The Speculative Fiction of Mark Twain

by Mark Twain

  “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 today.’”

  “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 came 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.

  IV

  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 woful 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.

  In the beginning of his pilgrimage he used often to say, “Ah, if I could but hear the Sweet By and By!” But toward the end of it he used to shed tears of anguish and say, “Ah, if I could but hear something else!”

  Thus a month and three weeks drifted by, and at last some humane people seized him and confined him in a private madhouse in New York. He made no moan, for his strength was all gone, and with it all heart and all hope. The superintendent, in pity, gave up his own comfortable parlor and bed-chamber to him and nursed him with affectionate devotion.

  At the end of a week the patient was able to leave his bed for the first time. He was lying, comfortably pillowed, on a sofa, listening to the plaintive Miserere of the bleak March winds, and the muffled sound of tramping feet in the street below,—for it was about six in the evening, and New York was going home from work. He had a bright fire and the added cheer of a couple of student lamps. So it was warm and snug within, though bleak and raw without; it was light and bright within, though outside it was as dark and dreary as if the world had been lit with Hartford gas. Alonzo smiled feebly to think how his loving vagaries had made him a maniac in the eyes of the world, and was proceeding to pursue his line of thought further, when a faint, sweet strain, the very ghost of sound, so remote and attenuated it seemed, struck upon his ear. His pulses stood still; he listened with parted lips and bated breath. The song flowed on,—he waiting, listening, rising slowly and unconsciously from his recumbent position. At last he exclaimed,—

  “It is! it is she! Oh, the divine flatted notes!”

  He dragged himself eagerly to the corner whence the sounds proceeded, tore aside a curtain, and discovered a telephone. He bent over, and as the last note died away he burst forth with the exclamation,—

  “Oh, thank Heaven, found at last! Speak to me, Rosannah, dearest! The cruel mystery has been unraveled; it was the villain Burley who mimicked my voice and wounded you with insolent speech!”

  There was a breathless pause, a waiting age to Alonzo; then a faint sound came, framing itself into language,—

  “Oh, say those precious words again, Alonzo!”

  “They are the truth, the veritable truth, my Rosannah, and you shall have the proof, ample and abundant proof!”

  “Oh, Alonzo, stay by me! Leave me not for a moment! Let me feel that you are near me! Tell me we shall never be parted more! Oh, this happy hour, this blessed hour, this memorable hour!”

  “We will make record of it, my Rosannah; every year, as this dear hour chimes from the clock, we will celebrate it with thanksgivings, all the years of our life.”

  “
We will, we will, Alonzo!”

  “Four minutes after six, in the evening, my Rosannah, shall hence-forth”—

  “Twenty-three minutes after twelve, afternoon, shall”—

  “Why, Rosannah, darling, where are you?”

  “In Honolulu, Sandwich Islands. And where are you? Stay by me; do not leave me for a moment. I cannot bear it. Are you at home?”

  “No, dear, I am in New York,—a patient in the doctor’s hands.”

  An agonizing shriek came buzzing to Alonzo’s ear, like the sharp buzzing of a hurt gnat; it lost power in traveling five thousand miles. Alonzo hastened to say,—

  “Calm yourself, my child. It is nothing. Already I am getting well under the sweet healing of your presence. Rosannah?”

  “Yes, Alonzo! Oh, how you terrified me! Say on.”

  “Name the happy day, Rosannah!”

  There was a little pause. Then a diffident small voice replied, “I blush—but it is with pleasure, it is with happiness. Would—would you like to have it soon?”

  “This very night, Rosannah! Oh, let us risk no more delays. Let it be now!—this very night, this very moment!”

  “Oh, you impatient creature! I have nobody here but my good old uncle, a missionary for a generation, and now retired from service,—nobody but him and his wife. I would so dearly like it if your mother and your aunt Susan”—

  “Our mother and our aunt Susan, my Rosannah.”

  “Yes, our mother and our aunt Susan,—I am content to word it so if it pleases you; I would so like to have them present.”

