The marriage of Jarvis and Bambi furnished the town with a ten days' topic of conversation, a fact to which they were perfectly indifferent. Then it was accepted, as any other wonder, such as a comet passing, or an airship disaster.
In the meantime the strangely assorted trio fell into a more or less comfortable relationship. Jarvis and the Professor almost came to blows, but for the most part the diplomatic Bambi kept peace. Both men appealed to her for everything and she took care of them like babies. She called them the "Heavenly Twins" and found endless amusement in their dependence on her. Sometimes she did not see Jarvis for days. His study and bedroom were on the top floor, and when he was in a work fit he forgot to come to meals. She let him alone, only seeing that he ate what she sent up to him. Sometimes his light burned all night. She would go to the foot of the stairs and listen to him reading scenes aloud in the early dawn, but she never interfered with him in any way. He plunged into the remaking of "Success" with characteristic abandon. He destroyed the old version entirely, and began on a new one. When he had the framework completed, he summoned Bambi for a private view. She condemned certain parts, praised others, flashed new thoughts upon him, forced him to new viewpoints. He raved at her, defended his ideas, refuted her arguments, and invariably accepted every contribution. When he came to an impasse, he howled through the house for her, like a lost child wailing for its mother.
These daily councils of war, his incessant need of her, interfered with her plan of a career as a danseuse. She found that her days were resolving themselves into two portions—times when Jarvis needed her, and times when he did not. The hours they devoted together to his work constituted the core of her day, her happy time. She considered Jarvis as impersonally as she did the typewriter. It was the sense of being needed, of helping in his work, that filled her with such new zest. But the hours hung heavy between the third-floor summons, and one day, as she lay in the hammock, a book in her hand, it came to her that she might try it herself. She might put down her thoughts, her dreams, her ambitions, and make a story of them. Thought and action were one with Bambi. In five minutes' time she had pencil and paper, and had set forth on her new adventure.
For the next few days she was so absorbed in her experiment that she almost neglected the "Heavenly Twins." The Professor commented on her abstraction, and Ardelia complained that "everybody in dis heah house is crazy, all of them studyin' and writin'; yo' cain't even sing a hallelujah but somebody is a shoutin', 'Sh!' "
Only Jarvis failed to note any change. It was too much to expect that the great Jocelyn could concentrate on any but his own mental attitudes.
Like most facile people, Bambi was bored with her masterpiece at the end of a week, and abandoned it without a sigh. She decided that literature was not to be enriched by her. In fact, she never gave a thought to her first-born child until a month after its birth, when a New York magazine fell into her hands offering a prize of $500 for a short story. She took out her manuscript and read it over with a sense of surprise. She marched off to a stenographer, had it typed, and sent it to the contest, using a pen name as a signature, and then she promptly forgot about it.
Six weeks more of hard labour brought "Success" almost to completion. Bambi was absorbed in the play. It was undoubtedly much better; her hopes were high that it would get a production. If only Jarvis could get to New York with it and show it to the managers; but that meant money, and they had none. Her busy brain spent hours scheming, but no light came.
Then out of the blue fell a shining bolt! A long envelope, with a magazine imprint on it, came with her morning's mail and nearly ended a young and useful life. The editor begged to inform her that the committee of judges had awarded her the short-story prize, that her tale would be published in the forth-coming issue, and she would please find check enclosed. Had she any other manuscript that they might see? Would she honour them with a visit the next time she came to New York? They would like to talk over a series of stories similar to the prize winner.
BAMBI FLUTTERED THE JOY-BRINGING LETTER ABOVE HER HEAD AND CIRCLED THE BREAKFAST-ROOM IN A WHIRL OF HAPPINESS.
BAMBI FLUTTERED THE JOY-BRINGING LETTER ABOVE HER HEAD AND CIRCLED THE BREAKFAST-ROOM IN A WHIRL OF HAPPINESS.
The Professor and Jarvis had both departed to their lairs, or they would have witnessed the best pas seul of Bambi's life. She fluttered the joy-bringing letter above her head, and circled the breakfast room in a whirl of happiness. Ardelia entered as she reached her climax.
"Mah good Lud, Miss Bambi, yo' sho' can dance better'n Jezebel! I 'low the debil do git into yo', the way yo' all dance! Go 'way frum me! Don' yo' drag me into no cunjer dance."
"Ardelia, the gods do provide!" cried Bambi. "Such unutterably crazy good luck—to think of my getting it!"
"Did yo' get a lottery prize, Miss Bambi?"
"That's just what I got—a lottery prize."
"Foh the Lud's sake! What you gwine to do with it?"
"I am going to take Jarvis Jocelyn to New York, and between us we are going to harness Fame and drive her home."
"Well, I don' know who Fame is, but if she's a hoss, wher' yo' goin' to keep her when yo' get her? We ain't got no barn for her."
Bambi laughed.
"We'll stable her all right, Ardelia, if we can catch her. This is a secret between you and me. Don't you breathe it to a soul that I have won anything."
"No, ma'am; yo' kin trust me to the death."
"I'll bring you a present from New York if you won't tell."
She rushed off to her own room, to look over her clothes and plan. Having married Jarvis out of hand, she would now take him on a moneymoon; they would seek their fortune instead of love. He would peddle his play; she would honour the publisher with a visit. She hugged herself with joy over the prospect. She worked out various schemes by which she could break it to Jarvis and the Professor that she had money enough for a trip to New York, without saying how she got it. Fortunately, they were not of an inquiring mind, so she hoped that she could convince them without much difficulty. She tried out a scene or two just to prove how she would do it. At luncheon she paved the way.
