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.