Kitabı oku: «A House-Boat on the Styx», sayfa 6
CHAPTER XI: AS TO SAURIANS AND OTHERS
It was Noah who spoke.
“I’m glad,” he said, “that when I embarked at the time of the heavy rains that did so much damage in the old days, there weren’t any dogs like that fellow Cerberus about. If I’d had to feed a lot of three-headed beasts like him the Ark would have run short of provisions inside of ten days.”
“That’s very likely true,” observed Mr. Barnum; “but I must confess, my dear Noah, that you showed a lamentable lack of the showman’s instinct when you selected the animals you did. A more commonplace lot of beasts were never gathered together, and while Adam is held responsible for the introduction of sin into the world, I attribute most of my offences to none other than yourself.”
The members of the club drew their chairs a little closer. The conversation had opened a trifle spicily, and, furthermore, they had retained enough of their mortality to be interested in animal stories. Adam, who had managed to settle his back dues and delinquent house-charges, and once more acquired the privileges of the club, nodded his head gratefully at Mr. Barnum.
“I’m glad to find some one,” said he, “who places the responsibility for trouble where it belongs. I’m round-shouldered with the blame I’ve had to bear. I didn’t invent sin any more than I invented the telephone, and I think it’s rather rough on a fellow who lived a quiet, retiring, pastoral life, minding his own business and staying home nights, to be held up to public reprobation for as long a time as I have.”
“It’ll be all right in time,” said Raleigh; “just wait—be patient, and your vindication will come. Nobody thought much of the plays Bacon and I wrote for Shakespeare until Shakespeare ’d been dead a century.”
“Humph!” said Adam, gloomily. “Wait! What have I been doing all this time? I’ve waited all the time there’s been so far, and until Mr. Barnum spoke as he did I haven’t observed the slightest inclination on the part of anybody to rehabilitate my lost reputation. Nor do I see exactly how it’s to come about even if I do wait.”
“You might apply for an investigating committee to look into the charges,” suggested an American politician, just over. “Get your friends on it, and you’ll be all right.”
“Better let sleeping dogs lie,” said Blackstone.
“I intend to,” said Adam. “The fact is, I hate to give any further publicity to the matter. Even if I did bring the case into court and sue for libel, I’ve only got one witness to prove my innocence, and that’s my wife. I’m not going to drag her into it. She’s got nervous prostration over her position as it is, and this would make it worse. Queen Elizabeth and the rest of these snobs in society won’t invite her to any of their functions because they say she hadn’t any grandfather; and even if she were received by them, she’d be uncomfortable going about. It isn’t pleasant for a woman to feel that every one knows she’s the oldest woman in the room.”
“Well, take my word for it,” said Raleigh, kindly. “It’ll all come out all right. You know the old saying, ‘History repeats itself.’ Some day you will be living back in Eden again, and if you are only careful to make an exact record of all you do, and have a notary present, before whom you can make an affidavit as to the facts, you will be able to demonstrate your innocence.”
“I was only condemned on hearsay evidence, anyhow,” said Adam, ruefully.
“Nonsense; you were caught red-handed,” said Noah; “my grandfather told me so. And now that I’ve got a chance to slip in a word edgewise, I’d like mightily to have you explain your statement, Mr. Barnum, that I am responsible for your errors. That is a serious charge to bring against a man of my reputation.”
“I mean simply this: that to make a show interesting,” said Mr. Barnum, “a man has got to provide interesting materials, that’s all. I do not mean to say a word that is in any way derogatory to your morality. You were a surprisingly good man for a sea-captain, and with the exception of that one occasion when you—ah—you allowed yourself to be stranded on the bar, if I may so put it, I know of nothing to be said against you as a moral, temperate person.”
“That was only an accident,” said Noah, reddening. “You can’t expect a man six hundred odd years of age—”
“Certainly not,” said Raleigh, soothingly, “and nobody thinks less of you for it. Considering how you must have hated the sight of water, the wonder of it is that it didn’t become a fixed habit. Let us hear what it is that Mr. Barnum does criticise in you.”
