Bambi (Cooke)/Chapter 2
II
TWO days later Jarvis, shaved, properly dressed, and apparently sane, appeared on the piazza, where Bambi and the Professor were at lunch. He hesitated on the threshold until they both turned toward him.
“Good morning,” he ventured.
“Good morning, Jarvis,” said Bambi gayly.
“Morning,” tersely, from the head of the house.
“Might I ask how long I have been sojourning on the top floor of this house, and how I got there?”
“Do you mean to say you don’t know?”
“Haven’t an idea. I have a faint recollection of a big disturbance, and then peace, heavenly peace, with black coffee every once in a while, and big ideas flowing like Niagara.”
Bambina’s eyes shone at him, but her father looked troubled.
“You know what the big disturbance was, don’t you?” he asked.
“It seems to me I wanted paper—that somebody was taking my things away—”
“You’d better tell him, Francesca; he doesn’t remember, so I don’t think it can be legal.”
Jarvis looked from one to the other.
“What’s all this? I don’t seem to get you.”
Bambi’s laugh bubbled over.
“You get me, all right.”
“For goodness’ sake, talk sense.”
“You came here, three days ago, in a trance, and announced that you had been bounced from the boarding-house, and that you needed paper to blot up the big ideas—the Niagara ideas—”
“Did I?”
“So I took you in, redeemed your clothes for you—”
“It was you who planted me upstairs in that heavenly quiet place, and brought black coffee?”
She nodded.
“God bless you for it.”
“I did something else, too.”
“Did you? What?”
“I married you.”
He looked at her, dazed, and then at the Professor.
“What’s the joke?” he asked.
“There is no joke,” said the Professor sternly. “She did it. I tried to stop her, but she never listens to me.”
“Do you mean, Bambi—” he began.
“I mean you told me to go ahead, so I got a license and a minister, and married you.”
“But where was I when you did it?”
“You were there, I thought, but it didn’t seem to take. Can’t you remember anything at all about it, Jarvis?”
“Not a thing. Word of honour! How long have we been married?”
“Three days. You couldn’t come out of the play, so I dragged you upstairs, fed you at stated periods, and let you alone.”
He looked at her as if for the first time.
“Why, Bambi,” he said, “you are a wonderful person.”
“I have known it all along,” she replied, sweetly.
“But why, in God’s name, did you do it?”
“That’s what I say,” interpolated the Professor.
“Oh, it just came to me when I saw you needed looking after—”
“Don’t you believe it. She intended to do it all along,” said her father, grimly. “I tried to dissuade her. I told her you were a dreamer, penniless, and always would be, but she wouldn’t listen to my practical talk.”
“I seem to get a pretty definite idea of your opinion of me, sir. Why didn’t you wake me up, so I could prevent this catastrophe?”
“I supposed you were awake. I didn’t know you worked in a cataleptic fit.”
“Catastrophe!” echoed Bambina.
“Certainly. Why don’t you look at it in a practical way, as your father says? I never had any money. I probably never will. I hate the stuff. It’s the curse of the age.”
“I know all that.”
“You will be wanting food and clothes no doubt, and you will expect me to provide them.”
“Oh, never! You don’t think I would take such an advantage of you, Jarvis, as to marry you when you were in a work fit and then expect you to support me?”
The Professor shook his head in despair, and arose.
“It’s beyond me, all this modern madness. I wash my hands of the whole affair.”
“That’s right, Professor Parkhurst. I married him, you know; you didn’t.”
“Well, keep him out of my study,” he warned.
Then he gathered up his scattered belongings, and turned his absent gaze on Bambi.
“What is it I want? Oh, yes. Call Ardelia.”
Bambi rang, and Ardelia answered the summons.
“Ardelia, did I ask you to remind me of anything this morning?”
She scratched her head in deep thought.
“No, sah, not’s as I recolleck. It was yistiddy you tol’ me to remin’ you, and I done forgot what it was.”
“Ardelia, you are not entirely reliable,” he remarked, as he passed her.
“No, sah. I ain’t jes’ what you call—” she muttered, following him out.
Bambi brought up the rear, chuckling over this daily controversy, which never failed to amuse her.
When the front door slammed, she came back to where Jarvis sat, his untouched luncheon before him. He watched her closely as she flashed into the room, like some swift, vivid bird perching opposite him.
“I spoiled your luncheon,” she laughed.
“Bambi, why did you do this thing?”
“Good heavens, I don’t know. I did it because I’m I, I suppose.”
“You wanted to marry me?” he persisted.
“I thought I ought to. Somebody had to look after you, and I am used to looking after father. I like helpless men.”
“So you were sorry for me? It was pity—”
“Rubbish. I believe in you. If you have a chance to work out your salvation you will be a big man. If you are hectored to death, you will kill yourself, or compromise, and that will be the end of you.”
“You see that—you understand—”
He pushed back his chair and came to her.
“You think that little you can stand between me and these things that I must compromise with?”
She nodded at him, brightly. He leaned over, took her two small hands, and leaned his face against them.
“Thank you,” he said, simply; “but I won’t have it.”
“Why not?”
“Because I am not worth it. You saw me in a work fit. I’m a devil. I’m like one possessed. I swear and rave if I am interrupted. I can’t eat nor sleep till I get the madness out of me. I am not human. I am not normal. I am not fit to live with.”
“Very well, we will build a cage at the top of the house, and when you feel a fit coming on you can go up there. I’ll slip you food through a wire door so you can’t bite me, and I’ll exhibit you for a fee as the wildest genius in captivity.”
