The Complete Short Stories of Mark Twain (60 page)

“Why, come to think, I don’t remember your bringing my passport away from the consulate. But you did, didn’t you?”

“No; it’s coming by mail,” said the Major, comfortably.

“C—coming—by—mail!” gasped the lad; and all the dreadful things he had heard about the terrors and disasters of passportless visitors to Russia rose in his frightened mind and turned him white to the lips. “Oh, Major—oh, my goodness, what will become of me! How
could
you do such a thing?”

The Major laid a soothing hand upon the youth’s shoulder and said:

“Now, don’t you worry, my boy, don’t you worry a bit. I’m taking care of you, and I’m not going to let any harm come to you. The Chief Inspector knows me, and I’ll explain to him, and it’ll be all right—you’ll see. Now don’t you give yourself the least discomfort—I’ll fix it all up, easy as nothing.”

Alfred trembled, and felt a great sinking inside, but he did what he could to conceal his misery, and to respond with some show of heart to the Major’s kindly pettings and reassurings.

At the frontier he got out and stood on the edge of the great crowd, and waited in deep anxiety while the Major plowed his way through the mass to “explain to the Chief Inspector.” It seemed a cruelly long wait, but at last the Major reappeared. He said, cheerfully, “Damnation, it’s a new inspector, and I don’t know him!”

Alfred fell up against a pile of trunks, with a despairing, “Oh, dear, dear, I might have known it!” and was slumping limp and helpless to the ground, but the Major gathered him up and seated him on a box, and sat down by him, with a supporting arm around him, and whispered in his ear:

“Don’t worry, laddie, don’t—it’s going to be all right; you just trust to me. The sub-inspector’s as near-sighted as a shad. I watched him, and I know it’s so. Now I’ll tell you how to do. I’ll go and get my passport chalked, then I’ll stop right yonder inside the grille where you see those peasants with their packs. You be there, and I’ll back up against the grille, and slip my passport to you through the bars, then you tag along after the crowd and hand it in, and trust to Providence and that shad. Mainly the shad. You’ll pull through all right—now don’t you be afraid.”

“But, oh dear, dear,
your
description and
mine
don’t tally any more than—”

“Oh, that’s all right—difference between fifty-one and nineteen—just entirely imperceptible to that shad—don’t you fret, it’s going to come out as right as nails.”

Ten minutes later Alfred was tottering toward the train, pale, and in a collapse, but he had played the shad successfully, and was as grateful as an untaxed dog that has evaded the police.

“I told you so,” said the Major, in splendid spirits. “I knew it would come out all right if you trusted in Providence like a little trusting child and didn’t try to improve on His ideas—it always does.”

Between the frontier and Petersburg the Major laid himself out to restore his young comrade’s life, and work up his circulation, and pull him out of his despondency, and make him feel again that life was a joy and worth living. And so, as a consequence, the young fellow entered the city in high feather and marched into the hotel in fine form, and registered his name. But instead of naming a room, the clerk glanced at him inquiringly, and waited. The Major came promptly to the rescue, and said, cordially:

“It’s all right—you know me—set him down, I’m responsible.” The clerk looked grave, and shook his head. The Major added: “It’s all right, it’ll be here in twenty-four hours—it’s coming by mail. Here’s mine, and his is coming, right along.”

The clerk was full of politeness, full of deference, but he was firm. He said, in English:

“Indeed, I wish I could accommodate you, Major, and certainly I would if I could; but I have no choice, I must ask him to go; I cannot allow him to remain in the house a moment.”

Parrish began to totter, and emitted a moan; the Major caught him and stayed him with an arm, and said to the clerk, appealingly:

“Come, you know me—everybody does—just let him stay here the one night, and I give you my word—”

The clerk shook his head, and said:

“But, Major, you are endangering me, you are endangering the house. I—I hate to do such a thing, but I—I
must
call the police.”

“Hold on, don’t do that. Come along, my boy, and don’t you fret—it’s going to come out all right. Hi, there, cabby! Jump in, Parrish. Palace of the General of the Secret Police—turn them loose, cabby! Let them go! Make them whiz! Now we’re off, and don’t you give yourself any uneasiness. Prince Bossloffsky knows me, knows me like a book; he’ll soon fix things all right for us.”

