Bambi Part 17

"Life has beaten me raw to-day," she answered him, with a shadowy smile.

VI

Bambi announced the next morning that she had to have an entire day in which to get over "Damaged Goods." Jarvis was nothing loath to put off the evil hour when he was to start on his manager-hunt. So they agreed on one more day of freedom.

The clouds threatened, so they looked over the papers for an announcement of picture exhibitions, concerts, and lectures. The choice was bewildering. They finally decided on a morning lecture, at Berkeley Lyceum, ent.i.tled "The Religion of the Democrat." They made their way to the little theatre, in a leisurely manner, to find the street blocked with motor cars, the sidewalk and foyer crowded with fas.h.i.+onable women, fully half an hour before the lecture was announced. Distracted ushers tried to find places for the endless stream of ardent culturites, until even the stage was invaded and packed in solid rows.

"This is astonis.h.i.+ng," said Jarvis. "What on earth do these fine birds care for democracy?"

"Must be the lecturer," said wise Bambi.

"Humph! A little mental pap before they run on to lunch."

The cackle and babble ceased suddenly as the chairman and lecturer appeared. After a few announcements, the leading man was introduced.

Bambi was right. It was the man. You felt personality in the slow way he swept the audience with his eyes, in the charming, friendly smile, in the humour of his face. The women fairly purred.

Jarvis grunted impatiently, and Bambi felt a sense of guilt for her ready response to this man, who had not yet spoken. Then he began, in a good, resonant voice, to hook this lecture to the one of the week before.

"Oh, it's a course," Bambi whispered.

Jarvis nodded. He wished he was well out of it. He hated the woman-idol kind of lecturer. Then a stray phrase caught his wandering attention, and he began to listen. The man had the "gift of tongues." That was evident. This was his last conscious comment. It seemed but a few minutes later that he turned to Bambi, as the lecturer sat down. She sat forward in her chair, with that absorbed responsiveness he had marked in her before. He touched her before she realized that it was time to go.

"That was big, wasn't it?" she said.

"It was. He is somebody. He gave them real meat instead of pap."

"And they liked it," Bambi said, reaching for her furs, her bag, and her umbrella, strewn under the seat in her trance.

"That fellow is all right. He makes you feel that there are fine, big things to be done in the world, and that you must be about it--not to-morrow, but to-day," Jarvis said, as they pushed their way out.

"I wonder what these women are doing about it?" Bambi speculated.

"Talking."

"Boo!" she scoffed at him.

They strolled, with the strollers, on the avenue. They ate what Jarvis dubbed "a soupcon" of lunch in a tea-shop, and to elude a dribble of rain they betook themselves to the Armory, down on Seventeenth Street, to the much-talked-of International Modern Art Exhibition.

Adam and Eve, the first day in the Garden, could not have been any more dazed than these two young things who had strayed in out of the rain. No sated sensibilities here, prodded by the constant shocks of metropolitan "latest thing," but fresh, enthusiastic interest was their priceless possession. They wandered aimlessly through several rooms, until they emerged into the Cubist and Futurist sections and stood rooted to the floor with surprise and horror.

"What are these?" Bambi demanded.

"Damaged Goods," Jarvis laughed, with a rare attempt at a joke.

"Are they serious?"

"Tragic, I should say."

He looked about with an expression of amus.e.m.e.nt, but Bambi felt actual, physical nausea at the sight of the vivid blue and orange and purple.

"It's wicked!" she said, between closed teeth.

"Let's sit down and try to get the idea," said Jarvis.

"There isn't any idea."

"Oh, yes, there must be. The directors would never get together an acre of these atrocities unless there was some excuse."

"It's low and degenerate. It's a school of hideousness. Come away!"

"You go sit in another room if you like. I am going to give these fellows a fair chance. Maybe they've got hold of something new."

"There is nothing new about that awful woman with a decayed face. She has been dead for weeks."

"Just put your emotions away, Bambi, and train your mind on this thing.

Here is a whole school of men, working in a new medium, along new ideas.

They can't all be crazy, you know."

"You like it?"

"Of course I don't like it, but it interests me. I haven't read or heard anything about it, so it is a shock."

"You shall not make for yourselves false images," she said, shaking her head.

"Maybe these maniacs are trying to break up the conventions of Painting and Sculpture. They want more freedom."

"They are anarchists, vandals!"

"Possibly, but if they are necessary to the development of a bigger art expression----"

"They ought to work in secret, and exhibit in the dark."

"No, no! We have to be prepared for it. Our old standards have got to go."

"I feel as medieval as the Professor. I never really understood him before."

"We ought to bring him here."

"I think it would kill him," Bambi answered.

They spent a couple of hours, and then went back to the club. For some reason the Cubists had stirred Jarvis deeply. He divined something new and sincere, where Bambi felt only pose and degeneracy.

"When you think of that awful street, and 'Damaged Goods,' and that exhibit of horrors, all in two days, I don't wonder I feel like an old, old woman," she said.

"Suppose we stay in to-night? There is some kind of special meeting announced here, to discuss the drama. We might go in for a little while."

"All right. But 'early to bed,' for to-morrow we set out on our careers."