"How much more work is there on the play, Jarvis?"
"I ought to finish it this week," he answered. "It is good, too. It is a first-rate play."
"You ought to go to New York with it, and see the managers," she said.
"Ugh!"
"Well, it's got to be done. You can't teach school unless you have pupils."
"I am not a pedant," he protested.
"You're a reformer, and you've got to get something to reform."
"The work itself satisfies me."
"It doesn't satisfy me. You have got to produce and learn before you will grow."
"You're a wise body for such a small package."
"That's the way wisdom comes."
"Perhaps, O sibyl, you will read the future and tell me how I am to finance a trip to New York."
"Oh, the money will be provided," airily.
"Yes, I suppose it will. It always is when actual need demands it, but how?"
"Never mind how. Just rest in the assurance that it will."
He looked at her, smiling.
"Do you know I sometimes suspect that Fate had a hand in bringing us together? We are so alike."
"We are so alike we're different," she amended, laughing.
She waited until next day to explode her bomb.
"I think if you finish up the play this week, Jarvis, we can have it typed early next week, and get off to New York on Friday or Saturday."
He stared at her.
"On foot?" he inquired.
"Oh, no. I find I have the money."
"You find you have it! You had that much and didn't know it?" he exploded so loudly that the Professor came to, and paid attention.
"I am careless about these things," Bambi murmured.
"What's all this?" queried the Professor.
"What I can't see is that if you had money enough to pay up my board bill, why you married me," continued Jarvis.
"Just one of my whims. I am so whimsical," retorted Bambi.
"Would you mind telling me?" begged the Professor.
"She's got money enough to take us to New York," repeated Jarvis.
"Thank you. I don't wish to go to that terrible place. Of all the distressing, improbable places, New York is the worst," replied Professor Parkhurst.
"Be calm, Professor. I was not planning to take you," soothed his daughter.
"But what is to be done with me?" he inquired, anxiously.
"You are to be left the one sole duty of Ardelia, to be overfed and pampered until you aren't fit to live with."
"But you can't go off alone with Jarvis."
"Why not? I am married to him."
"Yes, I suppose you are, but you seem so unmarried," he objected.
"We will have to practise up a few married poses, Jarvis. You must not act so interested in me. Father says we don't act married."
"I am not in the least interested in you," Jarvis defended himself, valiantly.
"There, father, could anything be more husband-like?"
"Where did you get the money, Jarvis?" the Professor asked.
"I didn't get it. She got it."
"Why, my dear," protested her father, "where did you get any money?"
"I have turned lady burglar."
"What?"
"Cheer up. It's butter-'n'-eggs money."
"Butter-'n'-eggs money?" repeated Jarvis.
"Certainly. The downtrodden farmer's wife always gives up her butter-'n'-eggs money to save the family fortunes, or build a new barn."
"What are you talking about?" interrupted the Professor.
"I don't know why the fact that I have a little money saved up should start a riot in this family. I have to go to New York on business, and as Jarvis has to go to see managers about 'Success,' I merely proposed that we go together."
"What business have you in New York, my dear?"
"My own, Professor darling."
"Excuse me," he hastened to add.
"Certainly," she replied, blithely.
"I hate New York," said Jarvis. "How long do you suppose we will have to stay?"
"I adore New York, and we will stay as long as the money holds out."
"Would you mind stating, in round figures, how much you have?" the Professor remarked.
"I would. I detest figures, round or oblong. I have enough."
"I hope you won't get there, and then call on me for a supply, as you usually do, my dear. I am a little short this spring."
"You two have no confidence in me. If you will just put your trust in Bambi, I'll mend the fortunes of this family so you will never be able to find the patch."
The two men laughed in spite of themselves, and the matter was dropped, but Bambi herself took the manuscript of "Success" to the stenographer, with strict orders as to a time limit; she led Jarvis, protesting, to a tailor's, to order a suit of clothes; she restocked him in collars, shirts, and ties. In fact, she handled the situation like a diplomat, buying the railroad tickets with a thrill of anticipation.
Jarvis made no protest at all, until the night before they were to start. He came to her and offered her a little black notebook.
"What is this?"
"I want you to put down every cent we spend. This is a loan, you understand."
"It's a gift from the gods. Go offer libations. I don't want your old debit and credit book."
He laid his hand on her shoulder, and looked into her shining eyes.
"Good little fairy," he said, "I want to put some gold dust in the pot, too."
"Wait until we get to the end of the rainbow."
"Just keep a record for me. My mind is such a sieve," he said, offering the spurned black book.
"All right. Give me the Black Maria. I will ride your figures in it."
"That was a pun. You ought to be spanked."
"Oh, Jarvis, isn't it fun?" she cried to him.
"Is it? I feel that turning salesman and approaching a manager is like marching to the block."
"Poor old dreamer! Suppose you stay home, and let me peddle the play."
"Not much. I will shoulder my own pack."
"I feel like a Crusader myself. I'd rather bemethan anybody on earth."
"The most extraordinary thing about you is your rapture," he commented, seriously.
She ran away, singing "Then Longen folke to go on Pilgrimauges."
The next day they set forth on their journey. Bambi left lists all over the house as reminders for the Professor. Ardelia had orders enough to manoeuvre an army. The Professor went to the station with them, and absent-mindedly kissed Jarvis good-bye, which infuriated his victim and nearly sent Bambi into hysterics. As the train pulled out, she leaned from the window and called, "Go home, now, Professor!" and with a mechanical jerk he turned and started off in the direction indicated.
