CHAPTER SIX

The Yankee University had resumed its last academic session, Charles and Vivian returned to the campus and behold, there were cheers and the peculiar freshness of newly married couples was upon them. They began to live under the same roof as a husband and wife outside the campus where they rented a house for their leisure time. Charles in this last academic session was writing his final examination, and was too busy like a termite preparing to write his thesis on his first degree in English language.

While on campus, the couple would come out in the evening from their respective hostels to kiss and discuss most of their pressing needs. They discussed significant issues and interesting tales about their future responsibilities and other numerous relevant issues.

No sooner did they resume studies in the English department than Charles and Vivian started going to parties and theater shows, staged in the University’s campuses, and in Hollywood. From these parties and theatre shows the couples attended, Vivian started emulating the characters of the corrupt females she saw at the show by putting on men’s wears. She started smoking cigarette and drinking alcohol like men. She began to put on provocative dresses and apply make-up. It seemed that she was full of self-control, caution and temperance. Any eye that saw her would take her for a sex-maniac or call her a nymphomaniac. The truth was that she rarely drank at all when she had not married Charles. In her younger days, it had seemed romantic to sip wine with dinner or share a cognac afterward, but when Charles started courting her, she developed an almost pathological devotion to keeping her own head clear. She would not even have a soft drink that contained caffeine anymore. She knew some of her intimate friends who smoke hemp, cigarette and sniff cocaine. They have become so hardened by their lives that there is no instruction that would turn them from addictions and frolic.

Previously, the girls and narcotic women in the school mocked her for her inability to smoke and drink, or join the bad gangs who were not ashamed of the immoral acts and vices of the town. For Vivian, those days were gone by, and it was time to join the group. Though in those days, to become one of those frivolous women and girls had never been her ambition; now she had become a professor in the University of Evil and she had reached a stage in the world of darkness where she could easily drag a saint out of heaven and throw him into hell-hole. She became a young woman of foolish prudence and sane madness so far as a relationship between pleasure men and women was concerned. As for others, she was ‘a prostitute without a park.’ She liked foolish connections with notorious class of women just as a vulture loves rotting carcass and followed them as flies follow a man with festering wound. The last instruction her parents gave her before sending her to the university was, that evil communication corrupts good manner; that if a goat that doesn’t eat yam moves with a goat that eats yam, it will start eating yam.

Now, in these grotty parties, Vivian involved in corrupt conversations and imitated the absurd examples of the bad company of pleasures stricken women; which had taken no root in her parental education. While the excitement of pleasure which she was lured into became part of her existence and brought a change within her and her modesty began to melt away like dews before the heat of the sun. She found herself in the midst of bad friends and remembered in her tertian heart what admonishment her parent gave her to avoid the bad company of friends. The remembrance of these warnings that coiled in her heart like a silken coil did not persuade her from enmeshing deeper and deeper into rascal life with her husband.

However, Vivian quite understood the law of morals which she was taught by her parents from the onset was still alive in her soul. No matter how she had rejected her previous moral conducts and accepted the filthy life, good people still gained a tolerable insight into the nature and secrets of her profession. People in society who knew her and classified her among the virtuous girls were surprised with her present way of life. People who respected her in the past, no longer considered her as a married lady, since she changed her attitude. She was considered a street class, an object of ‘hit and run’ and someone left to corrupt company. Being a party notoriety, she could no longer possess itch of moral conduct and she was obsessed by the new company of pleasure seeking group, in which her husband introduced her into.

Whenever Vivian went to party, Charles would leave Vivian and dance ecstatically with ex-girlfriends. She would in turn dance with other men in the party. She did not dance those days the money was good and she had not been a dancer in her life time. She started dancing during the first day Charles went with her to Hollywood. When she first went to Holly-wood, the music was only moderately loud, but the beat was driving and hard. The lounge was less brightly lit than the night outside, and the figures moving around were merely shadows, except for few girls dancing in the middle of the room under a spotlight. In the dark places, the shadows of nude women could be seen sitting on the laps of men and moving in ways that made a saint’s blush deepen.

