The Complete Short Stories of Mark Twain (36 page)

PLAYING COURIER
                                                                                                                                       

A
TIME WOULD come when we must go from Aix-les-Bains to Geneva, and from thence, by a series of day-long and tangled journeys, to Bayreuth in Bavaria. I should have to have a courier, of course, to take care of so considerable a party as mine.

But I procrastinated. The time slipped along, and at last I woke up one day to the fact that we were ready to move and had no courier. I then resolved upon what I felt was a foolhardy thing, but I was in the humor of it. I said I would make the first stage without help—I did it.

I brought the party from Aix to Geneva by myself—four people. The distance was two hours and more, and there was one change of cars. There was not an accident of any kind, except leaving a valise and some other matters on the platform—a thing which can hardly be called an accident, it is so common. So I offered to conduct the party all the way to Bayreuth.

This was a blunder, though it did not seem so at the time. There was more detail than I thought there would be: 1, two persons whom we had left in a Genevan pension some weeks before must be collected and brought to the hotel; 2, I must notify the people on the Grand Quay who store trunks to bring seven of our stored trunks to the hotel and carry back seven which they would find piled in the lobby; 3, I must find out what part of Europe Bayreuth was in and buy seven railway tickets for that point; 4, I must send a telegram to a friend in the Netherlands; 5, it was now two in the afternoon, and we must look sharp and be ready for the first night train and make sure of sleeping-car tickets; 6, I must draw money at the bank.

It seemed to me that the sleeping-car tickets must be the most important thing, so I went to the station myself to make sure; hotel messengers are not always brisk people. It was a hot day, and I ought to have driven, but it seemed better economy to walk. It did not turn out so, because I lost my way and trebled the distance. I applied for the tickets, and they asked me which route I wanted to go by, and that embarrassed me and made me lose my head, there were so many people standing around, and I not knowing anything about the routes and not supposing there were going to be two; so I judged it best to go back and map out the road and come again.

I took a cab this time, but on my way up-stairs at the hotel I remembered that I was out of cigars, so I thought it would be well to get some while the matter was in my mind. It was only round the corner, and I didn’t need the cab. I asked the cabman to wait where he was. Thinking of the telegram and trying to word it in my head, I forgot the cigars and the cab, and walked on indefinitely. I was going to have the hotel people send the telegram, but as I could not be far from the post-office by this time, I thought I would do it myself. But it was further than I had supposed. I found the place at last and wrote the telegram and handed it in. The clerk was a severe-looking, fidgety man, and he began to fire French questions at me in such a liquid form that I could not detect the joints between his words, and this made me lose my head again. But an Englishman stepped up and said the clerk wanted to know where he was to send the telegram. I could not tell him, because it was not my telegram, and I explained that I was merely sending it for a member of my party. But nothing would pacify the clerk but the address; so I said that if he was so particular I would go back and get it.

However, I thought I would go and collect those lacking two persons first, for it would be best to do everything systematically and in order, and one detail at a time. Then I remembered the cab was eating up my substance down at the hotel yonder; so I called another cab and told the man to go down and fetch it to the post-office and wait till I came.

I had a long, hot walk to collect those people, and when I got there they couldn’t come with me because they had heavy satchels and must have a cab. I went away to find one, but before I ran across any I noticed that I had reached the neighborhood of the Grand Quay—at least I thought I had—so I judged I could save time by stepping around and arranging about the trunks. I stepped around about a mile, and although I did not find the Grand Quay, I found a cigar shop, and remembered about the cigars. I said I was going to Bayreuth, and wanted enough for the journey. The man asked me which route I was going to take. I said I did not know. He said he would recommend me to go by Zurich and various other places which he named, and offered to sell me seven second-class through tickets for twenty-two dollars apiece, which would be throwing off the discount which the railroads allowed him. I was already tired of riding second-class on first-class tickets, so I took him up.

