The Complete Short Stories of Mark Twain (20 page)

“Yes, but be quick; I’m going right away.”

“Would you be so kind as to tell me what time it is?”

The girl blushed again, murmured to herself, “It’s right down cruel of him to ask me!” and then spoke up and answered with admirably counterfeited unconcern, “Five minutes after eleven.”

“Oh, thank you! You have to go, now, have you?”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry.”

No reply.

“Miss Ethelton!”

“Well?”

“You—you’re there yet,
ain’t
you?”

“Yes; but please hurry. What did you want to say?”

“Well, I—well, nothing in particular. It’s very lonesome here. It’s asking a great deal, I know, but would you mind talking with me again by and by—that is, if it will not trouble you too much?”

“I don’t know—but I’ll think about it. I’ll try.”

“Oh, thanks! Miss Ethelton! . . . Ah, me, she’s gone, and here are the black clouds and the whirling snow and the raging winds come again! But she said
good-by
. She didn’t say good morning. She said good-by! . . . The clock was right, after all. What a lightning-winged two hours it was!”

He sat down, and gazed dreamily into his fire for a while, then heaved a sigh and said:

“How wonderful it is! Two little hours ago I was a free man, and now my heart’s in San Francisco!”

About that time Rosannah Ethelton, propped in the window seat of her bedchamber, book in hand, was gazing vacantly out over the rainy seas that washed the Golden Gate, and whispered to herself, “How different he is from poor Burley, with his empty head and his single little antic talent of mimicry!”

2

Four weeks later Mr. Sidney Algernon Burley was entertaining a gay luncheon company, in a sumptuous drawing-room on Telegraph Hill, with some capital imitations of the voices and gestures of certain popular actors and San Franciscan literary people and Bonanza grandees. He was elegantly upholstered, and was a handsome fellow, barring a trifling cast in his eye. He seemed very jovial, but nevertheless he kept his eye on the door with an expectant and uneasy watchfulness. By and by a nobby lackey appeared; and delivered a message to the mistress, who nodded her head understandingly. That seemed to settle the thing for Mr. Burley; his vivacity decreased little by little, and a dejected look began to creep into one of his eyes and a sinister one into the other.

The rest of the company departed in due time, leaving him with the mistress, to whom he said:

“There is no longer any question about it. She avoids me. She continually excuses herself. If I could see her, if I could speak to her only a moment—but this suspense—”

“Perhaps her seeming avoidance is mere accident, Mr. Burley. Go to the small drawing-room up-stairs and amuse yourself a moment. I will despatch a household order that is on my mind, and then I will go to her room. Without doubt she will be persuaded to see you.”

Mr. Burley went up-stairs, intending to go to the small drawing-room, but as he was passing “Aunt Susan’s” private parlor, the door of which stood slightly ajar, he heard a joyous laugh which he recognized; so without knock or announcement he stepped confidently in. But before he could make his presence known he heard words that harrowed up his soul and chilled his young blood. He heard a voice say:

“Darling, it has come!”

Then he heard Rosannah Ethelton, whose back was toward him, say:

“So has yours, dearest!”

He saw her bowed form bend lower; he heard her kiss something—not merely once, but again and again! His soul raged within him. The heart-breaking conversation went on:

“Rosannah, I knew you must be beautiful, but this is dazzling, this is blinding, this is intoxicating!”

“Alonzo, it is such happiness to hear you say it. I know it is not true, but I am
so
grateful to have you think it is, nevertheless! I knew you must have a noble face, but the grace and majesty of the reality beggar the poor creation of my fancy.”

Burley heard that rattling shower of kisses again.

“Thank you, my Rosannah! The photograph flatters me, but you must not allow yourself to think of that. Sweetheart?”

“Yes, Alonzo.”

“I am so happy, Rosannah.”

“Oh, Alonzo, none that have gone before me knew what love was, none that come after me will ever know what happiness is. I float in a gorgeous cloudland, a boundless firmament of enchanted and bewildering ecstasy!”

“Oh, my Rosannah!—for you are mine, are you not?”

“Wholly, oh, wholly yours, Alonzo, now and forever! All the day long, and all through my nightly dreams, one song sings itself, and its sweet burden is, ‘Alonzo Fitz Clarence, Alonzo Fitz Clarence, Eastport, state of Maine!’”

“Curse him, I’ve got his address, anyway!” roared Burley, inwardly, and rushed from the place.

