Bambi
"Because I am not worth it. You saw me in a work fit. I'm a devil. I'm
like one possessed. I swear and rave if I am interrupted. I can't eat
nor sleep till I get the madness out of me. I am not human. I am not
normal. I am not fit to live with."
"Very well, we will build a cage at the top of the house, and when you
feel a fit coming on you can go up there. I'll slip you food through a
wire door so you can't bite me, and I'll exhibit you for a fee as the
wildest genius in captivity."
"Bambi, be serious. This is no joke. This is awful!"
"You consider it awful to be married to me?"
"I am not thinking of myself. I am thinking of you. You have got
yourself into a pretty mess, and I've got to get you out of it."
"How?"
"I'll divorce you."
"You've got no grounds. I've been a kind, dutiful wife to you. I haven't
been near you since I married you, except to give you food."
"How do you expect we are to live? Nobody wants my plays."
"How do you know? You never try to sell them. You told me so yourself.
You feel so superior to managers and audiences that you never
offer them."
"I know. I occasionally go to the theatre, by mistake, and I see what
they want."
"That's no criterion. We won't condemn even a Broadway manager until he
proves himself such a dummy as not to want your plays."
"Broadway? Think of a play of mine on Broadway! Think of the fat swine
who waddle into those theatres!"
"My dear, there are men of brains writing for the theatre to-day who do
not scorn those swine."
"Men of brains? Who, who, I ask you?"
"Bernard Shaw."
"Showman, trickster."
"Barrie."
"Well, maybe."
"Pinero?"
"Pinero knows his trade," he admitted.
"Galsworthy, Brieux."
"Galsworthy is a pamphleteer. Brieux is no artist. He is a surgeon. They
have nothing to say to Broadway. Broadway swallows the pills they offer
because of their names, but they might just as well give them the sugar
drip they want, for all the good it does."
"Well, they get heard, anyhow. What's the use of writing a play if it
isn't acted? Of course we'll sell your plays."
"But if we don't, where will you be?"
"Oh, I'll be all right. I mean to support myself, anyhow, and you, too,
if the plays don't go."
He laughed.
"You are an amusing mite. Queer I never noticed you before."
"You'll like me, if you continue to be aware of me. I'm nice," she
laughed up at him, and he smiled back.
"How do you intend to make this fortune, may I ask?"
"I haven't decided yet. Of course I can dance. If worst came to worst, I
can make a big salary dancing."
"Dancing?" he exploded.
"Yes, didn't you ever hear of it? With the feet, you know, and the body,
and the eyes, and the arms. So!"
She twirled about him in a circle, like a gay little figurine. He
watched her, fascinated.
"You can dance, can't you?"
"I can. At times I am quite inspired. Now, if you and the Professor will
be sensible, and let me go to New York and take a job, I could support
us all in luxury. You could write and he could figure."
"I don't see that it is any business of ours what you do, but I
certainly won't let you support me."
"Do you really mean it isn't your business?"
"Why should it be?"
"Well, if I am your wife, and his daughter, some people would think that
it was distantly related to your business."
"Why New York? Why not here?"
"In this town they think I am crazy now. But if I burst out as a
professional dancer----Wow!"
"That's so. It's a mean little town, but it's quiet. That's why I stay.
It's quiet."
"You wouldn't mind my being away, if I went to New York, would you?"
"Oh, no. I'd be busy."
"That's good. I really think you are almost ideal."
"Ideal?"
"As a husband. They are usually so exacting and interfering."
"I've not decided yet to be your husband."
"But you are it."
"Suppose you should fall in love with somebody else?"
"I'm much more apt to fall in love with you."
"Heaven forbid!" he exclaimed, and came to her side quickly. "Bambi,
promise me that no matter what happens you will not do that. You will
not fall in love with me."
She looked at him a minute, and then laughed contagiously.
"I am serious about this. My work is everything to me. Nothing matters
but just that, and it might be a dreadful interruption if you fell in
love with me."
"I don't see why, unless you fell in love with me."
"No danger of that," said he, and at her laugh turned to her again. "If
ever you see any signs of my being such a fool as that, you warn me,
will you?"
"And what will you do then?"
"I'll run away. I will go to the ends of the earth. That particular
madness is death to creative genius."
"All right. I'll warn you."
"I've got to begin to polish my first draft to-day, so I'll go upstairs
and get at it."
"Will you be gone two days this trip?"
He turned to smile at her.
"Some people would think you were eccentric," he said.
"They might," she responded.
"I am almost sane when I polish," he laughed. "It's only when I create
that I am crazy."
"It's all right then, is it? We go on?"
"Go on?"
"Being married?"
"Well, I have no objection, if you insist, but you'd better think over
what I told you. I think you have made a mistake; and you shall never
support me."
"I never think over my mistakes," said Bambi. "I just live up to them."
"I agree with your father that you risk a good deal."
"Risks are exciting."
"If you don't like it, you can divorce me the next time I am in a work
fit. I'll never know it, so it will be painless."
"Jarvis, that's unfair."
He came back quickly.
"That was intended for humour," he explained.
"I so diagnosed it," she flashed back at him.
He looked down at her diminutive figure with its well-shaped, patrician
head, its sensitive mouth, its wide-set, shining eyes.