By and by I found Natural & Co.’s storage office, and told them to send seven of our trunks to the hotel and pile them up in the lobby. It seemed to me that I was not delivering the whole of the message, still it was all I could find in my head.

Next I found the bank and asked for some money, but I had left my letter of credit somewhere and was not able to draw. I remembered now that I must have left it lying on the table where I wrote my telegram; so I got a cab and drove to the post-office and went up-stairs, and they said that a letter of credit had indeed been left on the table, but that it was now in the hands of the police authorities, and it would be necessary for me to go there and prove property. They sent a boy with me, and we went out the back way and walked a couple of miles and found the place; and then I remembered about my cabs, and asked the boy to send them to me when he got back to the post-office. It was nightfall now, and the Mayor had gone to dinner. I thought I would go to dinner myself, but the officer on duty thought differently, and I stayed. The Mayor dropped in at half past ten, but said it was too late to do anything to-night—come at 9.30 in the morning. The officer wanted to keep me all night, and said I was a suspicious-looking person, and probably did not own the letter of credit, and didn’t know what a letter of credit was, but merely saw the real owner leave it lying on the table, and wanted to get it because I was probably a person that would want anything he could get, whether it was valuable or not. But the Mayor said he saw nothing suspicious about me, and that I seemed a harmless person and nothing the matter with me but a wandering mind, and not much of that. So I thanked him and he set me free, and I went home in my three cabs.

As I was dog-tired and in no condition to answer questions with discretion, I thought I would not disturb the Expedition at that time of night, as there was a vacant room I knew of at the other end of the hall; but I did not quite arrive there, as a watch had been set, the Expedition being anxious about me. I was placed in a galling situation. The Expedition sat stiff and forbidding on four chairs in a row, with shawls and things all on, satchels and guide-books in lap. They had been sitting like that for four hours, and the glass going down all the time. Yes, and they were waiting—waiting for me. It seemed to me that nothing but a sudden, happily contrived, and brilliant
tour de force
could break this iron front and make a diversion in my favor; so I shied my hat into the arena and followed it with a skip and a jump, shouting blithely:

“Ha, ha, here we all are, Mr. Merryman!”

Nothing could be deeper or stiller than the absence of applause which followed. But I kept on; there seemed no other way, though my confidence, poor enough before, had got a deadly check and was in effect gone.

I tried to be jocund out of a heavy heart, I tried to touch the other hearts there and soften the bitter resentment in those faces by throwing off bright and airy fun and making of the whole ghastly thing a joyously humorous incident, but this idea was not well conceived. It was not the right atmosphere for it. I got not one smile; not one line in those offended faces relaxed; I thawed nothing of the winter that looked out of those frosty eyes. I started one more breezy, poor effort, but the head of the Expedition cut into the center of it and said:

“Where have you been?”

I saw by the manner of this that the idea was to get down to cold business now. So I began my travels, but was cut short again.

“Where are the two others? We have been in frightful anxiety about them.”

“Oh, they’re all right. I was to fetch a cab. I will go straight off, and—”

“Sit down! Don’t you know it is eleven o’clock? Where did you leave them?”

“At the pension.”

“Why didn’t you bring them?”

“Because we couldn’t carry the satchels. And so I thought—”

“Thought! You should not try to think. One cannot think without the proper machinery. It is two miles to that pension. Did you go there without a cab?”

“I—well, I didn’t intend to; it only happened so.”

“How did it happen so?”

“Because I was at the post-office and I remembered that I had left a cab waiting here, and so, to stop that expense, I sent another cab to—to—”

“To what?”

“Well, I don’t remember now, but I think the new cab was to have the hotel pay the old cab, and send it away.”

“What good would that do?”

“What good would it do? It would stop the expense, wouldn’t it?”

“By putting the new cab in its place to continue the expense?”

I didn’t say anything.

“Why didn’t you have the new cab come back for you?”

“Oh, that is what I did. I remember now. Yes, that is what I did. Because I recollect that when I—”

“Well, then why didn’t it come back for you?”

“To the post-office? Why, it did.”