"I never leave him with any comfort," she admitted to Jarvis. "He is so apt to mislay himself."
"He always makes me think of a mechanical toy, ever since he told me that he always counted whatever he did. I am sure that you wind him up, like a watch, every night."
"Poor old dear! Funny I should have chosen him for a father, isn't it?"
"I think your choice of relations is distinctly queer."
"My queer relations! That's a good title. Everybody would understand it at once."
"Thank heaven, I haven't any, queer, or otherwise."
"Didn't you ever have any?"
"No."
"Just growed?"
He nodded.
"I remember a funny old man you lived with, when I first knew you. Wasn't he a relative?"
"No, he found me some place. What's the difference? Do you care?"
"No, I'm glad. I am sure I couldn't abide 'in-laws.' "
Over the luncheon table he suddenly looked at her, as if for the first time. He noticed that all the eyes in the crowded diner were upon her.
"What's the matter?" she asked, intercepting his glance.
"Do people always stare at you?" he inquired.
She swept the car with an indifferent glance.
"I don't know. I never noticed."
"It's queer for us to be going off like this," he said, in a startled tone.
"It seems perfectly natural to me. Are you embarrassed?" she asked, suddenly aware of a new quality in him.
"No, certainly not," he defended himself.
It was five o'clock when they drew into Grand Central Station, a time when the whole duty of man seems to be to get out of New York and into the suburbs. An army of ants ran through the great blue-vaulted rotunda, streaming into the narrow tunnels, where the steel horses were puffing and steaming. The sense of rushing waters was upon Jarvis. He halted, stunned and helpless.
"Isn't it great? All the tribes of Shem, Ham, and Japhet," cried Bambi, at his elbow. She piloted him through—big, powerful, bewildered Jarvis. Many a hurrying suburbanite slowed up enough to look after them, the tall, blond giant, and a little girl with shining eyes.
"Where are we going?" Jarvis asked, with child-like confidence that she would know.
"Gramercy Park. We'll put up at a club. We'll act rich and take a taxi."
She ordered the driver to go down the avenue slowly, and as he jolted around the crowded corner of Forty-second Street, on to the smooth asphalt, Bambi leaned forward eagerly.
"GOOD EVENING, MRS. NEW YORK, AND ALL YOU PEOPLE OUT THERE! WE'RE HERE, JARVIS AND I."
"GOOD EVENING, MRS. NEW YORK, AND ALL YOU PEOPLE OUT THERE! WE'RE HERE, JARVIS AND I."
"Good evening, home of the books," she nodded to the Library. "Good evening, Mrs. New York, and all you people there! We're here, Jarvis and I."
She turned and caught his rare smile.
"You're happy, aren't you?" he remarked.
"Perfectly. I feel as if I were breathing electricity. Don't you like all these people?"
"No, I feel that there are too many of them. There should be half as many, and better done. Until we learn not to breed like rabbits, we will never accomplish a creditable race."
"Such good-looking rabbits though, Jarvis."
"Yes. Sleek and empty-headed."
"All hopping uptown, to nibble something," she chuckled.
"Life is such foolishness," he said, in disgust.
"Oh, no. Life is such ecstasy," she threw back at him, as the cab drew up to the clubhouse door.
Bambi was out of bed and at her window the next morning early. Her room faced on Gramercy Park, and the early morning sun fell across the little square so sacred to the memory of past glories, and bathed the trees in their new green drapery with a soft, impressionistic colour. Her eyes swept around the square, hastening over the great white apartment buildings, our modern atrocities, to linger over the old houses, which her swift imagination peopled with the fashion and pomp of another day.
"Spring in the city!" breathed Bambi. "Spring in New York!"
She was tempted to run to Jarvis's door and tap him awake, to drink it in too, but she remembered that Jarvis did not care for the flesh-pots, so she enjoyed her early hour alone. It was very quiet in the Park; only an occasional milk wagon rattled down the street. There is a sort of hush that comes at that hour, even in New York. The early traffic is out of the way. The day's work is not yet begun. There comes a pause before the opening gun is fired in the warfare of the day.
Many a gay-hearted girl has sat, as Bambi sat, looking off over the housetops in this "City of Beautiful Nonsense," dreaming her dreams of conquest and success. Youth makes no compromise with life. It demands all, passionately; loses all, or wins, with anguish of spirit. So it was with Bambi, the high-handed, imperious little mite. She willed Fame and Fortune for Jarvis and herself in full measure. She wanted to count in this great maelstrom of a city. She wanted two pedestals—one for Jarvis and one for herself—to lift them above the crowd. If all the young things who think such thoughts as these, in hall bedrooms and attic chambers, could mount their visioned pedestals, the traffic police would be powerless, and all the road to Albany lined like a Hall of Fame.
But, fortunately, our practical heroine took no account of failure. She planned a campaign for Jarvis. She would go first to Belasco with his play. Mr. Belasco would receive him at once, recognize a master mind, and accept the play after an immediate hearing. Of course Jarvis would insist on reading his play aloud, so that Mr. Belasco might get the points clearly. He would come away with a thousand dollars advance royalty in his pocket, and then would come the delicious excitement of rehearsals, in which she would help. She saw Jarvis before the curtain making a first-night's speech. A brilliant series of pictures followed, with the Jarvis Jocelyns as central figures, surrounded by the wealth and brains of New York, London, Paris!
