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
play. I'll see that it gets to him."
"I'd rather talk to him myself."
"Suit yourself."
"I suppose I can wait here?"
"No charge for chairs," said the cheerful one.
An hour passed, broken only by the click of the typewriter. Conventional
overtures from the cheerful one being discouraged, she smashed the keys
in sulky silence. From eleven to twelve things were considerably
enlivened. Many sleek youths, of a type he had seen on Broadway,
arrived. They saluted the cheerful one gayly as "Sally" and indulged in
varying degrees of witty persiflage before the inevitable "The
Governor in?"
"Nope."
"Expect him to-day?"
"I dunno."
"Billy here?"
"Dunno."
"Thank you, little one."
Sometimes they departed, sometimes they joined Jarvis's waiting party.
Lovely ladies, and some not so lovely. Old and young, fat and thin, they
climbed the many stairs and met their disappointment cheerfully. They
usually fell upon Jack, or Billy, or Jim, of the waiters, who, in turn,
fell upon Belle, or Susan, or Fay.
"What are you with? How's business?" were always the first questions,
followed by shop talk, unintelligible to Jarvis. One youth said that he
had been to this office ten successive mornings without getting an
appointment. The others laughed, and one woman boasted that she had the
record, for she had gone twenty-eight times before she saw Frohman, the
last engagement she sought.
"But he engaged me the 29th," she laughed.
They impressed Jarvis as the lightest-hearted set he had ever
encountered. They laughed over everything and nothing. By one o'clock
Jarvis and the cheerful one were again in sole possession.
"Don't you ever eat?" she asked him.
"Oh, is it lunch time?" he inquired.
"Come out of the trance."
She went through the entire performance before the mirror, in putting on
her hat.
"Shall I bring you anything, dearie?" she asked him, as she completed
her toilette.
"I'm going, too," he said. "I'll be back."
He plunged down the stairs. When he reached the street he thought of
Bambi's face when he returned with the announcement of his futile
morning. He went into a shop, telephoned the club that he had been
detained and would not be back to lunch. Then he foraged for food and
went back to his sitting on the top floor of the Belasco.
"Well, little stranger," said the cheerful one, on her return.
His interest in the afternoon callers waned. At five o'clock he gave it
up. He arranged with his new friend to call her up in the morning to see
if she had any news from the front. Then he slowly turned his footsteps
toward the club. He was irritated at the long delay, and for the first
time aware that there might be more difficulty in seeing managers than
he had anticipated. He had thought the condescension all on his part,
but eight hours of airing his heels in the outer purlieus had altered
his viewpoint a trifle.
His main concern was Bambi's disappointment. She had sent him out with
such high hopes--she would receive him back with his Big Chief feathers
drooping. He was sorrier than he would admit to drown the shine in her
eyes. He walked downtown to postpone the evil hour, but in the end it
had to be faced.