Read Ebook: The Bill-Toppers by Castaigne J Andr

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Ebook has 1422 lines and 77832 words, and 29 pages

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!"

"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.

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 matin?es 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.

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.

"Fat Freak."

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!

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