The difference is that she danced with men who were not her mate. Her soul became guilty and she started to feel as if she was lost in a bottomless well with nothing but death and horror for her constant companions. She wanted to be able to remind herself that her acts were against the previous warnings of her parents. She said that she was doing her evil practices by choice of her mate. The urge guided her and made her to concentrate on her ways as she listened to the voice of her mate and refused to think about the reasons behind her actions.

Nevertheless, Charles did not acknowledge that the footprint he had laid down for his wife was dangerous. Charles himself naturally enjoyed leisure, and had no regard to whether he was in society or not to fulfill that desire. He did not adhere to instructions. Any instruction given to him about his perverted behaviours was like pouring water on the back of a tortoise. It struck him like one of those incredible absurdities that somehow made life uneasy to take. His thoughts of prowling in night parties would not leave him alone. They were bound and determined to wonder pathways and corruptible areas. When he was twelve years old, he strolled out with friends at night and got rip-roaring drunk. To this day, he could not remember how he got home by the help of a Good Samaritan but he could remember his father knocking him to the ground when he staggered through the door.

Notwithstanding, Vivian who was a novice in party frolic soon became a professor of` jamboree. She could no longer suppress the delight she received from male friends’ associations in the party. Male friends gave her many gifts and persuaded her to visit them but she was appreciating their exchanges by email, twitter, Facebook and on the public bulletin-board service. With the little fear left in her, Vivian neglected their invitations. In fact, she understood that responding to such invitations would most likely open a way for Charles to suspect her. And on the other hand, she was happy that Charles led her into party life and pulled off her mask of timidity. In the later months, she felt free and could even answer calls from the opposite sex. She was able to hear wolf-whistles and phone calls from the male friends while every pair of public eyes looked and mocked her behaviours.

For all these practical maxims of her life: her mixing up with male friends on campus and society, stories about her swank behaviours went far and wide and reached her parents. When her parents got the news of her delinquencies, they were mad with sorrow and wondered why she had gone into such degradation, and drifted so low into immorality. They first blamed Charles for giving her the sum of five million dollars because the money had created a chance for her to enter into modern day crazy lives. The money which Charles gave her was drawn from the account of millions of dollars which his father banked for him as legacy, and for his possession, because he was his only child.

The day she received this money in cheque form, it was her ungovernable urge to get into materialism. Now, she is a big girl; she goes in Cadillac and Limousine cars which Charles bought for her during their wedding. Whereby she had her wealth, and not monetarily poor, she had no more regard to other girls of her class, who she felt most akin to during the period of her timidity. She is now civilized. The type of civilization that comes with corruption. She paid no more regard to moral characters and instruction which she was brought up. It had become a thing of the past. The consequences of partisan life took effect upon her. The frequency of smoking and drinking became a thing that she could not refrain from. The desire of dancing with male friend form her everyday life and a life of theatrical shows took over her everyday life. Nothing, in short, nothing mattered to her than the strong yearnings for going out anywhere she want to go upon all the inconveniences such luxury and pleasure could bring.

Formerly, she had no accord and company with the campus girls. She hated their obscure manners and ways of life and disdained their connections. But since she had joined the corrupt party life, she joined the campus girls for the corruption of her innocence; she joined their luscious talk, in which modesty was out of place; their descriptions of engagements with male friends had given her a tolerable insight into the kind of activities which they held every day in the nightclubs.

Vivian joined her course mates at the University of Yankee and they loved money like her. She and her money-maniac friends in due course nicknamed themselves sharp-wise ladies. There were very beautiful and charming, there were breathtakingly beautiful: each one looks like an angel – which anyone could feel a serious twinge of envy. They were money-crazy: they loved money, cherished it and treasured it. They used to walk in the streets in ‘hot-skirts’ or crazy trousers. They were goody-goody. Each one of them knew how to warm her way into the hearts of wealthy men- how to sap men’s money. There were loquacious tongues, indolent hands, proud hearts, and rough minds. Each of them took too many bottles of beer.