Just behind the unconscious Alonzo stood his mother, a picture of astonishment. She was so muffled from head to heel in furs that nothing of herself was visible but her eyes and nose. She was a good allegory of winter, for she was powdered all over with snow.

Behind the unconscious Rosannah stood “Aunt Susan,” another picture of astonishment. She was a good allegory of summer, for she was lightly clad, and was vigorously cooling the perspiration on her face with a fan.

Both of these women had tears of joy in their eyes.

“So ho!” exclaimed Mrs. Fitz Clarence, “this explains why nobody has been able to drag you out of your room for six weeks, Alonzo!”

“So ho!” exclaimed Aunt Susan, “this explains why you have been a hermit for the past six weeks, Rosannah!”

The young couple were on their feet in an instant, abashed, and standing like detected dealers in stolen goods awaiting Judge Lynch’s doom.

“Bless you, my son! I am happy in your happiness. Come to your mother’s arms, Alonzo!”

“Bless you, Rosannah, for my dear nephew’s sake! Come to my arms!”

Then was there a mingling of hearts and of tears of rejoicing on Telegraph Hill and in Eastport Square.

Servants were called by the elders, in both places. Unto one was given the order, “Pile this fire high with hickory wood, and bring me a roasting-hot lemonade.”

Unto the other was given the order, “Put out this fire, and bring me two palm-leaf fans and a pitcher of ice-water.”

Then the young people were dismissed, and the elders sat down to talk the sweet surprise over and make the wedding plans.

Some minutes before this Mr. Burley rushed from the mansion on Telegraph Hill without meeting or taking formal leave of anybody. He hissed through his teeth, in unconscious imitation of a popular favorite in melodrama, “Him shall she never wed! I have sworn it! Ere great Nature shall have doffed her winter’s ermine to don the emerald gauds of spring, she shall be mine!”

3

Two weeks later. Every few hours, during some three or four days, a very prim and devout-looking Episcopal clergyman, with a cast in his eye, had visited Alonzo. According to his card, he was the Rev. Melton Hargrave, of Cincinnati. He said he had retired from the ministry on account of his health. If he had said on account of ill-health, he would probably have erred, to judge by his wholesome looks and firm build. He was the inventor of an improvement in telephones, and hoped to make his bread by selling the privilege of using it. “At present,” he continued, “a man may go and tap a telegraph wire which is conveying a song or a concert from one state to another, and he can attach his private telephone and steal a hearing of that music as it passes along. My invention will stop all that.”

“Well,” answered Alonzo, “if the owner of the music could not miss what was stolen, why should he care?”

“He shouldn’t care,” said the Reverend.

“Well?” said Alonzo, inquiringly.

“Suppose,” replied the Reverend, “suppose that, instead of music that was passing along and being stolen, the burden of the wire was loving endearments of the most private and sacred nature?”

Alonzo shuddered from head to heel. “Sir, it is a priceless invention,” said he; “I must have it at any cost.”

But the invention was delayed somewhere on the road from Cincinnati, most unaccountably. The impatient Alonzo could hardly wait. The thought of Rosannah’s sweet words being shared with him by some ribald thief was galling to him. The Reverend came frequently and lamented the delay, and told of measures he had taken to hurry things up. This was some little comfort to Alonzo.

One forenoon the Reverend ascended the stairs and knocked at Alonzo’s door. There was no response. He entered, glanced eagerly around, closed the door softly, then ran to the telephone. The exquisitely soft and remote strains of the “Sweet By-and-By” came floating through the instrument. The singer was flatting, as usual, the five notes that follow the first two in the chorus, when the Reverend interrupted her with this word, in a voice which was an exact imitation of Alonzo’s, with just the faintest flavor of impatience added:

“Sweetheart?”

“Yes, Alonzo?”

“Please don’t sing that any more this week—try something modern.”

The agile step that goes with a happy heart was heard on the stairs, and the Reverend, smiling diabolically, sought sudden refuge behind the heavy folds of the velvet window-curtains. Alonzo entered and flew to the telephone. Said he:

“Rosannah, dear, shall we sing something together?”

“Something
modern?
” asked she, with sarcastic bitterness.

“Yes, if you prefer.”

“Sing it yourself, if you like!”

This snappishness amazed and wounded the young man. He said:

“Rosannah, that was not like you.”

“I suppose it becomes me as much as your very polite speech became you, Mr. Fitz Clarence.”

