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.
[Illustration: "GOOD EVENING, MRS. NEW YORK, AND ALL YOU PEOPLE OUT
THERE! WE'RE HERE, JARVIS AND I."]
"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
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.