Bambi (Cooke)/Chapter 11
XI
IT LOOKS very out-of-the-worldly, doesn’t it?” Bambi said as they came in sight of home.
“It looks like Paradise to me,” sighed Jarvis, holding open the gate for her.
“Enter Eve, dragging the serpent,” she laughed as she passed in. “Eve never played in an arithmetical garden,” she added. “If she had, there would probably have been no immortal fall.”
“The number eights look tired,” Jarvis commented, ignoring her witticism.
She spied the Professor afar sitting at work on the piazza. She flew along the path and burst in upon him.
“Daddy!” she cried, and enveloped him. His astonishment was poignant.
“My dear,” he said, “my dear. Why, I must have forgotten that you were coming. I would have been at the station.”
“I knew you’d forget, so I didn’t bother you with it. How are you? Have you been lonesome? Did you miss us? Where’s Ardelia?” all in a breath. The Professor smiled.
“Question one, I am well. Two, I cannot say that I have been lonesome. Three, I did not miss you. Four, Ardelia is in the kitchen. How are you, Jarvis?” he added as his son-in-law appeared.
“I am well, sir. I trust you are the same.”
“Thank you. I enjoy good health.”
“Stop it! Sounds like the first aid to manners. Here’s Ardelia. Well, how do you do?”
Ardelia’s face was decorated with a most expansive grin.
“Howdy, Miss Bambi? Howdy, Massa Jarvis? I sho'r am glad to see you folks home again.” She shook hands with both of them.
“How’s everything, Ardelia?”
“All right, Miss. Eberything is all right. We got ‘long fine together, the Perfessor and me. We des went about forgettin’ eberyting and habin’ a mighty comfortable time. Did you all have a good time on your honeymoon?”
“Fine,” said Bambi. “We brought you some presents, that will make your eyes ache, and, ’Delia, we’re famished.”
“Dog’s foot! Heah I stan’ a-gassin’ and a-talkin’ and you all hungry as wolfses.” She hurried off, muttering.
Jarvis and Bambi sat down.
“Isn’t there something you want to tell me? I can’t just remember what you went to New York for?”
“We went to sell my play,” Jarvis prompted.
“To be sure. It had escaped me for a moment. Were you successful?”
“We were not.”
“Oh, Jarvis, how can you say that? We don’t know yet. Belasco is considering it.”
“What is this Belasco?”
Bambi looked at Jarvis, and they both laughed.
“Isn’t he refreshing?” she remarked. “I’ve thought for two weeks in terms of managers. They fill the universe. They are the gods. Their nod is life or death, and now my nearest relative says, ‘What is Belasco?’”
“It’s a sort of meat sauce, isn’t it?”
Consternation on both their faces, then an outburst from Bambi.
“No, no! That’s tabasco, you dear, blessed innocent.”
“Belasco is one of the leading managers in New York, Professor,” explained Jarvis, patiently. “He is as well known as Pierpont Morgan or Theodore Roosevelt.”
“Indeed! Well, I am not surprised at my ignorance. I have no interest in present-day drama. It is degenerate mush.”
“Have you seen anything, since ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’?” Jarvis inquired.
“I have seen ‘The Second Mrs. Tanqueray,’” he replied conclusively.
“That was considered strong meat in its day, but now we have ‘Damaged Goods,’” mused Jarvis.
“And what are ‘Damaged Goods’?” inquired the Professor.
“What are Yonkers? Don’t tell him, Jarvis—he’s too young to know. It’s an ugly modern play. We saw some things you might have enjoyed. Oh, I often wished for you.”
“Thank you, my dear, but I have no desire to enter that cauldron of humanity.”
“I agree with you, Professor Parkhurst.”
“That is a rare occurrence, I may say,” answered the Professor, with a twinkle.
“Thank goodness, you have me to prod you into life. You would both sit in your dens and figure and write until you blinked like owls in the night. I have stored up energy enough, from these two weeks in the cauldron, to run me for months. I didn’t miss one thing, ugly or beautiful. I shall use it all.”
“Use it? How use it, my dear?”
“In my thoughts, my opinions, my life.”
“Dear me!” said her father, staring at her. “What odd things you say!”
“It’s true, what she says,” Jarvis ejaculated. “She rolled New York up on reels, like a moving-picture show, and I have no doubt she could give us a very good performance.”
“I shall,” quoth Bambi.
“It is rather a pity you waste your impressions, Bambi. Why don’t you write them down?” Jarvis patronized.
“In a young lady’s diary, I suppose. No, thanks.”
“One author in a family is enough,” commented the Professor, heartily.
“You ought to tell us your conclusion about your career. Did you settle it in your mind?”
“I did.”
“A career?” anxiously, from Professor Parkhurst.
“Yes, wealth and fame are in my grasp.”
“You haven’t done anything rash, my dear?”
“Well, slightly rash, but not the rashest I could do.”
“Is it dancing?” from Jarvis.
“Of a sort.”
