Mark Twain's Medieval Romance

by Otto Penzler

  About the latticed porch, which ran around the sanded yard with its feeble fountain and futile evergreens, other groups were eying one another or engaging in desultory conversation, oppressed with the heaviness of the night.

  At the round table, Quinny alone, absorbing energy as he devoured the conversation, having routed Steingall on the Germans and archaeology and Rankin on the origins of the Lord’s Prayer, had seized a chance remark of De Gollyer’s to say:

  “There are only half a dozen stories in the world. Like everything that’s true it isn’t true.” He waved his long gouty fingers in the direction of Steingall, who, having been silenced, was regarding him with a look of sleepy indifference. “What is more to the point, is the small number of human relations that are so simple and yet so fundamental that they can be eternally played upon, redressed, and reinterpreted in every language, in every age, and yet remain inexhaustible in the possibility of variations.”

  “By George, that is so,” said Steingall, waking up. “Every art does go back to three or four notes. In composition it is the same thing. Nothing new—nothing new since a thousand years. By George, that is true! We invent nothing, nothing!”

  “Take the eternal triangle,” said Quinny hurriedly, not to surrender his advantage, while Rankin and De Gollyer in a bored way continued to gaze dreamily at a vagrant star or two. “Two men and a woman, or two women and a man. Obviously it should be classified as the first of the great original parent themes. Its variations extend into the thousands. By the way, Rankin, excellent opportunity, eh, for some of our modern, painstaking, unemployed jackasses to analyze and classify.”

  “Quite right,” said Rankin without perceiving the satirical note. “Now there’s De Maupassant’s Fort comme la Mort—quite the most interesting variation—shows the turn a genius can give. There the triangle is the man of middle age, the mother he has loved in his youth and the daughter he comes to love. It forms, you might say, the head of a whole subdivision of modern Continental literature.”

  “Quite wrong, Rankin, quite wrong,” said Quinny, who would have stated the other side quite as imperiously. “What you cite is a variation of quite another theme, the Faust theme—old age longing for youth, the man who has loved longing for the love of his youth, which is youth itself. The triangle is the theme of jealousy, the most destructive and therefore, the most dramatic of human passions. The Faust theme is the most fundamental and inevitable of all human experiences, the tragedy of life itself. Quite a different thing.”

  Rankin, who never agreed with Quinny unless Quinny maliciously took advantage of his prior announcement to agree with him continued to combat this idea.

  “You believe then,” said De Gollyer after a certain moment had been consumed in hair splitting, “that the origin of all dramatic themes is simply the expression of some human emotion. In other words, there can exist no more parent themes than there are human emotions.”

  “I thank you, sir, very well put,” said Quinny with a generous wave of his hand, “Why is the Three Musketeers a basic theme? Simply the interpretation of comradeship, the emotion one man feels for another, vital because it is the one peculiarly masculine emotion. Look at Du Maurier and Trilby, Kipling in Soldiers Three—simply the Three Musketeers.”

  “The Vie de Bohème?” suggested Steingall. “In the real Vie de Bohème yes,” said Quinny viciously. “Not in the concocted sentimentalities that we now have served up to us by athletic tenors and consumptive elephants!”

  Rankin, who had been silently deliberating on what had been left behind, now said cunningly and with evident purpose:

  “All the same. I don’t agree with you men at all. I believe there are situations, original situations, that are independent of your human emotions, that exist just because they are situations, accidental and nothing else.”

  “As for instance?” said Quinny, preparing to attack. “Well. I’ll just cite an ordinary one that happens to come to my mind,” said Rankin, who had carefully selected his test. “In a group of seven or eight, such as we are here, a theft takes place; one man is the thief—which one? I’d like to know what emotion that interprets, and yet it certainly is an original theme, at the bottom of a whole literature.”

  This challenge was like a bomb.

  “Not the same thing.”

  “Detective stories, hah!”

  “Oh, I say, Rankin, that’s literary melodrama.”