While Jarvis was mounting like a meteor, she was making a reputation as a writer. When her place in the literary ranks was so assured that theSaturday Evening Postaccepted her stories without so much as reading them; when everybody was asking "Who is this brilliant writer?—this combination of O. Henry, Edith Wharton, and W.D. Howells?" then, and only then, would she come out from behind hernom-de-plumeand assume her position as Mrs. Jarvis Jocelyn, wife of the famous playwright.
So absorbed was she in her moving pictures that Jarvis's rap sounded to her like a cannon shot.
"Yes? Who is it?" she called.
"Jarvis," he answered. "Are you ready for breakfast?"
"Just a minute," she prevaricated. "Wait for me in the library."
She plunged into her tub and donned her clothes in record time. Fortunately, Jarvis did not fret over her tardiness. He was lost in an article on the drama in a current magazine.
"Good morrow, my liege lord," quoth Bambi, radiant, fresh, bewitching.
"This man has no standards at all," he replied, out of the magazine.
She quietly closed it and took it from him.
"I prefer to test the breakfast standards of this club," she laughed. "Did you sleep?" she added.
"I always sleep."
"Let's play to-day," she added, over the coffee cups.
"Play?"
"Yes. We've never been anywhere together before. I've put aside an appropriation for amusement. I say we draw on that to-day."
"All right. Where shall we go?"
"Let's go on top of the stage to Claremont for lunch, and then we might see some pictures this afternoon, dine here, and the theatre to-night."
"Had it all thought out, did you?"
"What would you plan?" she inquired.
"We will do my way to-morrow, and your way to-day," he said.
"All right. I promise to enjoy your way if you will promise to enjoy mine, not just endure it scornfully."
"You must think I'm a boor."
"No. But I think that until you learn that an artist cannot afford to scorn any phase of life that is human, you will never do great work."
He looked at her keenly.
"Fifth Avenue isn't human. It's an imitation," he objected.
"You're very young, Jarvis," she commented.
"Upon my soul," he laughed, so spontaneously that an old fogy at the next table said audibly to his waitress, "Bride and groom," and for some reason Bambi resented it with a flare of colour.
"It's true," she continued; "until you realize that Fifth Avenue and the Bowery are as inevitable as the two ends of the teeter-totter, you won't see the picture true."
"Sometimes you show a most surprising poise," he granted her. "But of course you are not the stuff of which creative artists are made."
She chuckled, and patted her bag where the bill fold lay, with its crisp hundreds due to some imitation of creative impulse.
"Just where, and in what, am I lacking?" she asked, most humbly.
"A creative artist would not care a fig for truth. He creates an impression of truth out of a lie if necessary."
"But I am in the direct line from Ananias," she protested. "I inherit creative talent of that brand."
So they laughed and chattered, in the first real companionship they had ever known.
True to the plan, they ascended the stage at Eighteenth Street, Bambi in a flutter of happiness. As the panorama of that most fascinating highway unrolled before them, she constantly touched this and that and the other object with the wand of her vivid imagination. Jarvis watched her with amused astonishment, for the first time really thoroughly aware of her. Again he noticed that wherever she was she was a lodestone for all eyes. He decided that it was not beauty, in the strictest sense of the word, but a sort of radiance which emanated from her like an aura.
Twenty-third Street cut across their path with its teeming throngs. Madison Square lay smiling in the sunshine like a happy courtesan, with no hint of its real use as Wayside Inn for all the old, the poor, the derelict, whose tired feet could find refuge there. The vista of the avenue lay ahead.
"It's like a necklace of sparkling pearls," Bambi said, with incessant craning of her neck. "I feel like standing up and singing 'The Song of the Bazaars.' There isn't a stuff, nor a silk, nor a gem from Araby to Samarkand that isn't here."
"It bewitches you, doesn't it?" Jarvis commented.
"Think of the wonder of it! Camel trains, and caravans, merchant ships on all the seas, trains, and electric trucks, all bringing the booty of the world to this great, shining bazaar for you and me. It's thrilling."
"So it is," he agreed. "I hope you mark the proportion of shops for men—dresses, hats, jewels, furs, motor clothes, tea rooms, candy shops, corsetières, florists, bootmakers, all for women. Motor cars are full of women. Are there no men in this menagerie?"
"No. They are all cliff-dwellers downtown. They probably wear loin cloths of a fashionable cut," she laughed back at him.
"They all look just alike—so many manikins on parade. I suppose there are distinctions in class. There must be some shopgirls in this crowd. Can you distinguish them?" he asked.
"Oh, yes. Not by cut, for the general line is the same for 'Judy O'Grady and the Captain's Lady,' but there is a subtle difference to the feminine eye."
"But you don't look like all the rest of them."
"No, alas, I look distinctly suburban. All I need is a package to make the disguise complete. Oh, Jarvis, do let's hurry and make much red gold, so I can look like these finished things that trip up Fifth Avenue."
"You want to be like them—like those dolls?" he scorned, with a magnificent gesture.
"Yes. I'd like to be so putrid with wealth that I could have rows of wardrobe trunks, with full sets of clothes for every me."
"How many of you are there?"
"Oh, lots. I've never counted myself. Some days I'd dress up like a Broadway siren, some days I'd be a Fifth Avenue lady, or a suburbanite, or a reformer, or a ballet dancer, or a visitor from Boston."
"What would I be doing while you were all these?"
"Oh, you'd be married to all of us. We'd keep you busy."
"The idea is appalling. A harem of misfits."
"We'd be good for your character."
"And death to my work."
