Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  For a moment she waited silently, freeing her net and gathering it in her right hand ready for a deadly cast. Then, pursing up her red lips, she mewed like a cat-bird, three times.

  Instantly, across the stream, she saw Ethra step out of the willows into plain view; saw Langdon wake up, stare, get up, and regard the beautiful vision across the stream with concentrated and delighted attention.

  Then Amourette stole swiftly forward over the moss, swinging the heavy silken net in her right hand, closer, closer. Suddenly the net whistled in the air, glistened, lengthened, and fell, enmeshing Langdon; and, at the same instant something behind her whistled and fell slap; and she found herself struggling in the folds of an enormous butterfly net.

  “Ethra! Help!” she cried, terrified, trying to keep her balance in the web which enveloped her, striving to tear a way free through the meshes; but she was only wrapped up the tighter; two brutal masculine arms lifted her, held her cradled and entangled, freed the handle from the net, and bore her swiftly away.

  “Darling,” whispered William Sayre, “d-don’t kick.”

  “You!” she gasped, struggling frantically.

  “The real thing, dearest of women! The old-fashioned, original cave man. Will you come quietly? There’s a license bureau in the next village. Or shall I be obliged to keep right on carrying you?”

  “Oh, oh, oh!” she sobbed; “what disgrace! what humiliation; what shame! Oh, Ethra! Ethra! What in the world am I to do?”

  “That’s where the mistake arose,” said William gently; “you don’t have to do anything — except put both arms around my neck and — be careful not to knock off my glasses.”

  “Glasses! Ethra! Ethra! Where are you? Don’t you see what is becoming of me? You — you had b-better hurry, too,” she added with a sob, “because the man who is carrying me off is the man I told you about. Ethra! Where are you?”

  A convenient echo replied in similar terms. Meanwhile Sayre was walking faster and faster through the woods.

  For a while she lay motionless and silent, cradled in his arms. And after a long, long time she tried feebly to adjust the disordered ondulations on her hair.

  Then a very small, still voice said:

  “Mr. Sayre?”

  “Darling!”

  She seemed to recognise this as her name.

  “Mr. Sayre, w-what are you going to do with me?”

  “Marry you.”

  “B-b-by f-f-force?”

  “That is up to you, darling.”

  “Against my will?”

  “That also is up to you.”

  “And — and my inclination?”

  “No, not against that, Amourette.”

  “Do you dare believe I love you?”

  “I should worry.”

  “Do you know you are hurting me, physically, spiritually, mentally?”

  “I suppose I am.”

  “Do you realise that you are a brute?”

  “I sure do. We’re all of us a little in that line, Amourette.”

  After a long silence she turned her face so that it rested against his shoulder — nestled closer, and lay very still.

  VI

  All over the United States conditions were becoming terrible, hundreds and hundreds of thousands of militant women, wives, widows, matrons, maidens, and stenographers had gone on strike. Non-intercourse with man was to be the punishment for any longer withholding the franchise; husbands, fathers, uncles, fiancés, bachelors, and authors held frantic mass meetings to determine what course to pursue in the imminence of rapidly impending industrial, political, and social disaster.

  But, although men’s sufferings threatened to be frightful; although for months now nobody of the gentler sex had condescended to pay them the slightest attention; although their wives replied to them only with monosyllables and scornful smiles, and their sweethearts were never at home to them, let it be remembered to their eternal credit that not one thought of surrender ever entered their limited minds.

  And so it was with young Langdon, who was left in a condition neither dignified nor picturesque — a martyr to friendship and a victim to his own rather frivolous idea of practical humour.

  Hopelessly entangled in the net which enveloped him from head to foot, he flopped about among the dead leaves on the bank of the stream, struggling and kicking like a fly in a cobweb. This he considered humorous.

  The lithe figure across the brook continued to view his gyrations with mingled emotions.

