CHAPTER III
It came as a smack in the jaw to Trampy.
“My pay, my work, mine!”
It meant no more pocket-money with which to lord it at the bar. It meant a cheap cigarette instead of his glorious cigar. It was the end of a beautiful dream; and the awakening was a hard one. At first, he hoped to make Lily jealous by going about openly with the stage-girls; but she no longer paid any attention, seemed to suggest that he had better amuse himself on his side and she on hers:
“What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander,” she said.
Lily would no longer take his orders; and, because he felt his wife escape him, it was he, Trampy, who now became jealous. When, from a distance, among the tables, he saw Lily ride round the stage and all those heads raised toward her, those opera-glasses pointed at her, he followed her with an anxious eye. “Miss Lily!” “Miss Lily” was his wife, after all! Those rounded arms, that lissom figure, those twinkling legs were all his, every bit of them! He was the husband, by Jove! It was not a marriage for fun, as with Ave Maria: it was a marriage for good and all, which had cost him two pounds—“Yes, siree!”—at the Kennington registry-office. And it wasn’t only her flightiness, her smiles at the front boxes, but “my work, my salary, mine” into the bargain! She was acting like a bad wife, forgetting her most sacred duties!
Lily stood on no ceremony with him, took her title of “Miss” seriously: very flattering for him, very flattering, he must say! He no longer knew himself: he who, in the old days, used to answer: “My lord, rely on me!” when a half-tipsy swell invited him to come and drink champagne with some stage-girls, now became furious if men in the audience, not knowing who he was, sized up “Miss Lily” before him—her shoulders, arms and the rest—with reflections such as “I could do with a bit of that!” or, “A nice little supper ...” He felt inclined to shout in their faces that she was no “miss,” but his wife, by Jove!
He became more and more jealous. The thought of Jimmy, especially, kept running in his head. He felt a twinge whenever he heard him mentioned. And Jimmy was often mentioned just at present, for he was said to be preparing a new turn, a turn which would make him famous, unless it killed him.
“If only it would!” Trampy hoped.
Jimmy was Trampy’s bugbear. He had flattered himself that he had snatched Lily from Jimmy by sheer prowess; and not a bit of it! The recollection of that drove him mad, the sense of his powerlessness exasperated him, he had but one idea left: to show Lily ... and Jimmy ... the sort of man he was; to take his revenge. That great scheme of his, that discovery that would show what he was made of, the invention which he had patented in America with Poland’s money—oh, she had revenged herself finely, had that Parisienne!—well, the time to apply himself to that trick had come. Lily had refused to do it. All right, he would do it himself!