"You'd know more about life when you had taken a course of us."
"Too much knowledge is a dangerous thing," he remarked. "Shall we get off and go into the Library?"
"Not to-day. That's part of your day. I want just people and things in mine."
"What are you to-day?" he inquired.
"An houri, a soulless houri," she retorted.
As they approached the University Club, Jarvis recognized it with scorn.
"Monument to the stupidity of modern education, probably full this minute of provincials from Harvard and Yale, all smugly resting in the assurance that they are men of culture."
"I adore the way you demolish worlds," Bambi sparkled up at him.
"Another monument," he remarked, indicating a new church lifting its spires among the money-changers' booths.
"Hic jacet,education and religion. Look at that slim white lady called the Plaza."
"You ought to name her 'Miss New York.' "
"Good, Jarvis. In time you will learn to play with me."
He frowned slightly.
"I know," she added, "I am scheduled underInterruptionsin that famous notebook. Unless you play with me occasionally I shall become actively interruptive."
"You are as clever as a squirrel," he said. "Always hiding things and finding them."
"Hic jacetBambi, along with the other self-important, modern institutions," she sighed humbly.
They rattled across the Circle and up Broadway. Bambi was silent, bored with its stupidity. It was not until they turned on to Riverside Drive that her enthusiasm bubbled up again.
"Don't you love rivers?" she exclaimed, as the Hudson sparkled at them in the sun.
"I've never known any," he replied.
"Oh, Mr. Hudson, Mr. Jocelyn," she said, instantly. "I thought, of course, you had met."
"You absurdity!" laughed Jarvis. "What is it that you love about rivers?"
"Oh, their subtlety, I suppose. They look and act so aimless, and they are going somewhere all the time. They are lazy and useful and—wet. I like them."
"Is there anything in the universe you don't like?" Jarvis inquired.
"Yes, but I can't think what it is just now," she answered, and sang "Ships of mine are floating—will they all come home?" so zestfully that an old gentleman in the front seat turned, with a smiling "I hope so, my dear!"
She nodded back at him gayly, to Jarvis's annoyance. As they approached Grant's Tomb, she glanced at him suspiciously. When they got safely by, she sighed with content.
"If you had said anything bromidic about Grant's Tomb, Jarvis Jocelyn, I should have thrown myself off the top of the stage to certain death."
"At times you underestimate me," he replied.
At Claremont, Bambi ordered a most enticing repast, and they were very gay. Everybody seemed gay, too. The sun shone, the early spring air was soft, and a certain gala "stolen sweets" air of Claremont made it seem their most intimate meal.
Everybody smiled at Bambi and she smiled back.
"Nice sort of hookey place, isn't it?" she commented.
"Do you know the man at the next table?"
"Which one?"
"The fat one, who is staring so."
"Oh, no. I thought you meant the one who lifts his glass to me every time he drinks."
Jarvis pushed back his chair furiously.
"I will smash his head," he said, rising.
"Jarvis! Sit down! You silly thing! He's only in fun. It's the spirit of the place."
"I won't have you toasted by strange men," he thundered.
"All right. I'll make a face at him next time," she said, soothingly; but somewhere, down in the depths of her being, where her cave ancestor lurked, she was pleased. As they finished their coffee, Bambi picked up the check, which the waiter laid beside Jarvis's plate.
"Do you mind my paying it? Would you rather do it?"
"Certainly not. It's your money. Why should I pretend about it?"
She could have hugged him for it. Instead, she overfed the waiter.
"It's too heavenly, out of doors, for pictures, after all," she said, as they came out on to the drive. "What shall we do?"
"Let's get that double-decker again, and ride until we come to the end of the world."
"Righto. Here it comes, now."
Downtown they went, to Washington Square, where they dismounted, to wander off at random. All at once they were in another world. It was like an Alice in Wonderland adventure. They stepped out of the quiet of the green, shady quadrangle into a narrow street, swarming with life.
Innumerable children, everywhere, shrieking and running at games. Fat mothers and babies along the curb, bargaining with pushcart men. A wheezing hurdy-gurdy, with every other note gone to the limbo of lost chords, rasped and leaked jerky tunes. All the shops had foreign names on the windows—not even an "English spoken here" sign. The fresh wind blew down the dirty street, and peppered everything with dust. Newspapers increased their circulation in a most irritating manner under foot. The place was hideous, lifting its raucous cry to the fair spring sky.
Jarvis looked at Bambi, silenced, for once. Her face registered a loud protest.
"Well?" he challenged her.
"Oh, I hate ugliness so. It's like pain. Is it very weak of me to hate ugliness?" she begged.
"It's very natural, and no doubt weak."
"I wouldn't mind the thought of poverty so much—not hunger, nor thirst, nor cold—but dirt and hideousness—they are too terrible."
"This is life in the raw. You like it dressed for Fifth Avenue better," he taunted.
"Do you prefer this?"
"Infinitely."
She looked about again, with a sense of having missed his point.
"Because it's fight, hand-to-throat fight?"
"Yes. You can teach these people. They don't know anything. They are dumb beasts. You can give them tongue. It's too late to teach your Upper End."
A woman passed close, with a baby, covered with great sores. Bambi caught at Jarvis's sleeve and tottered a step.
"I feel a little sick," she faltered.
He caught her hand through his arm, and hurried her quickly back the way they had come. As they mounted the stage, he looked at her white face.
"We will have to expurgate life for you, Miss Mite."
"No, no. I want it all. I must get hardened."
