The Pursuit of the House-Boat by John Kendrick Bangs (i can read books .txt) 📕

that on these particular evenings the most interesting people in certain lines would be present, and would mix with outsiders, who should be admitted only on payment of a certain sum of money.  The commonplace inhabitants of this country could thus meet the truly great; and if I know them well, as I think I do, they’ll pay readily for the privilege.  The obscure love to rub up against the famous here as well as they do on earth.”

“You’d run a sort of Social Zoo?” suggested Elizabeth.

“Precisely; and provide entertainment for private residences too.  An advertisement in Boswell’s paper, which everybody buys—”

“And which nobody reads,” said Portia.

“They read the advertisements,” retorted Madame Récamier.  “As I was saying, an advertisement could be placed in Boswell’s paper as follows: ‘Are you giving a Function?  Do you want Talent?  Get your Genius at the Récamier Salon (Limited).’  It would be simply magnificent as a business enterprise.  The common herd would be tickled to death if they could get great people at their homes, even if they had to pay roundly for them.”

“It would look well in the society notes, wouldn’t it, if Mr. John Boggs gave a reception, and at the close of the account it said, ‘The supper was furnished by Calizetti, and the genius by the Récamier Salon (Limited)’?” suggested Elizabeth, scornfully.

“I must admit,” replied the French lady, “that you call up an unpleasant possibility, but I don’t really see what else we can do if we want to preserve the salon idea.  Somebody has told these talented people that they have a commercial value, and they are availing themselves of the demand.”

“It is a sad age!” sighed Elizabeth.

“Well, all I’ve got to say is just this,” put in Xanthippe: “You people who get up functions have brought this condition of affairs on yourselves.  You were not satisfied to go ahead and indulge your passion for lions in a moderate fashion.  Take the case of Demosthenes last winter, for instance.  His wife told me that he dined at home three times during the winter.  The rest of the time he was out, here, there, and everywhere, making after-dinner speeches.  The saving on his dinner bills didn’t pay his pebble account, much less remunerate him for his time, and the fearful expense of nervous energy to which he was subjected.  It was as much as she could do, she said, to keep him from shaving one side of his head, so that he couldn’t go out, the way he used to do in Athens when he was afraid he would be invited out and couldn’t scare up a decent excuse for refusing.”

“Did he do that?” cried Elizabeth, with a roar of laughter.

“So the cyclopædias say.  It’s a good plan, too,” said Xanthippe.  “Though Socrates never had to do it.  When I got the notion Socrates was going out too much, I used to hide his dress clothes.  Then there was the case of Rubens.  He gave a Carbon Talk at the Sforza’s Thursday Night Club, merely to oblige Madame Sforza, and three weeks later discovered that she had sold his pictures to pay for her gown!  You people simply run it into the ground.  You kill the goose that when taken at the flood leads on to fortune.  It advertises you, does the lion no good, and he is expected to be satisfied with confectionery, material and theoretical.  If they are getting tired of candy and compliments, it’s because you have forced too much of it upon them.”

“They like it, just the same,” retorted Récamier.  “A genius likes nothing better than the sound of his own voice, when he feels that it is falling on aristocratic ears.  The social laurel rests pleasantly on many a noble brow.”

“True,” said Xanthippe.  “But when a man gets a pile of Christmas wreaths a mile high on his head, he begins to wonder what they will bring on the market.  An occasional wreath is very nice, but by the ton they are apt to weigh on his mind.  Up to a certain point notoriety is like a woman, and a man is apt to love it; but when it becomes exacting, demanding instead of permitting itself to be courted, it loses its charm.”

“That is Socratic in its wisdom,” smiled Portia.

“But Xanthippic in its origin,” returned Xanthippe.  “No man ever gave me my ideas.”

As Xanthippe spoke, Lucretia Borgia burst into the room.

“Hurry and save yourselves!” she cried.  “The boat has broken loose from her moorings, and is floating down the stream.  If we don’t hurry up and do something, we’ll drift out to sea!”

“What!” cried Cleopatra, dropping her cue in terror, and rushing for the stairs.  “I was certain I felt a slight motion.  You said it was the wash from one of Charon’s barges, Elizabeth.”

“I thought it was,” said Elizabeth, following closely after.

“Well, it wasn’t,” moaned Lucretia Borgia.  “Calpurnia just looked out of the window and discovered that we were in mid-stream.”

The ladies crowded anxiously about the stair and attempted to ascend, Cleopatra in the van; but as the Egyptian Queen reached the doorway to the upper deck, the door opened, and the hard features of Captain Kidd were thrust roughly through, and his strident voice rang out through the gathering gloom.  “Pipe my eye for a sardine if we haven’t captured a female seminary!” he cried.

And one by one the ladies, in terror, shrank back into the billiard-room, while Kidd, overcome by surprise, slammed the door to, and retreated into the darkness of the forward deck to consult with his followers as to “what next.”

p. 73V
A CONFERENCE ON DECK

“Here’s a kettle of fish!” said Kidd, pulling his chin whisker in perplexity as he and his fellow-pirates gathered about the captain to discuss the situation.  “I’m blessed if in all my experience I ever sailed athwart anything like it afore!  Pirating with a lot of low-down ruffians like you gentlemen is bad enough, but on a craft loaded to the water’s edge with advanced women—I’ve half a mind to turn back.”

“If you do, you swim—we’ll not turn back with you,” retorted Abeuchapeta, whom, in honor of his prowess, Kidd had appointed executive officer of the House-boat.  “I have no desire to be mutinous, Captain Kidd, but I have not embarked upon this enterprise for a pleasure sail down the Styx.  I am out for business.  If you had thirty thousand women on board, still should I not turn back.”

