Bambi (Cooke)/Chapter 24
XXIV
WHAT luck did you have with the climax, yesterday?” she asked Jarvis, next day, as she came into the workroom.
“None at all. I worked all day, and tore it up last night.”
“Oh, why did you do that?”
“It was hopeless. If you wanted to teach me how vital you are to this work, you did it.”
“Such a thing never entered my mind.”
“Shall we begin at it now?”
“Of course. I’m keen to get at it.”
She plunged into the situation and swept all obstacles before her. The entire reaction from yesterday’s pleasure and change went into her work. Lunch-time came as a shock, the morning had fled so fast. Jarvis sighed as he piled up the pages.
“You work like an electric dynamo,” he remarked.
“I always work better after a happy vacation. Why don’t you run off for a day, to get your breath, as it were?”
“Where would I run to?”
“You might go look up the author-lady you’re so interested in,” she remarked, wickedly.
He made no answer to that.
The noon mail brought Bambi’s latest letter from Jarvis. All mail was brought immediately to her, so she had a chance to extract the telltale letters. Jarvis wrote:
“Dear Lady: Your letters are fast becoming a necessity to me. I look for them as eagerly as a boy. I find myself more and more absorbed in the ‘Francesca’ of your fancy, whom I feel sure is the essence of you. Is it not so?
“I am bitterly unhappy these days—lonely, as I have never been before. The emotional side of life has always been a closed book to me, one I disdained to read. So once my heart begins to call attention to itself, I suppose the more poignant will be my experience.
“I have lately come back from a long exile spent in a hideous place. I brought with me the first hunger for love I had ever known. But I found no answering need in the heart I turned to. I have been thrown back on myself, to eat my heart out, because I know now that it is my own fault. If I had tried sooner to make myself a lover, I would not have to resign that place to another man.
“Why do I pour these personal sorrows upon you, my Lady of Sympathy? I am heartsick for comfort.
Bambi laid her cheek against the poor, hurt letter, and cried.
“My poor, bungling Jarvis, how I must have hurt you!”
She read it again, and all at once light flooded in.
“Why, it’s Richard, of course! He thinks I am in love with Richard! The dear old goose! He sees so little and sees that crooked.”
She went in search of him, determined to tell the whole foolish story, to explain the imaginary obstacles that divided them. But he was not to be found, so the impulse died, and she determined to play the farce out to its end, and now, that she knew the core of the whole situation, she could make it count for their final readjustment.
She wrote him at once:
“My Dear Jarvis: At last I feel that there is truth between us. I have suspected that you were not happy in your love life. But I wanted not to pry into locked chambers. Now we can be glad of the bond that lies between us, for I, too, go heart hungry through the days.
“I have not spoken to you of my home, or my husband, but now that you have become such a part of my thought life, I feel no disloyalty in the truth.
“My husband is a man who has never felt the want of affection. He is so self-centred in his devotion to his work that I have always been shut out of his heart. At first this did not trouble me, for I was ambitious, too. But so many things have happened to develop me this last year, to awaken me to my full womanhood!
“I have had to face, as you do, the ache of an unwanted love, tossed back to eat its way like a corrosive acid. Once, not long ago, I thought, perhaps, things were going to change for me. I thought he wanted me. But now I have come to know that it is to another woman he turns for sympathy and understanding.
“So, you see, my dear, we two have the same heart history. No wonder we have felt our way through time and space, to clasp hands in such deep affinity. I lay my hands upon your head, Jarvis.
His reply came by the first mail.
“Oh, my dear, my dear, we have found each other at last, in all truth. It was meant from the beginning of time that it should be so. Let me come to you. I cannot bear to live another hour without the touch of your hand. To think that I do not know your name, or the colour of your kind eyes! Say that I may come?
“Devotedly,
“Jarvis, My Big Boy: You may not come yet. It is part of a dream, cherished since you came to be the heart of me, that we should not come together until the night of the opening of our play. I know you will poohpooh this as sentimental nonsense. You may even call it theatrical. But let me have my way, this last one time. Afterward, my way shall be yours, beloved. Write me to say you will be patient with my foolishness!
“I am afraid of our meeting. Suppose I should fall short of your ideal of me? That you should think me ugly or old, I could not bear it. I have come to know all my happiness lies in the balance of that one night, toward which we walk, you and I, every minute of every day.
His answer came, special delivery:
“It shall be as you wish, dear heart. But if anything should happen to delay the opening of the play, I think I should ask you to remit the sentence of banishment. I live only to look into your eyes!
“How can you say that you may disappoint me? If you were old, humpbacked, ugly—what difference? You are mine! We must find freedom for ourselves and a new life. I adore you.
“I wouldn’t have thought it of Jarvis,” said Bambi as she read it. “He makes a very creditable lover.”
“My Dear One: I am as impatient as you are for our meeting. I gladly agree that we shall bring it about, at once, if anything happens to postpone the play opening.
“What you say about being indifferent to my looks makes me happy. I shall not try you too far, my lover. I’m quite pretty and young. Did you know I was young?
“You speak so confidently of freedom and a new life together. Are we to shed our old mates, like Nautilus shells? My new coming into love makes me pitiful. Must we be ruthless?
“Dear, Gentle Heart: I do not wish to seem ruthless to you, much less to be so. But has our suffering not entitled us to some joy? I know my wife to be absorbed in another man; you say your husband turns to another woman. We represent to them stumbling-blocks between them and their happiness. Surely it is only right that we should all be freed to find our true mates.
“I find it daily more of a burden to carry this secret in my heart, when knowledge of it would lighten my wife’s unhappiness. Shall we not confess the situation, and discuss plans for separation? I owe this girl who bears my name more than I can ever pay. I would not do anything to hurt her pride. Tell me what you think about it, dear one?
“Jarvis Dear: Again I must seem to oppose you. Please let us keep our secrets to ourselves until our meeting. Suppose that something should happen even yet? Suppose we should not wish to take this step when the time comes? I do not want you to hurt your wife. I respect and love you for your sense of obligation to her. How can she help loving you, my Jarvis?
“When the day comes for me to prove my devotion, may you say about me that you owe me more than you can ever pay.
“I live only for the completion of the play.