Back at the club, she hurried into her hot bath, with a vague hope of washing off all traces of that awful street. But their talk at dinner was desultory and rather serious. Jarvis talked for the most part, elaborating schemes of social reform and the handling of our immigrant brothers.
They started off to the theatre, with no definite plan. Bambi's spirits rose to the lights of Broadway, like a trout to a silver shiner. There is a hectic joyousness on Broadway, a personification of the "Eat, drink and be merry, for to-morrow we die" spirit which warms you, like champagne, or chills you, like the icy hand of despair, according to your mood. Bambi skipped along beside Jarvis, twittering gayly.
"People are happy, aren't they?"
"Surface veneer."
"Jarvis, you old bogie-man, hiding in the dark, to jump out and say 'Boo!' "
"That's my work—booing frauds. Let's go in here," he added.
" 'Damaged Goods,' " Bambi read on the theatre poster. "Do you know anything about it?"
"I've read it. It is not amusing," he added.
She followed him without replying. The theatre was packed with a motley audience of unrelated people. Professors and their wives, reformers, writers, mothers with adolescent sons, mothers with young daughters—what, in Broadway parlance, is called a "high-brow" audience—a striking group of people gathered together to mark a daring experiment of our audacious times; a surgical clinic on a social sore, up to this moment hidden, neglected, whispered about.
Bambi came to it with an open mind. She had heard of Brieux, his dramatic tracts, but she had not seen the text of this play, nor was she prepared for it. The first act horrified her into silence during the whole intermission. The second act racked her with sobs, and the last act piled up the agony to the breaking point. They made their way out to the street, part of that quiet audience which scarcely spoke, so deep was the impression of the play.
Broadway glared and grinned and gambolled, goat-like. Bambi clung to Jarvis tightly. He looked down at her swollen face, red eyes, and bewildered mouth without a word. He put her into a taxicab and got in after her. In silence she looked out at the glittering white way.
"The veneer is all rubbed off. I can see only bones," she said, and caught her breath in a sob.
Jarvis awkwardly took her hand and patted it.
"I am sorry we went to that play to-night. You must not feel things so," he added.
"Didn't you feel it?"
"I felt it, didactically, but not dramatically. It's a big sermon and a poor play."
"I feel as if I had had an appendicitis operation, and I am glad it is over."
"I must meet young Richard Bennett. He has contributed to the big issues of the day. He's a fine actor. He must be an intelligent man."
For the rest of the way they drove in silence.
"Tired?" Jarvis asked as they neared the club.
She looked so little and crumpled, with all the shine drowned in her eyes.
"Life has beaten me raw to-day," she answered him, with a shadowy smile.
Bambi announced the next morning that she had to have an entire day in which to get over "Damaged Goods." Jarvis was nothing loath to put off the evil hour when he was to start on his manager-hunt. So they agreed on one more day of freedom.
The clouds threatened, so they looked over the papers for an announcement of picture exhibitions, concerts, and lectures. The choice was bewildering. They finally decided on a morning lecture, at Berkeley Lyceum, entitled "The Religion of the Democrat." They made their way to the little theatre, in a leisurely manner, to find the street blocked with motor cars, the sidewalk and foyer crowded with fashionable women, fully half an hour before the lecture was announced. Distracted ushers tried to find places for the endless stream of ardent culturites, until even the stage was invaded and packed in solid rows.
"This is astonishing," said Jarvis. "What on earth do these fine birds care for democracy?"
"Must be the lecturer," said wise Bambi.
"Humph! A little mental pap before they run on to lunch."
The cackle and babble ceased suddenly as the chairman and lecturer appeared. After a few announcements, the leading man was introduced. Bambi was right. It was the man. You felt personality in the slow way he swept the audience with his eyes, in the charming, friendly smile, in the humour of his face. The women fairly purred.
Jarvis grunted impatiently, and Bambi felt a sense of guilt for her ready response to this man, who had not yet spoken. Then he began, in a good, resonant voice, to hook this lecture to the one of the week before.
"Oh, it's a course," Bambi whispered.
Jarvis nodded. He wished he was well out of it. He hated the woman-idol kind of lecturer. Then a stray phrase caught his wandering attention, and he began to listen. The man had the "gift of tongues." That was evident. This was his last conscious comment. It seemed but a few minutes later that he turned to Bambi, as the lecturer sat down. She sat forward in her chair, with that absorbed responsiveness he had marked in her before. He touched her before she realized that it was time to go.
"That was big, wasn't it?" she said.
"It was. He is somebody. He gave them real meat instead of pap."
"And they liked it," Bambi said, reaching for her furs, her bag, and her umbrella, strewn under the seat in her trance.
"That fellow is all right. He makes you feel that there are fine, big things to be done in the world, and that you must be about it—not to-morrow, but to-day," Jarvis said, as they pushed their way out.
"I wonder what these women are doing about it?" Bambi speculated.
"Talking."
"Boo!" she scoffed at him.
They strolled, with the strollers, on the avenue. They ate what Jarvis dubbed "a soupçon" of lunch in a tea-shop, and to elude a dribble of rain they betook themselves to the Armory, down on Seventeenth Street, to the much-talked-of International Modern Art Exhibition.
Adam and Eve, the first day in the Garden, could not have been any more dazed than these two young things who had strayed in out of the rain. No sated sensibilities here, prodded by the constant shocks of metropolitan "latest thing," but fresh, enthusiastic interest was their priceless possession. They wandered aimlessly through several rooms, until they emerged into the Cubist and Futurist sections and stood rooted to the floor with surprise and horror.
