Mark Twain's Medieval Romance (9 page)

“‘Why this delay?’ roared the King. ‘If I had been married this day to one so fair as the lady who wedded you, I should not wait one second to claim her.’

“The bewildered Prince walked again up and down the line. And this time there was a slight change in the countenances of two of the ladies. One of the fairest gently smiled as he passed her. Another, just as beautiful, slightly frowned.

“‘Now,’ said the Prince to himself, ‘I am sure that it is one of those two ladies whom I have married. But which? One smiled. And would not any woman smile when she saw, in such a case, her husband coming toward her? But, then, were she not his bride, would she not smile with satisfaction to think he had not selected her, and that she had not led him to an untimely doom? Then again, on the other hand, would not any woman frown when she saw her husband come toward her and fail to claim her? Would she not knit her lovely brows? And would she not inwardly say, “It is I! Don’t you know it? Don’t you feel it? Come!” But if this woman had not been married, would she not frown when she saw the man looking at her? Would she not say to herself, “Don’t stop at me! It is the next but one. It is two ladies above. Go on!” And then again, the one who married me did not see my face. Would she not smile if she thought me comely? While if I wedded the one who frowned, could she restrain her disapprobation if she did not like me? Smiles invite the approach of true love. A frown is a reproach to a tardy advance. A smile—’

“‘Now, hear me!’ loudly cried the King. ‘In ten seconds, if you do not take the lady we have given you, she, who has just been made your bride, shall be your widow.’

“And, as the last word was uttered, the Discourager of Hesitancy stepped close beside the Prince, and whispered: ‘I am here!’

“Now the Prince could not hesitate an instant; and he stepped forward and took one of the two ladies by the hand.

“Loud rang the bells; loud cheered the people; and the King came forward to congratulate the Prince. He had taken his lawful bride.

“Now, then,” said the high officer to the deputation of five strangers from a far country, “when you can decide among yourselves which lady the Prince chose, the one who smiled or the one who frowned, then will I tell you which came out of the opened door, the lady or the tiger!”

At the latest accounts, the five strangers had not yet decided.

THE LADY, AND THE TIGER

J
ACK
M
OFFITT

The author of a couple of tours de force as a short story writer, the brilliant Jack Moffitt (1901-1969) achieved most of his fame and success as a screenwriter. Among his more than two dozen credits from the 1930s to the 1950s for stories and screenwriting are
Passage to Marseilles
(1944), which starred Humphrey Bogart as a convict who escaped from Devil’s Island to help France in WWII;
Night and Day
(1946), a biography of Cole Porter starring Cary Grant; and films for Fred MacMurray and Gene Autry.

During the House Un-American Activities Committee’s search for Communists among Hollywood’s motion picture industry, he turned in Bernard Gordon, who admitted to being a card-carrying member of the American Communist Party from 1942 to 1956.

In addition to writing
for
Hollywood, he wrote
about
it, producing film reviews for various publications, including
The Hollywood Reporter
.

His daughter Peggy became the most prominent model used by the designer Rudi Gernreich; among the clothes in which she was photographed was the then-shocking monokini.

As an intellectual challenge, he wrote a continuation of Guy de Maupassant’s story “The Necklace,” and then did the same for Frank Stockton’s “The Lady, or the Tiger?”; his ingenious solution to this riddle appeared in the September 1948 issue of
Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine
.

THE LADY AND THE TIGER

BY
J
ACK
M
OFFITT

Y
OU MAY FIND IT
faintly ridiculous that I, Charles Sevier, a stout and fortyish researcher working in Rome at the Vatican Library, should be in love with a woman who has been dead two thousand years.

This strange infatuation was brought about by the most prosaic of instruments—Frank R. Stockton’s short story, “The Lady, or the Tiger?” which was published in 1884, sixteen years before my birth.

During the intervening years I doubt if there has been a single literate American who has not attempted to answer the riddle, which Mr. Stockton propounded in words which I have taken the liberty to abridge:

“In olden times there lived a semi-barbaric king, whose ideas, though polished and sharpened by the progressiveness of distant Latin neighbors, were still large, florid and untrammeled.

