The Speculative Fiction of Mark Twain

by Mark Twain

  Yesterday—I keep calling it yesterday, which is quite natural, for certain reasons—the instrument remained unused, and that, also, was natural, for it was the eve of the execution-day. It was spent in tears and lamentations and farewells. The governor and the wife and child remained until a quarter past eleven at night, and the scenes I witnessed were pitiful to see. The execution was to take place at four in the morning. A little after eleven a sound of hammering broke out upon the still night, and there was a glare of light, and the child cried out, “What is that, papa?” and ran to the window before she could be stopped, and clapped her small hands, and said: “Oh, come and see, mama—such a pretty thing they are making!” The mother knew—and fainted. It was the gallows!

  She was carried away to her lodging, poor woman, and Clayton and I were alone—alone, and thinking, brooding, dreaming. We might have been statues, we sat so motionless and still. It was a wild night, for winter was come again for a moment, after the habit of this region in the early spring. The sky was starless and black, and a strong wind was blowing from the lake. The silence in the room was so deep that all outside sounds seemed exaggerated by contrast with it. These sounds were fitting ones; they harmonized with the situation and the conditions: the boom and thunder of sudden storm-gusts among the roofs and chimneys, then the dying down into moanings and wailings about the eaves and angles; now and then a gnashing and lashing rush of sleet along the window-panes; and always the muffied and uncanny hammering of the gallows-builders in the courtyard. After an age of this, another sound—far off, and coming smothered and faint through the riot of the tempest—a bell tolling twelve! Another age, and it tolled again. By and by, again. A dreary, long interval after this, then the spectral sound floated to us once more—one, two, three; and this time we caught our breath: sixty minutes of life left!

  Clayton rose, and stood by the window, and looked up into the black sky, and listened to the thrashing sleet and the piping wind; then he said: “That a dying man’s last of earth should be—this!” After a little he said: “I must see the sun again—the sun!” and the next moment he was feverishly calling: “China! Give me China—Peking!”

  I was strangely stirred, and said to myself: “To think that it is a mere human being who does this unimaginable miracle—turns winter into summer, night into day, storm into calm, gives the freedom of the great globe to a prisoner in his cell, and the sun in his naked splendor to a man dying in Egyptian darkness!”

  I was listening.

  “What light! what brilliancy! what radiance! . . . This is Peking?”

  “Yes.”

  “The time?”

  “Mid-afternoon.”

  “What is the great crowd for, and in such gorgeous costumes? What masses and masses of rich color and barbaric magnificence! And how they flash and glow and burn in the flooding sunlight! What is the occasion of it all?”

  “The coronation of our new emperor—the Czar.”

  “But I thought that that was to take place yesterday.”

  “This is yesterday—to you.”

  “Certainly it is. But my mind is confused, these days; there are reasons for it. . . . Is this the beginning of the procession?”

  “Oh, no; It began to move an hour ago.”

  “Is there much more of it still to come?”

  “Two hours of it. Why do you sigh?”

  “Because I should like to see it all.”

  “And why can’t you?”

  “I have to go—presently.”

  “You have an engagement?”

  After a pause, softly: “Yes.” After another pause: “Who are these in the splendid pavilion?”

  “The imperial family, and visiting royalties from here and there and yonder in the earth.”

  “And who are those in the adjoining pavilions to the right and left?”

  “Ambassadors and their families and suites to the right; unofficial foreigners to the left.”

  “If you will be so good, I—”

  Boom! That distant bell again, tolling the half-hour faintly through the tempest of wind and sleet. The door opened, and the governor and the mother and child entered—the woman in widow’s weeds! She fell upon her husband’s breast in a passion of sobs, and I—I could not stay; I could not bear it. I went into the bedchamber, and closed the door. I sat there waiting—waiting—waiting, and listening to the rattling sashes and the blustering of the storm. After what seemed a long, long time, I heard a rustle and movement in the parlor, and knew that the clergyman and the sheriff and the guard were come. There was some low-voiced talking; then a hush; then a prayer, with a sound of sobbing; presently, footfalls—the departure for the gallows; then the child’s happy voice: “Don’t cry now, mama, when we’ve got papa again, and taking him home.”

  The door closed; they were gone. I was ashamed: I was the only friend of the dying man that had no spirit, no courage. I stepped into the room, and said I would be a man and would follow. But we are made as we are made, and we cannot help it. I did not go.

  I fidgeted about the room nervously, and presently went to the window, and softly raised it,—drawn by that dread fascination which the terrible and the awful exert,—and looked down upon the courtyard. By the garish light of the electric lamps I saw the little group of privileged witnesses, the wife crying on her uncle’s breast, the condemned man standing on the scaffold with the halter around his neck, his arms strapped to his body, the black cap on his head, the sheriff at his side with his hand on the drop, the clergyman in front of him with bare head and his book in his hand.

