Queen Elizabeth, attended by Ophelia and Xanthippe, was walking along the river-bank. It was a beautiful autumn day, although, owing to certain climatic peculiarities1 of Hades, it seemed more like midsummer. The mercury in the club thermometer was nervously2 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 gnats3 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, positively5. “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 peril6 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 fully7 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 binding8 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 arrogated9 to himself the sole and exclusive use of sane10 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, meekly11.
Xanthippe sniffed12 frigidly13 at this remark.
“I never should have gone crazy over a man if I’d remained unmarried forty thousand years,” she retorted, severely14. “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 resentment15, I have been handed down to posterity16 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 verge17 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 wed18, 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 diplomacy19 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 loomed20 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 Encyclopædia Britannica rightly calls dull and fatuous21. In other words, club life for him, and dulness and fatuity22 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,” giggled23 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 lighting4 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 whetted24 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 admiration25, 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 apparition26 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, kindly27............