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.
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!”
