The Pursuit of the House-Boat Part 4

"Nothing," said Solomon. "They're not mine yet, and it's their fathers'

business to get 'em back. Not mine."

Other subscriptions came pouring in, and it was not long before everybody save Shylock had put his name down for something. This some one of the more quick-witted of the spirits soon observed, and, with reckless disregard of the feelings of the Merchant of Venice, began to call: "Shylock! Shylock! How much?"

The Merchant tried to leave the pier, but his path was blocked.

"Subscribe, subscribe!" was the cry. "How much?"

"Order, gentlemen, order!" said Sir Walter, rising and holding a bottle aloft. "A black person by the name of Friday, a valet of our friend Mr.

Crusoe, has just handed me this bottle, which he picked up ten minutes ago on the bank of the river a few miles distant. It contains a bit of paper, and may perhaps give us a clew based upon something more substantial than even the wonderful theories of our new brother Holmes."

[Ill.u.s.tration: A BLACK PERSON BY THE NAME OF FRIDAY FINDS A BOTTLE]

A deathly silence followed the chairman's words, as Sir Walter drew a cork-screw from his pocket and opened the bottle. He extracted the paper, and, as he had surmised, it proved to be a message from the missing vessel. His face brightening with a smile of relief, Sir Walter read, aloud:

"Have just emerged into the Atlantic. Club in hands of Kidd and forty ruffians. One hundred and eighty-three ladies on board. Headed for the Azores. Send aid at once. All well except Xanthippe, who is seasick in the billiard-room. (Signed) Portia."

"Aha!" cried Hawkshaw. "That shows how valuable the Holmes theory is."

"Precisely," said Holmes. "No woman knows anything about seafaring, but Portia is right. The s.h.i.+p is headed for the Azores, which is the first tack needed in a windward sail for London under the present conditions."

The reply was greeted with cheers, and when they subsided the cry for Shylock's subscription began again, but he declined.

"I had intended to put up a thousand ducats," he said, defiantly, "but with that woman Portia on board I won't give a red obolus!" and with that he wrapped his cloak about him and stalked off into the gathering shadows of the wood.

And so the funds were raised without the aid of Shylock, and the shapely twin-screw steamer the _Gehenna_ was chartered of Charon, and put under the command of Mr. Sherlock Holmes, who, after he had thanked the company for their confidence, walked abstractedly away, observing in strictest confidence to himself that he had done well to prepare that bottle beforehand and bribe Crusoe's man to find it.

"For now," he said, with a chuckle, "I can get back to earth again free of cost on my own hook, whether my eminent inventor wants me there or not. I never approved of his killing me off as he did at the very height of my popularity."

IV

ON BOARD THE HOUSE-BOAT

Meanwhile the ladies were not having such a bad time, after all. Once having gained possession of the House-boat, they were loath to think of ever having to give it up again, and it is an open question in my mind if they would not have made off with it themselves had Captain Kidd and his men not done it for them.

"I'll never forgive these men for their selfishness in monopolizing all this," said Elizabeth, with a vicious stroke of a billiard-cue, which missed the cue-ball and tore a right angle in the cloth. "It is not right."

"No," said Portia. "It is all wrong; and when we get back home I'm going to give my beloved Ba.s.sanio a piece of my mind; and if he doesn't give in to me, I'll reverse my decision in the famous case of Shylock _versus_ Antonio."

"Then I sincerely hope he doesn't give in," retorted Cleopatra, "for I swear by all my auburn locks that that was the very worst bit of injustice ever perpetrated. Mr. Shakespeare confided to me one night, at one of Mrs.

Caesar's card-parties, that he regarded that as the biggest joke he ever wrote, and Judge Blackstone observed to Antony that the decision wouldn't have held in any court of equity outside of Venice. If you owe a man a thousand ducats, and it costs you three thousand to get them, that's your affair, not his. If it cost Antonio every drop of his bluest blood to pay the pound of flesh, it was Antonio's affair, not Shylock's. However, the world applauds you as a great jurist, when you have nothing more than a woman's keen instinct for sentimental technicalities."

"It would have made a horrid play, though, if it had gone on," shuddered Elizabeth.

"That may be, but, carried out realistically, it would have done away with a raft of bad actors," said Cleopatra. "I'm half sorry it didn't go on, and I'm sure it wouldn't have been any worse than compelling Brutus to fall on his sword until he resembles a chicken liver _en brochette_, as is done in that Julius Caesar play."

"Well, I'm very glad I did it," snapped Portia.

"I should think you would be," said Cleopatra. "If you hadn't done it, you'd never have been known. What was that?"

The boat had given a slight lurch.

"Didn't you hear a shuffling noise up on deck, Portia?" asked the Egyptian Queen.

"I thought I did, and it seemed as if the vessel had moved a bit,"

returned Portia, nervously; for, like most women in an advanced state of development, she had become a martyr to her nerves.

"It was merely the wash from one of Charon's new ferry-boats, I fancy,"

said Elizabeth, calmly. "It's disgusting, the way that old fellow allows these modern innovations to be brought in here! As if the old paddle-boats he used to carry shades in weren't good enough for the immigrants of this age! Really this Styx River is losing a great deal of its charm. Sir Walter and I were upset, while out rowing one day last summer, by the waves kicked up by one of Charon's excursion steamers going up the river with a party of picnickers from the city--the Greater Gehenna Chowder Club, I believe it was--on board of her. One might just as well live in the midst of the turmoil of a great city as try to get uninterrupted quiet here in the suburbs in these days. Charon isn't content to get rich slowly; he must make money by the barrelful, if he has to sacrifice all the comfort of everybody living on this river. Anybody'd think he was an American, the way he goes on; and everybody else here is the same way. The Erebeans are getting to be a race of shopkeepers."

