[Mark Twain Mysteries 03] - The Prince and the Prosecutor

by Peter J. Heck

  Late in the afternoon, Mr. Clemens declared the day’s work at an end, and we made our way to the smoking lounge, which had become our regular place to meet with Kipling and a few other fellow passengers with whom my employer enjoyed talking.

  The minute we entered the room, we could hear Robert Babson’s voice from the card table. “Leon, you dog, you dealt me this trash on purpose. How’s a fellow supposed to play a hand like this? Well, I guess I have to lead something—here, put that in your pipe and smoke it.” His belligerent tone and slurred speech were all the indication anyone needed that, if diluting his wine was intended to keep him sober, the stratagem was ineffective. A glance at his red face confirmed my diagnosis.

  We went to the far corner of the smoking room, where Babson’s noisy attempts at witticisms were less intrusive. Kipling and Colonel Fitzwilliam arrived a short while later, and we ordered up a round of drinks and soon were carrying on a lively controversy about Shakespeare. Somewhat to my surprise, Mr. Clemens took the position that Shakespeare was a semiliterate tradesman, whose plays were actually written by someone else—probably Sir Francis Bacon. “There’s only one uncontested poem from his hand, and that’s a wretched bit of doggerel,” my employer said, referring to the inscription on the Bard’s tombstone. “You know something about poetry, Kipling. Do you really think the same man who wrote Hamlet could write ‘Good friend, for Jesu’s sake forbear’? Would he allow those godawful lines to be carved on his monument for the ages to read? Would you want a stranger to come to your grave and read that, when you know you could do better?”

  “Hum—I shan’t care much what’s written on my grave, if I’m content with what I’ve done before I reach it,” said Kipling. “As for Shakespeare, I’m perfectly content to believe he wrote every word of the plays. The common man can learn to mimic the speech of kings and generals, but no aristocrat can capture the speech of the common man as well as Shakespeare has.”

  “Shakespeare is a fraud,” said Mr. Clemens, in a drawling tone that challenged the listener to guess whether he was jesting or in earnest. “None of his contemporaries took any notice of him. You’d think he’d have been the toast of London, even in that miserable era.”

  “Ah, Clemens, the time of Elizabeth was hardly a ‘miserable’ era,” said Kipling. “It’s easy for us to sit at the summit of nineteenth-century civilization and mock the past, but I’ll have you remember that three centuries of playwrights haven’t topped the common fare of Elizabeth’s time. As for the obscurity of Shakespeare’s life, I count that rather to his advantage. You may think it easy to be a public figure and write well; I should find it an immense distraction.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if he were a little mousy fellow who sat in the corner of the tavern listening, then went home and wrote it all down,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam, leaning forward eagerly. “His picture has that look, don’t you think?”

  “Ben Jonson considered him a superlative wit, and said so in print,” declared Mr. Kipling. He swirled the whisky in his glass and looked at my employer. “By Allah, I’d think that would be all the testimony even you need, Clemens. What better endorsement can you ask than the recognition of his peers? That counts for everything.”

  Mr. Clemens gleefully pounced on this point. “Sure it does, and that’s exactly the problem. Look at what happens when you or I publish a book, Kipling. Every damn fool on three or four continents has something to say about it, usually pure drivel, but that’s not the point. The damn fools in Shakespeare’s time can’t have been any different. Why aren’t there reams of letters and articles about Shakespeare? Went to see Hamlet last night; full of the veriest nonsense, but a good sword fight at the end. To the Mermaid Tavern afterwards for a cup of sack. Shakespeare and Jonson were there, with a rabble of players, all mightily drunk and making lewd japes. There’s nothing like that.”

  “And if he was like that, why would his contemporaries pay it any more attention than we do that young jackanapes over there?” said Colonel Fitzwilliam, gesturing in the direction of the card table. “It’s what he wrote that we care about, not how drunk he got.”

