The Pursuit of the House-Boat

by John Kendrick Bangs

  X

  A WARNING ACCEPTED

  "It is with no desire to interrupt my friend Cassandra unnecessarily,"said Mrs. Noah, as the prophetess was about to narrate her story, "that Irise to beg her to remember that, as an ancestress of Captain Kidd, I hopeshe will spare a grandmother's feelings, if anything in the story she isabout to tell is improper to be placed before the young. I have been soshocked by the stories of perfidy and baseness generally that have beenpublished of late years, that I would interpose a protest while there isyet time if there is a line in Cassandra's story which ought to bewithheld from the public; a protest based upon my affection for posterity,and in the interests of morality everywhere."

  "You may rest easy upon that score, my dear Mrs. Noah," said theprophetess. "What I have to say would commend itself, I am sure, even tothe ears of a British matron; and while it is as complete a demonstrationof man's perfidy as ever was, it is none the less as harmless a littletale as the Dottie Dimple books or any other more recent study of NewEngland character."

  "Thank you for the load your words have lifted from my mind," said Mrs.Noah, settling back in her chair, a satisfied expression upon her gentlecountenance. "I hope you will understand why I spoke, and withal whymodern literature generally has been so distressful to me. When youreflect that the world is satisfied that most of man's criminal instinctsare the result of heredity, and that Mr. Noah and I are unable to shiftthe responsibility for posterity to other shoulders than our own, you willunderstand my position. We were about the most domestic old couple thatever lived, and when we see the long and varied assortment of crimes thatare cropping out everywhere in our descendants it is painful to us torealize what a pair of unconsciously wicked old fogies we must have been."

  "We all understand that," said Cleopatra, kindly; "and we are all preparedto acquit you of any responsibility for the advanced condition ofwickedness to-day. Man has progressed since your time, my dear grandma,and the modern improvements in the science of crime are no moreattributable to you than the invention of the telephone or the oystercocktail is attributable to your lord and master."

  "Thank you kindly," murmured the old lady, and she resumed her knittingupon a phantom tam-o'-shanter, which she was making as a Christmassurprise for her husband.

  "When Captain Kidd began his story," said Cassandra, "he made one very badmistake, and yet one which was prompted by that courtesy which all meninstinctively adopt when addressing women. When he entered the room heremoved his hat, and therein lay his fatal error, if he wished to convinceme of the truth of his story, for with his hat removed I could see theworkings of his mind. While you ladies were watching his lips or his eyes,some of you taking in the gorgeous details of his dress, all of youhanging upon his every word, I kept my eye fixed firmly upon hisimagination, and I saw, what you did not, _that he was drawing wholly uponthat_!"

  "How extraordinary!" cried Elizabeth.

  "Yes--and fortunate," said Cassandra. "Had I not done so, a week hence weshould, every one of us, have been lost in the surging wickedness of thecity of Paris."

  "But, Cassandra," said Trilby, who was anxious to return once more to thebeautiful city by the Seine, "he told us we were going to Paris."

  "'HE TOLD US WE WERE GOING TO PARIS'"]

  "Of course he did," said Madame Recamier, "and in so many words. Certainlyhe was not drawing upon his imagination there."

  "And one might be lost in a very much worse place," put in Marguerite deValois, "if, indeed, it were possible to lose us in Paris at all. I fancythat I know enough about Paris to find my way about."

  "Humph!" ejaculated Cassandra. "What a foolish little thing you are! Youdon't imagine that the Paris of to-day is the Paris of your time, or eventhe Paris of that sweet child Trilby's time, do you? If you do you arevery much mistaken. I almost wish I had not warned you of your danger andhad let you go, just to see those eyes of yours open with amazement at thechange. You'd find your Louvre a very different sort of a place from whatit used to be, my dear lady. Those pleasing little windows through whichyour relations were wont in olden times to indulge in target practice atpeople who didn't go to their church are now kept closed; the gallerieswhich used to swarm with people, many of whom ought to have been hanged,now swarm with pictures, many of which ought not to have been hung; theromance which clung about its walls is as much a part of the dead past asyourselves, and were you to materialize suddenly therein you would findyourselves jostled and hustled and trodden upon by the curious from otherlands, with Argus eyes taking in five hundred pictures a minute, andtraversing those halls at a rate of speed at which Mercury himself wouldstand aghast."