There were many funny things these sharp-wised ladies used to do anytime they were chanced to meet. First, each of them in turn related the exploits and success she had made: how she played pranks on men and cheated or swindle men out of their money. Again, they advised themselves on how to spread their nets in order to catch more wealthy men. They also advised one another not to create any chance to men to deceive them and have forceful carnal knowledge of them. Besides, they urged and encouraged one another to deal ruthlessly with rich men who sought their hands in friendship. Their motto was: “Get money and dump men: use foolish men to make money.” They in other words were determined to punish men. They punished them in two ways. At first, they ignited sexual fire in them. These girls have no second thought about dancing in clubs. Their acts were more of a comment on society than on murderers and terrorists. Without a good reason to do otherwise, Vivian would do as she had been advised by her group. She did not want any one from her community to know about her secret persona. She did not feel guilt about her care-free life, as she cheated on her hubby.

The last session of the academic programme of the university had elapsed. Charles had finished his research on his English Course Project and came out in flying colours. He graduated in his course with Upper Credit. He was about to be posted for National Youth Service before he would be back to switch to the Government Service. Maybe get a job in one of those private companies that pay big money with good remunerations. Even if he could not get a good job, there was the possibility that he would establish a private business with big capital that his father banked for him as a heritage. Already, he was going to work for an accounting firm for a couple of years. The firm had already given him an appointment that would begin after his National Youth Service.

When Charles and Vivian came home on a fine morning, the parents of Charles were surprised at the appearance they saw Vivian. They were filled with awe and confounded with the way she dressed: her fashion was out of place, her eyes painted blue and look like the eyes of a lizard. Her lips painted red like the lips of a foolish woman, or like the lips of the Hollywood whore. Her chins were painted black and blue like the face of a witch doctor, her fingers like a claw, painted red. Her hair blown up on top of her skull like a satin crown; she wore a pair of trouser, which pounded her together and she looked like a bag of garri in deep water; and she stood on a high-heeled-shoes, her neck outstretched and was mincing as she walked into the castle of Noble Rogers.

“Oh! What has brought you into this deceitful and suspicious appearance?” Regina began awfully. Vivian’s face changed swiftly, and she looked like an entirely different person. She felt the impact of her question as if a nuclear bomb had been dropped in the room. Regina looked swiftly at her and saw that she had turned angrily pale. She got wondering if something was wrong with her. Vivian knew that everybody was saying about her being a beautiful woman, but she could not understand what her mother-in-law saw about her appearance. Nobody said anything wrong at all about what she was really like.

“What kind of appearance did you observed?” Vivian began suspiciously.

“Please I would not hide any fact from you. Your outlook is like one of those modern women found in Hollywood and streets of the town. Your dressing violets modest fashion. You don’t look like the wife of a reasonable man; I am not pleased with your shameful appearance. Why do you allow demons to slip through you? Once again, I have the feeling of shame burning inside me, because your appearance connotes evil. Nobody ever believed that someone like you could do this nefarious act. One of these days you will be like one of those women who showed themselves in public wearing nothing but G-strings. These women are taking advantage of our society, you know. If men were not so ready to pay exorbitant sums to see women undress, these women would not be tempted down this path. It was evil when Eve listened to the snake and ate from the tree of knowledge. It was evil when she saw she was naked. If not for that, none of us would ever have to grow old and sick, and die. God clothed her from her nudity and warned the woman not to put on men’s wears. How strange that people of honest feelings and sensibility consider your outlook?” Regina chided.

“Mum, what you observe of my outfit doesn’t make sense to me. It seems to me that anyone could put on what he or she likes. I just think I wasn’t wrong to put on what I like. That’s how we dress on campus. Old fogies dress in ancient clothes,” Vivian briefly retorted.