  At the colonel’s gesture, I glanced in the direction of the card table, and perforce at the door beyond it. As it happened, Robert Babson was also seated facing the door. And at precisely this moment, it opened to admit Prinz Karl, who glanced around the room. It seemed to me that his eyes lit on our little group, and that when he saw Mr. Clemens and Mr. Kipling, his face fell. After a moment of hesitation on the threshold, lie turned and went out the door. “Did you see that?” I whispered to Mr. Clemens.

  “What, Wentworth?” said Mr. Clemens, looking at me; he obviously had no idea what I was referring to.

  But Robert Babson had seen the prince’s entrance and abrupt exit, as well. His crowing voice came to us loud and clear. “Did you see that, Jack?” he said to the fellow on his right, echoing my exact words. “That pompous foreigner must have learned his lesson after all. He slunk right out the minute he laid eyes on me. You know, he tried to give me some of his lip the other day, but I stood up to him. That’s all you have to do with his sort. He’s not looking to tangle with Bobby Babson any more, no sirree.”

  “Why, that fellow’s an outright liar,” I said to Mr. Clemens. “He’s the one who ran away, when the prince showed up to contradict his stories.”

  “Yes, I doubt the prince was dodging Babson, whatever the young fellow wants to think of himself,” said Mr. Kipling, looking at Mr. Clemens. Mr. Clemens nodded. After a moment’s thought, I realized what Kipling meant; the prince had most likely been quizzed by the authorities, and unless he was an utter fool, he must have guessed who had raised the question as to his bona fides. It was my employer the prince had looked directly at before making his abrupt departure.

  I myself had had nothing to do with exposing him to the master-at-arms, of course. But I could not help feeling guilty at the sad expression he had turned our way before walking out of the convivial milieu of the smoking lounge. It made me feel like a traitor to a man who had helped me, and I did not like the feeling one bit. Neither did I want to be a possible accessory to fraud, however. It was an awkward dilemma, not likely to be resolved until we reached England.

  14

  That same evening, there was a musicale scheduled for the Grand Saloon, and despite the rough seas, a majority of the passengers turned out for what promised to be one of the highlights of the voyage. The ship’s little orchestra had shown itself to be remarkably versatile, expertly performing every style of music from symphonic selections and soothing chamber music to rousing patriotic airs, popular dances, and solemn hymns. Even Mr. Clemens decided to postpone the conversational pleasures of the smoking lounge in favor of the concert.

  The occasion was remarkable in that both Robert Babson and Prinz Karl were in the audience, standing some distance apart from one another; the prince had made some effort to avoid any unnecessary meetings with the younger Babson. For his part, Babson had grown progressively boisterous at dinner, drinking and laughing at a great rate. While I was not close enough to overhear what he said, it was funny enough to send his friends into gales of laughter so loud that several of those at nearby tables turned to shush them during the meal. And tonight, Mr. and Mrs. Kipling had been invited to sit with Mr. Clemens at the captain’s table, so the contrast between the low-key conversation around me and the high spirits at Babson’s was particularly obvious. As disgusted as I was at Babson’s drunken antics, I could not help feeling a certain attraction for the young, lively crowd around him—especially since it included his sister Rebecca, While she seemed to do no more than peck at her dinner, she seemed to be in fair spirits. Her face was a bit pale, but at least she was managing to keep a smile upon her lips.

  Prinz Karl, for his part, had arrived at dinner several minutes late, attired in his dress uniform and looking neither to the right nor to the left as he took his customary seat. And while he seemed to eat his meal and drink his wine with no lack of r
elish, he was quieter than I had seen him before. Our eyes met once as I looked in his direction, and then I quickly averted my gaze. I still felt guilty about his having been quizzed by the authorities aboard ship, especially after he had taken my side against Babson.