“His taste, that’s all,” said Mr. Barnum. “I contend that, compared to the animals he might have had, the ones he did have were as ant-hills to Alps. There were more magnificent zoos allowed to die out through Noah’s lack of judgment than one likes to think of. Take the Proterosaurus, for instance. Where on earth do we find his equal to-day?”
“You ought to be mighty glad you can’t find one like him,” put in Adam. “If you’d spent a week in the Garden of Eden with me, with lizards eight feet long dropping out of the trees on to your lap while you were trying to take a Sunday-afternoon nap, you’d be willing to dispense with things of that sort for the balance of your natural life. If you want to get an idea of that experience let somebody drop a calf on you some afternoon.”
“I am not saying anything about that,” returned Barnum. “It would be unpleasant to have an elephant drop on one after the fashion of which you speak, but I am glad the elephant was saved just the same. I haven’t advocated the Proterosaurus as a Sunday-afternoon surprise, but as an attraction for a show. I still maintain that a lizard as big as a cow would prove a lodestone, the drawing powers of which the pocket-money of the small boy would be utterly unable to resist. Then there was the Iguanadon. He’d have brought a fortune to the box-office—”
“Which you’d have immediately lost,” retorted Noah, “paying rent. When you get a reptile of his size, that reaches thirty feet up into the air when he stands on his hind-legs, the ordinary circus wagon of commerce can’t be made to hold him, and your menagerie-room has to have ceilings so high that every penny he brought to the box-office would be spent storing him.”
“Mischievous, too,” said Adam, “that Iguanadon. You couldn’t keep anything out of his reach. We used to forbid animals of his kind to enter the garden, but that didn’t bother him; he’d stand up on his hind-legs and reach over and steal anything he’d happen to want.”
“I could have used him for a fire-escape,” said Mr. Barnum; “and as for my inability to provide him with quarters, I’d have met that problem after a short while. I’ve always lamented the absence, too, of the Megalosaurus—”
“Which simply shows how ignorant you are,” retorted Noah. “Why, my dear fellow, it would have taken the whole of an ordinary zoo such as yours to give the Megalosaurus a lunch. Those fellows would eat a rhinoceros as easily as you’d crack a peanut. I did have a couple of Megalosaurians on my boat for just twenty-four hours, and then I chucked them both overboard. If I’d kept them ten days longer they’d have eaten every blessed beast I had with me, and your Zoo wouldn’t have had anything else but Megalosaurians.”
“Papa is right about that, Mr. Barnum,” said Shem. “The whole Saurian tribe was a fearful nuisance. About four hundred years before the flood I had a pet Creosaurus that I kept in our barn. He was a cunning little devil—full of tricks, and all that; but we never could keep a cow or a horse on the place while he was about. They’d mysteriously disappear, and we never knew what became of ’em until one morning we surprised Fido in—”
“Surprised who?” asked Doctor Johnson, scornfully.
“Fido,” returned Shem. “‘That was my Creosaurus’s name.”
“Lord save us! Fido!” cried Johnson. “What a name for a Creosaurus!”
“Well, what of it?” asked Shem, angrily. “You wouldn’t have us call a mastodon like that Fanny, would you, or Tatters?”
“Go on,” said Johnson; “I’ve nothing to say.”
“Shall I send for a physician?” put in Boswell, looking anxiously at his chief, the situation was so extraordinary.
Solomon and Carlyle giggled; and the Doctor having politely requested Boswell to go to a warmer section of the country, Shem resumed.
“I caught him in the act of swallowing five cows and Ham’s favorite trotter, sulky and all.”
Baron Munchausen rose up and left the room.
“If they’re going to lie I’m going to get out,” he said, as he passed through the room.
“What became of Fido?” asked Boswell.
“The sulky killed him,” returned Shem, innocently. “He couldn’t digest the wheels.”
