Robert Chambers - The Gay Rebellion

"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-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: "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!"

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.