  “I am the resurrection and the life—”

  I turned away. I could not listen; I could not look. I did not know whither to go or what to do. Mechanically, and without knowing it, I put my eye to that strange instrument, and there was Peking and the Czar’s procession! The next moment I was leaning out of the window, gasping, suffocating, trying to speak, but dumb from the very imminence of the necessity of speaking. The preacher could speak, but I, who had such need of words—

  “And may God have mercy upon your soul. Amen.”

  The sheriff drew down the black cap, and laid his hand upon the lever. I got my voice.

  “Stop, for God’s sake! The man is innocent. Come here and see Szczepanik face to face!”

  Hardly three minutes later the governor had my place at the window, and was saying:

  “Strike off his bonds and set him free!”

  Three minutes later all were in the parlor again. The reader will imagine the scene; I have no need to describe it. It was a sort of mad orgy of joy.

  A messenger carried word to Szczepanik in the pavilion, and one could see the distressed amazement dawn in his face as he listened to the tale. Then he came to his end of the line, and talked with Clayton and the governor and the others; and the wife poured out her gratitude upon him for saving her husband’s life, and in her deep thankfulness she kissed him at twelve thousand miles’ range.

  The telelectrophonoscopes of the globe were put to service now, and for many hours the kings and queens of many realms (with here and there a reporter) talked with Szczepanik, and praised him; and the few scientific societies which had not already made him an honorary member conferred that grace upon him.

  How had he come to disappear from among us? It was easily explained. He had not grown used to being a world-famous person, and had been forced to break away from the lionizing that was robbing him of all privacy and repose. So he grew a beard, put on colored glasses, disguised himself a little in other ways, then took a fictitious name, and went off to wander about the earth in peace.

  Such is the tale of the drama which began with an inconsequential quarrel in Vienna in the spring of 1898, and came near ending as a tragedy in the spring of 1904.

  II

  Correspondence of the “London Times”

  CHICAGO, APRIL 5, 1904

  To-day, by a clipper of the Electric Line, and the latter’s Electric Railway connections, arrived an envelop f
rom Vienna, for Captain Clayton, containing an English farthing. The receiver of it was a good deal moved. He called up Vienna, and stood face to face with Mr. K., and said:

  “I do not need to say anything; you can see it all in my face. My wife has the farthing. Do not be afraid—she will not throw it away.”

  III

  Correspondence of the “London Times”

  CHICAGO, APRIL 23, 1904

  Now that the after developments of the Clayton case have run their course and reached a finish, I will sum them up. Clayton’s romantic escape from a shameful death steeped all this region in an enchantment of wonder and joy—during the proverbial nine days. Then the sobering process followed, and men began to take thought, and to say: “But a man was killed, and Clayton killed him.” Others replied: “That is true: we have been overlooking that important detail; we have been led away by excitement.”

  The feeling soon became general that Clayton ought to be tried again. Measures were taken accordingly, and the proper representations conveyed to Washington; for in America, under the new paragraph added to the Constitution in 1899, second trials are not State affairs, but national, and must be tried by the most august body in the land—the Supreme Court of the United States. The justices were therefore summoned to sit in Chicago. The session was held day before yesterday, and was opened with the usual impressive formalities, the nine judges appearing in their black robes, and the new chief justice (Lemaitre) presiding. In opening the case, the chief justice said:

  “It is my opinion that this matter is quite simple. The prisoner at the bar was charged with murdering the man Szczepanik; he was fairly tried, and justly condemned and sentenced to death for murdering the man Szczepanik. It turns out that the man Szczepanik was not murdered at all. By the decision of the French courts in the Dreyfus matter, it is established beyond cavil or question that the decisions of courts are permanent and cannot be revised. We are obliged to respect and adopt the precedent. It is upon precedents that the enduring edifice of jurisprudence is reared. The prisoner at the bar has been fairly and righteously condemned to death for the murder of the man Szczepanik, and, in my opinion, there is but one course to pursue in the matter: he must be hanged.”

  Mr. Justice Crawford said:

  “But, your Excellency, he was pardoned on the scaffold for that.”

  “The pardon is not valid, and cannot stand, because he was pardoned for killing a man whom he had not killed. A man cannot be pardoned for a crime which he has not committed; it would be an absurdity.”

  “But, your Excellency, he did kill a man.”

  “That is an extraneous detail; we have nothing to do with it. The court cannot take up this crime until the prisoner has expiated the other one.”

  Mr. Justice Halleck said:

  “If we order his execution, your Excellency, we shall bring about a miscarriage of justice; for the governor will pardon him again.”

  “He will not have the power. He cannot pardon a man for a crime which he has not committed. As I observed before, it would be an absurdity.”

  After a consultation, Mr. Justice Wadsworth said:

  “Several of us have arrived at the conclusion, your Excellency, that it would be an error to hang the prisoner for killing Szczepanik, but only for killing the other man, since it is proven that he did not kill Szczepanik.”

  “On the contrary, it is proven that he did kill Szczepanik. By the French precedent, it is plain that we must abide by the finding of the court.”

  “But Szczepanik is still alive.”

  “So is Dreyfus.”

