LITMIR.BIZ

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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!”

      III

      Two weeks later. Every few hours, during same 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 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.

      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,

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