"You stood there in the bushes looking atmefor two hours,andlistening to my poem—andlikingit?"
"Yes, I did. . . . I don't know why. . . . And then, somehow, without any apparent reason, I wanted you to seeme. . . without any apparent reason . . . and so I stepped on a dry stick. . . . And to-day I came back . . . without any apparent reason. . . . I don't know what on earth has happened to make me—make me—forget——"
"Forget what?"
"Everything—except——"
"Except what?"
She looked up at him with clear grey eyes, a trifle daunted.
"Forget everything except that I—like you, Mr. Sayre."
He said: "That is the sweetest and most fearless thing a woman ever said. I am absurdly happy over it."
She waited, looking down at her linked fingers.
"And," he said, "for the first time in all my life I have cared more for what a woman has said to me than I care for anything on earth."
There was a good deal of the poet in William Sayre.
"Do you mean it?" she asked, tremulously.
"I mean more."
"I—I think you had better not say—more."
"Why?"
"Because of what I told you. There is no use in your—your finding me—interesting."
"Are you married?" he asked, so guilelessly that she blushed and denied it with haste.
His head was spinning in a sea of pink clouds.Harps were playing somewhere; it may have been the breeze in the pines.
"Amourette," he repeated in a sort of divine daze.
"I am—going," she said, in a low voice.
"Do you desire to render me miserable for life?" he asked so seriously that at first she scarcely realised what he had said. Then blush and pallor came and went; she caught her breath, looked up at him, beseechingly.
"Everything is wrong," she said in the ghost of a voice. "Things are hurrying me—trying to drive me headlong. I must go. Let me go, now."
And she sat very still, and closed her eyes. A second later she opened them.
"Why did you come?" she asked almost fiercely. "There was no use in it! Why did you come into these woods for that foolish newspaper? By this time the Associated Press, the police, and the families of the men you are looking for have received letters from every one of the four missing young men, saying that they are perfectly well and happy and expect to return—after their honeymoons."
Flushed, excited, beautiful in her animation, she faced the astounded young man who stared at her wildly through his eye-glasses.
After a while he managed to ask whether she wished him to believe that these four young men had each eloped with their soul mates.
She bit her lip. "To be accurate," she said in a low voice, "somebody eloped with each one of them."
"How? I don't understand!"
"I don't wish you to. . . . Good-bye."
"You mean," he demanded, incredulously, "that four girls ran away with these four big, hulking young men?"
"Practically."
"That's ridiculous! Besides, it's impossible! Besides—women don't run men off like cattle rustlers. Man is the active agent in elopements, woman the passive agent."
She did not answer.
"Isn't she?"
She made no reply.
He said: "Amourette, shall I illustrate what I mean—with you as the passive agent?"
The girl bent over a little, then with a sudden movement she dropped her head in her hands. A moment later he saw a single tear fall between her fingers.
He looked east, west, north, south, and finally up into the sky. Seeing nobody, the silly expression left his otherwise interesting face; a graver, gentler light grew in his eyes. And he put one arm around her supple waist.
"Something is dreadfully wrong," he said; "all this must be explained—our strange encounter, our speaking, our talking at cross purposes, our candid interest in each other—the sudden, swift, unfeigned friendship that was born the instant that our eyes encountered——"
"I know it. Itwasborn. Oh, I know it. Iknowit, and I could not help it—somehow—somehow——"
"It—it was almost like—like—love at first sight," he whispered.
"It was—something like it—I am afraid——"
"Do you think itwaslove?"
"I don't know. . . . Do you?"
"I don't know. . . . You mustn't cry. Putyour head down—here. You mustn't be distressed."
"I am, dreadfully."
"You mustn't be."
"I can't help it—now."
"Could you help it if you—loved me?"
"Oh, no! Oh, no! It would distress me beyond measure to—to love you. Oh, it must not be—it must not happen to me——"
"It is already happening tome."
"Don't let it! Don't let it happen to either of us! Please—please——"
"But—itishappening all the while, Amourette."
She drew a swift, startled sigh.
"Isthatwhat it is that is happening to me, too, Mr. Sayre?"
"Yes. I think so."
"Oh, oh,oh!" she sobbed, hiding her face closer to his shoulder.