  Rankin, satisfied, smiled and winked victoriously over to Tommers, who was listening from an adjacent table.

  “Of course your suggestion is out of order, my dear man, to this extent,” said Quinny, who never surrendered, “in that I am talking of fundamentals and you are citing details. Nevertheless, I could answer that the situation you give, as well as the whole school it belongs to, can be traced back to the commonest of human emotion’s, curiosity; and that the story of Bluebeard and The Moonstone are to all purpose identically the same.”

  At this Steingall, who had waited hopefully, gasped and made as though to leave the table.

  “I shall take up your contention,” said Quinny without pause for breath, “first, because you have opened up one of my pet topics, and second, because it gives me a chance to talk.” He gave a sidelong glance at Steingall and winked at De Gollyer. “What is the peculiar fascination that the detective problem exercises over the human mind? You will say curiosity. Yes and no. Admit at once that the whole art of a detective story consists in the statement of the problem. Any one can do it. I can do it. Steingall even can do it. The solution doesn’t count. It is usually banal; it should be prohibited. What interests us is, can we guess it? Just as an able-minded man will sit down for hours and fiddle over the puzzle column in a Sunday balderdash. Same idea. There you have it, the problem—the detective story. Now why the fascination? I’ll tell you. It appeals to our curiosity, yes—but deeper to a sort of intellectual vanity. Here are six matches, arrange them to make four squares, five men present, a theft takes place—who’s the thief? Who will guess it first? Whose brain will show its superior cleverness—see? That’s all—that’s all there is to it.”

  “Out of all of which,” said De Gollyer, “the interesting thing is that Rankin has supplied the reason why the supply of detective fiction is inexhaustible. It is a formula ludicrously simple, mechanical, and yet we will always pursue it to the end. The marvel is that writers should seek for any other formula when here is one so safe, that can never fail. By George I could start up a factory on it.”

  “The reason is,” said Rankin, “that the situation does constantly occur. It’s a situation that any of us might get into any time. As a matter of fact, now, I personally know two such occasions when I was of the party; and very uncomfortable it was too.”

  “What happened?” said Steingall.

  “Why, there is no story to it particularly. Once a mistake had been made, and the other time the real thief was detected by accident a year later. In both cases only one or two of us knew what had happened.”

  De Gollyer had a similar incident to recall. Steingall, after a reflection, related another that had happened to a friend.

  “Of course, of course, my dear gentlemen,” said Quinny impatiently, for he had been silent, too long, “you are glorifying commonplaces. Every crime, I tell you, expresses itself in the terms of the picture puzzle that you feed to your six-year-old. It’s only the variation that is interesting. Now quite the most remarkable turn of the complexities that can be developed is, of course, the well-known instance of the visitor at a club and the rare coin. Of course every one knows that? What?”

  Rankin smiled in a bored, superior way, but the others protested their ignorance.

  “Why, it’s very well known,” said Quinny lightly. “A distinguished visitor is brought into a club—dozen men, say, present, at dinner, long table. Conversation finally veers around to curiosities and relics. One of the members present then takes from his pocket what he announces as one of the rarest coins in existence—passes i
t around the table. Coin travels back and forth, every one examining it, and the conversation goes to another topic, say the influence of the auto mobile on domestic infelicity, or some other such asininely intellectual club topic—you know? All at once the owner calls for his coin.

  “The coin is nowhere to be found. Every one looks at every one else. First, they suspect a joke. Then it becomes serious—the coin is immensely valuable. Who has taken it?”

  The owner is a gentleman—does the gentlemanly idiotic thing, of course, laughs, says he knows some one is playing a practical joke on him and that the coin will be returned tomorrow. The others refuse to leave the situation so. One man proposes that they all submit to a search. Every one gives his assent until it comes to the stranger. He refuses curtly, roughly, without giving any reason. Uncomfortable silence—the man is a guest. No one knows him particularly well—but still he is a guest. One member tries to make him understand that no offense is offered, that the suggestion was simply to clear the atmosphere, and all that sort of bally rot, you know.

