“I tell you it’s an outrageous social condition which tolerates such doings!” shouted Sayre. “It’s a perfectly monstrous state of things! Nine handsome men out of ten are fatheads! I told her so! I tried to point out to her — but she wouldn’t listen — she wouldn’t listen!”
Langdon stared at him, jaw agape. Then:
“Quit that ghost-dancing and talk sense,” he ventured.
“Do you think that men are going to stand for it?” yelled Sayre, waving his hands, “ordinary, decent, God-fearing, everyday young men like you and me? If this cataclysmic cult gains ground among American women — if these exasperating suffragettes really intend to carry out any such programme, everybody on earth will resemble everybody else — like those wax figures marked ‘neat,’ ‘imported,’ and ‘nobby’! And I told Amourette that, too; but she wouldn’t listen — she wouldn’t lis — My God! Why am I bald?”
He swung his arms like a pair of flails and advanced distractedly upon Langdon, who immediately retreated.
“Come back here,” he said. “I want to picture to you the horrors that are going on in your native land! You ought to know. You’ve got to know!”
“Certainly, old man,” quavered Langdon, keeping a tree between them. “But don’t come any closer or I’ll scream.”
“Do you think I’m nutty?”
“Oh, not at all — not at all,” said Langdon soothingly. “Probably the wafers disagreed with you.”
“Curtis, wouldn’t it rock any man’s equilibrium to fall head over heels in love with a girl inside of ten minutes? I merely ask you, man to man.”
“It sure would, dear friend — —”
“And then to see that divine girl almost ready to love you in return — see it perfectly, plainly? And have her tell you that she could learn to care for you if your hair wasn’t so thin and you didn’t wear eye-glasses? By Jinks! That was too much! I’ll leave it to you — wasn’t it?”
Langdon swallowed hard and watched his friend fixedly.
“And then,” continued Sayre, grinding his teeth, “then she told me about Willett!”
“Hey?”
“Oh, the whole thing is knocked in the head from a newspaper standpoint. They’ve all written home. They’re married — or on the point of it — —”
“What!”
“But that isn’t what bothers me. What do I care about this job, or any other job, since I’ve seen the only girl on earth that I could ever stay home nights for! And to think that she ran away from me and I’m never to see her again because I’m near-sighted and partly bald!”
He waved his arms distractedly.
“But, by the gods and demons!” he cried, “I’m not going to stand for her going hunting with that man-net! If she catches any insufferable pup in it I’ll go insane!”
Langdon’s eyes rolled and he breathed heavily.
“Old man,” he ventured, kindly, “don’t you think you’d better lie down and try to take a nice little nap — —”
Sayre instantly chased him around the tree and caught him.
“Curt,” he said savagely, “get over the idea that there’s anything the matter with me mentally except love and righteous indignation. I am in love; and it hurts. I’m indignant, because those people are treating my sex with an outrageous and high-handed effrontery that would bring the blush of impotent rage to any masculine cheek!”
“What people?” said the other warily. “You needn’t answer till you get your wits back.”
“They’re back, Curt; that twelve-foot fence of heavy elephant-proof wire which we noticed in the forest day before yesterday isn’t the fencing to a game park. It encloses a thousand acres belonging to the New Race University. Did you know that?”
“What’s The New Race University?” asked Langdon, astonished.
“You won’t believe it — but, Curtis, it’s a reservation for the — the p-p-propagation of a new and s-s-symmetrically p-p-proportioned race of g-g-god-like human beings! It’s a deliberate attempt at cold-blooded scientific selection — an insult to every bald-headed, near-sighted, thin-shanked young man in the United States!”
“William,” said the other, coaxingly, “you had better lie down and let me make some wafer soup for you.”
“You listen to me. I’m getting calmer now. I want to tell you about these New Race women and their University and Amourette and Reginald Willett and the whole devilish business.”
“Is there — is there really such a thing, William? You would not tell me a bind like that just to make a goat of me, would you?”
