The Pursuit of the House-Boat by John Kendrick Bangs (great novels txt) 📗

the honor of bringing ’em over here, and I think I know ’em pretty well.  I’ve watched ’em close, and it’s my private opinion that before many days you’ll see your club-house sailing back here, with Queen Elizabeth at the hellum, and the other ladies on the for’ard deck knittin’ and crochetin’, and tearin’ each other to pieces in a conversational way, as happy as if there never had been any Captain Kidd and his pirate crew.”

“That suggestion is impossible,” said Blackstone, rising.  “Whether the relief expedition amounts to anything or not, it’s good to be set going.  The ladies would never forgive us if we sat here inactive, even if they were capable of rescuing themselves.  It is an accepted principle of law that this climate hath no fury like a woman left to herself, and we’ve got enough professional furies hereabouts without our aiding in augmenting the ranks.  We must have a boat.”

“It’ll cost you a thousand dollars a week,” said Charon.

“I’ll subscribe fifty,” cried Hamlet.

“I’ll consult my secretary,” said Solomon, “and find out how many of my wives have been abducted, and I’ll pay ten dollars apiece for their recovery.”

“That’s liberal,” said Hawkshaw.  “There are sixty-three of ’em on board, together with eighty of his fiancées.  What’s the quotation on fiancées, King Solomon?”

“Nothing,” said Solomon.  “They’re not mine yet, and it’s their father’s business to get ’em back.  Not mine.”

Other subscriptions came pouring in, and it was not long before everybody save Shylock had put his name down for something.  This some one of the more quick-witted of the spirits soon observed, and, with reckless disregard of the feelings of the Merchant of Venice, began to call, “Shylock!  Shylock!  How much?”

The Merchant tried to leave the pier, but his path was blocked.

“Subscribe, subscribe!” was the cry.  “How much?”

“Order, gentlemen, order!” said Sir Walter, rising and holding a bottle aloft.  “A black person by the name of Friday, a valet of our friend Mr. Crusoe, has just handed me this bottle, which he picked up ten minutes ago on the bank of the river a few miles distant.  It contains a bit of paper, and may perhaps give us a clew based upon something more substantial than even the wonderful theories of our new brother Holmes.”

A deathly silence followed the chairman’s words, as Sir Walter drew a corkscrew from his pocket and opened the bottle.  He extracted the paper, and, as he had surmised, it proved to be a message from the missing vessel.  His face brightening with a smile of relief, Sir Walter read, aloud:

“Have just emerged into the Atlantic Club in hands of Kidd and forty ruffians.  One hundred and eighty-three ladies on board.  Headed for the Azores.  Send aid at once.  All well except Xanthippe, who is seasick in the billiard-room.  (Signed) Portia.”

“Aha!” cried Hawkshaw.  “That shows how valuable the Holmes theory is.”

“Precisely,” said Holmes.  “No woman knows anything about seafaring, but Portia is right.  The ship is headed for the Azores, which is the first tack needed in a windward sail for London under the present conditions.”

The reply was greeted with cheers, and when they subsided the cry for Shylock’s subscription began again, but he declined.

“I had intended to put up a thousand ducats,” he said, defiantly, “but with that woman Portia on board I won’t give a red obolus!” and with that he wrapped his cloak about him and stalked off into the gathering shadows of the wood.

And so the funds were raised without the aid of Shylock, and the shapely twin-screw steamer the Gehenna was chartered of Charon, and put under the command of Mr. Sherlock Holmes, who, after he had thanked the company for their confidence, walked abstractedly away, observing in strictest confidence to himself that he had done well to prepare that bottle beforehand and bribe Crusoe’s man to find it.

“For now,” he said, with a chuckle, “I can get back to earth again free of cost on my own hook, whether my eminent inventor wants me there or not.  I never approved of his killing me off as he did at the very height of my popularity.”

p. 58IV
ON BOARD THE HOUSE-BOAT

Meanwhile the ladies were not having such a bad time, after all.  Once having gained possession of the House-boat, they were loath to think of ever having to give it up again, and it is an open question in my mind if they would not have made off with it themselves had Captain Kidd and his men not done it for them.

“I’ll never forgive these men for their selfishness in monopolizing all this,” said Elizabeth, with a vicious stroke of a billiard-cue, which missed the cue-ball and tore a right angle in the cloth.  “It is not right.”

“No,” said Portia.  “It is all wrong; and when we get back home I’m going to give my beloved Bassanio a piece of my mind; and if he doesn’t give in to me, I’ll reverse my decision in the famous case of Shylock versus Antonio.”

