Alonzo Fitz and Other Stories

M >> Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) >> Alonzo Fitz and Other Stories


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.


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 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.

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 mad-house 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 bedchamber 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 hated 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 forthwith the exclamation:

"Oh, thank Heaven, found at last! Speak tome, 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 henceforth--"

"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 tomorrow. 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 suit 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 at 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 loveliest hour in the day--since it will make you mine."

There was a feeble but frantic sound for some little time, as if
wool-upped, 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 necktie
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
importune lies, 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 lifetime--"

"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: "Oh, 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.






ON THE DECAY OF THE ART OF LYING

ESSAY, FOR DISCUSSION, READ AT A MEETING OF THE HISTORICAL AND
ANTIQUARIAN CLUB OF HARTFORD, AND OFFERED FOR THE THIRTY-DOLLAR PRIZE.
NOW FIRST PUBLISHED.--[Did not take the prize]

Observe, I do not mean to suggest that the custom of lying has suffered
any decay or interruption--no, for the Lie, as a Virtue, a Principle, is
eternal; the Lie, as a recreation, a solace, a refuge in time of need,
the fourth Grace, the tenth Muse, man's best and surest friend, is
immortal, and cannot perish from the earth while this Club remains. My
complaint simply concerns the decay of the art of lying. No high-minded
man, no man of right feeling, can contemplate the lumbering and slovenly
lying of the present day without grieving to see a noble art so
prostituted. In this veteran presence I naturally enter upon this scheme
with diffidence; it is like an old maid trying to teach nursery matters
to the mothers in Israel. It would not become me to criticize you,
gentlemen, who are nearly all my elders--and my superiors, in this thing
--and so, if I should here and there seem to do it, I trust it will in
most cases be more in a spirit of admiration than of fault-finding;
indeed, if this finest of the fine arts had everywhere received the
attention, encouragement, and conscientious practice and development
which this Club has devoted to it I should not need to utter this lament
or shed a single tear. I do not say this to flatter: I say it in a
spirit of just and appreciative recognition.

[It had been my intention, at this point, to mention names and give
illustrative specimens, but indications observable about me admonished me
to beware of particulars and confine myself to generalities.]

No fact is more firmly established than that lying is a necessity of our
circumstances--the deduction that it is then a Virtue goes without
saying. No virtue can reach its highest usefulness without careful and
diligent cultivation--therefore, it goes without saying that this one
ought to be taught in the public schools--at the fireside--even in the
newspapers. What chance has the ignorant, uncultivated liar against the
educated expert? What chance have I against Mr. Per-- against a lawyer?
Judicious lying is what the world needs. I sometimes think it were even
better and safer not to lie at all than to lie injudiciously. An
awkward, unscientific lie is often as ineffectual as the truth.

Now let us see what the philosophers say. Note that venerable proverb:
Children and fools always speak the truth. The deduction is plain
--adults and wise persons never speak it. Parkman, the historian, says,
"The principle of truth may itself be carried into an absurdity." In
another place in the same chapter he says, "The saying is old that truth
should not be spoken at all times; and those whom a sick conscience
worries into habitual violation of the maxim are imbeciles and
nuisances." It is strong language, but true. None of us could live with
an habitual truth-teller; but, thank goodness, none of us has to. An
habitual truth-teller is simply an impossible creature; he does not
exist; he never has existed. Of course there are people who think they
never lie, but it is not so--and this ignorance is one of the very things
that shame our so-called civilization. Everybody lies--every day; every
hour; awake; asleep; in his dreams; in his joy; in his mourning; if he
keeps his tongue still, his hands, his feet, his eyes, his attitude, will
convey deception--and purposely. Even in sermons--but that is a
platitude.

In a far country where I once lived the ladies used to go around paying
calls, under the humane and kindly pretense of wanting to see each other;
and when they returned home, they would cry out with a glad voice,
saying, "We made sixteen calls and found fourteen of them out"--not
meaning that they found out anything against the fourteen--no, that was
only a colloquial phrase to signify that they were not at home--and their
manner of saying it--expressed their lively satisfaction in that fact.
Now, their pretense of wanting to see the fourteen--and the other two
whom they had been less lucky with--was that commonest and mildest form
of lying which is sufficiently described as a deflection from the truth.
Is it justifiable? Most certainly. It is beautiful, it is noble; for
its object is, not to reap profit, but to convey a pleasure to the
sixteen. The iron-souled truth-monger would plainly manifest, or even
utter the fact, that he didn't want to see those people--and he would be
an ass, and inflict a totally unnecessary pain. And next, those ladies
in that far country--but never mind, they had a thousand pleasant ways of
lying, that grew out of gentle impulses, and were a credit to their
intelligence and at honor to their hearts. Let the particulars go.

