Chapter 7

"Such ardent admiration embarrasses me, Jarvis," she protested.

"You look very nice," he admitted.

"Nice! Nice! I look like a daffodil, or a crocus, or some other pleasant spring beauty."

"I am glad you are so pleased with yourself. I trust Strong will be equally appreciative."

"I hope so when I have gone to so much trouble for him," she tossed back over her shoulder, in punishment.

As Mr. Strong stepped off the train and faced her, it would be hard to say whether admiration or astonishment constituted the greater part of his expression.

"Mrs. Jocelyn, why this is too kind of you!"

"Not at all. City people are so unused to our devious country ways that I was afraid you would get lost."

Admiration was certainly on top now.

"If you don't mind, we will walk. It isn't far."

"The farther the better," he replied gallantly.

They set forth, down the shady village street, where the trees almost met overhead. Strong drew in deep breaths of the fresh morning air. His eyes kept returning to the little French figure at his side, so metropolitan, and yet so much the dominant note in any setting in which he had seen her. She chattered on, about the town, the university, and the sights.

"I refrain from pointing out the town hall, and the Carnegie Library," she said.

"I am grateful," he bowed.

"Are you married?" she darted at him, out of their impersonality.

"No, alas!"

"That helps a little."

His surprise was evident.

"I'm afraid I've got you into rather a box."

"I don't mind, if you will play Pandora."

"Thanks. You remember that I told you that my--my career was to be a secret from the 'Heavenly Twins'?"

"Yes."

"I suppose my career is about over, but I don't want them to know about it."

"Excuse me. What's that--about your career being over?"

"That's why you've come, isn't it? You didn't like the last story?"

He stared at her, and then burst out laughing.

"You thought I would come way out here from New York to tell you I didn't like it?"

"I have a high opinion of your kindness," she nodded.

"You nice little girl!" he added impetuously. "I came partly because I wanted to talk to you again, partly because I wanted to see Jarvis and the Professor."

She smiled and nodded encouragement.

"Then, too, we've had such a raft of letters about the 'Francesca' story that I want to talk to you about making a novel of it, to run serially, instead of the short stories we arranged for."

"A novel? You want me to write a novel?"

"We do."

"But I wonder if I could?" she said, in an awed voice.

"Of course you could. The second story was ripping."

"Was it? Was it?" She clapped her hands joyously.

"We can use it as Chapter Two, with very few changes, and from now on you can build your story about the characters you have introduced, with a spinal cord of plot to give it shape."

"It frightens me to death, to think of doing it. I have always thought it took genius to write a novel."

"My dear young woman, not in this day, when publishing houses gush books like so many geysers. Anybody with your gift of words and vivid reactions ought to find writing the line of least resistance. Of course you can do it."

"I'd adore trying if you'd help me."

"That's agreed."

He watched the concentration of her face with interest. She was wrapped in the thought of the book. She was attacking it, on all sides, with the lance of her mind. When she threw herself into every new interest with such abandon, it was no wonder that she gave out impressions with the same intensity.

"What about the box I'm in?" he reminded her. She came out of her trance with a start.

"I'd forgotten all about you," she said frankly. "I had to explain you to the 'Heavenly Twins,' somehow. If I said you were an editor, they would naturally ask why you came to see me?"

"I never thought of that. I am afraid I've put you in an embarrassing position."

"Oh, not at all. I've put you in one. I told them you were the brother of an old classmate, stopping over in town for a day, and that you were to look me up."

"Did I know you well when you were in college?", he smiled.

"I didn't intend to have you know me well, but Jarvis showed such unexpected interest in you that you are suspected of having known me rather well."

"Sort of an old affair?"

"Sort of," she laughed up at him.

"I get the idea. Have I your permission to play the rôle in my own way?"

"Yes, only don't betray me. The 'Twins' will only be around at lunch-time. After that, we can talk book."

"Good! I'll play up with my best amateur theatrical manner," he responded, as they entered the garden. "This is the arithmetical garden," he said "It's true. Why, it's just like an 'Alice in Wonderland' experience, coming into something I have known in some other state of consciousness."

"Oh, yes, it's true. That's all I am, a sort of a camera."

"What a picture-book house!" he added. "It's just right for you."

As they went into the screened porch Jarvis arose, slowly, from the hammock. Mr. Strong stopped, really amazed, as the splendid figure, with its Apollo head, advanced. Bambi, too, was struck with some new alive quality in Jarvis that was compelling.

"This is Mr. Strong, Jarvis." The two men measured each other swiftly.

"I am glad to meet you," said Jarvis, with determined politeness.

"Thank you. It's a pleasure to meet Mrs. Jocelyn's husband."

Bambi laughed.

"Mrs. Jocelyn's husband is a new rôle for Jarvis," said she.

"I understand you and Mrs. Jocelyn are old friends," said Jarvis, perfunctorily.

"We are indeed old and dear friends."

"It has been some years since you met?"

"Yes, although I couldn't realize it this morning. There is a vivid quality about Mrs. Jocelyn which makes it impossible to forget anything about her. Don't you think so?"

Jarvis looked at Bambi, who grinned.

"Do you find me vivid, Jarvis?"

"You are certainly highly coloured."

"Ugh! That sounds like a Sunday supplement."

