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diff --git a/40607-8.txt b/40607-8.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 732c73a..0000000 --- a/40607-8.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,9486 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of Excuse Me!, by Rupert Hughes - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with -almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org - - -Title: Excuse Me! - -Author: Rupert Hughes - -Release Date: August 29, 2012 [EBook #40607] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EXCUSE ME! *** - - - - -Produced by Melissa McDaniel and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive) - - - - - - - -Transcriber's Note: - - Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have - been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. - - The book uses both "Doc." and "Doc". - - Italic text is denoted by _underscores_. - - - - -EXCUSE ME! - - [Illustration] - - - - - EXCUSE ME! - - _By_ RUPERT HUGHES - Author of "The Old Nest" - - WITH FIVE ILLUSTRATIONS - - A. L. BURT COMPANY - PUBLISHERS NEW YORK - - - - - Copyright, 1911, by - THE H. K. FLY COMPANY - - - - -CONTENTS - - - CHAPTER PAGE - - I. The Wreck of the Taxicab 9 - - II. The Early Birds and the Worm 16 - - III. In Darkest Chicago 26 - - IV. A Mouse and a Mountain 35 - - V. A Queen Among Women 47 - - VI. A Conspiracy in Satin 53 - - VII. The Masked Minister 60 - - VIII. A Mixed Pickle 65 - - IX. All Aboard! 75 - - X. Excess Baggage 84 - - XI. A Chance Rencounter 88 - - XII. The Needle in the Haystack 92 - - XIII. Hostilities Begin 99 - - XIV. The Dormitory on Wheels 103 - - XV. A Premature Divorce 106 - - XVI. Good Night, All! 115 - - XVII. Last Call for Breakfast 122 - - XVIII. In the Composite Car 128 - - XIX. Foiled! 139 - - XX. Foiled Again! 142 - - XXI. Matrimony To and Fro 147 - - XXII. In the Smoking Room 156 - - XXIII Through a Tunnel 164 - - XXIV. The Train Butcher 173 - - XXV. The Train Wrecker 180 - - XXVI. Delilah and the Conductor 186 - - XXVII. The Dog-on Dog Again 191 - - XXVIII. The Woman-Hater's Relapse 203 - - XXIX. Jealousy Comes Aboard 213 - - XXX. A Wedding on Wheels 222 - - XXXI. Foiled Yet Again 227 - - XXXII. The Empty Berth 233 - - XXXIII. Fresh Trouble Daily 237 - - XXXIV. The Complete Divorcer 252 - - XXXV. Mr. and Mrs. Little Jimmie 266 - - XXXVI. A Duel for a Bracelet 273 - - XXXVII. Down Brakes! 278 - - XXXVIII. Hands Up! 284 - - XXXIX. Wolves in the Fold 296 - - XL. A Hero in Spite of Himself 304 - - XLI. Clickety-Clickety-Clickety 308 - - - - -ILLUSTRATIONS - - - No tips were to be expected from such - transients _Frontispiece_ - - PAGE - - "Now it's my vacation, and I'm going to smoke - up" 62 - - Marjorie fairly forced the dog on him 94 - - Down upon the unsuspecting elopers came this - miraculous cloudburst of ironical rice 118 - - "Why, Richard--Chauncey!--er--Billy! I'm - amazed at you! Let go, or I'll scream!" 276 - - - - -EXCUSE ME! - - - - -CHAPTER I - -THE WRECK OF THE TAXICAB - - -The young woman in the taxicab scuttling frantically down the dark -street, clung to the arm of the young man alongside, as if she were -terrified at the lawbreaking, neck-risking speed. But evidently some -greater fear goaded her, for she gasped: - -"Can't he go a little faster?" - -"Can't you go a little faster?" The young man alongside howled as he -thrust his head and shoulders through the window in the door. - -But the self-created taxi-gale swept his voice aft, and the taut -chauffeur perked his ear in vain to catch the vanishing syllables. - -"What's that?" he roared. - -"Can't you go a little faster?" - -The indignant charioteer simply had to shoot one barbed glare of -reproach into that passenger. He turned his head and growled: - -"Say, do youse want to lose me me license?" - -For just one instant he turned his head. One instant was just enough. -The unguarded taxicab seized the opportunity, bolted from the track, -and flung, as it were, its arms drunkenly around a perfectly -respectable lamppost attending strictly to its business on the curb. -There ensued a condensed Fourth of July. Sparks flew, tires exploded, -metals ripped, two wheels spun in air and one wheel, neatly severed at -the axle, went reeling down the sidewalk half a block before it leaned -against a tree and rested. - -A dozen or more miracles coincided to save the passengers from injury. -The young man found