  She was a boyish young thing with a full-lipped, sensitive mouth, eyes like bluish-black velvet, and clipped hair of a dull gold colour that curled thickly all over a small and beautifully shaped head in little burnished boucles d’or — which description ought to hold the reader for a while.

  She wore gray wool kilts, riding breeches laced in about the knee, suede puttees and tan shoes; and she carried a Russian game pouch beautifully embroidered across her right shoulder.

  For a minute or two she watched the entangled young man, eyes still wide with the excitement of the chase, full delicate lips softly parted; and her intent and earnest face reflected modest triumph charmingly modified by an involuntary sympathy — the natural tribute of a generous sportswoman to the quarry successfully stalked and bagged.

  Cautiously, now, but without hesitation she advanced to the edge of the stream, picked her way cleverly across it on the stones, and, leaping lightly to the bank, stood looking down at Langdon, who had ceased his contortions and now lay flat on his back, gazing skyward, a grin on his otherwise attractive countenance.

  He smiled up at her through the meshes of the net when he encountered her curious eyes, expecting immediate release.

  There was no answering smile from her as she coolly examined his symmetrical features and perfect physical proportions through the folds of the net.

  No, there could be no longer any doubt in her mind that this young man was what the New Race University required for breeding purposes.

  No such specimen as this could hope to escape instant marriage. Here were features so mathematically flawless that they became practically featureless; here was bodily balance so ideal that the ultimate standards of Greek perfection seemed lop-sided in comparison. No, there could be no doubt about it; this young man was certainly required for the purpose of scientific propagation; willy-nilly he was destined to be one of the ancestors of that future and god-like race which must, one day, people the earth to replace the bigoted and degenerate population which at present encumbered it.

  She regarded him without the slightest personal interest now. His symmetry wearied her profoundly.

  “When are you going to let me out?” he asked cheerfully.

  She looked at him almost insolently under slightly lifted brows.

  “Presently,” she said; and began to fumble in her satchel. In a few moments she produced two bottles, a roll of antiseptic cotton, and a hypodermic needle.

  “Will you come with me voluntarily?” she inquired, stepping nearer and looking down at him, “or must I use force?”

  He might have been humorously willing to go; he really desired to see this amusing adventure to the finish. But man resents coercion.

  “Force?” he repeated.

  “Exactly,” she replied, displaying her pocket pharmacy.

  “What are those things you have in your hand?” he asked, trying to see.

  “Chloroform and a hypodermic needle. If you do not wish to come with me voluntarily you may take your choice.”

  He laughed long and loud and derisively.

  “That’s ridiculous,” he said. “Be kind enough to undo this net. I might have been willing to go with you and look ’em over — your friends, you know; but I don’t care for your idea of humour.”

  “Your reply is typically man-like and tyrannical. For centuries man has enjoyed and abused the option of doing what he pleased. Now men are going to do what we please, whether or not it suits them.”

  “So I’ve understood,” he sai
d, laughing; “but this revolt has been on for a year and I haven’t noticed any men doing what they did not wish to do.”

  “We have four who are doing it. They are in training for their honeymoons. You are to be the fifth to begin training,” she said coolly.

  He laughed again derisively, and lay watching her. She walked up close beside him and seated herself on the rock marked “Votes for Women.”

  “I suppose,” she said, tauntingly, “that you were rather astonished to wake up from your fishing nap, and find yourself — —” she considered the effect of her words, gazing at him insolently from under slightly lowered lashes— “find yourself all balled up in a fish net.”

  He only grinned at her.

  “What are you laughing at?” she demanded, unsmiling.

  “Lying here flat on my back, I am smiling at Woman! at every individual woman on earth! at this ridiculous feminine uprising, this suffragette revolution — at your National Female Federation Committee; the thousands of local unions; this strike of your entire sex; this general boycott of my sex! What has it accomplished?” He tried to wave his hand.

  “You parade and make speeches in the streets, throw bricks, slap the faces of a few State Congressmen, and finally proclaim a general strike and boycott.