“Bambi, be serious. This is no joke. This is awful!”
“You consider it awful to be married to me?”
“I am not thinking of myself. I am thinking of you. You have got yourself into a pretty mess, and I’ve got to get you out of it.”
“How?”
“I’ll divorce you.”
“You’ve got no grounds. I’ve been a kind, dutiful wife to you. I haven’t been near you since I married you, except to give you food.”
“How do you expect we are to live? Nobody wants my plays.”
“How do you know? You never try to sell them. You told me so yourself. You feel so superior to managers and audiences that you never offer them.”
“I know. I occasionally go to the theatre, by mistake, and I see what they want.”
“That’s no criterion. We won’t condemn even a Broadway manager until he proves himself such a dummy as not to want your plays.”
“Broadway? Think of a play of mine on Broadway! Think of the fat swine who waddle into those theatres!”
“My dear, there are men of brains writing for the theatre to-day who do not scorn those swine.”
“Men of brains? Who, who, I ask you?”
“Bernard Shaw.”
“Showman, trickster.”
“Barrie.”
“Well, maybe.”
“Pinero?”
“Pinero knows his trade,” he admitted.
“Galsworthy, Brieux.”
“Galsworthy is a pamphleteer. Brieux is no artist. He is a surgeon. They have nothing to say to Broadway. Broadway swallows the pills they offer because of their names, but they might just as well give them the sugar drip they want, for all the good it does.”
“Well, they get heard, anyhow. What’s the use of writing a play if it isn’t acted? Of course we’ll sell your plays.”
“But if we don’t, where will you be?”
“Oh, I’ll be all right. I mean to support myself, anyhow, and you, too, if the plays don’t go.”
He laughed.
“You are an amusing mite. Queer I never noticed you before.”
“You’ll like me, if you continue to be aware of me. I’m nice,” she laughed up at him, and he smiled back.
“How do you intend to make this fortune, may I ask?”
“I haven’t decided yet. Of course I can dance. If worst came to worst, I can make a big salary dancing.”
“Dancing?” he exploded.
“Yes, didn’t you ever hear of it? With the feet, you know, and the body, and the eyes, and the arms. So!”
She twirled about him in a circle, like a gay little figurine. He watched her, fascinated.
“You can dance, can’t you?”
“I can. At times I am quite inspired. Now, if you and the Professor will be sensible, and let me go to New York and take a job, I could support us all in luxury. You could write and he could figure.”
“I don’t see that it is any business of ours what you do, but I certainly won’t let you support me.”
“Do you really mean it isn’t your business?”
“Why should it be?”
“Well, if I am your wife, and his daughter, some people would think that it was distantly related to your business.”
“Why New York? Why not here?”
“In this town they think I am crazy now. But if I burst out as a professional dancer— Wow!”
“That’s so. It’s a mean little town, but it’s quiet. That’s why I stay. It’s quiet.”
“You wouldn’t mind my being away, if I went to New York, would you?”
“Oh, no. I’d be busy.”
“That’s good. I really think you are almost ideal.”
“Ideal?”
“As a husband. They are usually so exacting and interfering.”
“I’ve not decided yet to be your husband.”
“But you are it.”
“Suppose you should fall in love with somebody else?”
“I’m much more apt to fall in love with you.”
“Heaven forbid!” he exclaimed, and came to her side quickly. “Bambi, promise me that no matter what happens you will not do that. You will not fall in love with me.”
She looked at him a minute, and then laughed contagiously.
“I am serious about this. My work is everything to me. Nothing matters but just that, and it might be a dreadful interruption if you fell in love with me.”
“I don’t see why, unless you fell in love with me.”
“No danger of that,” said he, and at her laugh turned to her again. “If ever you see any signs of my being such a fool as that, you warn me, will you?”
“And what will you do then?”
“I’ll run away. I will go to the ends of the earth. That particular madness is death to creative genius.”
“All right. I’ll warn you.”
“I’ve got to begin to polish my first draft to-day, so I’ll go upstairs and get at it.”
“Will you be gone two days this trip?”
He turned to smile at her.
“Some people would think you were eccentric,” he said.
“They might,” she responded.
“I am almost sane when I polish,” he laughed. “It’s only when I create that I am crazy.”
“It’s all right then, is it? We go on?”
“Go on?”
“Being married?”
“Well, I have no objection, if you insist, but you’d better think over what I told you. I think you have made a mistake; and you shall never support me.”
“I never think over my mistakes,” said Bambi. “I just live up to them.”
“I agree with your father that you risk a good deal.”
“Risks are exciting.”
“If you don’t like it, you can divorce me the next time I am in a work fit. I’ll never know it, so it will be painless.”
“Jarvis, that’s unfair.”
He came back quickly.
“That was intended for humour,” he explained.
“I so diagnosed it,” she flashed back at him.
He looked down at her diminutive figure with its well-shaped, patrician head, its sensitive mouth, its wide-set, shining eyes.
“Star-shine,” he smiled.
She poked him with a sharp “What?”
“You don’t think I ought to—to—kiss you, possibly, do you?”
“Mercy, no!”
“Good! I was afraid you might expect something of me.”
“Oh, no. Think what you have done for the girl,” she quoted, and he heard her laugh down the hall and out into the garden. He took a step as if to follow her. Then, with a shake of his shoulders, he climbed the stairs to his new workshop with a smile on his lips.