  “‘I refuse to allow my person to be searched,’ says the stranger, very firm, very proud, very English, you know, ‘and I refuse to give my reason for my action.’

  Another silence. The men eye him and then glance at one another. What’s to be done? Nothing. There is etiquette—that magnificent inflated balloon. The visitor evidently has the coin—but he is their guest and etiquette protects him. Nice situation, eh?

  “The table is cleared. A waiter removes a dish of fruit and there under the ledge of the plate where it had been pushed—is the coin. Banal explanation, eh? Of course. Solutions always should be. At once every one in profuse apologies! Whereupon the visitor rises and says:

  “‘Now I can give you the reason for my refusal to be searched. There are only two known specimens of the coin in existence, and the second happens to be here in my waistcoat pocket.’”

  “Of course,” said Quinny with a shrug of his shoulder, “the story is well invented, but the turn to it is very nice indeed.”

  “I did know the story,” said Steingall to be disagreeable; “the ending, though, is too obvious to be invented. The visitor should have had on him not another coin, but something absolutely different, something destructive, say, of a woman’s reputation, and a great tragedy should have been threatened by the casual misplacing of the coin.”

  “I have heard the same story told in a dozen different ways,” said Rankin.

  “It has happened a hundred times. It must be continually happening,” said Steingall.

  “I know one extraordinary instance,” said Peters, who up to the present, secure in his climax, had waited with a professional smile until the big guns had been silenced. “In fact, the most extraordinary instance of this sort I have ever heard.”

  “Peters, you little rascal,” said Quinny with a sidelong glance, “I perceive you have quietly been letting us dress the stage for you.”

  “It is not a story that will please every one,” said Peters, to whet their appetite.

  “Why not?”

  “Because you will want to know what no one can ever know.”

  “It has no conclusion then?”

  “Yes and no. As far as it concerns a woman, quite the most remarkable woman I have ever met, the story is complete. As for the rest, it is what it is, because it is one example where literature can do nothing better than record.”

  “Do I know the woman?” asked De Gollyer, who flattered himself on passing through every class of society.

  “Possibly, but no more than any one else.”

  “An actress?”

  “What she has been in the past I don’t know—a promoter would better describe her. Undoubtedly she has been behind the scenes in many an untold intrigue of the business world. A very feminine woman, and yet, as you shall see, with an unusual instantaneous masculine power of decision.”

  “Peters,” said Quinny, waving a warning finger, “you are destroying your story. Your preface will bring an anti-climax.”

  “You shall judge,” said Peters, who waited until his audience was in strained attention before opening his story. “The names are, of course, disguises.”

  MRS. RITA KILDAIR inhabited a charming bachelor-girl studio, very elegant, of the duplex pattern, in one of the buildings just off Central Park West. She knew pretty nearly every one in that indescribable society in New York that is drawn from all levels, and that imposes but one audition for membership—to be amusing. She knew every one and no one knew her. No one knew beyond the vaguest rumors her history or her means. No one had ever heard of a Mr. Kildair. There was always about her a certain defensive reserve the moment the limits of acquaintanceship had been reached. She had a certain amount of money, she knew a certain number of men in Wall Street affairs, and her studio was furnished with taste and even distinction. She was of any age. She might have suffered everything or nothing at all. In this mingled society her invitations were eagerly sought, her dinners were spontaneous, and the discussions, though gay and usually daring, were invariably under the control of wit and good taste.

  On the Sunday night of this adventure she had, according to her invariable custom, sent away her Japanese butler and invited to an informal chafing-dish supper seven of her more congenial friends, all of whom, as much as could be said of any one, were habitués of the studio.