“No, I wouldn’t. There is such a thing.”
“Did you see it?”
“No, I — —”
“How do you know?”
“Amourette told me — shamelessly, defiantly, adorably! It was organised in secret out of the most advanced and determined as well as the most healthy, vigorous, and physically beautiful of all the suffragettes in North America. One of their number happened to own a thousand acres here before the State took the rest for its park. And here they have come, dozens and dozens of them — to attend the first summer session of the New Race University.”
“Is — is there actually a University in these woods?”
“There is.”
“Buildings?” demanded Langdon, amazed.
“No, burrows. Isn’t that the limit? Curt, believe me, they live in caves. It’s their idea of being vigorous and simple and primitive. Their cult is the cave woman. They have classes; they study and recite and exercise and cook and play auction bridge. Their object is to hasten not only political enfranchisement, but the era of a physical and intellectual equality which will permit them to mate as they choose and people this republic with perfect progeny. Every girl there is pledged to mate only with the very pick of physical masculine perfection. Their pledge is to build up a new, god-like race on earth, which ultimately will dominate, crush out, survive, and replace all humanity which has become degenerate. Nothing mentally or physically or politically imperfect is permitted inside that wire fence. My eye-glasses bar me out; your shanks exclude you — also your politics, because you’re a democrat.”
“That’s monstrous!” exclaimed Langdon, indignantly.
“More monstrous still, these disciples of the New Race movement are militant! Their audacity is unbelievable! Certain ones among them, adepts in woodcraft, have now begun to range this forest with nets. What do you think of that! And when they encounter a young fellow who agrees with the remorseless standard of perfection set up by the University, they stalk him and net him! They’ve got four so far. And now it’s Amourette’s turn to go out!”
Langdon’s teeth chattered.
“W-w-what are they g-going to do with their captures?”
“Marry them!”
“Willett? And Carrick and — —”
“Yes. Isn’t it awful, Curt?”
“Was she the girl with the net in the photo? I mean, was that her hand?”
“No; that was a friend of her’s who bagged Willett. Amourette started out yesterday for the first time after — well, I suppose you’d call it ‘big game.’ She saw me, stalked me, got near enough to see my glasses, and let me go. And to-day, thinking that she might have been mistaken and that perhaps I only wore sun-glasses, she came back. But I was ass enough to take off my cap to her, and she saw my hair — saw where it wasn’t — and that settled it.”
“What a mortifying thing to happen to you, William.”
“I should think so. There’s nothing unusual the matter with me. Cæsar was bald. It’s idiotic to bar a man out because he has fewer hairs than the next man. And the exasperating part of it is that I believe I could win her if I had half a chance.”
“Of course you could. If she’s any good as a sport, she’d rather have you, hairless myopiac that you are, than a tailor’s dummy.”
Sayre said: “Isn’t it a terrible thing, Curtis, to think of that sweet, lovely young girl pledged to a scientific life like that? P-pl
edged to p-p-propagate p-p-perfection?”
“What a mean-spirited creature that fellow Willett must be,” observed Langdon in disgust; “and the other three — Ugh!”
“Why?”
“To tamely submit to being kidnapped and woo’d and wed that way — endure the degradation of a captivity among all those young girls — —”
Sayre said: “Would you call for help if kidnapped?”
Langdon gazed into space: “I wonder,” he murmured.
Sayre looked at him searchingly.
“I don’t believe you’d make the welkin ring with your yelps. It’s probably the same with those four men.”
“Probably.”
“I don’t suppose those suffragettes of the New Race University really require any fence there to keep those men in.”
“No; only to keep the rest of us out.”
“The chances are that Willett and that poet Carrick and De Lancy Smith and Alphonso W. Green couldn’t be chased out of that University.”
“Those are the chances. How I hate those four men. It’s curious, William, that no man can ever tolerate the idea of any other man ever getting solid with any looker. I always did dislike to see another man with a pretty girl. . . . William?”
“What?”
