The Gay Rebellion

by Robert W. Chambers

  XVIII

  AS the extremes of fashionable feminine costume appear first on FifthAvenue in late November, and in early December are imitated in Harlem,and finally in January pervade the metropolitan purlieus, so all thegreat cities of the Union, writhing in the throes of a fashionablesuffragette revolution, presently inoculated the towns; and the townsinfected the villages, and the villages the hamlets, and the hamletspassed the contagion along into the open country, where isolated farmsand dicky-birds alone remained uninfected and receptive.

  It was even asserted by enthusiastic suffragettes that flocks of femininedicky-birds had begun to assault masculine birds of the same variety;and that the American landscape was full of agitated male birds, lackingrear plumage, flying distractedly in every direction or squattingdisconsolately in lonely trees, counting their tail feathers.

  Mr. Borroughs and our late great President were excitedly inclined tobelieve it, but the most famous and calm of explorers, who had recentlyreturned from exile to his camp on top of Mt. McKinley, warned thescientific world on a type-writer not to credit anything that anybodysaid until he had corroborated it in the magazines. And he left that weekfor another trip to the pole to find out what the attitude of thepolecats might be concerning the matter in question.

  Meanwhile the cities were full of trouble and forcibly selectedbridegrooms. From 60,000 marriages recorded in New York City for thetwelve months of the previous year, in the few months of the eugenicrevolution the number of weddings had reached the enormous figures of180,000, not including Flatbush.

  Thousands and thousands of marriageable young men were hiding in theirclubs or in the shrubbery of Central Park, waiting for a chance to maketheir escape to the country and remain incognito in hay lofts until theeugenic revolution had ended itself in a dazzling display of divorce.

  Westchester, the Catskills, and even the country farther north were fullof young business men and professional men fleeing headlong from theirjobs in Wall Street, Broadway, and Fifth Avenue, and hiring out tofarmers and boarding house keepers under assumed names. One could jump ayoung man out of almost any likely thicket north of the Bronx; they wereas plentiful and as shy as deer in the Catskills; corn field, scrub,marsh, and almost any patch of woods in the State, if carefully beatenup, would have yielded at least one or two flocks of skulking young men.

  Now, as there was no close season, and marriageable youths in New YorkCity became scarcer, those militant suffragettes devoted to eugenicprinciples began to make excursions into the suburbs in search of beviesand singles--which had escaped the exciting days of the great Long Acredrive and the bachelors' St. Bartholomew. And, as the April days turnedinto May days, and the May days into June days, parties of pretty,laughing, athletic girls penetrated farther and farther into the country,joyously rummaging the woods and routing out and scattering into flightthe lurking denizens. For every den had its denizen, and Diana roamed theearth once more.

  There was excellent sport to be had along the Hudson. Some young ladieswent in automobiles; some in yachts; some by train, to points north,where the landscape looked more promising and wilder--but probably not aswild as the startled masculine countenances peering furtively fromhillside thickets as some gay camping party of distractingly pretty girlsappeared, carrying as excess baggage one clergywoman and a bundle ofmarriage licenses, with the bridegroom's name represented only by aquestion mark.

  It was on an unusually beautiful day in early June that two briar-mangledand weather-beaten young men, bearing every evidence of Wall Street andexcessive fright, might have been seen sitting up like a brace ofstartled rabbits in a patch of ferns which grew along the edges of abrook at the foot of a charmingly wooded slope among the Westchesterhills. In every direction stretched hills, woods, and Italians. The calmremote sky was blue and unvexed by anything except factory smoke; not asound was visible, not a noise was to be seen.

  Bacon was frying unctuously in a pan on the coals beside them; theirsuit-cases lay near. They sat up in the fern patch, coffee cupssuspended, eyes wild, listening intently.

  "Brown," whispered Vance, "did you hear anything except the hum ofautomobiles?"

  "I sure did," nodded Brown, craning his neck like a turkey in abriar-patch and glaring around.

  "If--if they've got dogs," said Vance, "they'll flush us before--hark!Great guns! _Look_ at that bench show!"

  Brown's hair rose on end. "They _have_ got dogs," he whispered, "a toybull, a Mexican, a Chow, two Pomms--and, by Jupiter! they've got amarmoset! Look at 'em! Hark! You can hear those unnatural girls laughing!Me for a quick getaway. Come on!"

  "They--they may come from some college," faltered Vance; "they may run usdown. Shall we trust to our protective colouring and squat close?"

  "Do you want to stay here until that miserable Chow comes poking hisorange-coloured head into the ferns and laughs at us with his bluetongue?"

  Vance wrung his hands, hurling coffee all over Brown in his agonisedindecision.

