And Trampy, turning his back to her, disappeared in a cloud of smoke.
CHAPTER IV
Lily came home and went straight to bed, without even waiting for supper, so great was her hurry to forget. It seemed to her that things had happened, things without end; that this day had been as long as a year. She simply could not understand Trampy. She could have imagined anything, except that! She racked her brain to conjecture how, why; and sleep quieted her till the next morning; and she woke up with teeth clenched and eyebrows set and ... why? Why? And again why? Did he still want to keep her?—after realizing in a hundred different ways that she did not love him, that she loathed him, that she had married him only to escape her whippings and that she had but one idea in her head: to divorce him!
Now—only Lily could not know this—it was because of that very reason that Trampy clung to her, like a faithful husband: Jimmy, Jimmy was his bugbear. He believed Jimmy to be in love with his wife. Once Lily was divorced, Jimmy could marry her; and Trampy would see him further first! The greater Jimmy became, the more jealous Trampy grew. He knew the steps Lily had taken to obtain a divorce, the witnesses she had tried to secure. She was very keen on a divorce, was she? All the more reason for not gratifying her; and she wasn’t going to get it. The witnesses, Trampy had just heard, declined to give evidence. They had seen nothing, heard nothing. A bike at her head? Maybe. They didn’t know. A bit of a fuss between artistes, such as you see every day, and none of their damned business. Outside that, Lily had nothing to go upon; on the contrary. She had abandoned the conjugal home; all the wrong, apparently, was on her side. He, Trampy, alone was entitled to file a petition; but that never! He considered that Jimmy and Lily had trifled with him sufficiently. He could not swallow the idea that they were only waiting for the divorce to get married; the idea that Lily would be Mrs. Jimmy, of her own free choice, after marrying him, Trampy, to escape her whippings; no, he couldn’t swallow that! Now it rested entirely with him to prevent that marriage. He had only to keep his dear little wife for himself. In that case, Jimmy, if he wanted her, would be obliged to do without her or else to “live with her” and set a bad example, lavish bestower of good advice that he was, the dirty hypocrite, preaching morality to others! That was what Trampy had determined to do. As for Lily, Trampy, who was incapable, at bottom, of either hatred or love, didn’t care one way or the other. He was always sure to want for nothing, so long as there were girls on the boards and whisky in the bars.
There was another reason still that urged him to let matters rest, without going further. To embark on a divorce-case, to have his name in the papers and his story hawked round the four quarters of the globe—“Trampy, you know. You knew Trampy, didn’t you? The husband of Lily?” and so on—was what he didn’t want at any price, for a reason known to himself. He had made inquiries, quite privately, at the beginning, when he thought of petitioning for a divorce; and what he had learned had made him prudent: his marriage in America was valid beyond a doubt. He was well and duly married, whether he liked it or not. By the common law, two wives meant bigamy; and bigamy meant prison, which was the last thing he wanted, as he himself said. But, so long as there was no scandal, he ran no great risk. He had lived on tenter-hooks at first, in Germany. Chance might have brought him face to face with Ave Maria, on the stage of a music-hall. This danger was not to be feared now, so far as he knew. Ave Maria and her brother Martello were no longer fit stars for Europe, nor for North America. He was too well known to the agencies; his brutality had produced too many complaints, too many denunciations to the police; it discredited any theater employing him. He might have come to Europe—who knew?—to try to get hold of the Bambinis, now that the old man had not much longer to live. But that was not very likely, either. An artiste, come across by accident, had seen the pair at Iquique, in a wretched circus that was doing the coast of Chili. He gave Trampy details: poor Ave Maria had grown very ugly; a body all skin and bone and nerves; no hips, no chest; nothing of the woman about her; in the last stages of consumption; and finished, as an artiste, done for; no spring left in her overworked thighs, no suppleness in her loins: even her brother, that brute, could get nothing out of her now. And Trampy, who knew Chili, followed them, in his mind, on their tour along the coast, from Iquique to Copiapó, to Valdivia: a trying climate, biting winds which would kill her on the spot, unless she went and perished in the fever-stricken plains of the Argentine.... When people had fallen so low as that, they did not rise again: there was nothing to fear from that side. But her presence was not necessary; the danger still existed. There were documents, in black and white. Their names were bracketed on a register somewhere or other: he knew where. It was better, therefore, in every way, not to call attention to himself. Meanwhile, he was playing a nice trick on Lily and her Jimmy. And Lily was Mrs. Trampy and Mrs. Trampy she would remain; and that was all there was about it.
But it was no use for Lily to give herself a headache trying to make out why and how. She did not guess Trampy’s secret thoughts, any more than he suspected the actual nature of her relations with Jimmy. For her, too, one thing was certain: Mrs. Trampy she was and Mrs. Trampy she would remain! She would never be free; she would always be chained to that tramp cyclist! And, if a match should happen to turn up for her among her admirers, the architect, for instance—you can never tell: plenty of others had already proposed for her hand in marriage, in England—she would be obliged to refuse! And, if some gentleman were to pay her his addresses, treat her like a lady, take her to choose a hat or a silk petticoat in a smart shop, there was somebody who would have the right to say to her, as she passed:
“How’s my little wife getting on?”
Oh, those two Jim Crows round her, spoiling her future! Jimmy and Trampy! They would end by being the death of her. Oh, if she had had Thea’s arm, what a blow in the jaw for one or both of them! And Lily, when she thought of it, wore the face which was hers on her bad days, teeth clenched, stubborn forehead. Glass-Eye shook in her boots when she saw it, for sometimes Lily vented her anger upon the poor girl with a smack, considering herself quits if she begged pardon after!