"Amourette! Darling! Dea——"
"L-listen. Because now I've got to tell you all about the disappearance of those perfectly horrid young specimens of physical perfection. And after that you will abhor me!"
"Abhoryou! Dearest—dearest and most divine of women!"
"Wait!" she sobbed. "I've got myself and you into the most awful scrape you ever dreamed of by falling in love with you at first sight!"
And she turned her face closer to his shoulder and slipped one desperate little hand into his.
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Untitled illustration
Abouttwo o'clock that afternoon Sayre rushed into camp with his scanty hair on end.
Langdon, who had been attempting to boil a blank-book for dinner, gazed at him in consternation.
"What is it? Bears, William?" he asked fearfully. "D-d-don't be f-f-frightened; I'll stand by you."
"It isn't bears, you simp! I've just unearthedthe most colossal conspiracy of the century! Curtis, things are happening in these woods that are incredible, abominable, horrible——"
"Whatis happening?" faltered Langdon, turning paler. "Murder?"
"Worse! They've got Willett and the others! She admitted it to me——"
"Hey?"
"Willett and Carrick and the others!" shouted Sayre, gesticulating. "They've caught 'em all! She said so! I——"
"They? She? Who's caught what? Who's 'they'? What it is? Who's 'she'? What are you talking about, anyway?"
"Amourette told me——"
"Amourette? Who the deuce is Amourette?"
"I don't know. Shut up! My head's spinning like a gyroscope. All I know is that I want to marry her and she won't let me—and I believe she would if I had a reliable hair-restorer and wasn't near-sighted—but she ran away and got inside the fence and locked the gate."
"Are you drunk?" demanded Langdon, "or merely frolicsome?"
"Idon't know. I guess I am. I'm about everything else. What do I know about anything anyway? Nothing!"
He began to run around in circles; Langdon, having seen similar symptoms in demented cats, regarded him with growing alarm.
"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 Itold Amourette that, too; but she wouldn't listen—she wouldn't lis—My God!Whyam 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—notatall," 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 youdidn't wear eye-glasses? By Jinks! That wastoomuch! I'll leave it to you—wasn'tit?"
Langdon swallowed hard and watched his friend fixedly.
"And then," continued Sayre, grinding his teeth, "thenshe 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. Iamin 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. Thereissuch 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 allthe 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, andreplace 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-pledged 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: "Wouldyoucall 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 poetCarrick and De Lancy Smith and Alphonso W. Green couldn't be chased out of that University."
"Thosearethe 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—becauseyouare slightly bald and near-sighted andIam thin and scholarly!" He ran at the camp-kettle and kicked it.
After a painful silence Sayre said timidly: "Don't laugh, butisthere 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."
"Amourettesawmy 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—tothinkof 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 Icouldgo to Utica and pay a wig-maker and costumer to make me up into the kindof 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!"
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Untitled illustration
Oneweek 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 andwatching 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 andwater, 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; "buteverybody 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 fell 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 operaglass, 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—aftertheir 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'lllet 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.
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; "youdon'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.
Untitled illustration
Allover 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 shapedhead in little burnishedboucles 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 enoughto 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 whatweplease, whether or not it suits them."
"So I've understood," he said, 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 insolentlyfrom 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 greatstrike 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 determinesyourintellectual 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 hasattempted 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 toremain; 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, whatarethey 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-markedwhat?"
"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:
"Willyoube 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 aman! I'm no bench-winner. And if ever I marry and p-p-produce p-p-progeny, it will be somebodyIselect, not somebody who selectsme!"
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 wassopretty—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!Youare 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 relaxedand 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.
At that instant consciousness began to return; he gave a sudden spasmodic and comprehensive flop; there was a report like a pistol. His chest improver had exploded.
Terrified, trembling, she dropped on her knees beside him; never before had she heard of a young man being blown to pieces by chloroform. Then, almost hysterical, she ran to the stream, filled her leather satchel with water, and, running backagain, emptied it upon his upturned countenance.
Horror on horror! His golden brown hair—his very scalp seemed to be parting from his forehead—eyebrows, silky moustache, lips—his entire face seemed to be coming off; and, as she shrieked and tottered to her feet, he began to sputter and kick so violently that both pneumatic calves blew up like the reports of a double-barreled shotgun.
And Ethra reeled back against a tree and cowered there, covering her shocked eyes with shaking fingers.
