Read Ebook: The Bill-Toppers by Castaigne J Andr

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Ebook has 1422 lines and 77832 words, and 29 pages

Jimmy's name--that was his sensitive point: he thought of it in spite of himself--ironically inquired of Lily if it was Jimmy who had put all that nonsense into her head. Lily was sorry to see the conversation take this turn. She flung her arms round her husband's neck, loved him, kissed him prettily, the great silly: he knew better; he knew she never thought of Jimmy:

"Kiss me, darling! I wish you would make me happy," said Lily, moved to pity for herself. "I want to be a good little wife!"

And time passed like this for weeks ... it was months now ... an existence like another, with good in it and bad ... and monotonous and common....

"I should have been better off, perhaps, at home," she thought. "If this is marriage, it's not much."

"Girls, girls, my!"

She would have laughed, she would even have felt flattered at being chosen among so many, if he had put an end to his conquests. But he continued to prowl round the stage-girls, as he used to do before he was married. If even he had shone upon the stage, she would have understood that he had got "swelled head," that he was yielding to temptation; but his success was only middling. He had not made a hit at Hamburg. The manager of Ludwig's had told him flatly that he would do well to practise and practise a great deal. Trampy posed as a victim of jealousy, spoke of showing them--all of them, if once he put his back to it!--a new turn, a discovery that would show what he was made of! Meanwhile he had a new idea, as a sketch comedian, with a make-up of his own invention, the face painted white on one side and red on the other, with wrinkles cunningly drawn--a laughing Johnny and a crying Johnny, two men in one. He pestered Lily with his plans, made her cut out dresses for him, came back from the old-clothes shop laden with uniforms in rags, into which Lily had to put patches. And shoes, in particular, ran in his head; shoes of which the soles and the uppers yawned like lips; talking shoes, which said, "Papa!" and "Mamma!" This last suggestion made Lily laugh.

Trampy haunted the bazaars, bought children's toys, took the stomachs out of the cardboard dogs and rabbits to make his quackers, sought about for his right note, pursued inspiration to the bottom of the glasses.

Lily was sometimes driven to exasperation. This tramp-cyclist, this sketch-comedian was making her, Lily Clifton, patch up his dresses! And her husband rewarded her for it by making love to the girls, poor idiot! Oh, if Pa and Ma had not been so harsh with her! Lily always harked back to that, stiffened herself with the thought, remembered the Marjutti girl, in whom love of art produced wonders and whose Pa and Ma were so gentle and kind.

"They should have treated me like that," she concluded, "and I should have been at home still!"

She regretted her marriage. And there were some who pitied her for belonging to Trampy: they looked upon him as not worthy of her, blamed him for openly carrying on with girls. Others asked, as though it did not matter, was she really married or were they just "living together?"

"What? Am I married? Is that what they think about me?" she said, a little annoyed. "Of course I am! At the Kennington registry-office!"

And yet a doubt entered her mind too. Was she really married, after all? Lily did not know much about it. Had the banns been published? And those two witnesses picked up in the street ... a ceremony that took just five minutes ... like a conjuring trick. If it was true that they were "living together" without her knowing it, she would not stay with him. She would go back home at once. Marriage, certainly, was never intended for her. This she realized now. When she thought of the Gilson girl, mad on her man, and of others whom she sometimes caught in the dressing-rooms and passages eating each other up with kisses, she was at a loss to understand. How could they make so much fuss about it?

Poor little wife, with so little love for her husband and no admiration at all! As an artiste she thought him lamentable. Trampy, who had seemed so great to her in Mexico ... why, she had shot miles ahead of him since! She felt that he was getting second-rate. He himself was well aware of it, for that matter; blamed everybody: suspected a hoodoo somewhere: some son of a gun bringing him ill-luck. And he was always casting about for an easy means of success ... another new plan ... always something new ... a high-sounding title: "Rusty Bike," an old jigger which, at each turn of the wheel, would grate like a cart, "Crrrra! Crrrra!" and bring the house down with laughter, while Lily, in the wings, was to sound an accompaniment on a grating rattle:

"Crrrra! Crrrra!"