“My daughter, your answers do not make sense to me. Your conception is odd. It seems to me that anyone could make up lies about things they did not really imagine. If the school pupils dress in such filthy wears like yours, it is properly degradation to the families and society in which they came from. It is quite mental for them not to see the past more clearly. I doubt anyone who lived few decades ago has any of immoral clothe. You are supposed to be a descent girl from a good family. To look like this, is a breach of moral law and if it is considered a vogue, it is a shameful appearance of the modern women. It is just suppression to the delight of morality and tampers on natural laws of the virtuous woman. A bad attitude is like a flat tire, you cannot get anywhere with it if you do not change it. Your thoughts of the modern vogue are contrary to anything that we have been taught.” Regina upbraided scathingly.

On hearing the warnings of her mother-in-law, Vivian dished out an acrid smile at the argument her mother-in-law could use to dissuade her from her seductive wears. She imagined whoever heard of a thing like that. She didn’t hear a thing like that. She doesn’t understand what her mother-in-law mean by her explanation of her modern vogue. Nobody had ever made her aware of absurd appearance. She did not see evil in her modern vogue. She knew that her mother who was a strict religious fundamentalist had previously warned her wearing panties and high heels. That did not mean much to her, but her mother-in-law’s questions and descriptions of her modern vogue infuriated and upset her, in the hope that she took precaution on her adverse wears. She was disconnected from reality that she could not imagine how anything her mother-in-law could count for her odd vogue and she considered her points as a hoax. Mrs. Rogers was lounging in her chair, apparently uncomfortable, but she was watching every detailed points. Charles sat prim and upright at the other end of the table, looking straight ahead, his face tight with disapproval as he listened to his mother. Few minutes elapsed; he settled in an armchair and let Vivian handle the conversation for a while. Vivian had shifted her chair away a little and sidewise, facing the mother- in- law. She was lolling back in her chair, looking up at her, the eyebrows raised, the eyes half closed, a little smile touching the corner of her lips; her eyes darkening with a memory. Basically she did not understand her archaic taught, and puts uninteresting spine on her thought processes. For a little time, she responded boldly to her.

“Mum, in instructing me, as far as your own lights reached, is good. I would assure you that; but I couldn’t be able to withdraw from the present day vogue, in which every girl appears. There are so many things you do not understand. Nobody lives in two worlds: ancient and modern. If you lived in the past age, you will talk about the things that happened in the past. If you live in the modern age, you will think about modern things. The whole world is gulfed up in a great mass of modernism and scientific technology. Everyone loves me, you know. I don’t think I ever heard a word spoken against my fashion. Look, if I go back to the days in which girls put on gowns that cascaded down from their necks to toes, making them look like they have no legs, the modern girls in the universities, who wear shorts and bikinis would classify me as one of the old fashion. Just one who had never cared to change the fashion of her foster mother. So, modernity doesn’t mean antiquity.”

“Look Vivian! I have a feeling of shame burning inside me. Have you no shame? So you have become one of those blind fools, a spoilt lady, who went on the streets in broad daylight half-naked and with lips, eyes, checks and nails painted like a prostitute. You must have been a spoilt girl, a hawker-whore, in this day. I wonder how we call ourselves Christians in this nation; yet each year, our women, take off more of their clothes and put on men’s wears. They ought to put on more clothes made for women. I don’t care what the rest of the world proved, said or did – it is wrong. Sometimes I see the way women walk nude on the street, I wonder if it is mental. It seems like they don’t realize that when they do that, they are making themselves baits for the devil. Therefore modernity must follow the footprint of antiquity lest corruption follows. In our days, nobody could ever put on these vulgar wears modern women put on. It is a disgrace to the female race that put on nude wears; I wasn’t taught to behave immorally by my parents neither do we participate in corruptions found among men and women of our modern time. I think, except these crimes to come from the intelligent women of the true society. If they were found in crimes, they have lost their bearing as virtuous women, and feminism has lost its value and binding functions, and justice to the true course of woman nature has been perverted,” Regina said curiously. She jerked her head briskly up and down as she spoke, like a hen. Charles moped, shook his head and sighed. He did not bother arguing with her mother. All the while, he just sat mutely and let Vivian and his mother in the tête-à-tête. At this point, he stood up and left the scene of the conversation.

