Mr. Strong's visit left its impress on all three members of the
household. The Professor referred to him as the man with the thirteen
sisters, and wished him reinvited to the house. Bambi treasured the day
he spent with her as a turning point in her life. Surely new vistas
opened up to her as a result of his coming. But to Jarvis the memory of
the day was extremely painful. He took Bambi's punishment very
seriously. He conceived Strong to be a former lover whom she welcomed
back with affectionate ardour. He knew enough of her odd personality to
be totally in the dark as to what she would do if she found herself
suddenly in love with Strong. The main difficulty was, however, that he
cared what she did--he, Jarvis, the free man! He realized that this was
a flag of danger, and he answered the warning by sedulously avoiding
Bambi for the next few days. She was too busy with the plans for the
book to notice, although she caught him looking at her once or twice in
a strange, speculative way. Their peace was broken, however, a few days
after Mr. Strong's famous visit by a letter from the Belasco office,
accompanied by the play. Mr. Belasco regretted that the play was not
just what he wanted. It had some excellent points, etc., but as he had
already arranged for so many productions during the coming season, he
felt he could not take on anything more at present. He would be glad to
read anything Mr. Jocelyn might submit. Jarvis handed it on to Bambi.
"As I told you," he remarked.
"It never got to Belasco," said Bambi, confidently. "If it had, he would
have seen its possibilities."
"Is something the matter?" inquired the Professor.
"Belasco has refused Jarvis's play."
"So. He didn't like that abominable woman any better than I did."
"She is not abominable!" from Jarvis.
"Be quiet, you two, and let me think."
"If you would learn concentration you would not need quiet in which to
think," protested her parent.
"Oh, if I would learn to be a camel I wouldn't need a hump," returned
Bambi, shortly.
"I don't think a hump would be becoming to you," mused the Professor,
turning back to his book.
"We'll send it to Parke, Jarvis."
"What's the use?"
"Don't be silly. Every manager in New York shall see that play before we
stop. We will send it to his wife. Maybe she will read it."
"Do as you like about it," he answered, with superb impersonality.
She took his advice and got it off at once, addressed to the actress. In
a week came a letter in reply saying that Miss Harper would like to talk
to Mr. Jocelyn about the play, and making an appointment at her house
two days later.
This letter threw them into great excitement. Jarvis protested, first,
that he could not be interrupted at his present work, which interested
him. Bambi pooh-poohed that excuse. Then he said he had never talked to
an actress, and he had heard they were a fussy lot. She would probably
want him to change the play; as he would not do that, there was no use
seeing the woman. Bambi informed him that if Miss Harper would get the
play produced, it would pay Jarvis to do exactly what she wanted done.
Then he protested he hated New York. He didn't want to go back there.
Bambi finally lost her temper.
"If you are going to act like a balky horse, I give you up. Until you
get started, you will have to do a great many things you will not like,
but if I were a man, I would never let any obstacles down me."
"When can I get a train?" meekly.
"You can take the same train we took before, to-morrow morning."
A great light broke for Jarvis.
"I can't go. I haven't any money."
"I have. I'll lend it to you."
"I must owe you thousands now."
"Not quite. We can do this all right."
"Have you got it all down?"
"In the Black Maria," she nodded.
So the long and the short of it was that Jarvis went off to New York
again. No martyr ever approached the stake with a more saddened visage
than he turned upon Bambi as the train pulled out. She waved her hand at
him, smiling pleasantly, but he was sorrowful to the last glimpse.
"Poor old baby!" she laughed. "He shall stay in New York a while. He is
getting too dependent on mamma."
She really welcomed his absence. It gave her so much more time for her
own work, which absorbed and delighted her. She had never known any
sensation so pleasurable as that sense of adventure with which, each
morning, she went to work. First, she patted the manuscript pile, which
grew so amazingly fast. Then she filled her fountain pen and looked off
over the treetops, beyond her window, until, like Peter Pan, she slipped
off into another world, the Land of Make Believe, a country she had
discovered for herself and peopled with human beings to suit her own
taste. To be sure, heir story concerned itself mainly with herself,
Jarvis, and the Professor, but only the traits that made them
individual, that made them "they," were selected, and the experiences
she took them through were entirely of her own making. It was such fun
to make them real by the power of words; to make many people know them
and love them, or condemn them, as the case might be. In fact, creation
was absorbing.
"It's very quiet around here since Jarvis left," commented the Professor
a few days later.
"I never thought Jarvis was noisy."
"Well, he's like distant thunder."
"And heat lightning," laughed Bambi.
"Do you happen to miss him?"
"Me? Oh, not at all. Do you?"
"It always frets me to have things mislaid that I am used to seeing
around. When you change the furnishings about, it upsets me."
"Do you look upon Jarvis as furniture?" she teased him.
"I look upon him as an anomaly."
"How so?"
"William Morris said, 'You should never have anything in your house
which you do not know to be useful, and believe to be beautiful.'"
"I think Jarvis is beautiful."
"That great mammoth?"
"He's like Apollo, or Adonis."