“When one of his male subjects was accused of a crime, public notice was given that on an appointed day, the man’s fate would be decided in the King’s Arena. Here the prisoner faced two doors, exactly alike and side-by-side. It was the obligation of the person on trial to open one of these doors. He was subject to no guidance or influence. He could open either he pleased.

“If he opened one, there came out a hungry tiger.

“But if he opened the other, there came forth a lady, the most suitable to his years and station that the King could select from among his subjects, and to this lady he was immediately married, amid appropriate ceremonies.

“Sometimes the tiger was behind one door, sometimes the other. Chance was the only arbiter.

“Now the ruler had a daughter as blooming as his most florid fancies, and with a soul as fervent and imperious as his own. As is usual, in such cases, she was the apple of his eye, and was loved by him above all humanity. But among the King’s courtiers was a young man who was handsome and brave to a degree unsurpassed in all this kingdom, and the princess loved him with an ardor that had enough of barbarism in it to make it exceedingly warm and strong.

“This love affair moved on happily for many months, until one day the King happened to discover its existence. He did not hesitate nor waver. The youth was immediately cast into prison, and a day was appointed for his trial in the King’s Arena.

“As the youth advanced toward the doors, his eyes were fixed upon the princess, who sat to the right of her father. Had it not been for the barbarism in her nature it is probable she would not have been there. But her intense and fervid soul would not allow her to be absent.

“Possessed of power, influence and force of character, she had succeeded in doing what no other person had ever done—she had managed to learn the secret of the doors. She knew in which of the rooms was the tiger, and in which the lady.

“She also knew who the lady was—and she hated her. The girl was lovely, but she had dared to raise her eyes to the loved one of the princess. With all the savagery transmitted to her through long lines of barbaric ancestors, the King’s daughter hated the woman who blushed and waited behind that silent door.

“She trembled as her lover turned and looked at her. His eye met hers as she sat there, with features paler and whiter than any in the vast ocean of anxious faces that surrounded her. And he saw instantly that she knew behind which door crouched the tiger, and behind which stood the lady.

“He had expected her to know it.

“Then his quick and anxious glance asked the question: ‘Which?’ It was as plain to her as if he shouted it from where he stood. There was not an instant to be lost. The question was asked in a flash; it must be answered in another.

“Her right arm lay on the cushioned parapet before her. She raised her hand and made a slight, quick movement toward the right. No one but her lover saw her. Every eye but his was fixed on the arena.

“He turned, and with a firm and rapid step, walked across the empty space. Every heart stopped beating, every breath was held, every eye was fixed immovable upon that man.

“Without the slightest hesitation, he went to the door on the right and opened it.

“Now, the point of the story is this: Did the tiger come out of that door, or did the lady?”

I
HAD HEARD
that Stockton had obtained the idea for his story from a Roman Catholic antiquarian in the city of Rome; so it is small wonder that I determined to solve the riddle when, after several years as a researcher in the Library of Congress, I was sent to introduce a modern cataloguing system in the Vatican Archives. The immediate purpose of my employment was to search for a long-lost letter supposed to have been written by Pontius Pilate. But I had plenty of time for private research.

After considerable study I decided that Stockton’s king could have been none other than Herod Antipas, who ruled Judea under the supervision of the Roman Governor, Pontius Pilate. He was the only eastern monarch who owned an arena, which his father had built after the Roman pattern, but he also had a daughter—or rather a step-daughter—of whom he was unnaturally and inordinately infatuated.

This girl was Princess Salome.

The logic fitted. I felt that I had identified two of the characters in Stockton’s story. But it was not until I found the cracked and yellowed parchment, covered with Hebrew characters and written in a sprawling, girlish hand, that I was certain of it. For this letter was written by the girl who had waited behind the second door.

To
THE HIGH PRIEST,
Caiphas; from his daughter, Miriam.