“Mum, I do not think there is something strange about my wears. You are judging me wrongly. Your condemnation of the style of the modern vogue would certainly be found on the reason that you are an old woman, and fuddy-duddy. No person in his right reasoning power could weigh the custom of the past with that of today. You are trying to live in a past age. People are living something that was done in the ancient time. Why do they do that? There is something in them that made them do that. They confuse and complicate modernity with antiquity. Today, people are trying to live in an age gone-by, what somebody else lived in some other age. That won’t work for this modern age, but it is not strange that old people think about old things. Modern lives go with modern thinking and behaviours and lives of antiquity are measured with such scale.”

“Your appearance crossed jurisdictional boundary. You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Vivian, for suggesting such a thing. There is something wrong with your conception. You have unpleasant thought. It hurts to take up your crude ideas. I don’t think I ever found out the truth in your crude analysis. Your ideas are bad. Your coordination is irresponsible. Whatever defense you would set in the pretext of self-defense on your diabolical appearance, would never change the truth and something that is black turns to white. We must call black, black and white, white. If immoral behaviour is the style of the modern woman, then, it is never laudable. Such sin would be somehow what the immoral generation of women makes a market of it. And if a married woman can put a gob of paint in her lips or paint her eyes blue, it signifies a bad paragraph that is in her heart; it is devil’s artificial beauty. But beauty is a secret thing of the heart. You ought to buy garments that would minimize your nudity.”

“Don’t be fooling around with queer thoughts like that, however, by all indications, old men and women think of old things that happened in their days. Their mental deterioration is very rapid as modern lives come. Your comments are improper. Your brain had decreased in weight and smoothing out of cerebral convolutions. That is why you could see modern lives like that. The blue under my eyes, the gob of paint on my lips, manicure and pedicure are additions to blend my natural beauty. With the paints, I look quite attractive. And you realize that no sensible person would condemn any attractive woman.” Vivian defended.

“No my daughter. You used to be a good, dependable, ordinary girl –not too bright maybe, but honest. Who knows what you have done to yourself to get so smart all of a sudden.

Or do you want to show us how smart you are. Those paints are not the symbol of beauty but the symbol of a striptease. I did not see anything like painted faces before in our days. Not one of those faces in my father’s family bore a trace of paint, and no good reasonable person could stand it. It is mental blindness to put on those things the modern women put on. Everyone is upset about what these women are doing today… the things these women do is demeaning, and it hardens them in a tragic way. They are driven on by something inside them that won’t let them stop their acts. It is very ridiculous to behave this way. It is kind of a shame, though. I cannot imagine why these women would do such things or how anyone would be capable of it. These women are capable of almost anything. If a married woman or a spinster puts a gob of paint on her check, and black under her eyes and lips, it clearly shows that she has evil spirit; if you insist in this artless work of artificial beauty, I would assure you that I would soon fade up with you and I believe the love that binds you with your hubby would never last long. The next thing the people would look at you as a disappointed figure, which is stabbing the bond of love between you and your groom because you are creating deceitful impression on the mind of the people”.

“My husband loved my ways and company on campus; he hadn’t uttered any angry complaint against my modern dresses. Before, people laughed at me and despised me for my ignorance and dullness and timidity; now, they hate me for my knowledge and understanding,” Vivian retorted.