  At seven o’clock, having finished dressing, she put in order her bedroom, which formed a sort of free passage between the studio and a small dining room to the kitchen beyond. Then, going into the studio, she lit a wax taper and was in the act of touching off the brass candlesticks that lighted the room when three knocks sounded on the door and a Mr. Flanders, a broker, compact, nervously alive, well groomed, entered with the informality of assured acquaintance.

  “You are early.

  “On the contrary, you are late,” said the broker, glancing at his watch.

  “Then be a good boy and help me with the candles,” she said, giving him a smile and a quick pressure of her fingers.

  He obeyed, asking nonchalantly:

  “I say, dear lady, who’s to be here to-night?”

  “The Enos Jacksons.”

  “I thought they were separated?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Very interesting! Only you, dear lady, would have thought of serving us a couple on the verge.”

  “It’s interesting, isn’t it?”

  “Assuredly. Where did you know Jackson?”

  “Through the Warings. Jackson’s a rather doubtful person, isn’t he?”

  “Let’s call him a very sharp lawyer,” said Flanders defensively. “They tell me, though, he is on the wrong side of the market—in deep.”

  “And you?”

  “Oh, I? I’m a bachelor,” he said with a shrug of his shoulders, “and if I come a cropper it makes no difference.”

  “Is that possible?” she said, looking at him quickly.

  “Probable even. And who else is coming?”

  “Maude Lille—you know her?”

  “I think not.”

  “You met her here—a journalist.”

  “Quite so, a strange career.”

  “Mr. Harris, a clubman, is coming, and the Stanley Cheevers.”

  “The Stanley Cheevers!” said Flanders with some surprise. “Are we going to gamble?”

  “You believe in that scandal about bridge?”

  “Certainly not,” said Flanders, smiling. “You see I was present. The Cheevers play a good game, a well united game, and have an unusual system of makes. By-the-way, it’s Jackson who is very attentive to Mrs. Cheever, isn’t it?”

  “Quite right.”

  “What a charming party,” said Flanders flippantly. “And where does Maude Lille come in?”

  “Don’t joke. She is in a desperate way,” said Mrs. Kildair, with a little sadness in her eyes.

  “And Harris?”

  “Oh, he is to make the salad and cream the chicken.”

  �
��Ah. I see the whole party. I, of course, am to add the element of respectability.”

  “Of what?”

  She looked at him steadily until he turned away, dropping his glance.

  “Don’t be an ass with me, my dear Flanders.”

  “By George, if this were Europe I’d wager you were in the secret service, Mrs. Kildair.”

  “Thank you.”

  She smiled appreciatively and moved about the studio, giving the finishing touches. The Stanley Cheevers entered, a short fat man with a vacant fat face and a slow-moving eye and his wife, voluble, nervous, overdressed and pretty. Mr. Harris came with Maude Lille, a woman, straight, dark, Indian, with great masses of somber hair held in a little too loosely for neatness, with thick, quick lips and eyes that rolled away from the person who was talking to her. The Enos Jacksons were late and still agitated as they entered. His forehead had not quite banished the scowl, nor her eyes the scorn. He was of the type that never lost his temper, but caused others to lose theirs, immovable in his opinions with a prowling walk, a studied antagonism in his manner and an impudent look that fastened itself unerringly on the weakness in the person to whom he spoke. Mrs. Jackson, who seemed fastened to her husband by an invisible leash, had a hunted, resisting quality back of a certain desperate dash, which she assumed rather than felt in her attitude toward life. One looked at her curiously and wondered what such a nature would do in a crisis, with a lurking sense of a woman who carried with her her own impending tragedy.

  As soon as the company had been completed and the incongruity if the selection had been perceived, a smile of malicious anticipation ran the rounds, which the hostess cut short by saying:

  “Well, now that every one is here, this is the order of the night: You can quarrel all you want, you can whisper all the gossip you can think of about one another, but every one is to be amusing! Also every one is to help with the dinner—nothing formal and nothing serious. We may all be bankrupt to-morrow, divorced or dead, but to-night we will be gay—that is the invariable rule of the house!”