“Not public dancing?”
“No, private,” she giggled.
“Will it take you away much?” Jarvis asked her.
“Oh, I’ll go to New York occasionally.”
“It is to be a secret, I take it?” the Professor said.
“It is, old Sherlock Holmes.”
They slipped back into their routine of life as if it had never been broken. Jarvis, after two perturbed days of restlessness, went into a work fit over a new play. The Professor was busy with final examinations, so Bambi was left alone with plenty of leisure in which to do her next story.
She wisely decided to write herself—in other words, to dramatize her own experiences, to draw on her emotions, her own views of life. She must leave it to Jarvis to rouse and stir people. She would be content to amuse and charm them. So she boldly called her tale by her own name, “Francesca,” and she shamelessly introduced the Professor and Jarvis, with a thin disguise, and chortled over their true likeness after she had dipped them in the solution of her imagination. She relied on the fact that neither of them ever looked between the covers of a magazine. Besides, even if they chanced upon the story, they would never recognize their own portraits.
A few days before the prize story was published, a special copy came to her from Mr. Strong. She hid it until the “Twins” were gone. Then she hurried out to the piazza and the hammock with it. It was a thrilling moment. “Prize Story by a Wonderful New Writer” stared up at her from the front page. Her tale had the place of honour in the makeup, and it was illustrated—double-page illustrations—by James Montgomery Flagg, the supreme desire of every young writer. She hugged the magazine. She scanned it over and over. She laid it on the table, picked it up casually, and turned to the first story indifferently, just to squeeze the full joy out of it. Then she pounded a pile of pillows into shape, drew her feet up under her, and began to read her own work. She smiled a good deal, she chuckled, finally she laughed outright, hugging herself. At this unfortunate moment Jarvis appeared. She looked as guilty as a detected criminal.
“What’s the joke?”
“Oh, I was laughing at a story in here.”
“How can you read that trash?”
“It isn’t trash. It’s perfectly delightful.”
“What is it?” He came nearer to her, and she clutched the magazine tightly.
“Oh, just a prize story.”
“A prize story? And funny enough to make you laugh? Not O. Henry?”
“Of course not. He’s dead. A new writer, it says.”
He held out his hands for it, and, perforce, she resigned it to him.
“Francesca!” he exclaimed.
“Odd, isn’t it? That’s what attracted me to it,” Bambi lied.
“Well, I suppose there are other Francescas. I came to ask you to listen to a scenario.”
“Good! I shall be delighted,” she replied cordially, folding the magazine over her finger.
So the fatal moment came and passed. Her secret was safe. She kept the cherished magazine in her own room, read and reread it, patting its cover, as one would a curly head.
Upon the receipt of her second story came a telegram from Strong, “Can you see me on Thursday? New plan for stories. Arrive in Sunnyside ten in the morning.” She wired him to come, then sat down to work up an explanation of him for the “Heavenly Twins.” He would be there for lunch—he must be accounted for. She discarded several plans, and finally decided to introduce him as the brother of a college classmate, in town for the day. She would get rid of the family speedily, so that she and Mr. Strong might have time for the conference. What on earth did he want to see her about? It must be important, to bring him from New York. Maybe he was disappointed with the second story, and wanted to break the contract. It was his kind way to come and say it, instead of writing it, but it was a blow. She had felt that the second tale was so much better than the first. She went over it, in her mind, trying to pick flaws in it. Well, she could always go to dancing, if everything else failed.
At lunch she casually remarked, “Richard Strong is coming to lunch on Thursday. I hope you will both be here.”
“Who may Richard Strong be?” inquired her father.
“He is the brother of an old classmate, Mary Strong.”
“Does he live here?” Jarvis asked.
“No. He lives in New York.”
“What brings him to Sunnyside?”
“He didn’t say.”
“I never heard of him before,” Professor Parkhurst said.
“Oh, yes. I used to talk about him a great deal. He’s a fine fellow.”
“Was he a special friend?” Jarvis asked, roused to some interest.
Bambi hesitated. She was getting in deeper than she planned.
“Yes, rather special. Not intimate, but special.”
“What is his business?” asked her father.
“I don’t remember.”
“Rich idler, I suppose,” Jarvis scorned.
“He used to work when I knew him.”
“Well, we shall be glad to see the young man. Would you like me to change off my afternoon classes and remain at home?”
“Oh, no. Don’t think of it!” Bambi cried, with unpremeditated warmth, which focussed Jarvis’s eyes upon her. “He’ll be here only a little while, and we will reminisce. He would bore you to death.”
“I like to be cordial to your beaus.”
“Professor Parkhurst, I am a married woman.” “Dear me, so you are. I am always forgetting Jarvis. If he is a bore, I’ll lunch at the club.”
“Possibly you would prefer me to lunch out, too,” said Jarvis, pointedly.
“Not at all. I want you both here,” said Bambi, with irritation, closing the incident. She had a feeling that she had not handled the situation as well as she had planned to do.