They tore through the gay streets and arrived at the palace, which was brilliantly lighted. But it was half past eight; the Prince was about going in to dinner, the sentinel said, and couldn’t receive any one.

“But he’ll receive
me
,” said the Major, robustly, and handed his card. “I’m Major Jackson. Send it in; it’ll be all right.”

The card was sent in, under protest, and the Major and his waif waited in a reception-room for some time. At length they were sent for, and conducted to a sumptuous private office and confronted with the Prince, who stood there gorgeously arrayed and frowning like a thunder-cloud. The Major stated his case, and begged for a twenty-four-hour stay of proceedings until the passport should be forthcoming.

“Oh, impossible!” said the Prince, in faultless English. “I marvel that you should have done so insane a thing as to bring the lad into the country without a passport, Major, I marvel at it; why, it’s ten years in Siberia, and no help for it—catch him! support him!” for poor Parrish was making another trip to the floor. “Here—quick, give him this. There—take another draught; brandy’s the thing, don’t you find it so, lad? Now you feel better, poor fellow. Lie down on the sofa. How stupid it was of you, Major, to get him into such a horrible scrape.” The Major eased the boy down with his strong arms, put a cushion under his head, and whispered in his ear:

“Look as damned sick as you can! Play it for all it’s worth; he’s touched, you see; got a tender heart under there somewhere; fetch a groan, and say, ‘Oh, mamma, mamma’; it’ll knock him out, sure as guns.”

Parrish was going to do these things anyway, from native impulse, so they came from him promptly, with great and moving sincerity, and the Major whispered: “Splendid! Do it again; Bernhardt couldn’t beat it.”

What with the Major’s eloquence and the boy’s misery, the point was gained at last; the Prince struck his colors, and said:

“Have it your way; though you deserve a sharp lesson and you ought to get it. I give you exactly twenty-four hours. If the passport is not here then, don’t come near me; it’s Siberia without hope of pardon.”

While the Major and the lad poured out their thanks, the Prince rang in a couple of soldiers, and in their own language, he ordered them to go with these two people, and not lose sight of the younger one a moment for the next twenty-four hours; and if, at the end of that term, the boy could not show a passport, impound him in the dungeons of St. Peter and St. Paul, and report.

The unfortunates arrived at the hotel with their guards, dined under their eyes, remained in Parrish’s room until the Major went off to bed, after cheering up the sad Parrish, then one of the soldiers locked himself and Parrish in, and the other one stretched himself across the door outside and soon went off to sleep.

So also did not Alfred Parrish. The moment he was alone with the solemn soldier and the voiceless silence his machine-made cheerfulness began to waste away, his medicated courage began to give off its supporting gases and shrink toward normal, and his poor little heart to shrivel like a raisin. Within thirty minutes he struck bottom; grief, misery, fright, despair, could go no lower. Bed? Bed was not for such as he; bed was not for the doomed, the lost! Sleep? He was not the Hebrew children, he could not sleep in the fire! He could only walk the floor. And not only could, but must. And did, by the hour. And mourned, and wept, and shuddered, and prayed.

Then all-sorrowfully he made his last dispositions, and prepared himself, as well as in him lay, to meet his fate. As a final act, he wrote a letter:

“M
Y DARLING
M
OTHER
,—When these sad lines shall have reached you your poor Alfred will be no more. No; worse than that, far worse! Through my own fault and foolishness I have fallen into the hands of a sharper or a lunatic; I do not know which, but in either case I feel that I am lost. Sometimes I think he is a sharper, but most of the time I think he is only mad, for he has a kind, good heart, I know, and he certainly seems to try the hardest that ever a person tried to get me out of the fatal difficulties he has gotten me into.

“In a few hours I shall be one of a nameless horde plodding the snowy solitudes of Russia, under the lash, and bound for that land of mystery and misery and termless oblivion, Siberia! I shall not live to see it; my heart is broken and I shall die. Give my picture to
her
, and ask her to keep it in memory of me, and to so live that in the appointed time she may join me in that better world where there is no marriage nor giving in marriage, and where there are no more separations, and troubles never come. Give my yellow dog to Archy Hale, and the other one to Henry Taylor; my blazer I give to brother Will, and my fishing-things and Bible.