  "Good heavens!" he moaned. "I don't _want_ to be married! I can't affordit! Do you think those girls can outrun us?"

  "If they can," said Brown, "they'll want me more than I want my liberty.Look out! There's their bat-eared bull! See him sniff! The wretched mutthas winded the bacon! We've got to make a break for it now! Come on! Beatit, son!"

  Up out of the covert crashed the two young fellows, and went prancingaway through the woods, suit-cases in hand. A chorus of excited yelps andbarks greeted the racket they made in their flight; a shrill whistle rangout, then a pretty and excited voice:

  "Mark! Quick, Gladys! There are two of them! Mark left!"

  "Are they any good?" cried Gladys. "Oh, where are they, dear?"

  "I only caught a glimpse of them. They looked like fine ones, in splendidcondition. Millicent! Quick, where are you?"

  "Here!" came a third voice. "Oh, Constance! one is too perfectly splendidfor anything! Chow-Chow is at his heels! Look out! Mark right!"

  "Run!" panted Constance, leaping a fallen log.

  The lovely June woodland was now echoing with the happy cries of thechase, the ki-yi of excited lap-dogs, the breathless voices of the younggirls, the heavy crashing racket of stampeding young men rushing headlongthrough bramble and thicket with a noise like a hurricane amid deadleaves.

  Vance's legs, terror weakened, wobbled as he fled; and after ten minuteshe took to a tree with a despairing scream.

  Brown, looking back from the edge of a mountain pasture, saw the dogsleaping frantically at his friend's legs as he shinned rapidly up thetrunk, and disappeared into the clustering foliage; saw three flushedyoung girls come running up with cries of innocent delight; saw one ofthem release a slender, black, furry, spidery thing which immediately ranup the tree; heard distracted yells from Vance:

  "For heaven's sake, take away that marmoset! I can't bear 'em--I hate'em, ladies! Ouch! He's all over me! He's trying to get into my pocket!Take him away, for the love of Mike, and I'll come down!"

  But Brown waited to hear no more. Horror now lent him her infernal wings;he fairly fluttered across the mountain side, sailed down the fartherslope, and into a lonely country road. Along this he cantered, observedonly by surprised cattle, until, exhausted, he slackened his pace to awalk.

  Rickety fences and the remains of old stone walls flanked him on eitherhand; the clearings were few, the cultivated patches fewer. Heencountered no houses. On a distant hillside stood a weather-beaten barn,the sky shining blue through its roof rafters.

  Beyond this the road forked; one branch narrowed to a grassy cattle pathand presently ended at a pair of bars. Inside the bars was a stone barn;beside the barn a house of the century before last--a low, square stonehouse, half stripped of its ancient stucco skin, a high-roofed one-storyaffair, with sagging dormers peering from the slates and little oblongloop-holes under the eaves, from which the straw of birds' nestsfluttered in the breeze.

  Surely this ancient place, even if inhabited--as he saw it was--must besufficiently remote from the
outer world to insure his safety. For herethe mountain road ended at the barn-yard bars; here the low wooded hillswalled in this little world of house, barn, and orchard, making a silent,sunny place under the blue sky, sweet with late lilac bloom and the humof bees. No factory smoke was visible, no Italians.

  He looked at the aged house. A black cat sat on the porch thoughtfullypolishing her countenance with the back of one paw. Three diminutiveparti-coloured kittens frisked and rolled and toddled around her; andoccasionally she seized one and washed it energetically against thegrain.

  Brown looked at the door with its iron knocker, at the delicately spreadfan-light over it, at the side-lights, at the half-pillars with theirIonic capitals, at the ancient clumps of lilacs flanking the stonestep--great, heavy-stemmed and gnarled old bushes now all hung withperfumed clusters of palest lavender bloom.

  Leaning there on the picket fence he inhaled their freshness, gazing upinto the sunny foliage of the ancient trees, elms, maples, and one oak soaged and so magnificent that, awed, his eyes turned uneasily again towardthe house to reassure himself that it was still inhabited.

  Cat and kittens were comfortable evidence, also a hen or two loiteringnear, and the pleasant sound from a dozen bee-hives, and a wild rose in achina bowl, dimly visible on an inner window-sill.

  There were two characters he might assume; he might go to the back doorand request a job; he might bang on the front door with that ironknocker, shaped like a mermaid, and ask for country board.

  Of one thing, somehow or other, he was convincing himself; this crumblinghouse and its occupants knew as much about the recent high-jinks in NewYork as did the man who built it in the days when loop-holes were anessential part of local architecture, and the painted Sagamore passedlike a spectre through the flanking forests.

  So Brown, carrying his suit-case, opened the gate, walked up the path,seized the knocker, and announced himself with resolution.