himself standing on the pavement with the unhinged -door still around his neck. The young woman's arms were round his -neck. Her head was on his shoulder. It had reposed there often enough, -but never before in the street under a lamppost. The chauffeur found -himself in the road, walking about on all fours, like a bewildered -quadruped. - -Evidently some overpowering need for speed possessed the young woman, -for even now she did not scream, she did not faint, she did not -murmur, "Where am I?" She simply said: - -"What time is it, honey?" - -And the young man, not realizing how befuddled he really was, or how -his hand trembled, fetched out his watch and held it under the glow of -the lamppost, which was now bent over in a convenient but disreputable -attitude. - -"A quarter to ten, sweetheart. Plenty of time for the train." - -"But the minister, honey! What about the minister? How are we going to -get to the minister?" - -The consideration of this riddle was interrupted by a muffled hubbub -of yelps, whimpers, and canine hysterics. Immediately the young woman -forgot ministers, collisions, train-schedules--everything. She showed -her first sign of panic. - -"Snoozleums! Get Snoozleums!" - -They groped about in the topsy-turvy taxicab, rummaged among a jumble -of suitcases, handbags, umbrellas and minor _impedimenta_, and fished -out a small dog-basket with an inverted dog inside. Snoozleums was -ridiculous in any position, but as he slid tail foremost from the -wicker basket, he resembled nothing so much as a heap of tangled yarn -tumbling out of a work-basket. He was an indignant skein, and had much -to say before he consented to snuggle under his mistress' chin. - -About this time the chauffeur came prowling into view. He was too -deeply shocked to emit any language of the garage. He was too deeply -shocked to achieve any comment more brilliant than: - -"That mess don't look much like it ever was a taxicab, does it?" - -The young man shrugged his shoulders, and stared up and down the long -street for another. The young woman looked sorrowfully at the wreck, -and queried: - -"Do you think you can make it go?" - -The chauffeur glanced her way, more in pity for her whole sex than in -scorn for this one type, as he mumbled: - -"Make it go? It'll take a steam winch a week to unwrap it from that -lamppost." - -The young man apologized. - -"I oughtn't to have yelled at you." - -He was evidently a very nice young man. Not to be outdone in courtesy, -the chauffeur retorted: - -"I hadn't ought to have turned me head." - -The young woman thought, "What a nice chauffeur!" but she gasped: -"Great heavens, you're hurt!" - -"It's nuttin' but a scratch on me t'umb." - -"Lend me a clean handkerchief, Harry." - -The young man whipped out his reserve supply, and in a trice it was a -bandage on the chauffeur's hand. The chauffeur decided that the young -woman was even nicer than the young man. But he could not settle on a -way to say to it. So he said nothing, and grinned sheepishly as he -said it. - -The young man named Harry was wondering how they were to proceed. He -had already studied the region with dismay, when the girl resolved: - -"We'll have to take another taxi, Harry." - -"Yes, Marjorie, but we can't take it till we get it." - -"You might wait here all night wit'out ketchin' a glimp' of one," the -chauffeur ventured. "I come this way because you wanted me to take a -short cut." - -"It's the longest short cut I ever saw," the young man sighed, as he -gazed this way and that. - -The place of their shipwreck was so deserted that not even a crowd had -gathered. The racket of the collision had not brought a single -policeman. They were in a dead world of granite warehouses, wholesale -stores and factories, all locked and forbidding, and full of silent -gloom. - -In the daytime this was a big trade-artery of Chicago, and all day -long it was thunderous with trucks and commerce. At night it was -Pompeii, so utterly abandoned that the night watchmen rarely slept -outside, and no footpad found it worth while to set up shop. - -The three castaways stared every which way, and every which way was -peace. The ghost of a pedestrian or two hurried by in the far -distance. A cat or two went furtively in search of warfare or romance. -The lampposts stretched on and on in both directions in two forevers. - -In the faraway there was a muffled rumble and the faint clang of a -bell. Somewhere