"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 pretty--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 ma.s.s 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 rec.u.mbent 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 back again, 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.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
[Ill.u.s.tration]
VII.
IT is 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 chin very 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-rac.o.o.n. It did not occur to her to flee; curiosity dominated--an overpowering desire to see what he really resembled in puris 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 trailing you as you really are?"
He gazed at her bewildered; pa.s.sed his unsteady hand over his countenance, then sat down abruptly beside 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: "Somebody did."
"Yes; my parents."
"What!"
"Oh, I don"t mean that silly make-up," he said, raising his head.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean my own face and figure. What you did to me--your netting me, doping me, and all that 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. "What you"ve said has--simply--and completely--spoiled--my life," he said slowly.
"What I said?"
"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 you know it!" 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!"
"What did you mean, then?"
"That--that you are not exactly--qualified to--to become an ancestor of the physically perfect race which----"
"What is wrong 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, do you want 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?"