"He certainly needs all Olympus to stretch out on. He clutters up this
little house."
"I am sorry you don't like Jarvis, Professor."
"I do like him. I am used to him. I enjoy disagreeing with him. I wish
he would come home."
His daughter beamed on him.
"Then he is also useful as a whetstone upon which you sharpen your wits.
William Morris had nothing on me when I added Jarvis to our Penates."
Jarvis's first letter she read aloud to her father, and they both
laughed at it, it was so Jarvis-like.
"Dear Bambi," he wrote, "I am in this vile cesspool of humanity again,
and I feel like a drowning gnat. I did not go to the club, as you told
me to, because I thought I could live more economically if I took a room
somewhere and 'ate around,' I left my bag at the station, while I went
to an address given me by a young man I met on the train. He said it was
plain but clean. He told me some experiences he had had in boarding and
lodging houses. They were awful! This place is an old three-story house,
of the fiendish mid-Victorian brand--dark halls, high ceilings, and
marble mantels. It seemed clean, so I took a room, almost as large as
your linen closet, where I shall spend the few days I am here. My room
has a court outlook, and was hotter than Tophet last night, but of
course you expect to be hot in summer.
"I went to see Miss Harper, at the time appointed, this morning. She
lives up Riverside Drive. She is a pleasant woman, who seems to know
what she wants. She thinks that if I write a new third act, and change
some things in the second act, Mr. Parke might produce it. I defended
the present form, and tried to show her that the changes she wants will
weaken the message of the play. She says she doesn't care a fig for my
message. She wants a good part. My impulse was to take my work and
leave, but I remembered how important this chance seemed to you, so I
swallowed my pride, though it choked me, and promised to make a scenario
of the changes, to submit at once. I may have to stay on a few days to
do things over as she wants me to do. The play is ruined for
me, already.
"I suppose it is cool and quiet where you are. The noise and heat are
terrible here. I forgot to say that I have to hurry with 'Success,'
because the lady is going to Europe in a fortnight, and insists it must
be finished by that time. I hope she won't crack the whip. It makes me
nervous. I am such a new trained bear.
"I'd rather argue with the Professor to-night than be here, or even talk
with you. I wish you didn't want me to be a success, Bambi. Couldn't you
let me off? My regards to you both. Tell Ardelia that nobody in New York
knows anything about cooking. There seem to be thousands of people
eating around, and oh, such food! Good night.
"JARVIS."
"He is homesick," said the Professor, as Bambi finished and folded the
letter.
"Homesick to argue with you," snapped Bambi.
"He said, 'Or talk with you.'"
"Excuse me. He said, 'Or even talk with you.' I shall punish him for
that."
"He isn't comfortable. Hot and mid-Victorian. He isn't responsible,"
excused her father.
"He won't be comfortable when he gets the penalty," said Bambi,
fiercely.
"I am surprised that he consented to change his play. Samson's locks are
certainly shorn."
"What do you mean by that?"
"You have shaved him, my dear."
"Are you calling me Delilah?"
"You can't deny that he would never be where he is, doing what he is
now, if he were not married to you."
"What of it? Time he had a little discipline. He needs it and his work
needs it."
"Well, he's getting it."
"Are you pitying him because he isn't as mad as he was when I caught
him?"
"He's still mad, nor' by nor'east."
"I'll make a human being and a big artist out of Jarvis before I am
through."
"Be careful that you don't lose everything in him that makes him
Jarvis."
"Do you think that I can't do it?"
"I only say that creation, like vengeance, is God's. It is dangerous
when man tampers with it."
Upon a sudden impulse, she went to lean over him and kiss his bald head.
"I'll remember that, Herr Vater," said she.
As the result of their talk, her reply to Jarvis was not so fierce as
she had planned to make it, in her first indignation at his "even you."
She did not pat him on the back for making concessions about the play.
She merely said she was glad he was acting so sensibly about it, and
that if she was the mainspring of that action she was proud. As for
letting him off, he was the only living person who could keep him on, or
let him off. If he was the sort of softling who could not stand up under
life's discipline because it was uncomfortable or unpleasant, then no
power on earth could hold him to accomplishment. But, endowed as he was,
with brain, imagination, sensibilities, health, it lay in his power to
actually create himself, to say "such and such a man will I be," making
every touch of life's sculpturing fingers count, "even the pinches," she
added, picturesquely. Of course he must stay in New York as long as
necessary. If he was uncomfortable, he must move. He could not do good
work under irritating conditions. She told him that the Professor missed
him, and Ardelia contemplated sending a box of goodies. She omitted any
mention of her own state of mind or feelings in regard to him or his
actions. Here was the punishment for his "even you," and he pondered
long over it.
"What on earth did she marry me for? She doesn't care a straw about me,
only what I can make of myself," he mused, a trifle bitterly. But he
went to work at "Success" with the abandon of a house-wrecker, pulling
it to the foundation. He used the sledgehammer on scenes he loved. He
loosened and pitched out phrases he had mulled over long, and in the
dust of the affray he forgot the sting that lay behind Bambi's words. If
she wanted him famous, famous would he be.