Part 18

"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 title 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 manuscript 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 God 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.