The Loves of Alonzo Fitz Clarence and Rosannah Ethelton | Page 7

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