Chapter XII: The House-Boat Disappears

A House-Boat on the Styx

by John Kendrick Bangs

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 Encyclopaedia 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 Caesars are on the telephone," Elizabeth said.
Investigation showed that both the Borgias and the Caesars 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. Caesar, 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 Caesar 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.
"Caesar'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."

Which was done, and I, in spirit, drank with them, for I
sincerely hope that the "New Women" of Hades are having a good
time.