Noah looked approvingly at his son, and, turning to Barnum, observed, quietly:
“What he says is true, and I will go further and say that it is my belief that you would have found the show business impossible if I had taken that sort of creature aboard. You’d have got mightily discouraged after your Antediluvians had chewed up a few dozen steam calliopes, and eaten every other able-bodied exhibit you had managed to secure. I’d have tried to save a couple of Discosaurians if I hadn’t supposed they were able to take care of themselves. A combination of sea-serpent and dragon, with a neck twenty-two feet long, it seemed to me, ought to have been able to ride out any storm or fall of rain; but there I was wrong, and I am free to admit my error. It never occurred to me that the sea-serpents were in any danger, so I let them alone, with the result that I never saw but one other, and he was only an illusion due to that unhappy use of stimulants to which, with shocking bad taste, you have chosen to refer.”
“I didn’t mean to call up unpleasant memories,” said Barnum. “I never believed you got half-seas over, anyhow; but, to return to our muttons, why didn’t you hand down a few varieties of the Therium family to posterity? There were the Dinotherium and the Megatherium, either one of which would have knocked spots out of any leopard that ever was made, and along side of which even my woolly horse would have paled into insignificance. That’s what I can’t understand in your selections; with Megatheriums to burn, why save leopards and panthers and other such every-day creatures?”
“What kind of a boat do you suppose I had?” cried Noah. “Do you imagine for a moment that she was four miles on the water-line, with a mile and three-quarters beam? If I’d had a pair of Dinotheriums in the stern of that Ark, she’d have tipped up fore and aft, until she’d have looked like a telegraph-pole in the water, and if I’d put ’em amidships they’d have had to be wedged in so tightly they couldn’t move to keep the vessel trim. I didn’t go to sea, my friend, for the purpose of being tipped over in mid-ocean every time one of my cargo wanted to shift his weight from one leg to the other.”
“It was bad enough with the elephants, wasn’t it, papa?” said Shem.
“Yes, indeed, my son,” returned the patriarch. “It was bad enough with the elephants. We had to shift our ballast half a dozen times a day to keep the boat from travelling on her beam ends, the elephants moved about so much; and when we came to the question of provender, it took up about nine-tenths of our hold to store hay and peanuts enough to keep them alive and good-tempered. On the whole, I think it’s rather late in the day, considering the trouble I took to save anything but myself and my family, to be criticised as I now am. You ought to be much obliged to me for saving any animals at all. Most people in my position would have built a yacht for themselves and family, and let everything else slide.”
“That is quite true,” observed Raleigh, with a pacificatory nod at Noah. “You were eminently unselfish, and while, with Mr. Barnum, I exceedingly regret that the Saurians and Therii and other tribes were left on the pier when you sailed, I nevertheless think that you showed most excellent judgment at the time.”
“He was the only man who had any at all, for that matter,” suggested Shem, “and it required all his courage to show it. Everybody was guying him. Sinners stood around the yard all day and every day, criticising the model; one scoffer pretended he thought her a canal-boat, and asked how deep the flood was likely to be on the tow-path, and whether we intended to use mules in shallow water and giraffes in deep; another asked what time allowance we expected to get in a fifteen-mile run, and hinted that a year and two months per mile struck him as being the proper thing—”
“It was far from pleasant,” said Noah, tapping his fingers together reflectively. “I don’t want to go through it again, and if, as Raleigh suggests, history is likely to repeat herself, I’ll sublet the contract to Barnum here, and let him get the chaff.”
“It was all right in the end, though, dad,” said Shem. “We had the great laugh on ‘hoi polloi’ the second day out.”
“We did, indeed,” said Noah. “When we told ’em we only carried first-class passengers and had no room for emigrants, they began to see that the Ark wasn’t such an old tub, after all; and a good ninety per cent. of them would have given ten dollars for a little of that time allowance they’d been talking to us about for several centuries.”
Noah lapsed into a musing silence, and Barnum rose to leave.
“I still wish you’d saved a Discosaurus,” he said. “A creature with a neck twenty-two feet long would have been a gold mine to me. He could have been trained to stand in the ring, and by stretching out his neck bite the little boys who sneak in under the tent and occupy seats on the top row.”
“Well, for your sake,” said Noah, with a smile, “I’m very sorry; but for my own, I’m quite satisfied with the general results.”
And they all agreed that the patriarch had every reason to be pleased with himself.
