You can? You can’t!
But hope—hope on!
While Fidette sang I made merry with my memory.
When I lived in Brooklyn I had a cousin who belonged to a wealthy family and was a member of a very famous woman’s club called the Amazons, and from her I learned that after the ladies who belonged to that organization had possessed themselves of all the “rights” that could not make their escape, they began to wrangle with each other as to which of them should enjoy the acquired privileges. The idea of having them in common did not satisfy. One incident that I remember to have heard mentioned impressed me greatly. It arose out of the annual election for the presidency. The tall and stately dame who held that honored post very nearly failed of a renomination. There was considerable feeling in the club in opposition to her, but when she realized that a younger candidate was to be named in her stead she burst into a flood of tears and made a pathetic appeal to the assembly for a continuance in authority. The result was that the meeting closed with a semi-hysterical burst of tears on all sides.
The moral of this bit of retrospection is that I felt perfectly sure Fidette and Donna Elenora would be less confidential toward each other at the end of a month than they were at the moment of arranging their friendly compact. Therefore, not approving of the sociability that had sprung up between them, I believed that the quickest way to destroy it was to encourage it.
CHAPTER XXVI.
THE NEW WOMAN IN SARGASSO.
The captain’s gig, which I had found in an excellent state of preservation on one of the lower decks, was put in the hands of one of the crew, who had some experience as a carpenter, and was thoroughly refitted. I had the seats in the stern of the boat covered with sea-grass cushions and the trim gig given a coat of the fish-scale shellac, without and within. There were seats for six oarsmen.
When the gig was finished and the oars fitted thereto, I selected a boat’s crew with great care, choosing only the strongest and homeliest young men from the ship’s company. When all was ready I had the boat placed in the water one day when Donna Elenora was present on the Caribas, and then informed the two ladies that the gig was at their service, individually and collectively, whenever they chose to use it. I knew enough of human nature to foresee that, after a few visits together, the two ladies would disagree as to the proper hour to make calls, and practically would never use the boat in each other’s company. I must admit that I felt an emotion of satanic delight in destroying all the traditions of the Sargassons at one blow, and in thus boldly introducing what we in the English language denominate “The Sociability of the Human Race.” Deep down in my heart I felt that the Sargassons were right in theory and in practice.
Little as they knew of the great world that surrounded them, but of which they formed a part, they had discovered that, almost universally, friendships exist because of mutual interests, and that the moment a preponderance of selfish benefit accrues to one individual in excess of that attainable by the other, all cordiality is dissipated.