Untitled illustration
Untitled illustration
Itis a surprising and trying moment for a girl who throws water upon a young man's face to see that face begin to dissolve and come off, feature by feature, in polychromatic splendour.
She did not faint; her intellect reeled for a moment; then she dropped her hands from her eyes and saw him sitting up on the ground, blinking at her gravely from a streaked and gaudy countenance. His wig was tilted over one eye; rouge and pearl powder made his cheeks and chinvery gay; and his handsome, silky moustache hung by one corner from his upper lip. It was too much. She sat down limply on a mossy log and wept.
His senses returned gradually; after a while he got up and walked down to the edge of the brook with all the dignity that unsteady legs permitted.
Fascinated, she watched him at his ablutions where he squatted by the water's edge, scrubbing away as industriously as a washer-racoon. It did not occur to her to flee; curiosity dominated—an overpowering desire to see what he really resembled inpuris naturalibus.
After a while he stood up, hurled the damp wig into the woods, wiped his hands on his knickerbockers and his face on his sleeve, and, bending over, examined his collapsed calves.
And all the while, as the fumes of the chloroform disappeared and he began to realise what had been done to him, he was becoming madder and madder.
She recognised the wrath in his face as he swung on his heel and came toward her.
"It is your own fault!" she said, resolutely,"for playing a silly trick like——" But she observed his advance very dubiously, straightening up to her full slender height to confront him, but not rising to her feet. Her knees were still very shaky.
He halted close in front of her. Something in the interrogative yet fearless beauty of her upward gaze checked the torrent of indignant eloquence under which he was labouring, and, presently, left him even mentally mute, his lips parted stupidly.
She said: "According to the old order of things a well-bred man would ask my pardon. But a decently-bred man, in the first place, wouldn't have done such a thing to me. So your apology would only be a paradox——"
"What!" he exclaimed, stung into protest. "Am I to understand that after netting me and chloroforming me and nearly drowning me——"
"My mistake was perfectly natural. Do you suppose that I would even dream of trailingyouas you really are?"
He gazed at her bewildered; passed his unsteady hand over his countenance, then sat down abruptlybeside her on the mossy log and buried his head in his hands.
She looked at him haughtily, sitting up very straight; he continued beside her in silence, face in his hands as though overwhelmed. Nothing was said for several minutes—until the clear disdain of her gaze changed, imperceptibly; and the rigidity of her spinal column relaxed.
"I am very sorry this has happened," she said. There was, however, no sympathy in her tone. He made no movement to speak.
"I am sorry," she repeated after a moment. "It is hard to suffer humiliation."
"Yes," he said, "it is."
"But you deserved it."
"How? I didn't fashion my face and figure."
She mistook him: "Somebodydid."
"Yes; my parents."
"What!"
"Oh, I don't mean that silly make-up," he said, raising his head.
"Whatdoyou mean?"
"I mean my own face and figure. What you did to me—your netting me, doping me, and allthat wasn't a patch on what you said afterward."
"What do you mean? What did I say?"
"You asked me if I supposed that you would dream of netting a man with a face and f-figure like——"
"Mr. Langdon!"
"Didn't you?"
"I—you—we——"
"You did! And can any man suffer any humiliation to compare with words like those? I merely ask you."
With eyes dilated, breath coming quickly, she stared at him, scarcely yet comprehending the blow which her words had dealt to one of the lords of creation.
"Mr. Langdon," she said, "do you suppose that I am the sort of girl to deliberately criticise either your features or your figure?"
"But you did."
"I merely meant that you should infer——"
"I inferred it all right," he said bitterly.
Perplexed, not knowing how to encounter such an unexpected reproach, vaguely distressed by it, she instinctively attempted to clear herself.
"Please listen. I hadn't any idea of mortifying you by explaining that you are not qualified by nature to interest the modern woman in——"
He turned a bright red.
"Do you suppose such a condemnation—such a total ostracism—is agreeable to a man? . . . Is there anything worse you can say about a man than to inform him that no woman could possibly take the slightest interest in him?"
"I didn't say that. I said the modern woman——"
"You're all modern."
"It is reported that there are still a few women sufficiently old-fashioned to——"
"They don't interest me." He looked up at her. "Whatyou'vesaid has—simply—and completely—spoiled—my life," he said slowly.
