A CONFERENCE BELOW-STAIRS
When, with a resounding slam, the
door to the upper deck of the House-boat was shut
in the faces of queens Elizabeth and Cleopatra by the
unmannerly Kidd, these ladies turned and gazed at
those who thronged the stairs behind them in blank
amazement, and the heart of Xanthippe, had one chosen
to gaze through that diaphanous person’s ribs,
could have been seen to beat angrily.
Queen Elizabeth was so excited at
this wholly novel attitude towards her regal self
that, having turned, she sat down plump upon the floor
in the most unroyal fashion.
“Well!” she ejaculated.
“If this does not surpass everything! The
idea of it! Oh for one hour of my olden power,
one hour of the axe, one hour of the block!”
“Get up,” retorted Cleopatra,
“and let us all return to the billiard-room
and discuss this matter calmly. It is quite evident
that something has happened of which we wotted little
when we came aboard this craft.”
“That is a good idea,”
said Calpurnia, retreating below. “I can
see through the window that we are in motion.
The vessel has left her moorings, and is making considerable
headway down the stream, and the distinctly masculine
voices we have heard are indications to my mind that
the ship is manned, and that this is the result of
design rather than of accident. Let us below.”
Elizabeth rose up and readjusted her
ruff, which in the excitement of the moment had been
forced to assume a position about her forehead which
gave one the impression that its royal wearer had
suddenly donned a sombrero.
“Very well,” she said.
“Let us below; but oh, for the axe!”
“Bring the lady an axe,”
cried Xanthippe, sarcastically. “She wants
to cut somebody.”
The sally was not greeted with applause.
The situation was regarded as being too serious to
admit of humor, and in silence they filed back into
the billiard-room, and, arranging themselves in groups,
stood about anxiously discussing the situation.
“It’s getting rougher
every minute,” sobbed Ophelia. “Look
at those pool-balls!” These were in very truth
chasing each other about the table in an extraordinary
fashion. “And I wish I’d never followed
you horrid new creatures on board!” the poor
girl added, in an agony of despair.
“I believe we’ve crossed
the bar already!” said Cleopatra, gazing out
of the window at a nasty choppy sea that was adding
somewhat to the disquietude of the fair gathering.
“If this is merely a joke on the part of the
Associated Shades, it is a mighty poor one, and I think
it is time it should cease.”
“Oh, for an axe!” moaned Elizabeth, again.
“Excuse me, your Majesty,”
put in Xanthippe. “You said that before,
and I must say it is getting tiresome. You couldn’t
do anything with an axe. Suppose you had one.
What earthly good would it do you, who were accustomed
to doing all your killing by proxy? I don’t
believe, if you had the unmannerly person who slammed
the door in your face lying prostrate upon the billiard-table
here, you could hit him a square blow in the neck
if you had a hundred axes. Delilah might as well
cry for her scissors, for all the good it would do
us in our predicament. If Cleopatra had her asp
with her it might be more to the purpose. One
deadly little snake like that let loose on the upper
deck would doubtless drive these boors into the sea,
and even then our condition would not be bettered,
for there isn’t any of us that can sail a boat.
There isn’t an old salt among us.”
“Too bad Mrs. Lot isn’t
along,” giggled Marguerite de Valois, whose Gallic
spirits were by no means overshadowed by the unhappy
predicament in which she found herself.
“I’m here,” piped
up Mrs. Lot. “But I’m not that kind
of a salt.”
“I am present,” said Mrs.
Noah. “Though why I ever came I don’t
know, for I vowed the minute I set my foot on Ararat
that dry land was good enough for me, and that I’d
never step aboard another boat as long as I lived.
If, however, now that I am here, I can give you the
benefit of my nautical experience, you are all perfectly
welcome to it.”
“I’m sure we’re
very much obliged for the offer,” said Portia,
“but in the emergency which has arisen we cannot
say how much obliged we are until we know what your
experience amounted to. Before relying upon you
we ought to know how far that reliance can go not
that I lack confidence in you, my dear madam, but
that in an hour of peril one must take care to rely
upon the oak, not upon the reed.”
“The point is properly taken,”
said Elizabeth, “and I wish to say here that
I am easier in my mind when I realize that we have
with us so level-headed a person as the lady who has
just spoken. She has spoken truly and to the
point. If I were to become queen again, I should
make her my attorney-general. We must not go
ahead impulsively, but look at all things in a calm,
judicial manner.”
