Bambi
"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 be _me_ than 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, 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.
V
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 the
_Saturday Evening Post_ accepted 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 her _nom-de-plume_ and 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