  “So would I. Suppose you telegraph aunt Susan. How long would it take her to come?”

  “The steamer leaves San Francisco day after to-morrow. The passage is eight days. She would be here the 31st of March.”

  “Then name the 1st of April: do, Rosannah, dear.”

  “Mercy, it would make us April fools, Alonzo!”

  “So we be the happiest ones that that day’s sun looks down upon in the whole broad expanse of the globe, why need we care? Call it the 1st of April, dear.”

  “Then the 1st of April it shall be, with all my heart!”

  “Oh, happiness! Name the hour, too, Rosannah.”

  “I like the morning, it is so blithe. Will eight in the morning do, Alonzo!”

  “The lovliest hour in the day,—since it will make you mine.”

  There was a feeble but frantic sound for some little time, as if wool-lipped, disembodied spirits were exchanging kisses; then Rosannah said, “Excuse me just a moment, dear; I have an appointment, and am called to meet it.”

  The young girl sought a large parlor and took her place at a window which looked out upon a beautiful scene. To the left one could view the charming Nuuana Valley, fringed with its ruddy flush of tropical flowers and its plumed and graceful cocoa palms; its rising foothills clothed in the shining green of lemon, citron, and orange groves; its storied precipice beyond, where the first Kamehameha drove his defeated foes over to their destruction,—a spot that had forgotten its grim history, no doubt, for now it was smiling, as almost always at noonday, under the glowing arches of a succession of rainbows. In front of the window one could see the quaint town, and here and there a picturesque group of dusky natives, enjoying the blistering weather; and far to the right lay the restless ocean, tossing its white mane in the sunshine.

  Rosannah stood there, in her filmy white raiment, fanning her flushed and heated face, waiting. A Kanaka boy, clothed in a damaged blue neck-tie and part of a silk hat, thrust his head in at the door, and announced, “ ’Frisco haole!”

  “Show him in,” said the girl, straightening herself up and assuming a meaning dignity. Mr. Sidney Algernon Burley entered, clad from head to heel in dazzling snow,—that is to say, in the lightest and whitest of Irish linen. He moved eagerly forward, but the girl made a gesture and gave him a look which checked him suddenly. She said, coldly, “I am here, as I promised. I believed your assertions, I yielded to your importunities, and said I would name the day. I name the 1st of April,—eight in the morning. Now go!”

  “Oh, my dearest, if the gratitude of a life time”—

  “Not a word. Spare me all sight of you, all communication with you, until that hour. No,—no supplications; I will have it so.”

  When he was gone, she sank exhausted in a chair, for the long siege of troubles she had undergone had wasted her strength. Presently she said, “What a narrow escape! If the hour appointed had been an hour earlier—Oh, horror, what an escape I have made! And to think I had come to imagine I was loving this beguiling, this truthless, this treacherous monster! Oh, he shall repent his villainy!”

  *

  Let us now draw this history to a close, for little more needs to be told. On the 2d of the ensuing April, the Honolulu Advertiser contained this notice:—

  Married.—In this city, by telephone, yesterday morning, at eight o’clock, by Rev. Nathan Hays, assisted by Rev. Nathaniel Davis, of New York, Mr. Alonzo Fitz Clarence, of Eastport, Maine, U.S., and Miss Rosannah Ethelton, of Portland, Oregon, U.S. Mrs. Susan Howland, of San Francisco, a friend of the bride, was present, she being the guest of the Rev. Mr. Hays and wife, uncle and aunt of the bride. Mr. Sidney Algernon Burley, of San Francisco, was also present, but did not remain till the conclusion of the marriage service. Captain Hawthorne’s beautiful yacht, tastefully decorated, was in waiting, and the happy bride and her friends immediately departed on a bridal trip to Lahaina and Haleakala.