“Think of the concentrated beauty in that University! Think of that rich round-up of creamy dreams! Consider that mellifluous marmalade! And — we can’t have any — because you are slightly bald and near-sighted and I am thin and scholarly!” He ran at the camp-kettle and kicked it.
After a painful silence Sayre said timidly: “Don’t laugh, but is there any known substance which will bring in hair?”
“You mean bring it out?”
“Well, dammit, grow it! Is there?”
“There are too many bald monarchs and millionaires to prove the contrary. Nor is there anything that can make my thin shanks fatter.”
“ — I’d be willing to go about without glasses,” said Sayre humbly. “I told her so.”
“Couldn’t you deceive her with a wig? It wouldn’t matter afterward. After you’re once married let her shriek.”
“Amourette saw my head.” And he hung it in bitter dejection.
“Come on,” said Langdon cheerily. “Let’s peek through their fence and see what happens. Much has been done with a merry eye in this world of haughty ladies.”
As they turned away into the woods Sayre clenched his fists.
“I’d like to knock the collective blocks off those four young men inside that fence. And — to think — to think of Amourette going out again to-morrow, man hunting, with her net! I can’t endure it, Curt — I simply can’t.”
Langdon looked at his friend in deep commiseration.
“I wish I could help you, William — but I don’t see — I — don’t — exactly — see — —” He hesitated. “Of course I could go to Utica and pay a wig-maker and costumer to make me up into the kind of Charlie-Gussie they’re looking for at that University. . . . And when your best girl goes out hunting, she’ll see me and net me, and you can be in hiding near by, and rush out and net her.”
In their excitement they seized each other and danced.
“Why not?” exclaimed Langdon. “Shall I try? Trust me to come back a specimen of sickening symmetry — the kind of man women write about and draw pictures of — pink and white and silky-whiskered! Shall I? And I’ll bring you a net to catch her in! Is it a go, William?”
Sayre broke down and began to cry.
“Heaven bless you, friend,” he sobbed. “And if ever I get that girl inside a net she’ll learn something about natural selection that they p-p-probably forgot to teach in their accursed New Race University!”
V
One week later Curtis Langdon sat on the banks of a trout stream fishing, apparently deeply absorbed in his business; but he was listening so hard that his ears hurt him.
A few yards away, ambushed behind a rock on which was painted “Votes for Women,” lurked William Sayre. A net lay on the ground beside him, fashioned with ring and detachable handle like a gigantic butterfly net.
He, too, tremendously excited, was listening and watching the human bait — Langdon being cast for the bait.
Perfect and nauseating beauty now marked that young gentleman. Features and figure were symmetrical; his eyebrows had been pencilled into exact arcs, his mouth was a Cupid’s bow, his cheeks were softly rosy, and a silky and sickly moustache shadowed his rosy lips. Under his fashionable outing shirt he wore a rubber chest improver; his cunningly padded shoulders recalled the exquisite sartorial creations of Mart, Haffner, and Sharx; his patent puttees gave him a calf to which his personal shanks had never aspired; thick, golden-brown hair, false as a woman’s vows, was tossed carelessly from a brow, snowy with pearl powder. And he wore a lilac-edged handkerchief in his left cuff.
Both young men truly felt that if any undergraduate of the New Race University was out stalking she’d have at least one try at such a bait. Nothing feminine and earnest could resist that glutinous agglomeration of charms.
But they had now been there since before dawn; nothing had broken the sun-lit quiet of forest and water, not even a trout; and they listened in vain for the snapping of the classical twig.
Lunch time came; they ate a pad apiece. Neither dared to smoke, Sayre because it might reveal his hiding place, Langdon because smoking might be considered an imperfection in the University.
Sunlight fell warm on the banks of the stream, the leaves rustled, big white clouds floated in the blue above. Nothing came near Langdon except a few mosquitoes, who couldn’t bite through the make-up; and a small and inquisitive bird that inspected him with disdain and said, “cheep — che-ep!” so many times that Langdon took it as a personal comment and almost blushed.
