Chapter 5

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.

VIII

After Jarvis had departed on his conquering way Bambi turned her attention to herself. She made a most careful toilette. When she was hatted, and veiled, and gloved, she tripped up and down before her mirror, trying herself out, as it were. She made several entrances into editorial sanctums. Once she entered haltingly, drawn to her full five-feet-one; once she bounced in, confidently, but she vetoed that, and decided upon a dignified but cordial entrance. One more trip to the mirror for a close inspection.

"Oh, you pretty thing!" she nodded to herself.

She set forth, as Jarvis had done, with the address on the publisher's letter clasped in her hand. She marched uptown with a singing heart. She saw everything and everybody. She wondered how many of them carried happy secrets, like hers, in their thoughts--how many of them were going toward thrilling experiences. She shot her imagination, like a boomerang, at every passing face, in the hope of getting back secrets that lay behind the masks. She was unaware how her direct gaze riveted attention to her own eager face. She thought the people who smiled at her were friendly, and she tossed them back as good as they gave. Even when a waxed and fashionable old dandy remarked, "Good morning, my dear," she only laughed. Naturally, he misunderstood, and fell in step beside her.

"Are you alone?" he asked, coyly.

She gave him a direct glance and answered seriously.

"No. I am walking with my five little brothers and sisters." He looked at her in such utter amazement that she laughed again. This time he understood.

"Good day," said he, and right-about-faced.

She knew she had plenty of time, so she sauntered into a bookshop and turned over the new books, thinking that maybe some day she would come into such a shop and ask for her own books, or Jarvis's published plays. She chatted with a clerk for a few minutes, then went back to the avenue, like a needle to a magnet.

In and out of shops she went. She looked at hats and frocks, and touched with envious fingers soft stuffs and laces.

"Some day," she hummed, "some day!"

She even turned in at Tiffany's seductive door. Colour was a madness with her, and her little cries of delight over a sapphire encouraged a young clerk to take it out of the case and lay it on the velvet square.

"Oh, it's so beautiful it hurts!" Bambi exclaimed.

He smiled at her sympathetically.

"Magnificent, isn't it? Are you interested in jewels?" he added.

"I am interested, but I am not a buyer," she admitted to him. "I adore colour."

"Let me show you some things," he said.

"Oh, no. I mustn't take up your time."

"That's all right. I have nothing else to do just now."

So he laid before her enraptured gaze the wealth of the Indies--the treasure baubles of a hundred queens--blue and green, and red and yellow, they gleamed at her. In an instinctive gesture she put out her hand, then drew it back quickly.

"Mustn't touch?" she asked, so like a child that he laughed.

"Take it up if you like."

She took the superb emerald. "Do you suppose it knows how beautiful it is?"

"It takes a fine colour on your hand. Some people kill stones, you know. You ought to wear them."

He told her some of the history of the jewels he showed her. He explained how stones were judged. He described the precautions necessary when famous jewels were to be taken from one place to another. Bambi sat hypnotized, and listened. She might have spent the entire day there if the man had not been called by an important customer. "I have been here hours, haven't I? I feel as if I ought to buy something. Could you show me something about $1.55?" The man laughed so spontaneously and Bambi joined him so gayly, that they felt most friendly.

"Come in next week. I'll show you a most gorgeous string of pearls which is coming to be restrung," he said.

"Oh, thank you. I have had such a good time."

He took her to the door as if she were a Vanderbilt, and bowed her out. The carriage man bowed, too, and Bambi felt that she was getting on.

This time she loitered no longer. She inspected her address for the hundredth time, and went to the magazine office, where she was to find the golden egg. She was impressed by the elegance of the busy reception room, with its mahogany and good pictures. She sent her card to the editor and waited fifteen minutes, then the card bearer returned. She was sorry, but the editor was extremely occupied this morning. Was there anything she could do for Mrs. Jocelyn? Bambi's face registered her disappointment.

"Would it do any good for me to wait?"

"Have you a letter of introduction? Mr. Strong seemed not to know your name."