Conversation limped along like a tired cab horse. Even Bambi could not prod it into a semblance of life. Besides, she was choked with laughter at the picture of Jarvis sitting up, during his sacred work hours, full of bromides and manners. A discussion of New York almost released him. He thundered against modern cities with force. New York, discovered to be the home of Strong, became anathema to his host. It was the Goliath of Tyranny, Wealth, Degeneration, against which, David-like, he aimed his sling. Strong led him on, interested in his personality.

"Mrs. Jocelyn does not share your opinion of New York?"

"There are many of my opinions in which Mrs. Jocelyn does not share."

"Fortunately. Same opinions ought to constitute grounds for divorce," said Bambi.

"I understand you write plays, Mr. Jocelyn?"

"I do."

"You will have to endure New York, now and again, I suppose, when you begin to produce."

"We have formed a partnership," Bambi interpolated. "He writes and I sell."

"You are a lucky man," Strong complimented him.

Jarvis ignored the remark. Strong wondered why on earth Bambi had married him. He was wonderful to look at, but his manners were impossible. If he was in love with her, he disguised it successfully. The entrance of the Professor saved the situation.

"This is Mr. Strong, Professor. My father, Professor Parkhurst."

The Professor's hand-clasp and absent-minded smile seemed like a perfect character make-up. It was the kind of thing David Warfield would have played excellently. Strong had to shake himself to realize that these were real people, they were so individualized, so emphasized, like characters in a play.

"I am always glad to welcome my daughter's old friends," he said. "I forget when it was you knew each other, my dear."

"At college."

"Ah, yes, I remember. In college. How is your sister?"

"My sister?" repeated Strong. Bambi gasped. She had forgotten to tell him about Mary.

"I refer to your sister Mary," the Professor went on.

"Oh, sister Mary? Oh----" Strong recovered himself.

"You have other sisters?"

"Yes, oh, yes. Many."

"Many, indeed! How many, may I ask?"

"Thirteen," at a venture.

"Thirteen sisters! That is astonishing! And you are the only brother?"

"The only one."

"Are they all living?"

"No. All dead."

"Not Mary?" exclaimed Bambi.

"No, no, I meant to omit Mary. All but Mary are gone."

"That is very sad," sighed the Professor. "Thirteen sisters! How were they named?"

"After the thirteen original states," replied Ananias Strong.

"Extraordinary, but Mary----"

"Short for Maryland," prompted Strong.

Bambi almost choked. The subject seemed to fascinate her father.

"Is Mary married?" he inquired.

"Yes, quite. Quite married."

"I forget whether she visited us, my dear."

"No, Mary never came to Sunnyside."

"What a pity the friendships of our young days pass away, isn't it?"

"Not at all. It's a blessing," snapped Jarvis. "When you think of all the donkeys you played with in your youth----"

"Mary was not a donkey," giggled Bambi.

"I wasn't speaking of Mary," he remarked.

"I thought you said you were going to lunch in your room to-day, Jarvis," the Professor remarked.

"That was yesterday," Bambi said quickly.

"Oh, I can never remember details."

"I thought that was what you did remember," challenged Jarvis.

"You refer to figures. They, are not details. They are of enormous importance," began Professor Parkhurst.

"Now, children, let us not trot out the family skeleton. The 'Heavenly Twins' can talk from now until doomsday tolls on the importance or non-importance of mathematics. It's as thrilling as modern warfare when they get started, but I can't afford to let them go, because they get so excited."

"Luncheon am served, Miss Bambi," announced Ardelia.

Bambi led the way, with a sigh of relief. If she could only get through with it, and get the happy family out of the way! Jarvis must be punished for bad behaviour, and she set herself to the task at once. She turned her attention wholly upon Mr. Strong. She laughed and shined her eyes at him, referring to the dear, old days in the most shameless manner. She fairly caressed him with her voice, and his devotion capped her own.

The Professor ate his lunch oblivious to the comedy, but Jarvis scarcely touched his. Some new, painful thing was at work in him. He resented it every time this man looked at Bambi. He wanted to knock him down, and order her off to her room. Most of all, he was furious with himself for caring. He had the same instinct which possessed him in New York when he rushed to the club to sweep her out of his life, and so save himself. He determined to leave the moment luncheon was over. She must never know what a bad hour she had given him. Poor, ostrich Jarvis, with his head in the sands!

The luncheon was one of the most amusing events in Richard Strong's experience, and as for Bambi, she was at her best. She enjoyed herself utterly, until coffee put a period to Act Two.

XIII

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.

XIV

Three boiling days, and the major part of three boiling nights, Jarvis sweated and toiled over the scenario for the revised two acts. It was work that irked him, because he hated doing things over when the first glad joy of inspiration was gone, but he stuck to it. And the fourth day he set out for the house far up the Riverside Drive, armed with his manuscript and a sense of triumph.

Arrived at his destination, the butler announced that Miss Harper had gone on a motor trip for two days. No, she had left no word. Angry at himself for not having provided against such a situation by an appointment with the lady, furious at the thought of two days' delay, he betook himself to the Parke offices in the hope of finding some word for him there. Mr. Parke was busy and could not see him, announced the keeper of the keys to heaven, who sat at the outer gate. No, Mrs. Parke had left no word for a Mr. Jocelyn. No, she knew nothing of Mrs. Parke's plans or movements. No, she could not ask Mr. Parke. Besides, he wouldn't know.

Jarvis descended the many stairs in a thickening gloom. Wait, wait, wait! That was part of the discipline Bambi talked of so wisely. Well, he then and there decided that the day would come when he would walk past every managerial outpost in the city, and invade the sanctum without so much as presenting a visiting-card.