Bambi
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 under _Interruptions_ in 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 jacet_ Bambi, 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.
VI
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