Part 10 (1/2)
Bambi gurgled with laughter, then looked serious.
”He's fallen on an idea just the same, Jarvis. Your woman isn't convincing.”
”But she's true,” he protested.
”We don't care a fig whether she's true, unless she's true to us,” she answered him. ”Go on with your last act.”
”You don't like it--what's the use?”
”Don't be silly. I am deeply interested. Go on!”
He began a little hopelessly, feeling the atmosphere, by that subtle sense that makes the creative artist like a sensitive plant where his work is at stake. The third act failed to ascend, or to resolve the situation. He merely carried it as far as it interested him, and then dropped it. As he closed the ma.n.u.script Bambi reached out her hand for it.
”Give it to me, in my hand!” she ordered. He obeyed, questioningly.
”I feel as if it was such a big thing, mangled and bleeding. I want to hold it and help it.”
”Mangled?”
”Yes. Don't you feel it? She isn't a woman! She's a monster. You don't believe her. You won't believe her, because you hate her.”
”But she's true. She lives to-day. She is the woman of now,” he repeated.
”No, no, no! Woman may approximate this, but she doesn't reason it out.
Let her be fine, and big, and righteously ambitious. Make us sympathize with her.”
”But I am preaching against her.”
”All the better. Make her a tragedy. Show the futility of it all. She didn't kill herself. You killed her.”
”Do you write plays?” he asked her.
”No, but I feel drama. This is big, but it is all man psychology. You don't know your woman.”
”I should hope not,” said the Professor. ”You needn't tell me there are such women in the world. She is worse than Lucretia Borgia.”
”Of course she is in the world, Father Professor. You haven't looked at a woman since mother died, nineteen years ago, so you are not strictly up-to-date.”
”I have hundreds of young women in my cla.s.ses.”
”Learning Euclid,” interpolated Jarvis.
”Well, Euclid is more desirable than what your heroine learned and taught.”
”Not at all. She learned life.”
The Professor turned to Bambi.
”Have you any ideas in common with this person, my dear?”