“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!”
Trampy’s reputation, so far from suffering, increased; all his compeers now envied him from the bottom of their hearts; the bosses, the profs, the managers, the Pas, the Mas treated him, in their own minds, as a lucky dog, all the more inasmuch as Trampy was not uppish and gladly stood drinks, while his wife, “Miss Lily,” made money for him with her breakneck tricks. It was much smarter than doing it for one’s self: the great thing was to have a “girl” like that! Trampy was having his revenge: he had been laughed at; he now had the laugh on them! and Trampy knew glorious times, in the Biergarten, or lounging at street-corners, near the stage-door, chaffing the girls, hat cocked back, hands deep in his pockets, a cigar stuck between his teeth. He told the story of his life, not without pride; said that he must write it one day, sell it to The New York Standard for a thousand dollars. The girls he’d had: whew! His love adventures: all over the world, by Jove! And his marriage with Lily Clifton, the New Zealander on Wheels, a dear little wife, so gentle, so obedient. No, he had no reason to complain of his life. He would write it, mark his words! To say nothing of a scheme he had in mind:
“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.