"All that set-out for nothing!" said Lily to herself. "It would be much simpler to have a little talent."

She felt herself overcome with contempt for her husband: what a sorry bread-winner he made! Why take a wife, when you had only that to keep her on? Lily did not know whether to laugh or to cry when she saw Trampy come down from his dressing-room, proud as a peacock, his chest swelling at the sight of so many girls at a time, a treat of which he never wearied. He was magnificent, was Trampy, against that background of shoulders, thighs and calves: in his element as a fish in water. Nor did he make any bones about smiling to them or monkey-clawing them as they came off the stage. The presence of his wife did not hinder him. He was sure of her love: he knew she must adore him, as all the others did. And, leaving Lily in a corner, in the shade of a pillar, with his eyes he devoured all that powdered flesh, all those coarse wigs.

Lily hated him at such times. She could have boxed his ears. She had enough of it, at last. One evening, she caught hold of his arm to take him away, furious that a gentleman could find a pleasure in making his wife look so ridiculous! And Trampy, more or less flattered at what he considered a fond wife's jealousy, was turning to go, when a lady with plumes on her head and a woolly dog under her arm greeted him with:

"Hullo, old boy! Glad to see you, Trampy!"

Lily--it was a distant memory, but no matter--recognized Poland, the Parisienne, with the painted face and the violent scent. Trampy took a step backward. He expected a scene, though he owed her nothing, after all; but she did not seem angry, no. On the contrary, she looked at him with a roguish eye. She knew of Trampy's marriage, no doubt, as she knew of his conquests, having been his victim herself.

"Hullo, old boy!" repeated Poland, sizing up Lily with an appraising glance and then fixing her eyes upon Trampy. "Still having your successes, old boy? Is this your number thirty? Thirty-six? Thirty-eight, eh?"

"What!" Lily broke in, astounded at these manners. "What number thirty-six, thirty-eight?"

"Ugh! A number in a lottery," said Trampy, looking quite vain between those two women in love with him. "Yes, a number ... with which I drew a prize!... Why, by Jove," he continued, addressing Poland, "this is my wife!... Lily Clifton! ... the New Zealander on Wheels."

"Oh, yes," said Poland to Lily. "I did hear that you ran away: tired of this, eh?"

And, tapping the back of her left hand with the palm of her right, she made the professional gesture that denotes a whipping.

"Yes, I was a bit," said Lily, feeling rather proud than otherwise. "I've been through the mill, I have!"

"You've had your fair share, eh?" insisted Poland. "You're not the first that has left her family to escape being whipped. You did quite right," she concluded.

Trampy was dumfounded and utterly floored by the revelation. What! He! He! Lily had married him because of that! Because ... And people said it! And talked about it!

"Come along, Lily," said Trampy. "Let's go home."

And, giving no further heed to Poland, who followed him with a mocking smile, he took Lily by the arm and went out with her.

Lily felt her arm shake. Trampy was furious, evidently. She saw her mistake, too late. There would be a stormy scene when they got in. Well, who cared? She was resolved, under that obstinate forehead of hers, to face the facts. She had had enough of this husband. And she meant to know, that very moment, if she was married or not ... because with him one never knew. When she admitted that she had married him because of "that," Trampy, in his humiliation would put her out of doors at once; if the marriage wasn't valid, he would get rid of her. There was no doubt about it.

And she did not have to wait, for Trampy, even before they were out of the theater, in the passage, among the trunks and properties, Trampy, unable to restrain himself any longer, seized her by the wrists and looked her straight in the face:

"Is it true?" he asked, in a voice trembling with rage.

"And," said Trampy, choking with shame, "you married me for 'that:' me, Trampy!"

"Yes," said Lily confusedly.

"Damn you!" cried Trampy. "Oh, if we weren't married for good, wouldn't I just make you sleep out to-night!"

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.

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 matin?e 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!

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!

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