CHAPTER XII: THE HOUSE-BOAT DISAPPEARS
Queen Elizabeth, attended by Ophelia and Xanthippe, was walking along the river-bank. It was a beautiful autumn day, although, owing to certain climatic peculiarities of Hades, it seemed more like midsummer. The mercury in the club thermometer was nervously clicking against the top of the crystal tube, and poor Cerberus was having all he could do with his three mouths snapping up the pestiferous little shades of by-gone gnats that seemed to take an almost unholy pleasure in alighting upon his various noses and ears.
Ophelia was doing most of the talking.
“I am sure I have never wished to ride one of them,” she said, positively. “In the first place, I do not see where the pleasure of it comes in, and, in the second, it seems to me as if skirts must be dangerous. If they should catch in one of the pedals, where would I be?”
“In the hospital shortly, methinks,” said Queen Elizabeth.
“Well, I shouldn’t wear skirts,” snapped Xanthippe. “If a man’s wife can’t borrow some of her husband’s clothing to reduce her peril to a minimum, what is the use of having a husband? When I take to the bicycle, which, in spite of all Socrates can say, I fully intend to do, I shall have a man’s wheel, and I shall wear Socrates’ old dress-clothes. If Hades doesn’t like it, Hades may suffer.”
“I don’t see how Socrates’ clothes will help you,” observed Ophelia. “He wore skirts himself, just like all the other old Greeks. His toga would be quite as apt to catch in the gear as your skirts.”
Xanthippe looked puzzled for a moment. It was evident that she had not thought of the point which Ophelia had brought up—strong-minded ladies of her kind are apt sometimes to overlook important links in such chains of evidence as they feel called upon to use in binding themselves to their rights.
“The women of your day were relieved of that dress problem, at any rate,” laughed Queen Elizabeth.
“The women of my day,” retorted Xanthippe, “in matters of dress were the equals of their husbands—in my family particularly; now they have lost their rights, and are made to confine themselves still to garments like those of yore, while man has arrogated to himself the sole and exclusive use of sane habiliments. However, that is apart from the question. I was saying that I shall have a man’s wheel, and shall wear Socrates’ old dress-clothes to ride it in, if Socrates has to go out and buy an old dress-suit for the purpose.”
The Queen arched her brows and looked inquiringly at Xanthippe for a moment.
“A magnificent old maid was lost to the world when you married,” she said. “Feeling as you do about men, my dear Xanthippe, I don’t see why you ever took a husband.”
“Humph!” retorted Xanthippe. “Of course you don’t. You didn’t need a husband. You were born with something to govern. I wasn’t.”
“How about your temper?” suggested Ophelia, meekly.
Xanthippe sniffed frigidly at this remark.
“I never should have gone crazy over a man if I’d remained unmarried forty thousand years,” she retorted, severely. “I married Socrates because I loved him and admired his sculpture; but when he gave up sculpture and became a thinker he simply tried me beyond all endurance, he was so thoughtless, with the result that, having ventured once or twice to show my natural resentment, I have been handed down to posterity as a shrew. I’ve never complained, and I don’t complain now; but when a woman is married to a philosopher who is so taken up with his studies that when he rises in the morning he doesn’t look what he is doing, and goes off to his business in his wife’s clothes, I think she is entitled to a certain amount of sympathy.”
“And yet you wish to wear his,” persisted Ophelia.
“Turn about is fair-play,” said Xanthippe. “I’ve suffered so much on his account that on the principle of averages he deserves to have a little drop of bitters in his nectar.”
“You are simply the victim of man’s deceit,” said Elizabeth, wishing to mollify the now angry Xanthippe, who was on the verge of tears. “I understood men, fortunately, and so never married. I knew my father, and even if I hadn’t been a wise enough child to know him, I should not have wed, because he married enough to last one family for several years.”
“You must have had a hard time refusing all those lovely men, though,” sighed Ophelia. “Of course, Sir Walter wasn’t as handsome as my dear Hamlet, but he was very fetching.”
