Bambi
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.
VII
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