Phases of an Inferior Planet Part 10

It is a more convincing argument against it than all the statistics of the divorce court--"

"For the Lord's sake, Carrie, beware of woman's rights," protested Miss Oliver. "That is exactly what Mrs. Simpson said in her lecture on 'Our Tyrant, Man.' Why, those dear old aunts of yours in Alabama have inserted an additional clause in their Litany: 'From intemperance, evil desires, and woman's suffrage, good Lord deliver us!' They are grounded in the belief that the new woman is an _edition de luxe_ of the devil."

Mariana rose and shook out her skirts. "I must go," she said, "and you haven't done a bit of work."

"So we haven't," replied Miss Hill, picking up her needle. "But take some caramels--do."

Mariana took a caramel and went out into the hall. Algarcife's door was open, and he was standing upon the threshold talking to Claude Nevins.

As Mariana pa.s.sed, Nevins smiled and called to her:

"I say, Miss Musin, here is a vandal who complains that you make night hideous."

Algarcife scowled.

"Nevins is a fool," he retorted, "and if he doesn't know it, he ought to be told so."

"Thanks," returned Nevins, amiably, "but I have long since learned not to believe anything I hear."

Anthony's irritation increased. "I should have thought the presumptive evidence sufficient to overcome any personal bias," he replied.

Nevins spread out his hands with an imperturbable shrug.

"My dear fellow, I never found my conclusions upon presumptive evidence.

Had I done so, I should hold life to be a hollow mockery--whereas I am convinced that it is a deuced solid one."

"You are so bad-tempered--both of you," said Mariana; "but, Mr.

Algarcife, do you really object to my singing? I can't keep silent, you know."

Algarcife smiled.

"I never supposed that you could," he answered. "And as for music, I had as soon listen to you as to--to Patti."

"Not that he values your accomplishments more, but Patti's less,"

observed Nevins, placidly.

"On the other hand, I should say that Miss Musin would make decidedly the less noise," said Anthony.

"He's a brute, isn't he, Mariana?" asked Nevins--and added, "Now I never said you made anything hideous, did I?"

Mariana laughed, looking a little vexed. "If you wouldn't always repeat everything you hear other people say, it would be wiser," she responded, tartly.

"Such is the reward of virtue," sighed Nevins. "All my life I have been held as responsible for other people's speeches as for my own. And all from a conscientious endeavor to let my neighbors see themselves as others see them--"

Algarcife smiled good-humoredly. "Whatever bad qualities Nevins may possess," he said, "he has at least the courage of his convictions--"

Nevins shrugged his shoulders.

"I don't know about the convictions," he rejoined, "but I've got the courage all right." Then he looked at Mariana. "Is that an implement of housewifery that I see?" he demanded.

"I have been to a darning-party," she answered, "but we didn't darn anything--not even circ.u.mstances."

"Lucky circ.u.mstances!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Nevins. Then he lowered his voice. "I should not have believed it of you," he protested; "to attend a darning-party, and to leave not only me, but my socks, outside."

Mariana flushed angrily.

"You are insufferable," she said, "and you haven't a particle of tact--not a particle. Only yesterday I heard you tell Mr. Morris that his head looked like an advertis.e.m.e.nt for sapolio, and the day before you told Miss Freighley that I said she didn't know how to dress her hair."

"It was true," said Nevins. "You can't make a liar of me, Mariana."

"I wish you wouldn't call me Mariana," she retorted; and he went upon his way with a lament.

As Mariana laid her hand upon her door-k.n.o.b she looked at Anthony.

"Mr. Algarcife," she said, "do you really mind my singing so very much?"

From the end of the corridor Nevins's voice was heard chanting:

"How fickle women are, Fickle as falling star."

"I wish that Nevins would attend to his own affairs," Algarcife responded. "As for me, you may dance a break-down every night of your life, and, if it amuses you, I'll grin and bear it."

CHAPTER VII

During Algarcife's first term at college, a fellow fraternity man remarked of him that he resembled the eternal void, in that he might have been anything and was nothing. Algarcife accepted the criticism with a shrug.

"Wait and see," he responded, shortly, and the fraternity man had waited and had seen.

In that first year Anthony succeeded in sowing a supply of wild oats sufficient for the domestication of the species. He was improvident from principle and reckless from an inborn distrust of accepted dogmas. "I shall live as I please," he replied, in answer to the warnings of a cla.s.smate, "and I shall think as I d.a.m.n please."

For a year he went about his dissipations in a kind of inquiring ardor.

He called it "seeing life," and he pursued his observations with entire obliviousness to public regard, but with philosophic concern as to the accuracy of the information obtained. He was known to have got drunk upon whiskey and light wine in order to test the differences in effect, and it was rumored that he made love to the homeliest and most virtuous daughter of the saloon-keeper that he might convince himself whether her virtue was the logical resultant of her homeliness. Into all experiments he carried an entire absence of prejudice, and a half-defiant acceptance of consequences.

"It is a sheer waste of time," said John Driscoll, of the Senior cla.s.s.

"You haven't learned the first principle of scientific dissipation.

Instead of plunging into excesses, you stroll into them. By Jove! if you broke every command in the Decalogue, you would appear to sin in moderation."

Algarcife laughed. "I am going to reform," he said. "I am not enough of an artist to see the aesthetic values of vice. Let's become decent. It is more economical."

It was at this time that he reduced his living expenses one-half, and appropriated the surplus funds to the support of a young mechanic, whose health had collapsed in the struggle to work his way to a university degree. "He not only gave it," declared the young mechanic, in a burst of grat.i.tude, "but he gave it without knowing that he did a generous thing."

When Algarcife left college that summer he followed Driscoll to his cabin in the Adirondacks and spent several months botanizing. The chance application to science decided the tenor of his mind, and, upon his return to study, he refused to bow beneath the weight of authority hurled upon him. He denounced the cla.s.sics and a cla.s.sical training.

Several courses he declared superficial, and he mastered various systems of moral philosophy that he might refute the fallacies of the professor.

The brilliancy which he had frittered during the preceding year was turned into newer channels, and the closeness of his reliance upon inductive reasoning caused him to become at once a source of amus.e.m.e.nt to his cla.s.smates and of annoyance to his instructor. To see him rise in cla.s.s, his face charged with the nervous vigor which seized him in moments of excitement, his keen glance riveted upon the professor as he mercilessly dissected his utterances, was an event which, to his fellow-students, rendered even old Monckton's lectures of interest.