“I cannot deny that,” said Elizabeth, “and I didn’t really have the heart to say no when he asked me; but I did tell him that if he married me I should not become Mrs. Raleigh, but that he should become King Elizabeth. He fled to Virginia on the next steamer. My diplomacy rid me of a very unpleasant duty.”
Chatting thus, the three famous spirits passed slowly along the path until they came to the sheltered nook in which the house-boat lay at anchor.
“There’s a case in point,” said Xanthippe, as the house-boat loomed up before them. “All that luxury is for men; we women are not permitted to cross the gangplank. Our husbands and brothers and friends go there; the door closes on them, and they are as completely lost to us as though they never existed. We don’t know what goes on in there. Socrates tells me that their amusements are of a most innocent nature, but how do I know what he means by that? Furthermore, it keeps him from home, while I have to stay at home and be entertained by my sons, whom the Encyclopædia Britannica rightly calls dull and fatuous. In other words, club life for him, and dulness and fatuity for me.”
“I think myself they’re rather queer about letting women into that boat,” said Queen Elizabeth. “But it isn’t Sir Walter’s fault. He told me he tried to have them establish a Ladies’ Day, and that they agreed to do so, but have since resisted all his efforts to have a date set for the function.”
“It would be great fun to steal in there now, wouldn’t it,” giggled Ophelia. “There doesn’t seem to be anybody about to prevent our doing so.”
“That’s true,” said Xanthippe. “All the windows are closed, as if there wasn’t a soul there. I’ve half a mind to take a peep in at the house.”
“I am with you,” said Elizabeth, her face lighting up with pleasure. It was a great novelty, and an unpleasant one to her, to find some place where she could not go. “Let’s do it,” she added.
So the three women tiptoed softly up the gang-plank, and, silently boarding the house-boat, peeped in at the windows. What they saw merely whetted their curiosity.
“I must see more,” cried Elizabeth, rushing around to the door, which opened at her touch. Xanthippe and Ophelia followed close on her heels, and shortly they found themselves, open-mouthed in wondering admiration, in the billiard-room of the floating palace, and Richard, the ghost of the best billiard-room attendant in or out of Hades, stood before them.
“Excuse me,” he said, very much upset by the sudden apparition of the ladies. “I’m very sorry, but ladies are not admitted here.”
“We are equally sorry,” retorted Elizabeth, assuming her most imperious manner, “that your masters have seen fit to prohibit our being here; but, now that we are here, we intend to make the most of the opportunity, particularly as there seem to be no members about. What has become of them all?”
Richard smiled broadly. “I don’t know where they are,” he replied; but it was evident that he was not telling the exact truth.
“Oh, come, my boy,” said the Queen, kindly, “you do know. Sir Walter told me you knew everything. Where are they?”
“Well, if you must know, ma’am,” returned Richard, captivated by the Queen’s manner, “they’ve all gone down the river to see a prize-fight between Goliath and Samson.”
“See there!” cried Xanthippe. “That’s what this club makes possible. Socrates told me he was coming here to take luncheon with Carlyle, and they’ve both of ’em gone off to a disgusting prize-fight!”
“Yes, ma’am, they have,” said Richard; “and if Goliath wins, I don’t think Mr. Socrates will get home this evening.”
“Betting, eh?” said Xanthippe, scornfully.
“Yes, ma’am,” returned Richard.
“More club!” cried Xanthippe.
“Oh no, ma’am,” said Richard. “Betting is not allowed in the club; they’re very strict about that. But the shore is only ten feet off, ma’am, and the gentlemen always go ashore and make their bets.”
During this little colloquy Elizabeth and Ophelia were wandering about, admiring everything they saw.
“I do wish Lucretia Borgia and Calpurnia could see this. I wonder if the Cæsars are on the telephone,” Elizabeth said. Investigation showed that both the Borgias and the Cæsars were on the wire, and in short order the two ladies had been made acquainted with the state of affairs at the house-boat; and as they were both quite as anxious to see the interior of the much-talked-of club-house as the others, they were not long in arriving. Furthermore, they brought with them half a dozen more ladies, among whom were Desdemona and Cleopatra, and then began the most extraordinary session the house-boat ever knew. A meeting was called, with Elizabeth in the chair, and all the best ladies of the Stygian realms were elected members. Xanthippe, amid the greatest applause, moved that every male member of the organization be expelled for conduct unworthy of a gentleman in attending a prize-fight, and encouraging two such horrible creatures as Goliath and Samson in their nefarious pursuits. Desdemona seconded the motion, and it was carried without a dissenting voice, although Mrs. Cæsar, with becoming dignity, merely smiled approval, not caring to take part too actively in the proceedings.
