Bambi
except as "Papa Pouter!"
"Would you get tired of it if you were here all the time?"
"I suppose so. It is all so alike. The women all look alike, and the
men, and the waiters. If you dropped through the ceiling, you could
hardly tell whether you were in the Ritz, the Plaza, the Manhattan, or
the Knickerbocker. You would know it was New York--that's all."
"What train do you take to-night, or shall you stay over?"
"I shall go on the 11:50, if you'll play with me until then."
He smiled at her affectation.
"Suppose we try another kind of crowd to-night, and dine at the
Lafayette."
"Delighted! I've never been there."
"It's jolly. You'll like it, I think."
"Where is it?"
"Way downtown--University Place. What shall we do between now and
dinner-time?"
"Let's walk down."
"Oh, that's a long walk."
"But I love to walk, unless it is too much for you."
"Sheer impudence!"
The walk was one never to be forgotten by Strong. To have Bambi all to
himself, to look forward to hours of such bliss, to have her swinging
along beside him, laughing and chattering, now and again laying her hand
on his arm in confident friendliness--it was intoxicating.
By sheer force of will he kept his hand on the throttle of his emotions.
One look, one false move, would ruin it all. He knew, without any doubts
that she did not love him. He even told himself she loved Jocelyn. He
knew that he must make himself a valuable friend and not an undesired
lover, but his want of her was great, and his fury at Jarvis's
indifference white hot. She caught his set look.
"Richard!"
He turned his eyes on her.
"You're tired of me. I won't talk any more."
He drew her hand through his arm, and held her there.
"Don't say that sort of thing, please; it isn't fair."
"Take it back."
The Lafayette filled her with excitement. They had a table on a raised
balcony overlooking the main dining-room. Richard pointed out
celebrities, bowed to many friends, talked charming personalities. A
feast of Lucullus was served them. Music and wine and excitement
bewitched Bambi. She sparkled and laughed. She capped his every sally
with a quick retort. She was totally different from the girl-boy who had
walked downtown beside him.
"What are you thinking about me?" she challenged him, her head tipped
back provokingly.
"Daughter of Joy!"
"I have spent a very pleasant fortnight with you, Richard!"
"Has it seemed that long?"
"Since I left Sunnyside this morning? Quite."
"How many personalities have you been since then?"
"Oh, not nearly all my mes."
"Protean artist?"
"Headliner," she nodded.
They drank to the success of the play. Later, as he stood beside her in
the car, a few minutes before she was to leave, she put her hand in his.
"I've had the loveliest time," she said. "You are the most accomplished
playmate I ever had."
"It has been a happy day."
"Come to Sunnyside soon."
The train began to move out and he hurried to get off. She waved to him
from the window. She was tired, so she went to bed at once, with never a
dream of the emptiness her small presence left in New York for the
"Playmate."
XXIV
"What luck did you have with the climax, yesterday?" she asked Jarvis,
next day, as she came into the workroom.
"None at all. I worked all day, and tore it up last night."
"Oh, why did you do that?"
"It was hopeless. If you wanted to teach me how vital you are to this
work, you did it."
"Such a thing never entered my mind."
"Shall we begin at it now?"
"Of course. I'm keen to get at it."
She plunged into the situation and swept all obstacles before her. The
entire reaction from yesterday's pleasure and change went into her work.
Lunch-time came as a shock, the morning had fled so fast. Jarvis sighed
as he piled up the pages.
"You work like an electric dynamo," he remarked.
"I always work better after a happy vacation. Why don't you run off for
a day, to get your breath, as it were?"
"Where would I run to?"
"You might go look up the author-lady you're so interested in," she
remarked, wickedly.
He made no answer to that.
The noon mail brought Bambi's latest letter from Jarvis. All mail was
brought immediately to her, so she had a chance to extract the telltale
letters. Jarvis wrote:
"DEAR LADY: Your letters are fast becoming a necessity to me. I look for
them as eagerly as a boy. I find myself more and more absorbed in the
'Francesca' of your fancy, whom I feel sure is the essence of you. Is
it not so?
"I am bitterly unhappy these days--lonely, as I have never been before.
The emotional side of life has always been a closed book to me, one I
disdained to read. So once my heart begins to call attention to itself,
I suppose the more poignant will be my experience.
"I have lately come back from a long exile spent in a hideous place. I
brought with me the first hunger for love I had ever known. But I found
no answering need in the heart I turned to. I have been thrown back on
myself, to eat my heart out, because I know now that it is my own fault.
If I had tried sooner to make myself a lover, I would not have to resign
that place to another man.
"Why do I pour these personal sorrows upon you, my Lady of Sympathy? I
am heartsick for comfort.
"Yours, "J."
Bambi laid her cheek against the poor, hurt letter, and cried.
"My poor, bungling Jarvis, how I must have hurt you!"
She read it again, and all at once light flooded in.
"Why, it's Richard, of course! He thinks I am in love with Richard! The
dear old goose! He sees so little and sees that crooked."