"Star-shine," he smiled.
She poked him with a sharp "What?"
"You don't think I ought to--to--kiss you, possibly, do you?"
"Mercy, no!"
"Good! I was afraid you might expect something of me."
"Oh, no. Think what you have done for the girl," she quoted, and he
heard her laugh down the hall and out into the garden. He took a step as
if to follow her. Then, with a shake of his shoulders, he climbed the
stairs to his new workshop with a smile on his lips.
III
The Professor was working in his garden. It was one of his few
relaxations, and he took it as seriously as a problem. He had great
success with flowers, owing to what he called his system. He was
methodical as a machine in everything he did, so the plants were fed
with the regularity of hospital patients, and flourished accordingly.
To-day he was in pursuit of slugs. He followed up one row, and down the
next, slaying with the ruthlessness of fate.
The general effect of his garden was rather striking. He laid out each
bed in the shape of an arithmetical figure. The pansy beds were in
figure eights, the nasturtiums were pruned and ordered into stubby
figure ones, while the asters and fall flowers ranged from fours
to twenties.
The Professor carried his arithmetical sense to extremes. He insisted
that figures had personality, just as people have, and it was a
favourite method of his to nickname his friends and pupils according to
a numeral. He was watching the death-throes of a slug, with scientific
indifference, as his son-in-law approached him, carrying a
wide-brimmed hat.
"Professor Parkhurst, your daughter desires you to put on your hat. You
forgot it."
"Oh, yes. Thank you!"
"I should like the opportunity of a few words with you, sir, if you can
spare the time."
"Well, I cannot. My time is very precious. If you desire to walk along
with me while I destroy these slugs, I will listen to what you say."
He pursued his course, and Jarvis, perforce, followed.
"I have been in your house for a week, now, Professor Parkhurst, and I
have merely encountered you at meals."
"Often enough," said the Professor, making a sudden turn that almost
upset Jarvis. "I go fifty steps up, and fifty steps back," he explained,
and Jarvis stared at him open-mouthed.
"You count your steps?" he repeated.
"Certainly, no matter what I do, I count. When I eat, when I sleep,
walk, talk, think, I always count."
"How awful! A human metronome. I must make a note of that." And Jarvis
took out a notebook to make an entry.
"You have the notebook habit?" snorted the Professor.
"Yes, I can't afford to waste ideas, suggestions, thoughts."
"Bah! A most offensive habit."
"I gather, from your general attitude," Jarvis began again, "that you
dislike me."
"I neither like nor dislike you. I don't know you."
"You never will know me, at this rate."
"I am not sure that I care to."
"Why not? What have you against me?"
"You are not practical."
"Do you consider yourself practical?"
"I do. I am the acme of practical. I am mathematical."
He slew another bug.
"How can you do that?" cried Jarvis, his concern in his face. "That slug
has a right to life. Why don't you get the point of view of the slug?"
"He kills my roses," justified the Professor. "He's a murderer. Society
has a right to extinguish him."
"The old fallacy, a tooth for a tooth?"
"You'd sacrifice my roses to save this insect?"
"I'd teach the rose to take care of itself."
"You're crazy," he snapped, and walked on, Jarvis at his heels.
"I didn't come to quarrel with you about our views of gardening, or of
life. I realize that we have no common ground. You are of the Past, and
I am of the Future."
"There is nobody more modern than I am!" cried the Professor.
"Rubbish! No modern wastes his life in rows of inanimate numerals. We
get out and work at humanity and its problems."
"What are the problems of humanity?"
"Food, employment, education, health."
"All of them mathematical. Economics is mathematical."
"Well, I wish instead of teaching a few thousand students higher algebra
that you had taught your own daughter a little common sense."
"Common sense is not taught. It is a gift of the gods, like genius,"
said the Professor.
Jarvis glanced at him quickly, and took out the notebook.
"Put that thing away!" shouted the Professor. "I will not be annotated."
Jarvis meekly returned it to his pocket, but as the Professor
right-about faced, he exploded:
"For heaven's sake, sit down and listen to me! This mathematical
progression makes me crazy."
"I have just so many rows to do," the Professor replied, as he marched
along. "Do I understand you to criticise my daughter's education?"
"I don't know anything about her education. I didn't know she had one,"
said Jarvis, "but this whim of hers, in marrying me, is very trying to
me. It is most upsetting."
"Have it annulled. It can't possibly be legal."
"She won't hear of it. She desires to be married to me."
The Professor rose and faced him.
"Then you may as well resign yourself. I have lived with her nineteen
years and I know."
"But it is absurd that a child like that should always have her own way.
You have spoiled her."
Even the Professor's bent back showed pity.
"You have a great deal to learn, young man."
"Can't you persuade her to divorce me?"
"I cannot. I tried to persuade her to do that before she married you."
"I suppose you think I ought to make a living for her?"
"At the risk of being called a back number, I do."
"Just when I am beginning to count."
"Count? Count what?"
"Count as a creative artist."
"Just what is it you do, Jocelyn?"
"I try to express the Philosophy of Modernism through the medium of the
Drama."
"Who buys it?"
"Nobody."
"How are you beginning to count, then?"
"Oh, not in the market-place. In my own soul."
"Forty-nine, fifty," said the Professor. "Turn here. In your own soul,