“Understand this Vivian; a man with good reasoning power would not tolerate such pollution of natural beauty with artificial make-up and prostheses. Though there are many men in the world who would like it, yet most noble and sensible men find it difficult to allow their wives paint their eyes and put on men’s outfits, or go out nude before the public with counterfeit beauty faces. Do not struggle under the specter of self-doubt. There is nothing wrong with a person becoming intelligent and wanting to acquire knowledge and understanding of the world around him. Knowledge misused caused nudity. When Eve got knowledge she became naked. It seems that you are dragged into this mess to do what you are doing,” Regina advised.

“Beauty of any kind is at the eyes that look at it; there are many counterfeit faces in this modern age: plastic faces, surgical faces, cream faces and pancake faces. Nature endows one with supernatural beauty. The fact is that whatever way beauty is made, artificial or supernatural, it is still beauty at the eyes that look at it. If my husband accepts my abject character which you found out, you have no right to stop me from putting on anything,” Vivian emphatically declared.

Everything inside Vivian tensed. She hadn’t felt comfortable with Regina since her accusations about her odd appearance. It was reassuring that she didn’t think she had anything to worry about from her mother in-law’s accusations. She almost hated her points; hated her for reminding her of all the things she was doing. Mrs. Rodgers was getting distinct impression that she didn’t have much opportunity to express herself on these issues.

“You can put anything you think best so far your husband likes it. If he desires your abject behaviours, it

signifies that he had become a boneless sissy, and had forgotten his nature of breed. If he accepts your filths, it is because the university’s immodest way of living had crept on him, and had corrupted his innocence which he was brought up. Nobody would blame you. Well, I would believe you; a slight shift of character in a man would absolutely appear on his wife. If your husband would accommodate your filthy acts, it then reflects what was in him. I am sure after all your false appearance; you do not need me to explain how you look like a devil. When a woman puts so much artificial on the outside, it shows there is a lot of artificial in the inside. Because, the outside always expresses what is in the inside. And what you do expresses who you are,” Regina concluded.

This discussion between Vivian and Regina took a long time and had drawn into the whole hours of the day, but at last; Regina was unable to convince her of her apparent immorality and immodest way of living. When she conceived that her instructions could not gain any advantage on her, she withdrew from their conversation and went out to meet up the day’s activities. The discussion offended her, for some reasons, and she could constantly think about it. Apparently, she knew that Vivian could not accept defeat. She realized that she had no valid concern on her immodest dressing since her husband accepts her abject behaviours. The truth was that Vivian needed the excitement and stimulation of modernity. She had determined to do what other people used to do. She did not want to put any distance between all the shit the world is drowning in. Regina simply could not imagine why any woman would want to do such things in public. Her arguments bored her.

On the side of Vivian, she believed that her mother-in-law knew things that other people did not know. She saw things with her third eye they did not see. And she could not make them believe her when she tried to admonish them. She could not make Vivian believe her, of course, but she could at least try to dissuade her from her demonic manifestations. She did not apologize for the way she had been acting. She was following the classic pattern of modernity. Contrary to her earlier impressions of her mother in-law, she realized that she is not at all a modern woman. She had a very good mind, but it struggles under the specter of antiquity. She wanted people to take her for her antique explanation of things in advance world. She felt her areas of knowledge are too limited. She was educated in the tradition of the past and narrow civilization. Her Moto activity is impaired; there is a general reduction in glandular activity; there is an accelerated loss of coordination. There are also strong indications of progressive amnesia. Her physical and mental deterioration syndromes could be seen by her application of antiquity to modernism. Vivian knew that she was stating the obvious. But then, Vivian had always had a penchant for stating the obvious.

Vivian did not see her wrong wears as anything bad; when she thought of Regina’s instructions and condemnations of her illegal outfit, she felt uncomfortable little twinge. Regina’s ugly comments would come floating back, but she was unable to make herself believe it. Although she knew that Regina was talking about something very basic. It is almost instinctual in the women to be nude. And she knew that a lot of cultures believed that a woman can dress anyhow she wants to. Besides it was her faults for not having recognized that something wasn’t quite right about her from the very start, when she begun putting on absurd wears. Instead, she had found her appearance exciting, and strange notions she took lively. It had never once occurred to her that wrong comments would be given to her immodest dressing. Regina, she had believed, was simply imaginative. But within her, her suspicions of women’s vogue had always been justifiable. The subject made her uneasy, somehow.