The men in that far country were liars; every one. Their mere howdy-do
was a lie, because they didn't care how you did, except they were
undertakers. To the ordinary inquirer you lied in return; for you made
no conscientious diagnosis of your case, but answered at random, and
usually missed it considerably. You lied to the undertaker, and said
your health was failing--a wholly commendable lie, since it cost you
nothing and pleased the other man. If a stranger called and interrupted
you, you said with your hearty tongue, "I'm glad to see you," and said
with your heartier soul, "I wish you were with the cannibals and it was
dinner-time." When he went, you said regretfully, "Must you go?" and
followed it with a "Call again"; but you did no harm, for you did not
deceive anybody nor inflict any hurt, whereas the truth would have made
you both unhappy.

I think that all this courteous lying is a sweet and loving art, and
should be cultivated. The highest perfection of politeness is only a
beautiful edifice, built, from the base to the dome, of graceful and
gilded forms of charitable and unselfish lying.

What I bemoan is the growing prevalence of the brutal truth. Let us do
what we can to eradicate it. An injurious truth has no merit over an
injurious lie. Neither should ever be uttered. The man who speaks an
injurious truth, lest his soul be not saved if he do otherwise, should
reflect that that sort of a soul is not strictly worth saving. The man
who tells a lie to help a poor devil out of trouble is one of whom the
angels doubtless say, "Lo, here is an heroic soul who casts his own
welfare into jeopardy to succor his neighbor's; let us exalt this
magnanimous liar."

An injurious lie is an uncommendable thing; and so, also, and in the same
degree, is an injurious truth--a fact which is recognized by the law of
libel.

Among other common lies, we have the silent lie, the deception which one
conveys by simply keeping still and concealing the truth. Many obstinate
truth-mongers indulge in this dissipation, imagining that if they speak
no lie, they lie not at all. In that far country where I once lived,
there was a lovely spirit, a lady whose impulses were always high and
pure, and whose character answered to them. One day I was there at
dinner, and remarked, in a general way, that we are all liars. She was
amazed, and said, "Not all!" It was before "Pinafore's" time so I did
not make the response which would naturally follow in our day, but
frankly said, "Yes, all--we are all liars; there are no exceptions."
She looked almost offended, and said, "Why, do you include me?"
"Certainly," I said, "I think you even rank as an expert." She said,
"'Sh!--'sh! the children!"

So the subject was changed in deference to the children's presence, and
we went on talking about other things. But as soon as the young people
were out of the way, the lady came warmly back to the matter and said,
"I have made it the rule of my life to never tell a lie; and I have never
departed from it in a single instance." I said, "I don't mean the least
harm or disrespect, but really you have been lying like smoke ever since
I've been sitting here. It has caused me a good deal of pain, because I
am not used to it." She required of me an instance--just a single
instance. So I said:

"Well, here is the unfilled duplicate of the blank which the Oakland
hospital people sent to you by the hand of the sick-nurse when she came
here to nurse your little nephew through his dangerous illness. This
blank asks all manner of questions as to the conduct of that sick-nurse:
'Did she ever sleep on her watch? Did she ever forget to give the
medicine?' and so forth and so on. You are warned to be very careful and
explicit in your answers, for the welfare of the service requires that
the nurses be promptly fined or otherwise punished for derelictions.
You told me you were perfectly delighted with that nurse--that she had a
thousand perfections and only one fault: you found you never could depend
on her wrapping Johnny up half sufficiently while he waited in a chilly
chair for her to rearrange the warm bed. You filled up the duplicate of
this paper, and sent it back to the hospital by the hand of the nurse.
How did you answer this question--'Was the nurse at any time guilty of a
negligence which was likely to result in the patient's taking cold?'
Come--everything is decided by a bet here in California: ten dollars to
ten cents you lied when you answered that question." She said, "I
didn't; I left it blank!" "Just so--you have told a silent lie; you have
left it to be inferred that you had no fault to find in that matter."
She said, "Oh, was that a lie? And how could I mention her one single
fault, and she so good?--it would have been cruel." I said, "One ought
always to lie when one can do good by it; your impulse was right, but,
your judgment was crude; this comes of unintelligent practice. Now
observe the result of this inexpert deflection of yours. You know Mr.
Jones's Willie is lying very low with scarlet fever; well, your
recommendation was so enthusiastic that that girl is there nursing him,
and the worn-out family have all been trustingly sound asleep for the
last fourteen hours, leaving their darling with full confidence in those
fatal hands, because you, like young George Washington, have a reputa--
However, if you are not going to have anything to do, I will come around
to-morrow and we'll attend the funeral together, for, of course, you'll
naturally feel a peculiar interest in Willie's case--as personal a one,
in fact, as the undertaker."

But that was all lost. Before I was half-way through she was in a
carriage and making thirty miles an hour toward the Jones mansion to save
what was left of Willie and tell all she knew about the deadly nurse.
All of which was unnecessary, as Willie wasn't sick; I had been lying
myself. But that same day, all the same, she sent a line to the hospital
which filled up the neglected blank, and stated the facts, too, in the
squarest possible manner.