under fire.

It was a bolt from the blue for the Kaiserin when the little paper arrived, the injunction against “Arching the Gulf.” A steamer caught in a cyclone would undergo much the same disablement, under a sea sweeping her from stem to stern, swamping the saloons, drowning the very rats in the hold. Jimmy’s active inquiries had not taken long: telegram followed upon telegram; the British consul woke up. The law at Washington was formal and precise: nothing could be patented that had been known, or used, or published before the patent was applied for. Now the article in Engineering, of course, appeared prior to the step taken by Trampy. And in Germany, also, Jimmy won his case; the court found in favor of the absolute novelty of the invention. The Kaiserin could not give its performance short of paying five hundred marks a night to its rival, the Kolossal. This meant the wreck of “Arching the Gulf;” and Trampy came down with it. For a few days, he led a terrible life, a desperate struggle, made efforts in every direction; but, at last, worried, hustled, driven to bay, Trampy disappeared into the darkness, while Jimmy, freed from this enervating opposition and feeling sure of himself henceforward, gained fresh courage, added another arch to “Bridging the Abyss.”

It was done, he had made his start, he had a name, he was the man who draws crowds; he received brilliant proposals from all sides, from the Western Trust, among others. He felt himself somebody; and money also was coming in. He could at last realize what he had in his head ... in the absence of love there would be fame ... oh, something a thousand times more sensational than “Bridging the Abyss,” more modern, more scientific, something which he confided to nobody, which he kept locked up in his brain, in his heart, like a love passion, a thing which would be his alone, this time, which no one could take from him! For it would not be a question of a spring and a click, only. The thing moved in his breast, lived in his brain. When he thought of it, his cheeks became hollow with ambition, his eyes lit up. He seemed to tower over immense perspectives; and, from that height, Trampy appeared to him so small, so small, so really small that he felt his anger decrease. And then there was Lily! To send Trampy to his wife with a black eye or a bloody nose, to turn the husband into an object of ridicule to his wife, that was impossible for him; it would have shown lack of respect for Lily, poor darling; he would not humiliate her in her man! She loved him, perhaps, in the illusion of her seventeen years! Hurt her? Never! Jimmy wiped the episode from the slate; hard as it was, he forgave that highway robber, in the name of his dead love.

Ah, if he could have seen Lily when Trampy was driven to confess his discomfiture to her! He would have been revenged offhand! Lily seethed with rage against her husband, that footy rotter! What! Was that his great scheme? Did he call that an idea? How often had not Jimmy spoken to her about it! It was pinned on the wall, it lay about in the Gresse Street workshop for months. She remembered seeing the plans, the diagrams, the drawings in the papers. Jimmy had explained everything to her at the time when he was still a josser. And Trampy had stolen it from him, stolen it, stolen it! Oh, he would make her die of shame!

It was a terrible dispute, a real “playing humanity,” with threats, clenched fists, broken crockery strewing the floor.

“To humiliate me like that before Jimmy!” said Lily, furious.

“Drop that about Jimmy!” snarled Trampy, green with jealousy. “I won’t have you mention him!”

“I shall mention him if I like! Jimmy is a son of a gun! Very well! But he’s a man! He’s worth two of you.”

Trampy strode up to her with his fist raised.

“If you touch me,” cried Lily, seizing the lamp, “if you touch me, I’ll smash it over your head!”