"New York's architecture," said I, "--or what popularly passes for
it--is all in front. The minute you get to the rear a pitiable condition
is exposed."
He said: "Professor Jane Bottomly is all façade; the remainder of her is
merely an occiputal backyard full of theoretical tin cans and broken
bottles. I think we all had better resign."
It was a fearsome description. I trembled as I lighted an inexpensive
cigar.
The sentimental feminist movement in America was clearly at the bottom of
the Bottomly affair.
Long ago, in a reactionary burst of hysteria, the North enfranchised the
Ethiopian. In a similar sentimental explosion of dementia, some sixty
years later, the United States wept violently over the immemorial wrongs
perpetrated upon the restless sex, opened the front and back doors of
opportunity, and sobbed out, "Go to it, ladies!"
They are still going.
Professor Jane Bottomly was wished on us out of a pleasant April sky. She
fell like a meteoric mass of molten metal upon the Bronx Park Zoölogical
Society splashing her excoriating personality over everybody until
everybody writhed.
I had not yet seen the lady. I did not care to. Sooner or later I'd be
obliged to meet her but I was not impatient.
Now the Field Expeditionary Force of the Bronx Park Zoölogical Society
is, perhaps, the most important arm of the service. Professor Bottomly
had just been appointed official head of all field work. Why? Nobody
knew. It is true that she had written several combination nature and love
romances. In these popular volumes trees, flowers, butterflies, birds,
animals, dialect, sobs, and sun-bonnets were stirred up together into a
saccharine mess eagerly gulped down by a provincial reading public, which
immediately protruded its tongue for more.
The news of her impending arrival among us was an awful blow to everybody
at the Bronx. Professor Farrago fainted in the arms of his pretty
stenographer; Professor Cornelius Lezard of the Batrachian Department ran
around his desk all day long in narrowing circles and was discovered on
his stomach still feebly squirming like an expiring top; Dr. Hans Fooss,
our beloved Professor of Pachydermatology sat for hours weeping into his
noodle soup. As for me, I was both furious and frightened, for, within
the hearing of several people, Professor Bottomly had remarked in a very
clear voice to her new assistant, Dr. Daisy Delmour, that she intended to
get rid of me for the good of the Bronx because of my reputation for
indiscreet gallantry among the feminine employees of the Bronx Society.
Professor Lezard overhead that outrageous remark and he hastened to
repeat it to me.
I was lunching at the time in my private office in the Administration
Building with Dr. Hans Fooss--he and I being too busy dissecting an
unusually fine specimen of Dingue to go to the Rolling Stone Inn for
luncheon--when Professor Lezard rushed in with the scandalous libel still
sizzling in his ears.
"Everybody heard her say it!" he went on, wringing his hands. "It was a
most unfortunate thing for anybody to say about you before all those
young ladies. Every stenographer and typewriter there turned pale and
then red."
"What!" I exclaimed, conscious that my own ears were growing large and
hot. "Did that outrageous woman have the bad taste to say such a thing
before all those sensitive girls!"
"She did. She glared at them when she said it. Several blondes and one
brunette began to cry."
"I hope," said I, a trifle tremulously, "that no typewriter so far forgot
herself as to admit noticing playfulness on my part."
"They all were tearfully unanimous in declaring you to be a perfect
gentleman!"
"I am," I said. "I am also a married man--irrevocably wedded to science.
I desire no other spouse. I am ineligible; and everybody knows it. If at
times a purely scientific curiosity leads me into a detached and
impersonally psychological investigation of certain--ah--feminine
idiosyncrasies--"
"Certainly," said Lezard. "To investigate the feminine is more than a
science; it is a duty!"
"Of a surety!" nodded Dr. Fooss.
I looked proudly upon my two loyal friends and bit into my cheese
sandwich. Only men know men. A jury of my peers had exonerated me. What
did I care for Professor Bottomly!
"All the same," added Lezard, "you'd better be careful or Professor
Bottomly will put one over on you yet."
"I am always careful," I said with dignity.
"All men should be. It is the only protection of a defenseless coast
line," nodded Lezard.
"Und neffer, neffer commid nodding to paper," added Dr. Fooss. "Don'd
neffer write it, 'I lofe you like I was going to blow up alretty!' Ach,
nein! Don'd you write down somedings. Effery man he iss entitled to
protection; und so iss it he iss protected."