  "But my beloved Tuileries?" cried Marie Antoinette.

  "Has been swallowed up by a play-ground for the people, my dear," saidCassandra, gently. "Paris is no place for us, and it is the intention ofthese men, in whose hands we are, to take us there and then desert us. Canyou imagine anything worse than ourselves, the phantoms of a gloriousromantic past, basely deserted in the streets of a wholly strange,superficial, material city of to-day? What do you think, Elizabeth, wouldbe your fate if, faint and famished, you begged for sustenance at anEnglish door to-day, and when asked your name and profession were toreply, 'Elizabeth, Queen of England'?"

  "Insane asylum," said Elizabeth, shortly.

  "Precisely. So in Paris with the rest of us," said Cassandra.

  "How do you know all this?" asked Trilby, still unconvinced.

  "I know it just as you knew how to become a prima donna," said Cassandra."I am, however, my own Svengali, which is rather preferable to the patentdetachable hypnotizer you had. I hypnotize myself, and direct my mind intothe future. I was a professional forecaster in the days of ancient Troy,and if my revelations had been heeded the Priam family would, I doubt not,still be doing business at the old stand, and Mr. AEneas would not havegrown round-shouldered giving his poor father a picky-back ride on theopening night of the horse-show, so graphically depicted by Virgil."

  "I never heard about that," said Trilby. "It sounds like a very funnystory, though."

  "Well, it wasn't so humorous for some as it was for others," saidCassandra, with a sly glance at Helen. "The fact is, until you mentionedit yourself, it never occurred to me that there was much fun in anyportion of the Trojan incident, excepting perhaps the delirium tremens ofold Laocoon, who got no more than he deserved for stealing my thunder. Ihad warned Troy against the Greeks, and they all laughed at me, and saidmy eye to the future was strabismatic; that the Greeks couldn't get intoTroy at all, even if they wanted to. And then the Greeks made a greatwooden horse as a gift for the Trojans, and when I turned my X-ray gazeupon it I saw that it contained about six brigades of infantry, threeartillery regiments, and sharp-shooters by the score. It was a sort ofmilitary Noah's Ark; but I knew that the prejudice against me was sostrong that nobody would believe what I told them. So I said nothing. Myprophecies never came true, they said, failing to observe that my warningas to what would be was in itself the cause of their non-fulfilment. Butdesiring to save Troy, I sent for Laocoon and told him all about it, andhe went out and announced it as his own private prophecy; and then, havingtried to drown his conscience in strong waters, he fell a victim to theusual serpentine hallucination, and everybody said he wasn't sober, andtherefore unworthy of belief. The horse was accepted, hauled into thecity, and that night orders came from hindquarters to the regimentsconcealed inside to march. They marched, and next morning Troy had beenremoved from the map; ninety per cent. of the Trojans died suddenly, andAEneas, grabbing up his family in one hand and his gods in the other, wentyachting for several seasons, ultimately settling down in Italy. All ofthis could have been avoided if the Trojans would have taken the hint frommy prophecies. They preferred, however, not to do it, with the result thatto-day no one but Helen and myself knows even where Troy was, and we'llnever tell."

  "It is all true," said Helen, proudly. "I was the woman who was at thebottom of it all, and I can testify that Cassandra always told the t
ruth,which is why she was always so unpopular. When anything that wasunpleasant happened, after it was all over she would turn and say,sweetly, 'I told you so.' She was the original 'I told you so' nuisance,and of course she had the newspapyruses down on her, because she neverleft them any sensation to spring upon the public. If she had only told afib once in a while, the public would have had more confidence in her."