Beloved Father,

How can I tell you how much I love you? I know that you must he ashamed of me because all Jerusalem now knows that I love the Greek youth, Jason. I know you will feel humiliated—almost defiled—to see me married to him, by a pagan ritual, before all the people in the King’s arena tomorrow. Yet I know that even now, despite your sorrow and your humiliation, you are praying to our one true God to defend Jason and asking the Lord to lead him to the door behind which I will be waiting.

I know that you are doing this, in spite of your conviction that Jason is shallow and ambitious—one of those youths who came swaggering out of Alexandria to seek his fortune at the court of Herod. And I feel that you are praying for Jason, even though you dislike him, because you have always been a just and merciful man.

Oh, dear! It is dreadful to be young! It seems odd to remember that I didn’t want to go with you to Herod’s palace on that day last autumn—when I first met Jason. For weeks I’d heard you and Grandfather discussing the arrogance of Pontius Pilate who had displayed the eagles of his legions on the fortress of Antonia, overlooking the Temple courtyard. Of course, I’d been taught to regard graven images as sacrilegious, but I wondered why older people made such a fuss about things.

When you decided that the family should ask Herod to intercede, I pretended to have a headache. But I didn’t fool you. You said the visit would seem more tactful and more friendly if the whole family went along. I was amused to see, when we arrived at the palace, that your strategy had not fooled Herod any more than mine had fooled you. His chamberlain led you and Grandfather away to the King’s audience chamber while the rest of us were sent to wait for you in one of the private courtyards.

As soon as my little brothers saw the fountain splashing in the center of the palace, they rushed toward it squealing and laughing.

I tried to get them interested in the pictures in the floor of the courtyard. They were mosaics showing the fall of Troy. I told as much of the Pagan Story as I thought was good for them.

But you know Nathan. He can’t sit still for more than a minute.

“Look!” he shouted, “I’ll bet I can jump all around this place and never put my foot on anything but the women!”

This wasn’t easy. There were many more warriors in the mosaic floor than there were goddesses. Nathan missed on the third jump. But he had started a game. Soon the whole place was filled with the hopping children, wobbling and tottering as they leaped from Minerva to Aphrodite to Helen, and so on. I know it was childish, but it really was fun. So, just to keep them quiet, I pulled up my dress above my knees and joined in.

And then I heard someone laughing.

Dearest heavens! I could have died! A man had entered the courtyard—a tall, lithe man wearing sandals of silver leather and a tunic and cloak of green silk.

He laughed and said, “Who are you?”

You can imagine how confused I was as I dropped my skirts and tried to brush the hair out of my eyes. It was too awful for a grown-up woman to be caught like this by a member of the court, playing a ridiculous childish game. After all, I am fourteen years old.

“Who are you?” he repeated, coming toward me. “Surely you must have a name—is it Daphne? Or Thetis? Are you a dryad? Or a nymph?”

I was afraid the stranger might laugh at me when I told him who I was. But he didn’t. He bowed and replied courteously.

“You must come with me, Miriam,” he said. “I have been commanded to bring you to the princess.”

I wasn’t so sure I should go. But the young man kept laughing and assuring us that he was repeating a royal order—until I finally let him lead me away through the maze of splendid corridors.

I couldn’t find anything to say as I walked beside him, listening to his easy conversation. He told me that his name was Jason and that he had lived in Rome and Alexandria. He was the most interesting man I had ever met.

Finally, we came to a larger courtyard, where Salome idled beneath a pinkish awning, surrounded by many courtiers. Youths and maidens from all over the world were there—Greeks and Arabians and officers from the Roman garrison, and even a number of young Jews—though these were unlike any Jews I had seen before. Their cheeks were shaved and they wore Greek or Roman clothing.

Salome was a surprise. She didn’t look at all like the kind of girl who could have caused the death of the young preacher whom the country people called the Baptist. She wore no veils or oriental draperies. Her gown was simple and Grecian, with the skirt folded into many soft pleats that concealed but outlined her small and doll-like figure. I had seen her mother, Herodias, in a procession once, and I had expected the daughter to have the same stately figure and proud eyes.