Many a gay-hearted girl has sat, as Bambi sat, looking off over the
housetops in this "City of Beautiful Nonsense," dreaming her dreams of
conquest and success. Youth makes no compromise with life. It demands
all, passionately; loses all, or wins, with anguish of spirit. So it was
with Bambi, the high-handed, imperious little mite. She willed Fame and
Fortune for Jarvis and herself in full measure. She wanted to count in
this great maelstrom of a city. She wanted two pedestals--one for Jarvis
and one for herself--to lift them above the crowd. If all the young
things who think such thoughts as these, in hall bedrooms and attic
chambers, could mount their visioned pedestals, the traffic police would
be powerless, and all the road to Albany lined like a Hall of Fame.
But, fortunately, our practical heroine took no account of failure. She
planned a campaign for Jarvis. She would go first to Belasco with his
play. Mr. Belasco would receive him at once, recognize a master mind,
and accept the play after an immediate hearing. Of course Jarvis would
insist on reading his play aloud, so that Mr. Belasco might get the
points clearly. He would come away with a thousand dollars advance
royalty in his pocket, and then would come the delicious excitement of
rehearsals, in which she would help. She saw Jarvis before the curtain
making a first-night's speech. A brilliant series of pictures followed,
with the Jarvis Jocelyns as central figures, surrounded by the wealth
and brains of New York, London, Paris!
While Jarvis was mounting like a meteor, she was making a reputation as
a writer. When her place in the literary ranks was so assured that the
_Saturday Evening Post_ accepted her stories without so much as reading
them; when everybody was asking "Who is this brilliant writer?--this
combination of O. Henry, Edith Wharton, and W.D. Howells?" then, and
only then, would she come out from behind her _nom-de-plume_ and assume
her position as Mrs. Jarvis Jocelyn, wife of the famous playwright.
So absorbed was she in her moving pictures that Jarvis's rap sounded to
her like a cannon shot.
"Yes? Who is it?" she called.
"Jarvis," he answered. "Are you ready for breakfast?"
"Just a minute," she prevaricated. "Wait for me in the library."
She plunged into her tub and donned her clothes in record time.
Fortunately, Jarvis did not fret over her tardiness. He was lost in an
article on the drama in a current magazine.
"Good morrow, my liege lord," quoth Bambi, radiant, fresh, bewitching.
"This man has no standards at all," he replied, out of the magazine.
She quietly closed it and took it from him.
"I prefer to test the breakfast standards of this club," she laughed.
"Did you sleep?" she added.
"I always sleep."
"Let's play to-day," she added, over the coffee cups.
"Play?"
"Yes. We've never been anywhere together before. I've put aside an
appropriation for amusement. I say we draw on that to-day."
"All right. Where shall we go?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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