Chapter 4

"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 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 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.