  “And what’s the result? All social functions and ceremonies are suspended; caterers, florists, confectioners, cabmen, ruined; theatres, restaurants, department stores, novelists, milliners, in financial throes; a falling off of over eighty per cent. in marriages and births — and you are no nearer a vote than you were before the great strike paralysed the business of this Republic.”

  The young lady had been growing pinker and pinker.

  “Oh! . . . And is that why you are laughing?” she asked.

  “Yes. It’s the funniest strike that ever happened to a serious-minded sex. Because you know your sex, as a sex, is a trifle destitute of a sense of humour — —”

  “That expression,” she cut in with bitter satisfaction, “definitely determines your intellectual and social limits, Mr. Langdon. You are what you appear to be — one of those dreary bothers whose stock phrase is ‘a sense of humour’ — the kind of young man who has acquired a florid imitation of cultivation, a sort of near-polish; the type of person who uses the word ‘brainy’ for ‘capable,’ and ‘mentality’ for ‘intelligence’; the dreadful kind of person who speaks of a subject as ‘meaty’ instead of properly employing the words ‘substance’ or ‘material’; the sort of — —”

  Langdon, red and wrathful, sat up on the ground, peering at her through the enveloping net.

  “Never in my life,” he said, “have I been spoken to in such terms of feminine contempt. Stop it! Can’t you appreciate a joke?”

  “Mr. Langdon, the day is past when women will either countenance or take part in any disrespectful witticisms, slurs, or jests at the expense of their own sex. Once — and that not very long ago — they did it. Comic papers made my sex the subject of cartoons and witticisms; the stage dared to spread the contemptible misinformation; women either smiled or remained indifferent. The impression became general and fixed that women were gallinaceous, that a hen-like philosophy characterised the sex; that they were, at best, second-rate humans, tagging rather gratefully at the heels of the Lords of Creation, unconcerned with the greater and vital questions of the world.

  “Now your sex has discovered its mistake. After countless centuries of intellectual and physical bondage Woman has calmly risen to assert herself — not as the peer of man, but as his superior!”

  “What!” exclaimed Langdon, angrily.

  “Certainly. Since prehistoric times man has attempted to govern and shape the destinies of all things living on this earth. He has made of his reign a miserable fizzle. It is our turn now to try our hands.

  “And so, at last, woman steps forward, tipping the symbols of despotic power — sceptre and crown — from the nerveless hand and dishonoured brow of her recent lord and master! And down he goes under her feet — where he belongs.”

  Langdon, unable to endure such language, attempted to sit up, but the net interfered and he lay clawing at the meshes while the girl calmly continued:

  “The human race, as it is at present, is a disgrace to the world it inhabits. We women have now decided to repeople the earth scientifically with a race as wholesome in body as our instruction shall render it in mind. Those among us women who are adjudged physically and mentally perfect for this great and sacred work have pledged ourselves to the sacrifice — pro bono publico.

  “We shall pick out, from your degenerate sex, such physically perfect individuals as chance to remain; we shall regard our marriages with them as purely scientific and cold-blooded affairs; we have begun, for the purposes of re-populating the world by capturing four symmetrical young men. You are the fifth. The Regents of the New Race University will select for you several girls who, theoretically, are best qualified to become the mothers of your — —”

  “Stop!” shouted Langdon, tearing violently at the net. “I don’t want you to talk that way to me!”

  “What way?”

  “You know perfectly well,” he retorted, blushing vividly. “I won’t stand it!”

  “What a slave to prudery and smug convention you are,” she observed with amused contempt. “Nobody in the University is going to shock your modesty.”

  “Well, what are they going to do?”

  “Turn you loose in the preserve after the Regents have inspected you.”

  “And then?”

  “Oh, I suppose two or three girls will be selected.”

  “To do w-what?”

  “To pay you marked attention.”

  “M-m-marked what?”

  “Attention. Two or three girls will begin to court you.”

  “How?”