"He told me to come."

"Told you? How do you mean?"

Bambi offered the letter to her. As she read it her face changed.

"Oh, are you the girl who won the prize?" Bambi nodded.

"You are?" she protested her amazement.

"I'm just as surprised as you are," Bambi assured her.

"Of course Mr. Strong will see you. He didn't understand." She was off in great haste, and back in a jiffy.

"Come right in," she invited.

Bambi wanted to run. Her breath came in little, short gasps. She wished she could take hold of the other girl's hand and hold on tight. A door stood open into an outside office, and several clerks stared at her. The sanctum door was open.

"Mr. Strong, this is Mrs. Jocelyn," said her guide, and the door closed behind her. A tall, pleasant-faced young man rose and tried to cover his surprise.

"How do you do?" he said cordially, with outstretched hand.

Bambi laid hers in it.

"I'm frightened to death," she answered.

"Frightened--of me?"

"Well, not you, exactly, but editorism." He laughed.

"I can match amazement with your terror, then. You are a surprise."

"You are disappointed in me," she said quickly.

"I expected a--a--well, a bigger woman, and older."

"I see. You didn't expect a half portion?"

"Exactly," he smiled. "Well, we were extremely interested in your story."

"I am so glad."

"What else have you done?"

"Nothing."

"That your first story?"

"Yes."

"How did you happen to write it, Mrs. Jocelyn?"

"I am looking for a career," she began, but his surprised glance stopped her. "You see I ought to dance. That's what the Lord intended me to do. I can dance."

"I can imagine that."

"But dancing would take me away from home so much, and the 'Heavenly Twins' need me so."

"Twins? You haven't twins!"

"Yes. Oh, no, not real ones, but my father and Jarvis."

"Jarvis?"

"Jarvis is a poet and a dreamer."

"Is Jarvis a friend?"

"Oh, no, I am married to him. They are both so helpless. My father is a mathematician. I have to take care of them both, you see."

"You mean in a financial way?"

"My father makes a fair income, and of course Jarvis may sell his plays, but when I married him I expected to support him."

"He is delicate, I suppose?"

She laughed.

"He's six feet and over, wide and strong as a battleship."

"And he expects you to support him?"

"No. He protests, but you see I took a sort of advantage of him when I married him. He didn't want to marry me."

"You are a most extraordinary young woman," remarked Mr. Strong.

"Oh, no, I am usual enough. I help Jarvis with his plays, and what I say seems to have sense. Do you know?"

"I do."

"So just for fun I wrote the story, and just for fun I sent it to your contest."

"Well, just for fun we gave you the prize."

She laughed.

"We want a whole series of tales about that girl. She's new."

"How many is a series?"

"Oh, eight or ten, if you have material enough."

"Oh, yes, I live--I mean I get material all the time."

"What do you want for them?"

"Oh, I'd like a lot for them. New York is full of things I want."

He laughed again.

"We could give you $150 a story. That would be $1,500 for the ten. Then, eventually, we would make a book of them, and you would get 10 per cent. on that."

"A book? A book, with illustrations, and covers, and all?"

He nodded. "Are those terms satisfactory?"

"Oh, mercy, yes. It sounds like a fortune!"

"When could you begin, Mrs. Jocelyn?"

"Right away, to-day!"

"Well, that will hardly be necessary. If you send copy to us by the fifth, that will be soon enough."

"All right. Jarvis is selling a play to-day, so probably we will be rich shortly."

"To whom is Mr. Jocelyn selling his play?"

"Belasco."

"So! That's fine! You'll never have to support him, at that rate."

"He doesn't know about my getting the prize and coming to see you, and all. I want to keep it a secret for a time."

"I understand."

"It would be rather awful for me to be famous first."

"I don't know about that. It would be selfish of your husband to stand in your way."

"Oh, Jarvis is selfish. He's utterly, absorbedly selfish, but not just that way. He'd never stand in my way."

"I'd like to meet Jarvis."