“Which is pretty hard work with
a sea like this on,” remarked Ophelia, faintly,
for she was getting a trifle sallow, as indeed she
might, for the House-boat was beginning to roll tremendously,
with no alleviation save an occasional pitch, which
was an alleviation only in the sense that it gave
variety to their discomfort. “I don’t
believe a chief-justice could look at things calmly
and in a judicial manner if he felt as I do.”
“Poor dear!” said the
matronly Mrs. Noah, sympathetically. “I
know exactly how you feel. I have been there
myself. The fourth day out I and my whole family
were in the same condition, except that Noah, my husband,
was so very far gone that I could not afford to yield.
I nursed him for six days before he got his sea-legs
on, and then succumbed myself.”
“But,” gasped Ophelia, “that doesn’t
help me ”
“It did my husband,” said
Mrs. Noah. “When he heard that the boys
were sea-sick too, he actually laughed and began to
get better right away. There is really only one
cure for the mal de mer, and that is the fun
of knowing that somebody else is suffering too.
If some of you ladies would kindly yield to the seductions
of the sea, I think we could get this poor girl on
her feet in an instant.”
Unfortunately for poor Ophelia, there
was no immediate response to this appeal, and the
unhappy young woman was forced to suffer in solitude.
“We have no time for untimely
diversions of this sort,” snapped Xanthippe,
with a scornful glance at the suffering Ophelia, who,
having retired to a comfortable lounge at an end of
the room, was evidently improving. “I have
no sympathy with this habit some of my sex seem to
have acquired of succumbing to an immediate sensation
of this nature.”
“I hope to be pardoned for interrupting,”
said Mrs. Noah, with a great deal of firmness, “but
I wish Mrs. Socrates to understand that it is rather
early in the voyage for her to lay down any such broad
principle as that, and for her own sake to-morrow,
I think it would be well if she withdrew the sentiment.
There are certain things about a sea-voyage that are
more or less beyond the control of man or woman, and
any one who chides that poor suffering child on yonder
sofa ought to be more confident than Mrs. Socrates
can possibly be that within an hour she will not be
as badly off. People who live in glass houses
should not throw dice.”
“I shall never yield to anything
so undignified as seasickness, let me tell you that,”
retorted Xanthippe. “Furthermore, the proverb
is not as the lady has quoted it. ’People
who live in glass houses should not throw stones’
is the proper version.”
“I was not quoting,” returned
Mrs. Noah, calmly. “When I said that people
who live in glass houses should not throw dice, I meant
precisely what I said. People who live in glass
houses should not take chances. In assuming with
such vainglorious positiveness that she will not be
seasick, the lady who has just spoken is giving tremendous
odds, as the boys used to say on the Ark when we gathered
about the table at night and began to make small wagers
on the day’s run.”
“I think we had better suspend
this discussion,” suggested Cleopatra. “It
is of no immediate interest to any one but Ophelia,
and I fancy she does not care to dwell upon it at
any great length. It is more important that we
should decide upon our future course of action.
In the first place, the question is who these people
up on deck are. If they are the members of the
club, we are all right. They will give us our
scare, and land us safely again at the pier.
In that event it is our womanly duty to manifest no
concern, and to seem to be aware of nothing unusual
in the proceeding. It would never do to let them
think that their joke has been a good one. If,
on the other hand, as I fear, we are the victims of
some horde of ruffians, who have pounced upon us unawares,
and are going into the business of abduction on a
wholesale basis, we must meet treachery with treachery,
strategy with strategy. I, for one, am perfectly
willing to make every man on board walk the plank,
having confidence in the seawomanship of Mrs. Noah
and her ability to steer us into port.”
“I am quite in accord with these
views,” put in Madame Recamier, “and I
move you, Mrs. President, that we organize a series
of subcommittees one on treachery, with
Lucretia Borgia and Delilah as members; one on strategy,
consisting of Portia and Queen Elizabeth; one on navigation,
headed by Mrs. Noah; with a final subcommittee on reconnoitre,
with Cassandra to look forward, and Mrs. Lot to look
aft all of these subordinated to a central
committee of safety headed by Cleopatra and Calpurnia.
The rest of us can then commit ourselves and our interests
unreservedly to these ladies, and proceed to enjoy
ourselves without thought of the morrow.”
“I second the motion,”
said Ophelia, “with the amendment that Madame
Recamier be appointed chair-lady of another subcommittee,
on entertainment.”
The amendment was accepted, and the
motion put. It was carried with an enthusiastic
aye, and the organization was complete.
