Bambi Part 9

"I'll come and listen."

"If you decide to undertake me, I insist that you shall not continue this scornful avoidance of me. If we three are to live together, we must live in harmony, which is necessary to my work."

"Whose favour is this, yours or mine?"

"Favour? Good heavens! you don't think it is a favour to give me food and a roof for two years, do you? I thought it was an opportunity for you."

The Professor, not easily moved to mirth, did an imitation of laughter, holding both his sides. Jarvis turned his charming, boyish smile upon him, and walked up the path to the house. Strange what things amused Bambi and her parent!

That night, after dinner, Bambi arranged the electric reading light in the screened porch, drew a big chair beside it, placed the Professor's favourite chaise-lounge near by, and got him into it. Then she went in search of her performer. She looked all over the house for him, to finally discover him on the top floor in hiding.

"Come on! I've got everything all ready, even the Professor."

"I am terrified," Jarvis admitted. "Suppose you should not understand what I have written? Suppose you thought it was all rubbish?"

"If I think so, I will say so. Isn't that the idea? You are trying it on the dog to see if it goes?"

"If you think it is rubbish, don't say anything."

"How silly! If you are spending your time on trash, you ought to know it, and get over it, and begin to write sense."

"I feel like one of the Professor's slugs," he muttered.

"Better try us on the simplest one."

"Well, I will read you 'Success.'"

She ran downstairs, and he followed, to the piazza.

There was no sign of the Professor.

"Ardelia," called Bambi, "where is the Professor?"

"I don't know, ma'am. I seen him headed for the garden."

"Professor Parkhurst, come in here!" Bambi called. "We are to hear Jarvis's play."

"Oh, that is it. I couldn't remember why I was placed in that chair, and Ardelia couldn't remember. So it occurred to me that I had forgotten my trowel," he said. He put the trowel, absent-mindedly, in the tea basket, and took the seat arranged for Jarvis.

"Here, you sit in your regular seat," Bambi objected, hauling him up.

"That isn't wise, my dear. I am sure to go to sleep."

"We'll see that you don't," she laughed.

"I've never heard a play read aloud that I can remember," said the Professor.

"You will probably be very irritating, then. Don't interrupt me. If you fumble things, or make a noise, I'll stop."

"That knowledge helps some," retorted the Professor, with a twinkle. "If I can't stand it, I'll whistle."

"Be quiet," said his daughter. "Go ahead, Jarvis."

"What is this play supposed to be about?" Professor Parkhurst inquired.

"The t.i.tle is 'Success.' It is about a woman who sold herself for success, and paid with her soul."

"Is it a comedy?"

"Good Lord, no! I don't try to make people laugh. I make them think."

"Go ahead."

"Don't interrupt again, father."

Jarvis began to read, nervously at first, then with greater confidence.

He read intelligently, but without dramatic value, and Bambi longed to seize the ma.n.u.script and do it herself. Once, during the first act, the Professor cleared his throat.

"Don't do that!" said Jarvis, without pausing for the Professor's hasty apology.

The play told the story of a woman whose G.o.d was Success. She sacrificed everything to him. First her mother and father were offered up, that she might have a career. Then her lover. She married a man she did not love, that she might mount one step higher, and finally she sacrificed her child to her devouring ambition. When she reached the goal she had visioned from the first, she was no longer a human being, with powers of enjoyment or suffering. She was, instead, a monster, incapable of appreciating what she had won, and in despair she killed herself.

There were big scenes, some bold, telling strokes, in Jarvis's handling of his theme. Again, it was utterly lacking in drama. The author stopped the action and took to the pulpit.

At the end of the first act he stopped and looked at the faces of his audience. The Professor was awake and deeply puzzled. This strange young man was holding up to his view a perfectly strange anomaly which he called a woman. The Professor had never dreamed of such a hybrid. He couldn't grasp it. He gasped at Jarvis's audacity.

Bambi sat curled up in the end of a wicker couch, her feet drawn under her, like a Chinese idol, every nerve attuned to attention. He noticed how, without words, she seemed to emanate responsiveness and understanding.

"Well?" he said.

"Let's wait until you have finished to discuss it," she said.

"Is it any good?"

"In spots it's great. In other spots it is incredibly rotten."

"My child," protested the Professor.

"Go on!" she ordered.

The second act began well, mounted halfway to its climax, and fell flat.

Some of the lines, embodying the new individualistic philosophy of woman, roused the Professor to protest.

"Rubbish, sir!" he cried. "Impossible rubbis.h.!.+ No woman ever thought such things."

"Take your nose out of your calculus, and look about you, Professor,"

retorted Jarvis. "You haven't looked around since the stone age."