"Well, when the secret is out I'll bring him here. He's unusual, Jarvis is. Some day he'll be great."

"He is in luck to be Mr. to your Mrs."

She flushed furiously.

"Yes, I think he is," she admitted, as she rose.

"How long are you to be in New York?"

"As long as your five hundred holds out."

"You must come in again. If I can be of any use to you, while you are here, give you letters to anybody, have you meet people, I'll be delighted to do so."

"You're a very nice man," said she. "You have removed the ban from the whole tribe of editors in twenty minutes' talk."

"That's a tribute worth living for. It has been a delightful twenty minutes. Come in again."

Out in the office, and in the impressive reception room, interested faces turned toward her. The girl who had acted sponsor for her nodded. She tasted the first fruits of success, and they were sweet. The only imperfection was the fact she could not tell Jarvis. She could not brag of her triumphs nor repeat the friendly chat with Mr. Strong. It would be such fun to see his surprise at the news--he had so lately patronized her. "You are not the stuff of which creative artists are made, of course."

Tra-la-la! She'd make him eat those words.

Then she began at once to do the next story of the series, and by the time she reached the club she had it all thought out. It was then that Jarvis's telephone message came to her, and she decided that he was even now reading his play aloud to Belasco; that he, too, had found a golden key.

She worked on the new story all the afternoon, and waited for Jarvis's triumphant return, in a seventh heaven of joyous anticipation.

IX

Jarvis marshalled his reluctant feet into "Forward, March!" down the hall, and trod softly in the hope that he could get past Bambi's door; but at his first step on the corridor it was flung open, and the small figure silhouetted against the light of the room behind.

"You read him the play?"

He led her gently into the room, closed the door, and faced her.

"Jarvis, he refused it?" she cried.

"I have spent seven hours sitting in an anteroom with a blond steno, waiting. Nobody has been near, all day, excepting fat old girls and Billy boys, looking for jobs."

"Belasco didn't come?"

"He did not. What's more, he sometimes does not come for days."

"Couldn't they send him word you were there?"

Even Jarvis smiled at this.

"My dear, they treated me with the same consideration afforded the janitor. It occurred to me, during those seven hours of enforced thought, that our ideas of the simplicity of selling a play were a trifle arrogant. It seems to have unforeseen complications."

Bambi sat down on the bed, her brow knitted.

"Seven hours sitting? That's awful!"

"The blond young woman suggested a letter of introduction or an appointment, but I don't know any one to give me a letter. I doubt if he will give me the appointment without it."

"I can get it for you!" she said.

"You can? Where? How?"

"I know a way. Never you mind."

"I was afraid you would be so disappointed I was tempted not to come back at all," he remarked.

"Disappointed? Not I! Why, we can wait seven years, if need be. In the end we will win."

"You are a very good sport, Miss Mite."

"I are," laughed she. "I am a very able woman, Jarvis. Some day you will be proud of me."

"You are a terrible egotist," he objected.

"If I didn't believe in myself, where would I be? You and father scarcely notice me."

"I'm beginning to notice you," Jarvis interrupted. "I was really surprised to find how concerned I was not to disappoint you."

"That was nice of you, Jarvis," she beamed at him.

"Don't do that," he said sharply.

"Do what?"

"Smile like a cat at a mouse," he said.

"I intended that for a grateful smile."

"It didn't turn out that. It was possessive. If I can't be friendly with you without your over-occupying my thoughts, I shall ignore you."

"You mustn't worry about liking me, Jarvis. It's inevitable. People always like me. I become a necessity, like salt and pepper. Just accept me cheerfully, for here I am."

He looked at her, frowning.

"Yes, there you are."

"That scowl is very becoming to you. You look like an angry viking."

"I am in no good mood to play."

"Oh, very well, Grandfather Grunt. I had such a nice day. Why don't you ask me about it?"

"I should be interested to hear what you did."

"Your manners are painful but impeccable," she laughed. "Well, I flittered and fluttered up and down the avenue, like a distracted butterfly. I spent a few hours in Tiffany's with such a pleasant man."