  "Thank you for your endorsement," said Cassandra, with a nod at Helen."With such testimony I cannot see how you can refrain from taking myadvice in this matter; and I tell you, ladies, that this man Kidd has madehis story up out of whole cloth; the men of Hades had no more to do withour being here than we had; they were as much surprised as we are to findus gone. Kidd himself was not aware of our presence, and his object intaking us to Paris is to leave us stranded there, disembodied spirits,vagrant souls with no familiar haunts to haunt, no place to rest, andnothing before us save perpetual exile in a world that would have nosympathy for us in our misfortune, and no belief in our continuedexistence."

  "But what, then, shall we do?" cried Ophelia, wringing her hands indespair.

  "It is a terrible problem," said Cleopatra, anxiously; "and yet it doesseem as if our woman's instinct ought to show us some way out of ourtrouble."

  "The Committee on Treachery," said Delilah, "has already suggested achafing-dish party, with Lucretia Borgia in charge of the lobsterNewberg."

  "That is true," said Lucretia; "but I find, in going through my reticule,that my maid, for some reason unknown to me, has failed to renew my supplyof poisons. I shall discharge her on my return home, for she knows that Inever go anywhere without them; but that does not help matters at thisjuncture. The sad fact remains that I could prepare a thousand delicaciesfor these pirates without fatal results."

  "You mean immediately fatal, do you not?" suggested Xanthippe. "I couldmyself prepare a cake which would in time reduce our captors to a state ofabsolute dependence, but of course the effect is not immediate."

  "We might give a musicale, and let Trilby sing 'Ben Bolt' to them,"suggested Marguerite de Valois, with a giggle.

  "Don't be flippant, please," said Portia. "We haven't time to waste onflippant suggestions. Perhaps a court-martial of these pirates,supplemented by a yard-arm, wouldn't be a bad thing. I'll prosecute thecase."

  "You forget that you are dealing with immortal spirits," observedCleopatra. "If these creatures were mortals, hanging them would be allright, and comparatively easy, considering that we outnumber them ten toone, and have many resources for getting them, more or less, in our power,but they are not. They have gone through the refining process ofdissolution once, and there's an end to that. Our only resource is in theline of deception, and if we cannot deceive them, then we have ceased tobe women."

  "That is truly said," observed Elizabeth. "And inasmuch as we have alreadyprovided ourselves with a suitable committee for the preparation of ourplans of a deceptive nature, I move, as the easiest possible solution ofthe difficulty for the rest of us, that the Committee on Treachery berequested to go at once into executive session, with orders not to comeout of it until they have suggested a plausible plan of campaign againstour abductors. We must be rid of them. Let the Committee on Treachery sayhow."

  "Second the motion," said Mrs. Noah. "You are a very clear-headed youngwoman, Lizzie, and your grandmother is proud of you."

  "'YOU ARE A VERY CLEAR-HEADED YOUNG WOMAN, LIZZIE,' SAIDMRS. NOAH"]

  The Committee on Treachery were about to protest, but the chair refused toentertain any debate upon the question, which was put and carried with astorm of approval.

  Five minutes later a note was handed through the port, addressed toCleopatra, which read as follows:

  "DEAR MADAME,--Six bells has just struck, and the officers and crew are hungry. Will you and your fair companions co-operate with us in our enterprise by having a hearty dinner ready within two hours? A speck has appeared on the horizon which betokens a coming storm, else we would prepare our supper ourselves. As it is, we feel that your safety depends on our remaining on deck. If there is any beer on the ice, we prefer it to tea. Two cases will suffice.

  "Yours respectfully,

  "HENRY MORGAN, Bart., First Mate."

  "Hurrah!" cried Cleopatra, as she read this communication. "I have anidea. Tell the Committee on Treachery to appear before the full meeting atonce."

  The committee was summoned, and Cleopatra announced her plan of operation,and it was unanimously adopted; but what it was we shall have to wait foranother chapter to learn.