"I think myself," sighed Cleopatra, "that Hades is being spoiled by the introduction of American ideas--it is getting by far too democratic for my tastes; and if it isn't stopped, it's my belief that the best people will stop coming here. Take Madame Recamier's salon as it is now and compare it with what it used to be! In the early days, after her arrival here, everybody went because it was the swell thing, and you'd be sure of meeting the intellectually elect. On the one hand you'd find Sophocles; on the other, Cicero; across the room would be Horace chatting gayly with some such person as myself. Great warriors, from Alexander to Bonaparte, were there, and glad of the opportunity to be there, too; statesmen like Macchiavelli; artists like Cellini or Tintoretto. You couldn't move without stepping on the toes of genius. But now all is different. The money-getting instinct has been aroused within them all, with the result that when I invited Mozart to meet a few friends at dinner at my place last autumn, he sent me a card stating his terms for dinners. Let me see, I think I have it with me; I've kept it by me for fear of losing it, it is such a complete revelation of the actual condition of affairs in this locality. Ah! this is it," she added, taking a small bit of paste-board from her card-case. "Read that."

The card was pa.s.sed about, and all the ladies were much astonished--and naturally so, for it ran this wise:

-------------------------------------------------- | NOTICE TO HOSTESSES. | | | | Owing to the very great, constantly growing, | | and at times vexatious demands upon his time | | socially, | | | | HERR WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART | | | | takes this method of announcing to his | | friends that on and after January 1, 1897, | | his terms for functions will be as follows: | | | | Marks. | | Dinners with conversation on the | | Theory of Music ................. 500 | | Dinners with conversation on the | | Theory of Music, ill.u.s.trated .... 750 | | Dinners without any conversation .. 300 | | Receptions, public, with music .... 1000 | | " private, " ...... 750 | | Encores (single) .................. 100 | | Three encores for ................. 150 | | Autographs ........................ 10 | | | | Positively no Invitations for Five-o'Clock | | Teas or Morning Musicales considered. | --------------------------------------------------

"Well, I declare!" t.i.ttered Elizabeth, as she read. "Isn't that extraordinary? He's got the three-name craze, too!"

"It's perfectly ridiculous," said Cleopatra. "But it's fairer than Artemus Ward's plan. Mozart gives notice of his intentions to charge you; but with Ward it's different. He comes, and afterwards sends a bill for his fun.

Why, only last week I got a 'quarterly statement' from him showing a charge against me of thirty-eight dollars for humorous remarks made to my guests at a little chafing-dish party I gave in honor of Balzac, and, worst of all, he had marked it 'Please remit.' Even Antony, when he wrote a sonnet to my eyebrow, wouldn't let me have it until he had heard whether or not Boswell wanted it for publication in the _Gossip_. With Rubens giving chalk-talks for pay, Phidias doing 'Five-minute Masterpieces in Putty' for suburban lyceums, and all the ill.u.s.trious in other lines turning their genius to account through the entertainment bureaus, it's impossible to have a salon now."

"You are indeed right," said Madame Recamier, sadly. "Those were palmy days when genius was satisfied with chicken salad and lemonade. I shall never forget those nights when the wit and wisdom of all time were--ah--were on tap at my house, if I may so speak, at a cost to me of lights and supper. Now the only people who will come for nothing are those we used to think of paying to stay away. Boswell is always ready, but you can't run a salon on Boswell."

"Well," said Portia, "I sincerely hope that you won't give up the functions altogether, because I have always found them most delightful. It is still possible to have lights and supper."

"I have a plan for next winter," said Madame Recamier, "but I suppose I shall be accused of going into the commercial side of it if I adopt it.

The plan is, briefly, to incorporate my salon. That's an idea worthy of an American, I admit; but if I don't do it I'll have to give it up entirely, which, as you intimate, would be too bad. An incorporated salon, however, would be a grand thing, if only because it would perpetuate the salon.

'The Recamier Salon (Limited)' would be a most excellent t.i.tle, and, suitably capitalized, would enable us to pay our lions sufficiently.

Private enterprise is powerless under modern conditions. It's as much as I can afford to pay for a dinner, without running up an expense account for guests; and unless we get up a salon trust, as it were, the whole affair must go to the wall."

[Ill.u.s.tration: MADAME ReCAMIER HAS A PLAN]

"How would you make it pay?" asked Portia. "I can't see where your dividends would come from."

"That is simple enough," said Madame Recamier. "We could put up a large reception-hall with a portion of our capital, and advertise a series of nights--say one a week throughout the season. These would be Warriors'

Night, Story-tellers' Night, Poets' Night, Chafing-dish Night under the charge of Brillat-Savarin, and so on. It would be understood 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 advertis.e.m.e.nt in Boswell's paper, which everybody buys--"

"And which n.o.body reads," said Portia.

"They read the advertis.e.m.e.nts," retorted Madame Recamier. "As I was saying, an advertis.e.m.e.nt could be placed in Boswell's paper as follows: 'Are you giving a Function? Do you want Talent? Get your Genius at the Recamier 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."