"Who was he?"

"I don't know. He was a clerk there. I went in to look at jewels."

"What for?"

"Just for the joy of it."

"And a clerk spent two hours with you?"

She nodded.

"But why?"

"Because I'm so charming, stupid. He asked me to come in next week to see some famous pearls. I also inspected a bookshop. I asked about the sale of published plays. I thought we might make your things into a book."

"If Broadway doesn't want them?"

"Better still if Broadway does."

"Do you always go about making acquaintances?" he inquired.

"Always. People like to talk to me. I look so inoffensive."

He smiled at her saucy, tip-tilted face.

"Any more adventures?"

"Oh, yes. A gay old man asked me if I was alone?"

"What?" he exploded.

"He did. He liked my looks enormously. I could see it."

"Did you call a policeman?"

"Not I. Do you think I am a 'bitty-lum'?"

"A what?" he asked.

"Once a pig molicepan, Saw a bitty-lum, Sitting on a surbcone, Chewing gubber rum. Hi, said the molicepan, Will you sim me gome? Tinny on your nintype, Said the bitty-lum."

"How old _are_ you?" inquired Jarvis.

"Well, I've got all my teeth."

"What did you do with the old masher?"

"I squelched him."

"Did he go away?"

She nodded.

"You must be more careful on the streets, Bambi. People misunderstand you."

"Well, I can always explain myself," she added, laughing.

"Then what did you do?"

"More or less directly, I came here, and lunched, in the conviction that you were closeted with Belasco. Did you have any lunch?"

"Yes. The blond one drove me out for half an hour."

"I should have gone with you."

"Why?"

"I would never sit anywhere seven hours."

"What would you have done?"

"Gone to Belasco's house, or telephoned something startling that would have brought him down quickly."

"For instance?"

"Well, that the theatre was on fire."

"But when he got there?"

"I'd have made him see it was a joke."

"Maybe he hasn't that kind of a sense of humour?"

"Then I should have perished bravely."

So the incidents of their first day's careering ended jocularly.

Bambi called Mr. Strong on the wire next day, and told him of Jarvis's unprofitable sitting. Could he get her a letter to Belasco? Or to any other leading manager? He laughed, said he did not know Belasco, but thought he could arrange it for her. He promised to send a letter to the club.

With this assurance to fall back upon, she persuaded Jarvis to go to the office of one of the newer managers who seemed to be of an open mind in regard to untried playwrights. She showed him a magazine article about this "live wire," named over his productions, and repeated his cordial invitation to new writers.

Jarvis set forth reluctantly. He liked salesman work as little as he had expected to. But he felt he owed some effort to Bambi, since he was her guest, and her mind was so set on his success.

This time the cheeky-faced office boy admitted that the manager was in. He accepted and scrutinized Jarvis's card with disdain, but on his return from the inner office he ejaculated, "Wait!" So Jarvis sat down for his second endurance feat. The same Johnnies and Billies and Fays came to this office in their endless seeking. He began to vision the great, ceaseless army of them "making the rounds," as they call it, often hungry and tired. They were most of them uneducated, you could tell by their speech, for all their long "a's" and short "r's." That they were physically unadapted to the profession was obvious enough in many cases. They were probably badly trained. How did they live? Where did they go? They began to haunt him.

He was interrupted by hearing his name called. He rose mechanically, and followed the boy into a very large and ornate office. A fat Jewish man, in loud clothes, a brown derby hat, and a cigar, sat at a desk, dictating.

"H'are ye?" he ejaculated as Jarvis entered. He went on dictating and smoking, until Jarvis finally interrupted him, saying he wanted to see the manager. The fat man glared at him.

"Sit down until I get through!" he shouted. "I'm the manager."

Jarvis took a chair and looked at the man closely. What would such a creature find in his play, with its roots in a modern condition, no more grasped by this man than by Professor Parkhurst? The absurdity of the idea struck Jarvis so forcibly that he laughed out loud.