Stein in hand he beamed upon us benevolently over his knifeful of
sauerfisch, then he fed himself and rammed it down with a hearty draught
of Pilsner. We gazed with reverence upon Kultur as embodied in this great
Teuton.
"That woman," remarked Lezard to me, "certainly means to get rid of you.
It seems to me that there are only two possible ways for you to hold down
your job at the Bronx. You know it, don't you?"
I nodded. "Yes," I said; "either I must pay marked masculine attention to
Professor Bottomly or I must manage to put one over on her."
"Of course," said Lezard, "the first method is the easier for _you_--"
"Not for a minute!" I said, hastily; "I simply couldn't become frolicsome
with her. You say she's got a voice like a drill-sergeant and she
goose-steps when she walks; and I don't mind admitting she has me badly
scared already. No; she must be scientifically ruined. It is the only
method which makes her elimination certain."
"But if her popular nature books didn't ruin her scientifically, how can
we hope to lead her astray?" inquired Lezard.
"There is," I said, thoughtfully, "only one thing that can really ruin a
scientist. Ridicule! I have braved it many a time, taking my scientific
life in my hands in pursuit of unknown specimens which might have proved
only imaginary. Public ridicule would have ended my scientific career in
such an event. I know of no better way to end Professor Bottomly's
scientific career and capability for mischief than to start her out after
something which doesn't exist, inform the newspapers, and let her suffer
the agonising consequences."
Dr. Fooss began to shout:
"The idea iss schön! colossal! prachtvol! ausgezeichnet! wunderbar!
wunderschön! gemütlich--" A large, tough noodle checked him. While he
labored with Teutonic imperturbability to master it Lezard and I
exchanged suggestions regarding the proposed annihilation of this
fearsome woman who had come ravening among us amid the peaceful and
soporific environment of Bronx Park.
It was a dreadful thing for us to have our balmy Lotus-eaters' paradise
so startlingly invaded by a large, loquacious, loud-voiced lady who had
already stirred us all out of our agreeable, traditional and leisurely
inertia. Inertia begets cogitation, and cogitation begets ideas, and
ideas beget reflexion, and profound reflexion is the fundamental
cornerstone of that immortal temple in which the goddess Science sits
asleep between her dozing sisters, Custom and Religion.
This thought seemed to me so unusually beautiful that I wrote it with a
pencil upon my cuff.
While I was writing it, quietly happy in the deep pleasure that my
intellectual allegory afforded me, Dr. Fooss swabbed the last morsel of
nourishment from his plate with a wad of rye bread, then bolting the
bread and wiping his beard with his fingers and his fingers on his
waistcoat, he made several guttural observations too profoundly German
to be immediately intelligible, and lighted his porcelain pipe.
"Ach wass!" he remarked in ruminative fashion. "Dot Frauenzimmer she iss
to raise hell alretty determined. Von Pachydermatology she knows nodding.
Maybe she leaves me alone, maybe it is to be 'raus mit me. I' weis' ni'!
It iss aber besser one over on dat lady to put, yess?"
"It certainly is advisable," replied Lezard.
"Let us try to think of something sufficiently disastrous to terminate
her scientific career," said I. And I bowed my rather striking head and
rested the point of my forefinger upon my forehead. Thought crystallises
more quickly for me when I assume this attitude.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Lezard fold his arms and sit frowning
at infinity.
Dr. Fooss lay back in a big, deeply padded armchair and closed his
prominent eyes. His pipe went out presently, and now and then he made
long-drawn nasal remarks, in German, too complicated for either Lezard or
for me to entirely comprehend.
"We must try to get her as far away from here as possible," mused Lezard.
"Is Oyster Bay _too_ far and too cruel?"
I pondered darkly upon the suggestion. But it seemed unpleasantly like
murder.
"Lezard," said I, "come, let us reason together. Now _what_ is woman's
besetting emotion?"
"Curiosity?"
"Very well; assuming that to be true, what--ah--quality particularly
characterizes woman when so beset."
"Ruthless determination."
"Then," said I, "we ought to begin my exciting the curiosity of Professor
Bottomly; and her ruthless determination to satisfy that curiosity should
logically follow."
"How," he asked, "are we to arouse her curiosity?"
"By pretending that we have knowledge of something hitherto undiscovered,
the discovery of which would redound to our scientific glory."
"I see. She'd want the glory for herself. She'd swipe it."
"She would," said I.
"Tee--hee!" he giggled; "Wouldn't it be funny to plant something phony on
her--"