He thought to himself: “If it wasn’t that William is actually becoming ill over his unhappy love affair I’m damned if I’d let even a dicky-bird see me in this rig. Ugh! What a head of hair! The average girl’s ideal is what every healthy man wants to kick. I wouldn’t blame any decent fellow for booting me into the brook on sight.”
He bit into his pad and sat chewing reflectively and dabbling his line in the water.
“Poor old William,” he mused. “This business is likely to end us both. If we stay here we lose our jobs; if we go back William is likely to increase the nut crop. I never supposed men took love as seriously as that. I’ve heard that it sometimes occurred — what is it Shakespeare says: ‘How Love doth make nuts of us all!’”
He chewed his pad and swung his feet, philosophically.
“Why the devil doesn’t some girl come and try to steal a kiss?” he muttered. “It might perhaps be well to call their attention to my helpless presence and unguarded condition.”
So he sang for a while, swinging his legs: “Somebody’s watching and waiting for me!” munching his luncheon between verses; and, as nobody came, he bawled louder and louder the refrain: “Somebody’s darling, darling, dah-ling!” until a hoarse voice from behind the rock silenced him:
“Shut up that hurdy-gurdy voice of yours! A defect like that will count ten points against you! Can it!”
“Oh, very well,” said Langdon, offended; “but everybody doesn’t feel the way you do about music.”
Silence resumed her classical occupation in the forest; the stream continued to sparkle and make its own kind of music; the trout, having become accustomed to the queer thing on the bank and the baited hook among the pebbles, gathered in the ripples stemming the current with winnowing fins.
A very young rabbit sat up in a fern patch and examined Langdon with dark, moist eyes. He sat there for several minutes, and might have remained for several more if a sound, unheard by Langdon and by Sayre, had not set the bunch of whiskers on his restless nose twitching, and sent him scurrying off over the moss.
The sound was no sound to human ears; Langdon heard it not; Sayre, drowsy in the scented heat, dozed behind his rock.
A shadow f
ell across the moss; then another; two slim shapes moved stealthily among the trees across the brook.
For ten minutes the foremost figure stood looking at Langdon. Occasionally she used an opera glass, which, from time to time, she passed back over her shoulder to her companion.
“Ethra,” she whispered at last, “he seems to be practically perfect.”
“I’m wondering about those puttees, dear — shanks in puttees are deceptive.”
“Those are exquisite calves,” said Amourette sadly. “I’m sure they’ll measure up to regulation. And his chest seems up to proof.”
“What beautiful eyebrows,” murmured Ethra.
But Amourette found no pleasure in them, nor in the golden-brown hair, nor the bloom of youth and perfect health pervading their unconscious quarry. Perhaps she was thinking of a certain near-sighted, thin-haired young man — and how she had slammed the gate of the wire fence in his face — after their first kiss.
She drew a deep, painful breath and lifted her head resolutely.
“I suppose I’d better begin to stalk him, Ethra,” she said.
“Yes; he’s a very good specimen. Be careful, dear. Strike a circle and come up behind him. When you’re ready, mew like a cat-bird and I’ll let him catch a glimpse of me. And as soon as he begins to — to rubber,” she said, with a haughty glance at the unconscious angler, “steal up and net him, and I’ll come across and help tie him up.”
Amourette sighed, standing there irresolute. Then she straightened her drooping shoulders, seized her net very firmly, and, with infinite caution, began to stalk her quarry.
Once the stalking had fairly begun, the girl became absorbed in the game. All memory of Sayre, if there indeed had been any to make her falter in her purpose, now departed. She was a huntress pure and simple, silent, furtive, adroit, intent upon her quarry. There came a kind of fierceness into her concentration; the joy of the chase thrilled her as she crept noiselessly through the woods, describing a circle, crossing the stream far above the sleepy fisherman, gliding, stealing nearer, nearer, until at length she stood in the thicket behind him.
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 620