“
Mister
Fitz Clarence! Rosannah, there was nothing impolite about my speech.”

“Oh, indeed! Of course, then, I misunderstood you, and I most humbly beg your pardon, ha-ha-ha! No doubt you said, ‘Don’t sing it any more
to-day
.’”

“Sing
what
any more to-day?”

“The song you mentioned, of course. How very obtuse we are, all of a sudden!”

“I never mentioned any song.”

“Oh, you
didn’t?
”

“No, I
didn’t!
”

“I am compelled to remark that you
did
.”

“And I am obliged to reiterate that I
didn’t
.”

“A second rudeness! That is sufficient, sir. I will never forgive you. All is over between us.”

Then came a muffled sound of crying. Alonzo hastened to say:

“Oh, Rosannah, unsay those words! There is some dreadful mystery here, some hideous mistake. I am utterly earnest and sincere when I say I never said anything about any song. I would not hurt you for the whole world. . . . Rosannah, dear! . . . Oh, speak to me, won’t you?”

There was a pause; then Alonzo heard the girl’s sobbings retreating, and knew she had gone from the telephone. He rose with a heavy sigh, and hastened from the room, saying to himself, “I will ransack the charity missions and the haunts of the poor for my mother. She will persuade her that I never meant to wound her.”

A minute later the Reverend was crouching over the telephone like a cat that knoweth the ways of the prey. He had not very many minutes to wait. A soft, repentant voice, tremulous with tears, said:

“Alonzo, dear, I have been wrong. You
could
not have said so cruel a thing. It must have been some one who imitated your voice in malice or in jest.”

The Reverend coldly answered, in Alonzo’s tones:

“You have said all was over between us. So let it be. I spurn your proffered repentance, and despise it!”

Then he departed, radiant with fiendish triumph, to return no more with his imaginary telephonic invention forever.

Four hours afterward Alonzo arrived with his mother from her favorite haunts of poverty and vice. They summoned the San Francisco household; but there was no reply. They waited, and continued to wait, upon the voiceless telephone.

At length, when it was sunset in San Francisco, and three hours and a half after dark in Eastport, an answer to the oft-repeated cry of “Rosannah!”

But, alas, it was Aunt Susan’s voice that spake. She said:

“I have been out all day; just got in. I will go and find her.”

The watchers waited two minutes—five minutes—ten minutes. Then came these fatal words, in a frightened tone:

“She is gone, and her baggage with her. To visit another friend, she told the servants. But I found this note on the table in her room. Listen: ‘I am gone; seek not to trace me out; my heart is broken; you will never see me more. Tell him I shall always think of him when I sing my poor “Sweet By-and-By,” but never of the unkind words he said about it.’ That is her note. Alonzo, Alonzo, what does it mean? What has happened?”

But Alonzo sat white and cold as the dead. His mother threw back the velvet curtains and opened a window. The cold air refreshed the sufferer, and he told his aunt his dismal story. Meantime his mother was inspecting a card which had disclosed itself upon the floor when she cast the curtains back. It read, “Mr. Sidney Algernon Burley, San Francisco.”

“The miscreant!” shouted Alonzo, and rushed forth to seek the false Reverend and destroy him; for the card explained everything, since in the course of the lovers’ mutual confessions they had told each other all about all the sweethearts they had ever had, and thrown no end of mud at their failings and foibles—for lovers always do that. It has a fascination that ranks next after billing and cooing.

4

During the next two months many things happened. It had early transpired that Rosannah, poor suffering orphan, had neither returned to her grandmother in Portland, Oregon, nor sent any word to her save a duplicate of the woeful note she had left in the mansion on Telegraph Hill. Whosoever was sheltering her—if she was still alive—had been persuaded not to betray her whereabouts, without doubt; for all efforts to find trace of her had failed.

Did Alonzo give her up? Not he. He said to himself, “She will sing that sweet song when she is sad; I shall find her.” So he took his carpet-sack and a portable telephone, and shook the snow of his native city from his arctics, and went forth into the world. He wandered far and wide and in many states. Time and again, strangers were astounded to see a wasted, pale, and woe-worn man laboriously climb a telegraph-pole in wintry and lonely places, perch sadly there an hour, with his ear at a little box, then come sighing down, and wander wearily away. Sometimes they shot at him, as peasants do at aeronauts, thinking him mad and dangerous. Thus his clothes were much shredded by bullets and his person grievously lacerated. But he bore it all patiently.