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.