a street car was bumping along its rails. - -"Our only hope," said Harry. "Come along, Marjorie." - -He handed the chauffeur five dollars as a poultice to his wounds, -tucked the girl under one arm and the dog-basket under the other, and -set out, calling back to the chauffeur: - -"Good night!" - -"Good night!" the girl called back. - -"Good night!" the chauffeur echoed. He stood watching them with the -tender gaze that even a chauffeur may feel for young love hastening to -a honeymoon. - -He stood beaming so, till their footsteps died in the silence. Then he -turned back to the chaotic remnants of his machine. He worked at it -hopelessly for some time, before he had reason to look within. There -he found the handbags and suitcases, umbrellas and other equipment. He -ran to the corner to call after the owners. They were as absent of -body as they had been absent of mind. - -He remembered the street-number they had given him as their -destination. He waited till at last a yawning policeman sauntered that -way like a lonely beach patrol, and left him in charge while he went -to telephone his garage for a wagon and a wrecking crew. - -It was close on midnight before he reached the number his fares had -given him. It was a parsonage leaning against a church. He rang the -bell and finally produced from an upper window a nightshirt topped by -a frowsy head. He explained the situation, and his possession of -certain properties belonging to parties unknown except by their first -names. The clergyman drowsily murmured: - -"Oh, yes. I remember. The young man was Lieutenant Henry Mallory, and -he said he would stop here with a young lady, and get married on the -way to the train. But they never turned up." - -"Lieutenant Mallory, eh? Where could I reach him?" - -"He said he was leaving to-night for the Philippines." - -"The Philippines! Well, I'll be----" - -The minister closed the window just in time. - - - - -CHAPTER II - -THE EARLY BIRDS AND THE WORM - - -In the enormous barn of the railroad station stood many strings of -cars, as if a gigantic young Gulliver stabled his toys there and -invisibly amused himself; now whisking this one away, now backing that -other in. - -Some of the trains were noble equipages, fitted to glide across the -whole map with cargoes of Lilliputian millionaires and their -Lilliputian ladies. Others were humble and shabby linked-up -day-coaches and dingy smoking-cars, packed with workers, like ants. - -Cars are mere vehicles, but locomotives have souls. The express -engines roll in or stalk out with grandeur and ease. They are like -emperors. They seem to look with scorn at the suburban engines -snorting and grunting and shaking the arched roof with their plebeian -choo-choo as they puff from shop to cottage and back. - -The trainmen take their cue from the behavior of their locomotives. -The conductor of a transcontinental nods to the conductor of a -shuttle-train with less cordiality than to a brakeman of his own. The -engineers of the limiteds look like senators in overalls. They are -far-traveled men, leading a mighty life of adventure. They are pilots -of land-ships across land-oceans. They have a right to a certain -condescension of manner. - -But no one feels or shows so much arrogance as the sleeping car -porters. They cannot pronounce "supercilious," but they can be it. -Their disdain for the entire crew of any train that carries merely -day-coaches or half-baked chair-cars, is expressed as only a darkey in -a uniform can express disdain for poor white trash. - -Of all the haughty porters that ever curled a lip, the haughtiest by -far was the dusky attendant in the San Francisco sleeper on the -Trans-American Limited. His was the train of trains in that whole -system. His car the car of cars. His passengers the surpassengers of -all. - -His train stood now waiting to set forth upon a voyage of two thousand -miles, a journey across seven imperial States, a journey that should -end only at that marge where the continent dips and vanishes under the -breakers of the Pacific Ocean. - -At the head of his car, with his little box-step waiting for the foot -of the first arrival, the porter stood, his head swelling under his -cap, his breast swelling beneath his blue blouse, with its brass -buttons like reflections of his own eyes. His name was Ellsworth -Jefferson, but he was called anything from "Poarr-turr" to "Pawtah," -and he usually did