The Gay Rebellion. Chambers Robert William
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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 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 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.
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