  In the end it was found impossible to ignore or get around the French precedent. There could be but one result: Clayton was delivered over to the executioner. It made an immense excitement; the State rose as one man and clamored for Clayton’s pardon and retrial. The governor issued the pardon, but the Supreme Court was in duty bound to annul it, and did so, and poor Clayton was hanged yesterday. The city is draped in black, and, indeed, the like may be said of the State. All America is vocal with scorn of “French justice,” and of the malignant little soldiers who invented it and inflicted it upon the other Christian lands.

  THE LOVES OF ALONZO FITZ CLARENCE AND ROSANNAH ETHELTON

  I

  IT WAS WELL along in the forenoon of a bitter winter’s day. The town of Eastport, in the State of Maine, lay buried under a deep snow that was newly fallen. The customary bustle in the streets was wanting. One could look long distances down them and see nothing but a dead-white emptiness, with silence to match. Of course I do not mean that you could see the silence,—no, you could only hear it. The sidewalks were merely long, deep ditches, with steep snow walls on either side. Here and there you might hear the faint, far scrape of a wooden shovel, and if you were quick enough you might catch a glimpse of a distant black figure stooping and disappearing in one of those ditches, and reappearing the next moment with a motion which you would know meant the heaving out of a shovelful of snow. But you needed to be quick, for that black figure would not linger, but would soon drop that shovel and scud for the house, thrashing itself with its arms to warm them. Yes, it was too venomously cold for snow shovelers or anybody else to stay out long.

  Presently the sky darkened; then the wind rose and began to blow in fitful, vigorous gusts, which sent clouds of powdery snow aloft, and straight ahead, and everywhere. Under the impulse of one of these gusts, great white drifts banked themselves like graves across the streets; a moment later, another gust shifted them around the other way, driving a fine spray of snow from their sharp crests, as the gale drives the spume flakes from wave-crests at sea; a third gust swept that place as clean as your hand, if it saw fit. This was fooling, this was play; but each and all of the gusts dumped some snow into the sidewalk ditches, for that was business.

  Alonzo Fitz Clarence was sitting in his snug and elegant little parlor, in a lovely blue silk dressing-gown, with cuffs and facings of crimson satin, elaborately quilted. The remains of his breakfast were before him, and the dainty and costly little table service added a harmonious charm to the grace, beauty, and richness of the fixed appointments of the room. A cheery fire was blazing on the hearth.

  A furious gust of wind shook the windows, and a great wave of snow washed against them with a drenching sound, so to speak. The handsome young bachelor murmured,—

  “That means, no going out to-day. Well, I am content. But what to do for company? Mother is well enough, aunt Susan is well enough; but these, like the poor, I have with me always. On so grim a day as this, one needs a new interest, a fresh element, to whet the dull edge of captivity. That was very neatly said, but it does n’t mean anything. One does n’t want the edge of captivity sharpened up, you know, but just the reverse.”

  He glanced at his pretty French mantel clock.

  “That clock’s wrong again. That clock hardly ever knows what time it is; and when it does know, it lies about it—which amounts to the same thing. Alfred!”

  There was no answer.

  “Alfred! . . . Good servant, but as uncertain as the clock.”

  Alonzo touched an electrical bell-button in the wall. He waited a moment, then touched it again; waited a few moments more, and said,—

  “Battery out of order, no doubt. But now that I have started, I will find out what time it is.” He stepped to a speaking-tube in the wall, blew its whistle, and called, “Mother!” and repeated it twice.

  “Well, that’s no use. Mother’s battery is out of order, too. Can’t raise anybody down-stairs,—that is plain.”

  He sat down at a rose-wood desk, leaned his chin on the left-hand edge of it, and spoke, as if to the floor: “Aunt Susan!”

  A low, pleasant voice answered, “Is that you, Alonzo?”

  “Yes. I’m too lazy and comfortable to go down-stairs; I am in extremity, and I can’t seem to scare up any help.”

  “Dear me, what is the matter?”

  “Matter enough, I can tell you!”

  “Oh, don�
�t keep me in suspense, dear! What is it?”

  “I want to know what time it is.”

  “You abominable boy, what a turn you did give me! Is that all?”

  “All,—on my honor. Calm yourself. Tell me the time, and receive my blessing.”

  “Just five minutes after nine. No charge,—keep your blessing.”

  “Thanks. It would n’t have impoverished me, aunty, nor so enriched you that you could live without other means.” He got up, murmuring, “Just five minutes after nine,” and faced his clock. “Ah,” said he, “you are doing better than usual. You are only thirty-four minutes wrong. Let me see . . . let me see. . . . Thirty-three and twenty-one are fifty-four; four times fifty-four are two hundred and thirty-six. One off, leaves two hundred and thirty-five. That’s right.”

  He turned the hands of his clock forward till they marked twenty-five minutes to one, and said, “Now see if you can’t keep right for a while . . . else I’ll raffle you!”

  He sat down at the desk again, and said, “Aunt Susan!”

  “Yes, dear.”

  “Had breakfast?”

  “Yes indeed, an hour ago.”