“Very well, then, how did you come to walk to the pension?”

“I—I don’t quite remember how that happened. Oh, yes, I do remember now. I wrote the despatch to send to the Netherlands, and—”

“Oh, thank goodness, you did accomplish something! I wouldn’t have had you fail to send—what makes you look like that! You are trying to avoid my eye. That despatch is the most important thing that— You haven’t sent that despatch!”

“I haven’t said I didn’t send it.”

“You don’t need to. Oh, dear, I wouldn’t have had that telegram fail for anything. Why didn’t you send it?”

“Well, you see, with so many things to do and think of, I—they’re very particular there, and after I had written the telegram—”

“Oh, never mind, let it go, explanations can’t help the matter now—what will he think of us?”

“Oh, that’s all right, that’s all right, he’ll think we gave the telegram to the hotel people, and that they—”

“Why, certainly! Why didn’t you do that? There was no other rational way.”

“Yes, I know, but then I had it on my mind that I must be sure and get to the bank and draw some money—”

“Well, you are entitled to some credit, after all, for thinking of that, and I don’t wish to be too hard on you, though you must acknowledge yourself that you have cost us all a good deal of trouble, and some of it not necessary. How much did you draw?”

“Well, I—I had an idea that—that—”

“That what?”

“That—well, it seems to me that in the circumstances—so many of us, you know, and—and—”

“What are you mooning about? Do turn your face this way and let me—why, you haven’t drawn any money!”

“Well, the banker said—”

“Never mind what the banker said. You must have had a reason of your own. Not a reason, exactly, but something which—”

“Well, then, the simple fact was that I hadn’t my letter of credit.”

“Hadn’t your letter of credit?”

“Hadn’t my letter of credit.”

“Don’t repeat me like that. Where was it?”

“At the post-office.”

“What was it doing there?”

“Well, I forgot and left it there.”

“Upon my word, I’ve seen a good many couriers, but of all the couriers that ever I—”

“I’ve done the best I could.”

“Well, so you have, poor thing, and I’m wrong to abuse you so when you’ve been working yourself to death while we’ve been sitting here only thinking of our vexations instead of feeling grateful for what you were trying to do for us. It will all come out right. We can take the 7.30 train in the morning just as well. You’ve bought the tickets?”

“I have—and it’s a bargain, too. Second class.”

“I’m glad of it. Everybody else travels second class, and we might just as well save that ruinous extra charge. What did you pay?”

“Twenty-two dollars apiece—through to Bayreuth.”

“Why, I didn’t know you could buy through tickets anywhere but in London and Paris.”

“Some people can’t, maybe; but some people can—of whom I am one of which, it appears.”

“It seems a rather high price.”

“On the contrary, the dealer knocked off his commission.”

“Dealer?”

“Yes—I bought them at a cigar shop.”

“That reminds me. We shall have to get up pretty early, and so there should be no packing to do. Your umbrella, your rubbers, your cigars—what is the matter?”

“Hang it, I’ve left the cigars at the bank.”

“Just think of it! Well, your umbrella?”

“I’ll have that all right. There’s no hurry.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Oh, that’s all right; I’ll take care of—”

“Where is that umbrella?”

“It’s just the merest step—it won’t take me—”

“Where is it?”

“Well, I think I left it at the cigar shop; but anyway—”

“Take your feet out from under that thing. It’s just as I expected! Where are your rubbers?”

“They—well—”

“Where are your rubbers?”

“It’s got so dry now—well, everybody says there’s not going to be another drop of—”

“Where—are—your—rubbers?”

“Well, you see—well, it was this way. First, the officer said—”

“What officer?”

“Police officer; but the Mayor, he—”

“What Mayor?”

“Mayor of Geneva; but I said—”

“Wait. What is the matter with you?”

“Who, me? Nothing. They both tried to persuade me to stay, and—”

“Stay where?”

“Well, the fact is—”

“Where have you been? What’s kept you out till half past ten at night?”