"WhatIsaid?"
"Yes."
"What have—what could—what I—how—where—who is——" and she checked herself, eyes on his.
"Yes," he repeated with a curious sort of satisfaction, "you have spoiled my entire life for me."
"What an utterly—what a wildly absurd and impossible——"
"And youknowit!" he insisted, with gloomy triumph.
"Know what?"
"That you've spoiled——"
"Stop! Will you explain to me how——"
"Is it necessary?"
"Necessary? Of course it is! You have made a most grave and serious and—and heartless charge against a woman——"
"Yes, a heartless one—against you!"
"I?Heartless?"
"Cold, deliberate, cruel, unfeeling, merciless, remorseless——"
"Mr. Langdon!"
"Didn't you practically tell me that no woman could endure the sight of a face and figure like mine?"
"No, I did not. What a—a cruel accusation!"
"Whatdidyou mean, then?"
"That—that you are not exactly—qualified to—to become an ancestor of the physically perfect race which——"
"Whatiswrong with me, then?"
She looked at him helplessly. "What do you mean?"
"I mean where am I below proof? Where am I lacking? What points count me out?"
Her sensitive underlip began to tremble.
"I—I don't want to criticise you——" she faltered.
"Please do. I beg of you. There are beauty doctors in town," he added earnestly. "They can fix up a fellow—and I can go to a gymnasium, and take up deep-breathing and——"
"But, Mr. Langdon, doyouwant to—to be—captured——"
He looked into her bright and melting eyes.
"Yes," he said. "I'd like to give you another chance at me."
"Me? After what I did to you?"
"Will you?"
"Why, what a perfectly astonishing——"
"Not very. Look me over and tell me what points count against me. I know I'm not good-looking, but I'd like to go into training for the bench—I mean——"
"Mr. Langdon," she said slowly, "surelyyouwould not care to develop the featureless symmetry and the—the monotonous perfection necessary to——"
"Yes, I would. I wish to become superficially monotonous. I'm too varied; I realise that. I want to resemble that make-up I wore——"
"That! Goodness! What a horrid idea——"
"Horrid? Didn't you like it well enough to net me?"
"I—there was nothing expressive of my personal taste in my capturing you—I mean the kind of a man you appeared to be. It was my duty—a purely scientific matter——"
"I don't care what it was. You went after me. You wouldn't go after me as I now appear. I want you to tell me what is lacking in me which would prevent you going after me again—from a purely scientific standpoint."
She sat breathing irregularly, rather rapidly, pretty head bent, apparently considering her hands, which lay idly in her lap. Then she lifted her blue eyes and inspected him. And it wascurious, too, that, now when she came to examine him, she did not seem to discover any faults.
"My nose doesn't suit you, does it?" he asked candidly.
"Why, yes," she said innocently, "it suits me."
"That's funny," he reflected. "How about my ears?"
"They seem to be all right," she admitted.
"Do you think so?"
"They seem to me to be perfectly good ears."
"That's odd. Whatisthere queer about my face?"
She looked in vain for imperfections.
"Why, do you know, Mr. Langdon, I don't seem to notice anything that is not entirely and agreeably classical."
"But—my legs are thin."
"Not very."
"Aren't they too thin?"
"Nottoothin. . . . Perhaps you might ride a bicycle for a few days——"
"I will!" he exclaimed with a boyish enthusiasm which lighted up his face so attractively that she found it fascinating to watch.
"Do you know," she said slowly, "the chances are that I would have netted you anyway. It just occurred to me."
"Without my make-up?" he asked, in delighted surprise.
"I think so. Why not?" she replied, looking at him with growing interest. "I don't see anything the matter with you."
"My chest improver exploded," he ventured, being naturally honest.
"Idon't think you require it."
"Don't you? That is the nicest thing you ever said to me."
"It's only the truth," she said, flushing a trifle in her intense interest. "And, as far as your legs are concerned, I really do not believe you need a bicycle or anything else. . . . In fact—in fact—Idon't see why you shouldn't go with me to the University if—if you—care to——"
"You darling!"
"Mr. Langdon! Wh-what a perfectly odd thing to s-say to me!"
"I didn't mean it," he said with enthusiasm;"I really didn't mean it. What I meant was—you know—don't you?"