“Then I sincerely hope he doesn’t give in,” retorted Cleopatra, “for I swear by all my auburn locks that that was the very worst bit of injustice ever perpetrated.  Mr. Shakespeare confided to me one night, at one of Mrs. Cæsar’s card-parties, that he regarded that as the biggest joke he ever wrote, and Judge Blackstone observed to Antony that the decision wouldn’t have held in any court of equity outside of Venice.  If you owe a man a thousand ducats, and it costs you three thousand to get them, that’s your affair, not his.  If it cost Antonio every drop of his bluest blood to pay the pound of flesh, it was Antonio’s affair, not Shylock’s.  However, the world applauds you as a great jurist, when you have nothing more than a woman’s keen instinct for sentimental technicalities.”

“It would have made a horrid play, though, if it had gone on,” shuddered Elizabeth.

“That may be, but, carried out realistically, it would have done away with a raft of bad actors,” said Cleopatra.  “I’m half sorry it didn’t go on, and I’m sure it wouldn’t have been any worse than compelling Brutus to fall on his sword until he resembles a chicken liver en brochette, as is done in that Julius Cæsar play.”

“Well, I’m very glad I did it,” snapped Portia.

“I should think you would be,” said Cleopatra.  “If you hadn’t done it, you’d never have been known.  What was that?”

The boat had given a slight lurch.

“Didn’t you hear a shuffling noise up on deck, Portia?” asked the Egyptian Queen.

“I thought I did, and it seemed as if the vessel had moved a bit,” returned Portia, nervously; for, like most women in an advanced state of development, she had become a martyr to her nerves.

“It was merely the wash from one of Charon’s new ferry-boats, I fancy,” said Elizabeth, calmly.  “It’s disgusting, the way that old fellow allows these modern innovations to be brought in here!  As if the old paddle-boats he used to carry shades in weren’t good enough for the immigrants of this age!  Really this Styx River is losing a great deal of its charm.  Sir Walter and I were upset, while out rowing one day last summer, by the waves kicked up by one of Charon’s excursion steamers going up the river with a party of picnickers from the city—the Greater Gehenna Chowder Club, I believe it was—on board of her.  One might just as well live in the midst of the turmoil of a great city as try to get uninterrupted quiet here in the suburbs in these days.  Charon isn’t content to get rich slowly; he must make money by the barrelful, if he has to sacrifice all the comfort of everybody living on this river.  Anybody’d think he was an American, the way he goes on; and everybody else here is the same way.  The Erebeans are getting to be a race of shopkeepers.”

“I think myself,” sighed Cleopatra, “that Hades is being spoiled by the introduction of American ideas—it is getting by far too democratic for my tastes; and if it isn’t stopped, it’s my belief that the best people will stop coming here.  Take Madame Récamier’s salon as it is now and compare it with what it used to be!  In the early days, after her arrival here, everybody went because it was the swell thing, and you’d be sure of meeting the intellectually elect.  On the one hand you’d find Sophocles; on the other, Cicero; across the room would be Horace chatting gayly with some such person as myself.  Great warriors, from Alexander to Bonaparte, were there, and glad of the opportunity to be there, too; statesmen like Macchiavelli; artists like Cellini or Tintoretto.  You couldn’t move without stepping on the toes of genius.  But now all is different.  The money-getting instinct has been aroused within them all, with the result that when I invited Mozart to meet a few friends at dinner at my place last autumn, he sent me a card stating his terms for dinners.  Let me see, I think I have it with me; I’ve kept it by me for fear of losing it, it is such a complete revelation of the actual condition of affairs in this locality.  Ah! this is it,” she added, taking a small bit of pasteboard from her card-case.  “Read that.”

The card was passed about, and all the ladies were much astonished—and naturally so, for it ran this wise:

NOTICE TO HOSTESSES.

Owing to the very great, constantly growing, and at times vexatious demands upon his time socially,

HERR WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

takes this method of announcing to his friends that on and after January 1, 1897, his terms for functions will be as follows:

 

Marks

Dinners with conversation on the Theory of Music

500

Dinners with conversation on the Theory of Music, illustrated

750

Dinners without any conversation

300

Receptions, public, with music

1000

   ,,    ,,   private,    ,,    ,,,

750

Encores (single)

100

Three encores for

150

Autographs

10

Positively no Invitations for Five-o’Clock Teas or Morning Musicales considered.