She went in search of him, determined to tell the whole foolish story,
to explain the imaginary obstacles that divided them. But he was not to
be found, so the impulse died, and she determined to play the farce out
to its end, and now, that she knew the core of the whole situation, she
could make it count for their final readjustment.
She wrote him at once:
"MY DEAR JARVIS: At last I feel that there is truth between us. I have
suspected that you were not happy in your love life. But I wanted not to
pry into locked chambers. Now we can be glad of the bond that lies
between us, for I, too, go heart hungry through the days.
"I have not spoken to you of my home, or my husband, but now that you
have become such a part of my thought life, I feel no disloyalty in
the truth.
"My husband is a man who has never felt the want of affection. He is so
self-centred in his devotion to his work that I have always been shut
out of his heart. At first this did not trouble me, for I was ambitious,
too. But so many things have happened to develop me this last year, to
awaken me to my full womanhood!
"I have had to face, as you do, the ache of an unwanted love, tossed
back to eat its way like a corrosive acid. Once, not long ago, I
thought, perhaps, things were going to change for me. I thought he
wanted me. But now I have come to know that it is to another woman he
turns for sympathy and understanding.
"So, you see, my dear, we two have the same heart history. No wonder we
have felt our way through time and space, to clasp hands in such deep
affinity. I lay my hands upon your head, Jarvis.
"YOUR LADY."
His reply came by the first mail.
"Oh, my dear, my dear, we have found each other
at last, in all truth. It was meant from the beginning
of time that it should be so. Let me come to
you. I cannot bear to live another hour without
the touch of your hand. To think that I do not
know your name, or the colour of your kind eyes!
Say that I may come?
"Devotedly,
"JARVIS."
"JARVIS, MY BIG BOY: You may not come yet. It is part of a dream,
cherished since you came to be the heart of me, that we should not come
together until the night of the opening of our play. I know you will
poohpooh this as sentimental nonsense. You may even call it theatrical.
But let me have my way, this last one time. Afterward, my way shall be
yours, beloved. Write me to say you will be patient with my foolishness!
"I am afraid of our meeting. Suppose I should fall short of your ideal
of me? That you should think me ugly or old, I could not bear it. I have
come to know all my happiness lies in the balance of that one night,
toward which we walk, you and I, every minute of every day.
"YOUR LADY."
His answer came, special delivery:
"It shall be as you wish, dear heart. But if anything should happen to
delay the opening of the play, I think I should ask you to remit the
sentence of banishment. I live only to look into your eyes!
"How can you say that you may disappoint me? If you were old,
humpbacked, ugly--what difference? You are mine! We must find freedom
for ourselves and a new life. I adore you.
"JARVIS."
"I wouldn't have thought it of Jarvis," said Bambi as she read it. "He
makes a very creditable lover."
"My DEAR ONE: I am as impatient as you are for our meeting. I gladly
agree that we shall bring it about, at once, if anything happens to
postpone the play opening.
"What you say about being indifferent to my looks makes me happy. I
shall not try you too far, my lover. I'm quite pretty and young. Did you
know I was young?
"You speak so confidently of freedom and a new life together. Are we to
shed our old mates, like Nautilus shells? My new coming into love makes
me pitiful. Must we be ruthless?
"YOUR OWN."
"DEAR, GENTLE HEART: I do not wish to seem ruthless to you, much less to
be so. But has our suffering not entitled us to some joy? I know my wife
to be absorbed in another man; you say your husband turns to another
woman. We represent to them stumbling-blocks between them and their
happiness. Surely it is only right that we should all be freed to find
our true mates.
"I find it daily more of a burden to carry this secret in my heart, when
knowledge of it would lighten my wife's unhappiness. Shall we not
confess the situation, and discuss plans for separation? I owe this girl
who bears my name more than I can ever pay. I would not do anything to
hurt her pride. Tell me what you think about it, dear one?
"YOUR JARVIS."
"JARVIS DEAR: Again I must seem to oppose you. Please let us keep our
secrets to ourselves until our meeting. Suppose that something should
happen even yet? Suppose we should not wish to take this step when the
time comes? I do not want you to hurt your wife. I respect and love you
for your sense of obligation to her. How can she help loving you,
my Jarvis?
"When the day comes for me to prove my devotion, may you say about me
that you owe me more than you can ever pay.
"I live only for the completion of the play.
"YOUR LOVE."
XXV
Bambi felt the renewed vigour with which Jarvis attacked the final
problems of their task. He was working toward the goal of his
affections, a meeting with his lady. She, too, felt the strain of the
situation, and keyed herself up to a final burst of speed. The middle of
February came, bringing the day which ended their labours.
"Well, I believe that is the best we can do with it," Jarvis said.
"Yes, our best best. For my part, I feel quite fatuously satisfied. I
think it is perfectly charming."
"I hope the author will be pleased," he said earnestly.
"I'm much more concerned with Mr. Frohman's satisfaction. If he likes
it, hang the author!"
"But I want to please her more than I can say."
"You have a great interest in that woman, Jarvis. What is it about her