Bambi | Page 8

Marjorie Benton Cooke
and its problems."
"What are the problems of humanity?"
"Food, employment, education, health."
"All of them mathematical. Economics is mathematical."
"Well, I wish instead of teaching a few thousand students higher algebra that you had taught your own daughter a little common sense."
"Common sense is not taught. It is a gift of the gods, like genius," said the Professor.
Jarvis glanced at him quickly, and took out the notebook.
"Put that thing away!" shouted the Professor. "I will not be annotated."
Jarvis meekly returned it to his pocket, but as the Professor right-about faced, he exploded:
"For heaven's sake, sit down and listen to me! This mathematical progression makes me crazy."
"I have just so many rows to do," the Professor replied, as he marched along. "Do I understand you to criticise my daughter's education?"
"I don't know anything about her education. I didn't know she had one," said Jarvis, "but this whim of hers, in marrying me, is very trying to me. It is most upsetting."
"Have it annulled. It can't possibly be legal."
"She won't hear of it. She desires to be married to me."
The Professor rose and faced him.
"Then you may as well resign yourself. I have lived with her nineteen years and I know."
"But it is absurd that a child like that should always have her own way. You have spoiled her."
Even the Professor's bent back showed pity.
"You have a great deal to learn, young man."
"Can't you persuade her to divorce me?"
"I cannot. I tried to persuade her to do that before she married you."
"I suppose you think I ought to make a living for her?"
"At the risk of being called a back number, I do."
"Just when I am beginning to count."
"Count? Count what?"
"Count as a creative artist."
"Just what is it you do, Jocelyn?"
"I try to express the Philosophy of Modernism through the medium of the Drama."
"Who buys it?"
"Nobody."
"How are you beginning to count, then?"
"Oh, not in the market-place. In my own soul."
"Forty-nine, fifty," said the Professor. "Turn here. In your own soul, you say?" He glanced at the youth beside him. "Bambi has sold her birthright for a mess of pottage," he muttered.
"That's just the question. Whose duty is it to provide the pottage?"
"Maybe you think it's mine?"
"Why shouldn't Science support Art?"
"Humph! Why not let Bambi support you? She says she wants to."
"I am willing she should support herself, but not me."
"So the only question is, will I support you?"
"Exactly. With Bambi off your hands, you will have no other responsibility, and you could not do a bigger thing for the world than to help me to instruct and inspire it."
"Aristophanes!" exclaimed the Professor. "You are unique! You are number twenty-three."
"Why twenty-three?"
"Because that is neither much nor little."
"Your daughter thinks my plays will sell, but I tell you frankly I doubt it."
"How can you instruct and inspire if nobody listens?"
"They must listen in the end, else why am I here?"
The Professor relinquished his chase, to stare again. "You are at least sincere in your belief in yourself--twenty-three. I'd like to hear some of these great ideas of yours."
"Very well. I am going to read a play to your daughter this evening. If you care to come, you may listen. Then you will see that it would pay you to stake me for a couple of years."
"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
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