Homepage
Login
Profile
BookClubs
dmBox
Read this ebook for free! No credit card needed, absolutely nothing to pay.
Words: 77832 in 33 pages
This is an ebook sharing website. You can read the uploaded ebooks for free here. No credit cards needed, nothing to pay. If you want to own a digital copy of the ebook, or want to read offline with your favorite ebook-reader, then you can choose to buy and download the ebook.
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?
Free books android app tbrJar TBR JAR Read Free books online gutenberg
(0)More posts by @FreeBooks