"What are these?" Bambi demanded.
"Damaged Goods," Jarvis laughed, with a rare attempt at a joke.
"Are they serious?"
"Tragic, I should say."
He looked about with an expression of amusement, but Bambi felt actual, physical nausea at the sight of the vivid blue and orange and purple.
"It's wicked!" she said, between closed teeth.
"Let's sit down and try to get the idea," said Jarvis.
"There isn't any idea."
"Oh, yes, there must be. The directors would never get together an acre of these atrocities unless there was some excuse."
"It's low and degenerate. It's a school of hideousness. Come away!"
"You go sit in another room if you like. I am going to give these fellows a fair chance. Maybe they've got hold of something new."
"There is nothing new about that awful woman with a decayed face. She has been dead for weeks."
"Just put your emotions away, Bambi, and train your mind on this thing. Here is a whole school of men, working in a new medium, along new ideas. They can't all be crazy, you know."
"You like it?"
"Of course I don't like it, but it interests me. I haven't read or heard anything about it, so it is a shock."
"You shall not make for yourselves false images," she said, shaking her head.
"Maybe these maniacs are trying to break up the conventions of Painting and Sculpture. They want more freedom."
"They are anarchists, vandals!"
"Possibly, but if they are necessary to the development of a bigger art expression——"
"They ought to work in secret, and exhibit in the dark."
"No, no! We have to be prepared for it. Our old standards have got to go."
"I feel as medieval as the Professor. I never really understood him before."
"We ought to bring him here."
"I think it would kill him," Bambi answered.
They spent a couple of hours, and then went back to the club. For some reason the Cubists had stirred Jarvis deeply. He divined something new and sincere, where Bambi felt only pose and degeneracy.
"When you think of that awful street, and 'Damaged Goods,' and that exhibit of horrors, all in two days, I don't wonder I feel like an old, old woman," she said.
"Suppose we stay in to-night? There is some kind of special meeting announced here, to discuss the drama. We might go in for a little while."
"All right. But 'early to bed,' for to-morrow we set out on our careers."
"You haven't told me what yours is, yet," he objected.
"Mine is a secret."
The dining-room of the club was entirely full when they went down, and the hum of talk and laughter roused Bambi's tired sensibilities.
"It's quite jolly," she said. "Some of the people look interesting, don't they?"
"I talked to that little man, over there, with the red necktie, while I was waiting for you, and he has ideas."
"Lovely woman with him."
They chatted personalities for a while.
"Seems ages since we left home, doesn't it?"
"Yes. Big mental experiences obliterate time."
"The Professor has forgotten to write, of course."
"He has probably forgotten us."
"Oh, no!"
"I feel that I am getting rather well acquainted with you," he nodded and smiled.
"How do you like me, now that you have met me?" she teased.
"You are an interesting specimen over-sensitized."
"Jarvis!" she protested. "I sound like a Cubist picture."
After dinner they drifted with the crowd into the art gallery, where they talked to several people who introduced themselves. It was very friendly and social. The lecturer they had heard in the morning was there. Jarvis went to speak to him, and brought him back to Bambi. She found him jolly and responsive. She even dared to twit him about his feminine audience.
People seated themselves in groups, and finally a chairman made some remarks about the Modern Drama and invited a discussion. A dramatic critic made cynical comment on the so-called "uplift plays," which roused Jarvis to indignation. To Bambi's surprise, he was on his feet instantly, and a torrent of words was spilled upon the dramatic critic. He held the attention closely, in an impassioned plea for thoughtful drama, not necessarily didactic, but the serious handling of vital problems in comedy, if necessary, or even in farce. It need not be such harrowing work as Brieux makes it, but if the man who had things to say could and would conquer the technique of dramatic writing, he would reach the biggest audiences that could be provided, which ought to pay him for the severity of his apprenticeship.
Bambi thrilled with pride in him, his handsome face, his passionate idealism, and his eloquence. He sat down, amid much applause, and Bambi knew he had made his place among these clever people. He took some part in the discussion that followed, and when they went upstairs she marked the flush of excitement and the alive look of his face.
"I was proud of you, Jarvis," she said, as they stopped at her door.
"Nonsense. The man I talked against was a duffer, but this has been a great day," he said. "This place stimulates you every minute."
"Tomorrow we move on Broadway, Captain Jocelyn. Get your forces in order to advance."
"Very good, General. Good night, sir."
"Good-night."
As she closed her door she skipped across the room. She knew the first gun had been fired when Jarvis rose to speak. If she was to act as commander in the making of his career, she was glad she had a personality to work with. Nobody would forget that Greek head, with its close-cropped brown curls, those dreaming blue eyes, and that sensitive, over-controlled mouth. Her own dreams were wrought about them.
The day which Bambi foretold would some time be famous in history dawned propitiously, with sun and soft airs. A sense of excitement got them up early. Breakfast was over, and Jarvis ready for action, by eight-thirty.
"I don't believe Mr. Belasco will be down this early, Jarvis," Bambi said.
"Well, he is a busy man. He'll probably get an early start. I want to be on the ground when he arrives, anyhow. If he should want me to read the play this morning, we should need time."
She made no more objections. She straightened his tie, and brushed his coat, with shining eyes, full of excitement.
"Just think! In five hours we may know." He took up his hat and his manuscript.
"Yes," he answered confidently. "Shall we lunch here?"
"Yes, and do hurry back, Jarvis."
At the door he remembered her.
"Where are you going? Do you want to come?"