"Let's have it, if it's any good," said the fat man.

"I beg your pardon," Jarvis replied.

The manager dismissed the stenographer, took up Jarvis's card, looked at it, and then at his victim.

"Jarvis Jocelyn," he read. "Good stage name. What's your line, Jarvis?"

"I've come to see you about a play."

"Oh, you're a writer? What have you done?"

"Several plays, and some poetry."

"Nix on the poetry. Who brought out the plays?"

"Nobody yet. I am just beginning to offer them."

"What sort of stuff is it?"

"It's a dramatic handling of the feminist movement."

"What's that?"

"The emancipation of woman."

"I hadn't heard about it. Is your stuff funny?"

"No. It is a serious presentation of an unique revolution----"

"Well, believe me, that high-brow stuff is on the toboggan. I knew it couldn't last. I gave it to them when they demanded it, but I am cutting it out now. Haven't you got a good melodrama, or a funny show?"

"I have not," superbly.

"Say, do you know any Jews? I got a great idea for a Jew play that would take like the measles if some fellow would work it up. Pile of money in it."

Jarvis rose, furious.

"It is so apparent that we have nothing to say to each other that I'll bid you good morning."

"If you fellows who come in here from the country to run Broadway could put _yourselves_ in a show, it would be the scream of the town," said the fat man in Jarvis's wake.

"I'd rather starve than endure a pig like you!" cried Jarvis, as he fled.

The fat man's laugh followed him to the street. He hated himself, and the whole situation. It galled him to think he had deliberately submitted himself to such treatment. Even Bambi could not expect it of him,--to set him to sell his dreams in such a market. He charged down Broadway, clearing a wake as wide as a battleship in action. He saw red. He was unconscious of people. He only felt the animus of the atmosphere, the sense of things tugging at him, which had to be cast off. Why was he here? He wanted the quiet, the open stretches, and his own free thoughts. What turn of the wheel had brought him into this maelstrom? Bambi! The old story, Samson and Delilah! He had visioned great things. She had shorn him, and pushed him into a net of circumstances. He would not endure it. He would sweep her out of his life, and be about his work.

He was disappointed to find her out when he returned to the club. He had his opening speech all ready and it was annoying to have his scene delayed. He raged about, to keep his wrath hot, until she came. "Greeting," she began; then saw his face, and added, "Jungle beast!"

"I'll not stay here another day!" he cried.

"You saw the manager?"

"He asked me if the stuff was funny! He invited me to write a Jew play, and make a pot of money! He said 'Nix on the high-brow stuff,' and never heard of the feminist movement," he blurted out in one breath.

She sat down under the onslaught, trying to arrange her rebellious features.

"'Nix on the high-brow stuff.' To me!" he repeated.

Bambi gave up. She rolled on the bed, and laughed.

Jarvis raged the room up and down. There was no gleam of humour in it for him. When her paroxysm had passed, she sat up and looked at him.

"Poor old Knight with the Broken Lance," she said. "It's tough, but it had to be done."

"What had to be done?"

"This morning's work. It was part of your training. You must know just what the situation is here, in the market-place."

"But there is no place for me here."

"After two days' failure, you give up?"

"I told you I couldn't sell my things. They are too good."

"That's rubbish. Nothing you, nor I, nor any other human can think, is too good. If we have big thoughts, and want to tell them to our brothers who speak another tongue, if we have the brains, we must learn their tongue, not hope for them to acquire ours. That is what I hoped you would see."

"You think I've got to learn the Broadway lingo?"

"I do. If you have anything to say, Broadway needs it."

"I can't translate what I want to say into that speech."

"But you can. It will mean hard work, hard work and heartache, and disappointment, but you can do it, because you have the soul stuff of a great man."

Her eyes shone now, misted with feeling. He saw again his multitudes flocking to him in the wilderness. He saw them aroused, revived, triumphant over life through him.

"Will you help me?" he cried to her. It was his first uttered need of her, and her heart beat high in response.