She had weighed in her heart after Regina had withdrawn from their dialogue, the instructions she had given her, she felt that she was an old foggy; she considered her senses to be paralyzed by odd thinking. Her thinking faculty could not match with the advance of event in modern world. She dictated that her five senses had been confounded by archaic reasoning; that her intelligent quotient measures a lot of different things including some of the things that differ from modern application. She added angrily that her mother-in-law was looking at the rear-view-mirror, what she contemplated women and their style of fashions were many decades ago. It is absurd when you consider the work that is being done in old times to advance modern age. She said that modernity had nothing to do with antiquity, and that the ancient ways of life contradicts the liberty which modernism throws.

She had wanted a change of attitude when she found out that the way people live in the village were quite different from what they were living on campus. She knew that her fashion was anomalous. It was clear that such radical ways of life were never her nature. It was only the life on campus that changed her former innocent life, to something strange. She found out within herself that she had abandoned all the fine virtuous character which she was natively raised up and she understood too well that her parents in particular would not like her present immoral life. And she quite knew that her parents disliked evil manifestations, and had always pointed ugly fingers at vulgar girls in the society, whose innocence were thrown to the dust at nonage; those youths that smoke and drink alcohol, who had shame earlier on, but were biased and confused by ill wind in society.

Nevertheless, Vivian pondered and said that ‘there was a time in a youth, when pleasure was wanted besides been prurient and uncontrollable passion.’ She knew that she was matured, and in that period of unchecked passion. And she knew that she cannot conquer the present weird force of her odd life. She could not maneuver the pulsating punk party regal that filled her heart. Uncontrollable passion triggers her particular interest. Instead of embarrassing men into going away with her, she admitted them. She had exposed herself and had joined the parties, which brought noble-to-nine-pence. For this, she was living extravagantly with the five million dollars that Charles gave her.

Since she was on money, she was quite open to live any kind of life she chose and would not accept any person’s instructions on the ways of life. Neither would any person prevent her from the chances of looking good, which was the way the modern women adopted. And money is the power of good and evil. Yes, she had the money, more than enough. She was sure where she had gotten it, but it did not do to question too closely. Providence had put the money in her possession through Charles charities and through foolish men she sapped their money. The rich numskulls were enslaved by her beauty. All the while, she was almost all the days working gracefully, shaking her buttock in a charming way. All she wore was a G-string and high heels, and she moved her body in ways calculated to make everything sway. As she was doing so, the sons of the devil took leave of their senses – lost their minds – and began to follow her like blue fly following a rotten corpse to the grave…

When it was bed time, Vivian thought about what Mrs. Rogers had instructed her, on her present fake character manifestations. She made up her mind never to change her pattern of fashion, since Charles did not complain about her odd appearances but admired her modern vogue, and the kind of company she associated with. She was not careful about what her characters let out to the public. She found herself getting widely into invasion of virtuous life. Her parents and in-laws had not opportunity any longer to talk her out of it. She was finding some amusement rather than studying at her books and sat in the darkness of unbelief. She grew more evil wings. Her character stank like a skunk as she grew bigger and deeper in vice and folly. She became an enemy of diligence, a stranger to prudence. As the sky is far from the earth, so she was far from the path of honour, truth and dignity. Except the light of formal education, there was no light in her. As a matter of fact, Vivian was an evil double-edged-sword. She did evil both at home and on campus. She disobeyed her parents and everyone and went in company with her sharp-wise friends; criss-crossed the bedrooms of rich-sex-mad men. The worst of all, she went wherever and whenever she wanted without informing her husband – Charles. But she could not forget her father’s proverb: “show me your associate, where you go, what you do and what you look at and I will tell you who you are and the kind of spirit that motivates you.”