The men having thus been disposed of in a summary fashion, Richard was elected Janitor in Charon’s place, and the club was entirely reorganized, with Cleopatra as permanent President. The meeting then adjourned, and the invaders set about enjoying their newly acquired privileges. The smoking-room was thronged for a few moments, but owing to the extraordinary strength of the tobacco which the faithful Richard shovelled into the furnace, it developed no enduring popularity, Xanthippe, with a suddenly acquired pallor, being the first to renounce the pastime as revolting.
So fast and furious was the enjoyment of these thirsty souls, so long deprived of their rights, that night came on without their observing it, and with the night was brought the great peril into which they were thrown, and from which at the moment of writing they had not been extricated, and which, to my regret, has cut me off for the present from any further information connected with the Associated Shades and their beautiful lounging-place. Had they not been so intent upon the inner beauties of the House-boat on the Styx they might have observed approaching, under the shadow of the westerly shore, a long, rakish craft propelled by oars, which dipped softly and silently and with trained precision in the now jet-black waters of the Styx. Manning the oars were a dozen evil-visaged ruffians, while in the stern of the approaching vessel there sat a grim-faced, weather-beaten spirit, armed to the teeth, his coat sleeves bearing the skull and cross-bones, the insignia of piracy.
This boat, stealing up the river like a thief in the night, contained Captain Kidd and his pirate crew, and their mission was a mission of vengeance. To put the matter briefly and plainly, Captain Kidd was smarting under the indignity which the club had recently put upon him. He had been unanimously blackballed, even his proposer and seconder, who had been browbeaten into nominating him for membership, voting against him.
“I may be a pirate,” he cried, when he heard what the club had done, “but I have feelings, and the Associated Shades will repent their action. The time will come when they’ll find that I have their club-house, and they have—its debts.”
It was for this purpose that the great terror of the seas had come upon this, the first favorable opportunity. Kidd knew that the house-boat was unguarded; his spies had told him that the members had every one gone to the fight, and he resolved that the time had come to act. He did not know that the Fates had helped to make his vengeance all the more terrible and withering by putting the most attractive and fashionable ladies of the Stygian country likewise in his power; but so it was, and they, poor souls, while this fiend, relentless and cruel, was slowly approaching, sang on and danced on in blissful unconsciousness of their peril.
In less than five minutes from the time when his sinister-craft rounded the bend Kidd and his crew had boarded the house-boat, cut her loose from her moorings, and in ten minutes she had sailed away into the great unknown, and with her went some of the most precious gems in the social diadem of Hades.
The rest of my story is soon told. The whole country was aroused when the crime was discovered, but up to the date of this narrative no word has been received of the missing craft and her precious cargo. Raleigh and Cæsar have had the seas scoured in search of her, Hamlet has offered his kingdom for her return, but unavailingly; and the men of Hades were cast into a gloom from which there seems to be no relief.
Socrates alone was unaffected.
“They’ll come back some day, my dear Raleigh,” he said, as the knight buried his face, weeping, in his hands. “So why repine? I’ll never lose my Xanthippe—permanently, that is. I know that, for I am a philosopher, and I know there is no such thing as luck. And we can start another club.”
“Very likely,” sighed Raleigh, wiping his eyes. “I don’t mind the club so much, but to think of those poor women—”
“Oh, they’re all right,” returned Socrates, with a laugh. “Cæsar’s wife is along, and you can’t dispute the fact that she’s a good chaperon. Give the ladies a chance. They’ve been after our club for years; now let ’em have it, and let us hope that they like it. Order me up a hemlock sour, and let’s drink to their enjoyment of club life.”