  The New York papers of the same date contained this notice—

  Married.—In this city, yesterday, by telephone, at half past two in the morning, by Rev. Nathaniel Davis, assisted by Rev. Nathan Hays, of Honolulu, Mr. Alonzo Fitz Clarence, of Eastport, Maine, and Miss Rosannah Ethelton, of Portland, Oregon. The parents and several friends of the bridegroom were present, and enjoyed a sumptuous breakfast and much festivity until nearly sunrise, and then departed on a bridal trip to the Aquarium, the bridegroom’s state of health not admitting of a more extended journey.

  Toward the close of that memorable day, Mr. and Mrs. Alonzo Fitz Clarence were buried in sweet converse concerning the pleasures of their several bridal tours, when suddenly the young wife exclaimed: “O, Lonny, I forgot! I did what I said I would.”

  “Did you, dear?”

  “Indeed I did. I made him the April fool! And I told him so, too! Ah, it was a charming surprise! There he stood, sweltering in a black dress suit, with the mercury leaking out of the top of the thermometer, waiting to be married. You should have seen the look he gave when I whispered it in his ear! Ah, his wickedness cost me many a heartache and many a tear, but the score was all squared up, then. So the vengeful feeling went right out of my heart, and I begged him to stay, and said I forgave him everything. But he wouldn’t. He said he would live to be avenged; said he would make our lives a curse to us. But he can’t, can he, dear?”

  “Never in this world, my Rosannah!”

  *

  Aunt Susan, the Oregonian grandmother, and the young couple and their Eastport parents are all happy at this writing, and likely to remain so. Aunt Susan brought the bride from the Islands, accompanied her across our continent, and had the happiness of witnessing the rapturous meeting between an adoring husband and wife who had never seen each other until that moment.

  A word about the wretched Burley, whose wicked machinations came so near wrecking the hearts and lives of our poor young friends, will be sufficient. In a murderous attempt to seize a crippled and helpless artisan who he fancied had done him some small offense, he fell into a caldron of boiling oil and expired before he could be extinguished.

  MENTAL TELEGRAPHY

  MAY, ’78.—Another of those apparently trifling things has happened to me which puzzle and perplex all men every now and then, keep them thinking an hour or two, and leave their minds barren of explanation or solution at last. Here it is—and it looks inconsequential enough, I am obliged to say. A few days ago I said: “It must be that Frank Millet do
esn’t know we are in Germany, or he would have written long before this. I have been on the point of dropping him a line at least a dozen times during the past six weeks, but I always decided to wait a day or two longer, and see if we shouldn’t hear from him. But now I will write.” And so I did. I directed the letter to Paris, and thought, “Now we shall hear from him before this letter is fifty miles from Heidelberg—it always happens so.”

  True enough; but why should it? That is the puzzling part of it. We are always talking about letters “crossing” each other, for that is one of the very commonest accidents of this life. We call it “accident,” but perhaps we misname it. We have the instinct a dozen times a year that the letter we are writing is going to “cross” the other person’s letter; and if the reader will rack his memory a little he will recall the fact that this presentiment had strength enough to it to make him cut his letter down to a decided briefness, because it would be a waste of time to write a letter which was going to “cross,” and hence be a useless letter. I think that in my experience this instinct has generally come to me in cases where I had put off my letter a good while in the hope that the other person would write.

  Yes, as I was saying, I had waited five or six weeks; then I wrote but three lines, because I felt and seemed to know that a letter from Millet would cross mine. And so it did. He wrote the same day that I wrote. The letters crossed each other. His letter went to Berlin, care of the American minister, who sent it to me. In this letter Millet said he had been trying for six weeks to stumble upon somebody who knew my German address, and at last the idea had occurred to him that a letter sent to the care of the embassy at Berlin might possibly find me.

  Maybe it was an “accident” that he finally determined to write me at the same moment that I finally determined to write him, but I think not.

  With me the most irritating thing has been to wait a tedious time in a purely business matter, hoping that the other party will do the writing, and then sit down and do it myself, perfectly satisfied that that other man is sitting down at the same moment to write a letter which will “cross” mine. And yet one must go on writing, just the same; because if you get up from your table and postpone, that other man will do the same thing, exactly as if you two were harnessed together like the Siamese twins, and must duplicate each other’s movements.