“But what shall we do with ’em?” pleaded Kidd.  “Where can we go without attracting attention?  Who’s going to feed ’em?  Who’s going to dress ’em?  Who’s going to keep ’em in bonnets?  You don’t know anything about these creatures, my dear Abeuchapeta; and, by-the-way, can’t we arbitrate that name of yours?  It would be fearful to remember in the excitement of a fight.”

“Call him Ab,” suggested Sir Henry Morgan, with an ill-concealed sneer, for he was deeply jealous of Abeuchapeta’s preferral.

“If you do I’ll call you Morgue, and change your appearance to fit,” retorted Abeuchapeta, angrily.

“By the beards of all my sainted Buccaneers,” began Morgan, springing angrily to his feet, “I’ll have your life!”

“Gentlemen!  Gentlemen—my noble ruffians!” expostulated Kidd.  “Come, come; this will never do!  I must have no quarrelling among my aides.  This is no time for divisions in our councils.  An entirely unexpected element has entered into our affairs, and it behooveth us to act in concert.  It is no light matter—”

“Excuse me, captain,” said Abeuchapeta, “but that is where you and I do not agree.  We’ve got our ship and we’ve got our crew, and in addition we find that the Fates have thrown in a hundred or more women to act as ballast.  Now I, for one, do not fear a woman.  We can set them to work.  There is plenty for them to do keeping things tidy; and if we get into a very hard fight, and come out of the mêlée somewhat the worse for wear, it will be a blessing to have ’em along to mend our togas, sew buttons on our uniforms, and darn our hosiery.”

Morgan laughed sarcastically.  “When did you flourish, if ever, colonel?” he asked.

“Do you refer to me?” queried Abeuchapeta, with a frown.

“You have guessed correctly,” replied Morgan, icily.  “I have quite forgotten your date; were you a success in the year one, or when?”

“Admiral Abeuchapeta, Sir Henry,” interposed Kidd, fearing a further outbreak of hostilities—“Admiral Abeuchapeta was the terror of the seas in the seventh century, and what he undertook to do he did, and his piratical enterprises were carried on on a scale of magnificence which is without parallel off the comic-opera stage.  He never went forth without at least seventy galleys and a hundred other vessels.”

Abeuchapeta drew himself up proudly.  “Six-ninety-eight was my great year,” he said.

“That’s what I thought,” said Morgan.  “That is to say, you got your ideas of women twelve hundred years ago, and the ladies have changed somewhat since that time.  I have great respect for you, sir, as a ruffian.  I have no doubt that as a ruffian you are a complete success, but when it comes to ‘feminology’ you are sailing in unknown waters.  The study of women, my dear Abeuchadnezzar—”

“Peta,” retorted Abeuchapeta, irritably.

“I stand corrected.  The study of women, my dear Peter,” said Morgan, with a wink at Conrad, which fortunately the seventh-century pirate did not see, else there would have been an open break—“the study of women is more difficult than that of astronomy; there may be two stars alike, but all women are unique.  Because she was this, that, or the other thing in your day does not prove that she is any one of those things in our day—in fact, it proves the contrary.  Why, I venture even to say that no individual woman is alike.”

“That’s rather a hazy thought,” said Kidd, scratching his head in a puzzled sort of way.

“I mean that she’s different from herself at different times,” said Morgan.  “What is it the poet called her?—‘an infinite variety show,’ or something of that sort; a perpetual vaudeville—a continuous performance, as it were, from twelve to twelve.”

“Morgan is right, admiral!” put in Conrad the corsair, acting temporarily as bo’sun.  “The times are sadly changed, and woman is no longer what she was.  She is hardly what she is, much less what she was.  The Roman Gynæceum would be an impossibility to-day.  You might as well expect Delilah to open a barber-shop on board this boat as ask any of these advanced females below-stairs to sew buttons on a pirate’s uniform after a fray, or to keep the fringe on his epaulets curled.  They’re no longer sewing-machines—they are Keeley motors for mystery and perpetual motion.  Women have views now they are no longer content to be looked at merely; they must see for themselves; and the more they see, the more they wish to domesticate man and emancipate woman.  It’s my private opinion that if we are to get along with them at all the best thing to do is to let ’em alone.  I have always found I was better off in the abstract, and if this question is going to be settled in a purely democratic fashion by submitting it to a vote, I’ll vote for any measure which involves leaving them strictly to themselves.  They’re nothing but a lot of ghosts anyhow, like ourselves, and we can pretend we don’t see them.”

“If that could be, it would be excellent,” said Morgan; “but it is impossible.  For a pirate of the Byronic order, my dear Conrad, you are strangely unversed in the ways of the sex which cheers but not inebriates.  We can no more ignore their presence upon this boat than we can expect whales to spout kerosene.  In the first place, it would be excessively impolite of us to cut them—to decline to speak to them if they should address us.  We may be pirates, ruffians, cutthroats, but I hope we shall never forget that we are gentlemen.”

“The whole situation is rather contrary to etiquette, don’t you think?” suggested Conrad.  “There’s nobody to introduce us, and I can’t really see how we can do otherwise than ignore them.  I certainly am not going to stand on deck and make eyes at them, to try and pick up an acquaintance with them, even if I am of a Byronic strain.”

“You forget,” said Kidd, “two essential features of the situation.  These women are at present—or shortly will be, when they realize their situation—in distress, and a true gentleman may always fly to the rescue of a distressed female; and, the second point, we shall soon be on the seas, and I understand that on the fashionable transatlantic lines it is now considered de rigueur to speak to anybody you choose to.  The introduction business isn’t going to stand in my way.”

“Well, may I ask,” put in