The various committees retired to
the several corners of the room to discuss their individual
lines of action, when a shadow was observed to obscure
the moonlight which had been streaming in through the
window. The faces of Calpurnia and Cleopatra
blanched for an instant, as, immediately following
upon this apparition, a large bundle was hurled through
the open port into the middle of the room, and the
shadow vanished.
“Is it a bomb?” cried several of the ladies
at once.
“Nonsense!” said Madame
Recamier, jumping lightly forward. “A man
doesn’t mind blowing a woman up, but he’ll
never blow himself up. We’re safe enough
in that respect. The thing looks to me like a
bundle of illustrated papers.”
“That’s what it is,”
said Cleopatra, who had been investigating. “It’s
rather a discourteous bit of courtesy, tossing them
in through the window that way, I think, but I presume
they mean well. Dear me,” she added, as,
having untied the bundle, she held one of the open
papers up before her, “how interesting!
All the latest Paris fashions. Humph! Look
at those sleeves, Elizabeth. What an impregnable
fortress you would have been with those sleeves added
to your ruffs!”
“I should think they’d
be very becoming,” put in Cassandra, standing
on her tiptoes and looking over Cleopatra’s
shoulder. “That Watteau isn’t bad,
either, is it, now?”
“No,” remarked Calpurnia.
“I wonder how a Watteau back like that would
go on my blue alpaca?”
“Very nicely,” said Elizabeth. “How
many gores has it?”
“Five,” observed Calpurnia.
“One more than Caesar’s toga. We had
to have our costumes distinct in some way.”
“A remarkable hat, that,”
nodded Mrs. Lot, her eye catching sight of a Virot
creation at the top of the page.
“Reminds me of Eve’s description
of an autumn scene in the garden,” smiled Mrs.
Noah. “Gorgeous in its foliage, beautiful
thing; though I shouldn’t have dared wear one
in the Ark, with all those hungry animals browsing
about the upper and lower decks.”
“I wonder,” remarked Cleopatra,
as she cocked her head to one side to take in the
full effect of an attractive summer gown “I
wonder how that waist would make up in blue crépon,
with a yoke of lace and a stylishly contrasting stock
of satin ribbon?”
“It would depend upon how you
finished the sleeves,” remarked Madame Recamier.
“If you had a few puffs of rich brocaded satin
set in with deeply folded pleats it wouldn’t
be bad.”
“I think it would be very effective,”
observed Mrs. Noah, “but a trifle too light
for general wear. I should want some kind of a
wrap with it.”
“It does need that,” assented
Elizabeth. “A wrap made of passementerie
and jet, with a mousseline de soie
ruche about the neck held by a chou, would
make it fascinating.”
“The committee on treachery
is ready to report,” said Delilah, rising from
her corner, where she and Lucretia Borgia had been
having so animated a discussion that they had failed
to observe the others crowding about Cleopatra and
the papers.
“A little sombre,” said
Cleopatra. “The corsage is effective, but
I don’t like those basque terminations.
I’ve never approved of those full godets ”
“The committee on treachery,”
remarked Delilah again, raising her voice, “has
a suggestion to make.”
“I can’t get over those
sleeves, though,” laughed Helen of Troy.
“What is the use of them?”
“They might be used to get Greeks
into Troy,” suggested Madame Recamier.
“The committee on treachery,”
roared Delilah, thoroughly angered by the absorption
of the chairman and others, “has a suggestion
to make. This is the third and last call.”
“Oh, I beg pardon,” cried
Cleopatra, rapping for order. “I had forgotten
all about our committees. Excuse me, Delilah.
I ah was absorbed in other matters.
Will you kindly lay your pattern I should
say your plan before us?”
“It is briefly this,”
said Delilah. “It has been suggested that
we invite the crew of this vessel to a chafing-dish
party, under the supervision of Lucretia Borgia, and
that she ”
The balance of the plan was not outlined,
for at this point the speaker was interrupted by a
loud knocking at the door, its instant opening, and
the appearance in the doorway of that ill-visaged ruffian
Captain Kidd.
“Ladies,” he began, “I
have come here to explain to you the situation in
which you find yourselves. Have I your permission
to speak?”
The ladies started back, but the chairman
was equal to the occasion.
“Go on,” said Cleopatra,
with queenly dignity, turning to the interloper; and
the pirate proceeded to take the second step in the
nefarious plan upon which he and his brother ruffians
had agreed, of which the tossing in through the window
of the bundle of fashion papers was the first.