  The music was scheduled to begin half an hour after dinner. Mr. Clemens and I went back to the cabin for a few minutes to refresh ourselves, then strolled down a still-unsteady corridor to the Grand Saloon. Some of our fellow passengers seemed themselves unsteady, whether from seasickness or a surfeit of drink with dinner, I could not tell. My employer took a seat on the side aisle, but I (remembering the crowd at Signor Rubbia’s lecture) decided to stand along the wall a short distance away so as to allow for the ladies who would undoubtedly make up a large part of the audience.

  I was pleased to see Rebecca Babson enter a short while later, with her mother and brother. Robert Babson escorted them to a pair of seats up front, then strolled over to join a couple of his usual companions standing in the far rear corner. I saw sly grins on their faces, and then one reached into his jacket pocket and extracted a small flask, which he passed to his companions. Babson appeared to have gotten over his hangover—but it was clear that he was working on another one for the morrow.

  The saloon rapidly filled up, and at the appointed hour, the musicians made their entrance, dressed in formal evening wear instead of the uniforms in which they had played their little concert on deck the day of our departure. There was a flurry of rustling as the late arrivals settled into their places, accompanied by shushing from those already seated.

  The conductor, whose exemplary posture set off evening attire as effectively as a uniform, took a seat at the grand piano, placed some sheets of music on the rack, and waited for his men to adjust their instruments and music stands. When he was satisfied, he nodded to the front row of the audience, and Captain Mortimer stood up and turned to face us. “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” he said. “We have all had the pleasure of listening to our ship’s orchestra, led by Professor Isaac Goldberg, throughout the voyage, and I am sure you have enjoyed their playing as much as I have. Tonight, we give these fine musicians a chance to show their talents individually as well as in a group. We have also prevailed upon several of the passengers, who are gifted musical amateurs in their own right, to join in an evening of music and song. So without further preamble, let me turn the proceedings over to Professor Goldberg and his musicians.”

  The orchestra conductor rose to acknowledge the applause, bowed to the audience, and then resumed his seat at the piano as the room fell silent in anticipation. He nodded to his musicians, counted softly to four, and they began to play one of Mozart’s instrumental pieces. I am afraid my taste runs more to popular dance music—or to Buddy Bolden’s band, which I heard in New Orleans—than to the classical repertory. But it would have been difficult not to admire the superlative musicianship. Conducting from the piano bench, Professor Goldberg varied the program skillfully, changing moods and styles frequently. Of the soloists, I was especially impressed by the first violinist, who played a devilishly complicated number by Paganini, and by the professor himself, whose keyboard virtuosity sometimes gave the impression that he had more than the usual number of fingers.

  After an hour or so, there was a brief intermission, followed by the amateur portion of the musicale. While the level of musicianship did noticeably decline with the arrival onstage of my fellow passengers, several of the young ladies sang very prettily, and Michael Richards, who as a small boy had known Mr. Clemens in his California days, turned out to have a fine clear tenor voice, gaining an enthusiastic round of applause for his rendition of “Willow, Tit-Willow,” from The Mikado.

  But there were moments best forgotten. Mme. Trappeaux, a sturdy woman of the contralto persuasion, favored us with a wobbling version of “O Promise Me,” that reminded me of nothing so much as an ailing steam-whistle. Mr. Clemens looked around as if to locate an escape route; had the performance gone on much longer, I think I would have raced him to the exit, and knocked him down if he hindered my getting through the door. Professor Goldberg managed to display a polite smile despite the singer’s misguided attempts at some of the high notes. Accompanied by polite applause—probably for not offering an encore—Mme. Trappeaux returned to her seat.

  Then the professor yielded up his seat at the piano, and Theresa Mercer sat down to play. Her selection was a folklike melody in a strange minor key, by a Norwegian composer of whom I had never heard—Edvard Grieg. I am not certain whether it was the piece itself or Miss Mercer’s rendition that most affected me, but while I listened, I was convinced that I had never heard anything so haunting. Her movements were remarkably graceful, and her face made it clear that she was not simply regurgitating some hard-learned lesson, but playing music that she loved. Possibly because she was Robert Babson’s fiancée, I had not paid Theresa Mercer any particular attention before this evening, but by the time she had finished playing, I knew that she was a very accomplished young woman. As the last notes rang out, the room burst into applause; she had clearly won the hearts of all the listeners.