“There is no hope for me. I cannot escape; the soldier stands there with his gun and never takes his eyes off me, just blinks; there is no other movement, any more than if he was dead. I cannot bribe him, the maniac has my money. My letter of credit is in my trunk, and may never come—
will
never come, I know. Oh, what is to become of me! Pray for me, darling mother, pray for your poor Alfred. But it will do no good.”

4

In the morning Alfred came out looking scraggy and worn when the Major summoned him to an early breakfast. They fed their guards, they lit cigars, the Major loosened his tongue and set it going, and under its magic influence Alfred gradually and gratefully became hopeful, measurably cheerful, and almost happy once more.

But he would not leave the house. Siberia hung over him black and threatening, his appetite for sights was all gone, he could not have borne the shame of inspecting streets and galleries and churches with a soldier at each elbow and all the world stopping and staring and commenting—no, he would stay within and wait for the Berlin mail and his fate. So, all day long the Major stood gallantly by him in his room, with one soldier standing stiff and motionless against the door with his musket at his shoulder, and the other one drowsing in a chair outside; and all day long the faithful veteran spun campaign yarns, described battles, reeled off explosive anecdotes, with unconquerable energy and sparkle and resolution, and kept the scared student alive and his pulses functioning. The long day wore to a close, and the pair, followed by their guards, went down to the great dining-room and took their seats.

“The suspense will be over before long, now,” sighed poor Alfred. Just then a pair of Englishmen passed by, and one of them said, “So we’ll get no letters from Berlin to-night.”

Parrish’s breath began to fail him. The Englishmen seated themselves at a near-by table, and the other one said:

“No, it isn’t as bad as that.” Parrish’s breathing improved. “There is later telegraphic news. The accident did detain the train formidably, but that is all. It will arrive here three hours late to-night.”

Parrish did not get to the floor this time, for the Major jumped for him in time. He had been listening, and foresaw what would happen. He patted Parrish on the back, hoisted him out of the chair, and said, cheerfully:

“Come along, my boy, cheer up, there’s absolutely nothing to worry about. I know a way out. Bother the passport; let it lag a week if it wants to, we can do without it.”

Parrish was too sick to hear him; hope was gone, Siberia present; he moved off on legs of lead, upheld by the Major, who walked him to the American legation, heartening him on the way with assurances that on his recommendation the minister wouldn’t hesitate a moment to grant him a new passport.

“I had that card up my sleeve all the time,” he said. “The minister knows me—knows me familiarly—chummed together hours and hours under a pile of other wounded at Cold Harbor; been chummies ever since, in spirit, though we haven’t met much in the body. Cheer up, laddie, everything’s looking splendid! By gracious! I feel as cocky as a buck angel. Here we are, and our troubles are at an end! If we ever really had any.”

There, alongside the door, was the trade-mark of the richest and freest and mightiest republic of all the ages: the pine disk, with the planked eagle spread upon it, his head and shoulders among the stars, and his claws full of out-of-date war material; and at that sight the tears came into Alfred’s eyes, the pride of country rose in his heart, Hail Columbia boomed up in his breast, and all his fears and sorrows vanished away; for here he was safe, safe! not all the powers of the earth would venture to cross that threshold to lay a hand upon him!

For economy’s sake the mightiest republic’s legations in Europe consist of a room and a half on the ninth floor, when the tenth is occupied, and the legation furniture consists of a minister or an ambassador with a brakeman’s salary, a secretary of legation who sells matches and mends crockery for a living, a hired girl for interpreter and general utility, pictures of the American liners, a chromo of the reigning President, a desk, three chairs, kerosene-lamp, a cat, a clock, and a cuspidor with the motto, “In God We Trust.”

The party climbed up there, followed by the escort. A man sat at the desk writing official things on wrapping-paper with a nail. He rose and faced about; the cat climbed down and got under the desk; the hired girl squeezed herself up into the corner by the vodka-jug to make room; the soldiers squeezed themselves up against the wall alongside of her, with muskets at shoulder arms. Alfred was radiant with happiness and the sense of rescue.

The Major cordially shook hands with the official, rattled off his case in easy and fluent style, and asked for the desired passport.