"No. I have something to attend to myself. Good luck."
She held out her hand to him. He held it a second, looking at it as if it was a specimen of something hitherto unknown.
"I am not forgetting that you are giving me this chance," he said, and left abruptly.
Bambi leaped about the rooms in a series of joy-leaps that would have shamed Mordkin, before she began the serious business of the day.
Jarvis had carefully looked up the exact location of the Belasco Theatre. He decided to walk uptown, in order to arrange his thoughts, and to make up his mind just how much and what he would say to Mr. Belasco. The stir, the people, the noise and the roar were unseen, unheard. He strolled along, towering above the crowd, a blond young Achilles, with many an admiring eye turned in his wake.
None of the perquisites of success, so dear to Bambi's dreams, appealed to him. He saw himself, like John the Baptist, crying in the wilderness, which was the world, and all the people, in all the cities, were roused out of their lethargy and dull submission at his call—not to prayer, but to thought. It was a great mission he was upon, and even Broadway became consecrated ground. He walked far beyond the cross street of the theatre in his absorption, so it was exactly half-after nine when he arrived at the box office.
"I want to speak to Mr. Belasco," he said to the man there.
"Three flights up."
"Is there an elevator?"
"Naw."
He resented the man's grin, but he made no reply. He began to climb the long flights of dark stairs. Arrived at the top, the doors were all locked, so he was forced to descend again to the box office.
"There is nobody up there," he said.
"You didn't expect anybody to be there at this hour of the dawn, did you?"
"What time does Mr. Belasco usually come?"
"There is nothing usual about him. He is liable to land here any time between now and midnight, if he comes at all."
"He doesn't come every day, then?"
The man grinned.
"Say, you're new to this game, ain't you? Sometimes he don't show up for days. The steno can tell you whether he is coming to-day."
"The steno?"
"Yes. The skirt that's in his office."
"When does she come?"
"Oh, about ten or eleven."
"Thank you."
"Don't mention it."
Jarvis made the ascent again. He stood about for nearly an hour before the office girl arrived. "Those stairs is the limit," she gasped. "You waiting for me?"
"I am waiting for Mr. Belasco."
"Oh! Appointment?"
"No."
"Got a letter to him?"
"No."
"What do you want to see him about? A job?"
"No. About a play."
She ushered him in, opened the windows, took off her hat, looked at herself in the mirror, while she patted her wonderful hair. She powdered her nose, fixed her neck ruffle, apparently oblivious of Jarvis.
"What time do you expect Mr. Belasco?"
"Goodness only knows."
"Do you think he will come to-day?"
"Far be it from me to say."
"But I wish to see him."
"Many a blond has twirled his thumbs around here for weeks for the same reason."
"But I am only in New York for a little while."
"I should worry," said she, opening her typewriter desk. "Give me your play. I'll see that it gets to him."
"I'd rather talk to him myself."
"Suit yourself."
"I suppose I can wait here?"
"No charge for chairs," said the cheerful one.
An hour passed, broken only by the click of the typewriter. Conventional overtures from the cheerful one being discouraged, she smashed the keys in sulky silence. From eleven to twelve things were considerably enlivened. Many sleek youths, of a type he had seen on Broadway, arrived. They saluted the cheerful one gayly as "Sally" and indulged in varying degrees of witty persiflage before the inevitable "The Governor in?"
"Nope."
"Expect him to-day?"
"I dunno."
"Billy here?"
"Dunno."
"Thank you, little one."
Sometimes they departed, sometimes they joined Jarvis's waiting party. Lovely ladies, and some not so lovely. Old and young, fat and thin, they climbed the many stairs and met their disappointment cheerfully. They usually fell upon Jack, or Billy, or Jim, of the waiters, who, in turn, fell upon Belle, or Susan, or Fay.
"What are you with? How's business?" were always the first questions, followed by shop talk, unintelligible to Jarvis. One youth said that he had been to this office ten successive mornings without getting an appointment. The others laughed, and one woman boasted that she had the record, for she had gone twenty-eight times before she saw Frohman, the last engagement she sought.
"But he engaged me the 29th," she laughed.
They impressed Jarvis as the lightest-hearted set he had ever encountered. They laughed over everything and nothing. By one o'clock Jarvis and the cheerful one were again in sole possession.
"Don't you ever eat?" she asked him.
"Oh, is it lunch time?" he inquired.
"Come out of the trance."
She went through the entire performance before the mirror, in putting on her hat.
"Shall I bring you anything, dearie?" she asked him, as she completed her toilette.
"I'm going, too," he said. "I'll be back."
He plunged down the stairs. When he reached the street he thought of Bambi's face when he returned with the announcement of his futile morning. He went into a shop, telephoned the club that he had been detained and would not be back to lunch. Then he foraged for food and went back to his sitting on the top floor of the Belasco.
"Well, little stranger," said the cheerful one, on her return.
His interest in the afternoon callers waned. At five o'clock he gave it up. He arranged with his new friend to call her up in the morning to see if she had any news from the front. Then he slowly turned his footsteps toward the club. He was irritated at the long delay, and for the first time aware that there might be more difficulty in seeing managers than he had anticipated. He had thought the condescension all on his part, but eight hours of airing his heels in the outer purlieus had altered his viewpoint a trifle.
His main concern was Bambi's disappointment. She had sent him out with such high hopes—she would receive him back with his Big Chief feathers drooping. He was sorrier than he would admit to drown the shine in her eyes. He walked downtown to postpone the evil hour, but in the end it had to be faced.