  “Oh, the usual way — by sending you flowers and books and bon-bons, and asking permission to call on you in your cave,” she said carelessly.

  There was an embarrassed pause, then:

  “Will you be one of those — those aspirants to my hand?” he inquired.

  She said indifferently: “I hope not. I’m sure I don’t desire to be the mother of — —”

  “Stop! I tell you to stop conversing on such topics!” he yelled, struggling and squirming and finally rolling over, all fours in the air.

  “I want to get up!” he shouted. “My position is undignified! Anybody’d think I was a prize animal. I don’t like this poultry talk! I’m a man! I’m no bench-winner. And if ever I marry and p-p-produce p-p-progeny, it will be somebody I select, not somebody who selects me!”

  The girl looked at him sternly.

  “No,” she said. “For centuries man has mated from sentiment and filled the earth with mental and physical degeneracy. Now woman steps in. It is her turn. And she flings aside precedent, prejudice, and sentiment — for the good of the human race! and joining hands with Science marches forward inexorably toward the millennium!”

  The girl was so earnest, so naïve, so emotionally stirred by the picture evoked that she enacted in pretty gestures the allegory of womanhood trampling upon sentimental emotion and turning toward Science with arms outstretched.

  Langdon, who had managed to sit up, regarded her with terrified interest.

  “Would you be amiable enough to remove this net?” he asked, shivering.

  “I shall take you before the Board of Regents of the New Race University. They will assign you a cave.”

  “This joke has gone far enough,” he said. “Please take off this net.”

  “No. I am going to show the Regents what I caught.”

  “Me?”

  “Certainly.”

  “But, my poor child,” he said, “I am not what I seem. The joke is entirely on woman — poor, derided, deluded, down-trodden, humourless woman! Why, all this symmetry of mine — all these endearing young charms, are — are — —”

  He hesitated, looked at her, reflected, wavered. She was so p
retty — somehow he didn’t want to tell her. He felt furtively of his rubber chest improver, his flexible pneumatic calves, his golden brown wig, his pencilled brows, silky moustache, and carefully fashioned rosebud mouth. . . . A sudden and curious distaste for confessing to her that all the beauties were unreal came over him.

  Meanwhile, paying him no further attention for the moment, she was trying hard to uncork the bottle of chloroform.

  When she succeeded, she soaked the roll of antiseptic cotton, folded it in a handkerchief, and re-corked the bottle. Then, eyeing him coldly, holding the saturated handkerchief with one hand, her pretty nose with the other, she said with nasal difficulty:

  “Dow, Bister Lagdod, bake up your bind dot to struggle — —”

  “Are you actually going to do it?” he asked, incredulously.

  “I ab!” she replied firmly.

  “Nonsense! You are not accustomed to give chloroform!”

  “Do; but I’ve read up od the subject — —”

  “What!” he exclaimed, horrified. “Look out what you’re doing, child! Don’t you dare try that on me!”

  “I’ve got to,” she insisted. “Please dod bake be dervous or we bay have ad accidend — —”

  “Take that stuff away!” he yelled. “You’ll give me too much and then I won’t wake up at all!”

  “I’ll be as careful as I cad,” she promised him. “Dow be still — —”

  “But this is monstrous!” he retorted, flopping about in the leaves like a stranded fish and frantically endeavouring to dodge the wet and reeking handkerchief.

  “Let go of my nose! Help! He — he — hah — h — um! bz-z-z-z — —” and he suddenly relaxed and fell back a limp, loose-limbed mass among the leaves.

  Pale and resolute the girl knelt beside him, freed him from the net, and, bending nearer, gazed earnestly into his unconscious features. Still gazing, she drew a postman’s whistle from her satchel, set it to her lips, and was about to summon the student on duty at the distant gate to help bring in the quarry, when something about the features of the recumbent young man arrested her attention.

  The postman’s whistle fell from her pretty lips; her startled eyes widened as she bent closer to examine the perfections which had captivated her from a scientific standpoint.