  Somewhat to my surprise, Prinz Karl stepped forward as Miss Mercer stood up from the piano. “Young lady, you have a rare talent,” he said, with a formal bow. “Your playing has lightened my heart, and I would be much pleased if you would offer another selection.”

  Miss Mercer blushed very charmingly, and made a curtsy to the prince. “Oh, thank you so much, but I really couldn’t,” she said. “I only have the one piece really prepared for tonight.” And she returned to her seat as the applause continued, smiling and blushing. I was sorry she had not been willing to play again, especially since the next performer—Miss Mabel Archer, another of the young Philadelphians—sang “Ben Bolt” with a tuneless voice and affected diction that even her undeniably pretty face could not outweigh. While she was hardly the worst singer we were subjected to that evening, the contrast with Miss Mercer’s musicianship made her seem a lifeless puppet. She returned to her seat with a smattering of applause, led mainly by her parents.

  Finally, the supply of musical amateurs was exhausted, and the orchestra returned to play a last gay piece as finale to the evening’s entertainment. The audience rose to its feet, and began to thread its way out the door to its various destinations. I made my way to Mr. Clemens’s side, intending to go with him to the smoking lounge, where Mr. Kipling and Colonel Fitzwilliam had elected to spend the evening.

  But before we had gone more than a short distance, the crowd stopped its forward motion, and I became aware of a disturbance near the door. I stood on tiptoe to peer over the heads in front of me, but believed I already recognized the two raised voices. Sure enough, Robert Babson and Prinz Karl stood blocking the exit, neither willing to yield to the other. What childish behavior, I thought. Several others in the crowd muttered similar criticisms, and to my right I saw Captain Mortimer pressing forward to break the jam.

  Robert Babson drew back his fist and cursed at Prinz Karl. “Damn you, you’ve been in my way the whole voyage, you arrogant Kraut. You act as if you expect us to give you the road, as if we were peasants and you the master. Well, I don’t give a damn what kind of prince you claim to be. I’ll show you what a Yankee thinks of your nose in the air.” And before anyone could stop him, he struck the prince directly in the face.

  Prinz Karl fell back a step, and I could see blood running from his nose. He reached up to his face, then gave a guttural cry in German, and leapt upon his attacker, swinging both fists. The next moment, both of them were rolling on the floor. The ladies nearby drew back in horror, but I stepped forward and, with the help of two or three other men, managed to separate the combatants and pull them to their feet just as Captain Mortimer arrived.

  “You two should be ashamed of yourselves,” said the captain, his hands on his hips. He looked first at Babson, then at the prince, shaking his head. “How dare you spoil such a lovely evening of music with your petty squabbling?”
he demanded. “I might expect such clownish behavior from the steerage passengers, but from two supposed gentlemen . . .” He let the thought trail off, and I saw Prinz Karl hang his head as if to acknowledge the justice of the captain’s accusation.

  Babson was by no means chastened, however. “Gentlemen, you say?” he sneered. “Unless you’re judging him by his suit, this tub of lard is no more a gentleman than the micks who stoke the boilers. People all over the ship are talking about him behind his back, but I’ll say it to his face—he’s as phony as a wooden nickel.”

  “Accusations you cannot back, you should not make,” said Prinz Karl, now glaring angrily at the young man. “If you did not learn that lesson from yesterday, then in church you should have been taught it: Do not bear false witness.”

  “You call me a liar, do you?” shouted Babson, and lunged suddenly at the prince. The men holding Babson back must have been caught off guard, for he managed to break free and take another swing at Prinz Karl, who was unprepared to defend himself. The blow caught him in the side of the neck, and he went down heavily. In an instant, Babson’s guards had pulled him back again, but not before he aimed a kick at the fallen man’s ribs. “No damned foreign snob is going to call me a liar,” he shouted.