not come when he was called. - -To-night he was wondering perhaps what passengers, with what -dispositions, would fall to his lot. Perhaps he was wondering what his -Chicago sweetheart would be doing in the eight days before his return. -Perhaps he was wondering what his San Francisco sweetheart had been -doing in the five days since he left her, and how she would pass the -three days that must intervene before he reached her again. - -He had Othello's ebon color. Did he have Othello's green eye? - -Whatever his thoughts, he chatted gaily enough with his neighbor and -colleague of the Portland sleeper. - -Suddenly he stopped in the midst of a soaring chuckle. - -"Lordy, man, looky what's a-comin'!" - -The Portland porter turned to gaze. - -"I got my fingers crossed." - -"I hope you git him." - -"I hope I don't." - -"He'll work you hard and cuss you out, and he won't give you even a -Much Obliged." - -"That's right. He ain't got a usher to carry his things. And he's got -enough to fill a van." - -The oncomer was plainly of English origin. It takes all sorts of -people to make up the British Empire, and there is no sort -lacking--glorious or pretty, or sour or sweet. But this was the type -of English globe-trotter that makes himself as unpopular among -foreigners as he is among his own people. He is almost as unendurable -as the Americans abroad who twang their banjo brag through Europe, and -berate France and Italy for their innocence of buckwheat cakes. - -The two porters regarded Mr. Harold Wedgewood with dread, as he bore -down on them. He was almost lost in the plethora of his own luggage. -He asked for the San Francisco sleeper, and the Portland porter had to -turn away to smother his gurgling relief. - -Ellsworth Jefferson's heart sank. He made a feeble effort at -self-protection. The Pullman conductor not being present at the -moment, he inquired: - -"Have you got yo' ticket?" - -"Of cawse." - -"Could I see it?" - -"Of cawse not. Too much trouble to fish it out." - -The porter was fading. "Do you remember yo' numba?" - -"Of cawse. Take these." He began to pile things on the porter like a -mountain unloading an avalanche. The porter stumbled as he clambered -up the steps, and squeezed through the strait path of the corridor -into the slender aisle. He turned again and again to question the -invader, but he was motioned and bunted down the car, till he was -halted with a "This will do." - -The Englishman selected section three for his own. The porter -ventured: "Are you sho' this is yo' numba?" - -"Of cawse I'm shaw. How dare you question my----" - -"I wasn't questionin' you, boss, I was just astin' you." - -He resigned himself to the despot, and began to transfer his burdens -to the seat. But he did nothing to the satisfaction of the Englishman. -Everything must be placed otherwise; the catch-all here, the -portmanteau there, the Gladstone there, the golfsticks there, the -greatcoat there, the raincoat there. The porter was puffing like a -donkey-engine, and mutiny was growing in his heart. His last -commission was the hanging up of the bowler hat. - -He stood on the arm of the seat to reach the high hook. From here he -paused to glare down with an attempt at irony. - -"Is they anything else?" - -"No. You may get down." - -The magnificent patronage of this wilted the porter completely. He -returned to the lower level, and shuffled along the aisle in a trance. -He was quickly recalled by a sharp: - -"Pawtah!" - -"Yassah!" - -"What time does this bally train start?" - -"Ten-thutty, sah." - -"But it's only ten now." - -"Yassah. It'll be ten-thutty a little later." - -"Do you mean to tell me that I've got to sit hyah for half an -hour--just waitin'?" - -The porter essayed another bit of irony: - -"Well," he drawled, "I might tell the conducta you're ready. And mebbe -he'd start the train. But the time-table says ten-thutty." - -He watched the effect of his satire, but it fell back unheeded from -the granite dome of the Englishman, whose only comment was: - -"Oh, never mind. I'll wait." - -The porter cast his eyes up in despair, and turned away, once more to -be recalled. - -"Oh, pawtah!" - -"Yassah!" - -"I think we'll put on my slippahs." - -"Will we?" - -"You might hand me that large bag. No, stupid, the othah one. You -might open it. No, its in the othah one. Ah, that's it. You may set it -down." - -Mr. Wedgewood brought forth a soft cap and a pair of red slippers. The -porter made another effort to escape, his thoughts as black as his -face. Again the relentless recall: - -"Oh, pawtah, I think we'll unbutton my boots." - -He was too weak to murmur "Yassah." He simply fell on one knee and got -to work. - -There was a witness to his helpless rage--a newcomer, the American -counterpart of the Englishman in all that makes travel difficult for -the fellow travelers. Ira Lathrop was zealous to resent anything short -of perfection, quick and loud of complaint, apparently impossible to -please. - -In everything else he was the opposite of the Englishman. He was -burly, middle-aged, rough, careless in attire, careless of speech--as -uncouth and savage as one can well be who is plainly a man of means. - -It was not enough that a freeborn Afro-American should be caught -kneeling to an Englishman. But when he had escaped this penance, and -advanced hospitably to the newcomer, he must be greeted with a snarl. - -"Say, are you the porter of this car, or that man's nurse?" - -"I can't tell yet. What's yo' numba, please?" - -The answer was the ticket. The porter screwed up his eyes to read the -pencilled scrawl. - -"Numba se'm. Heah she is, boss." - -"Right next to a lot of women, I'll bet. Couldn't you put me in the -men's end of the car?" - -"Not ve'y well, suh. I reckon the cah is done sold out." - -With a growl of rage, Ira Lathrop slammed into the seat his entire -hand baggage, one ancient and rusty valise. - -The porter gazed upon him with increased depression. The passenger -list had opened inauspiciously with two of the worst types of -travelers the Anglo-Saxon race has developed. - -But their anger was not their worst trait in the porter's eyes. He -was, in a limited way, an expert in human character. - -When you meet a stranger you reveal your own character in what you ask -about his. With some, the first question is, "Who are his people?" -With others, "What has he achieved?" With others, "How much is he -worth?" Each gauges his cordiality according to his estimate. - -The porter was not curious on any of these points. He showed a -democratic indifference to them. His one vital inquiry was: - -"How much will he tip?" - -His inspection of his first two charges promised small returns. He -buttoned up his cordiality, and determined to waste upon them the -irreducible minimum of attention. - -It would take at least a bridal couple to restore the balance. But -bridal couples in their first bloom rarely fell to the lot of that -porter, for what bridal couple wants to lock itself in with a crowd -of passengers for the first seventy-two hours of wedded bliss? - -The porter banished the hope as a vanity. Little he knew how eagerly -the young castaways from that wrecked taxicab desired to be a bridal -couple, and to catch this train. - -But the Englishman was restive again: - -"Pawtah! I say, pawtah!" - -"Yassah!" - -"What time are we due in San Francisco?" - -"San Francisco? San Francisco? We are doo thah the evenin' of the -fo'th day. This bein' Monday, that ought to bring us in abote Thuzzday -evenin'." - -The Yankee felt called upon to check the foreign usurper. - -"Porrterr!" - -"Yassah!" - -"Don't let that fellow monopolize you. He probably won't tip you at -all." - -The porter grew confidential: - -"Oh, I know his kind, sah. They don't tip you for what you do do, but -they're ready letter writers to the Sooperintendent for what you don't -do." - -"Pawtah! I say, pawtah!" - -"Here, porrterr." - -The porter tried to imitate the Irish bird, and be in two places at -once. The American had a coin in his hand. The porter caught the -gleam of it, and flitted thither. The Yankee growled: - -"Don't forget that I'm on the train, and when we get to 'Frisco there -may be something more." - -The porter had the coin in his hand. Its heft was light. He sighed: "I -hope so." - -The Englishman was craning his head around owlishly to ask: - -"I say, pawtah, does this train ever get wrecked?" - -"Well, it hasn't yet," and he murmured to the Yankee, "but I has -hopes." - -The Englishman's voice was querulous again. - -"I say, pawtah, open a window, will you? The air is ghastly, -abso-ripping-lutely ghastly." - -The Yankee growled: - -"No wonder we had the Revolutionary War!" - -Then he took from his pocket an envelope addressed to Ira Lathrop & -Co., and from the envelope he took a contract, and studied it grimly. -The envelope bore a Chinese stamp. - -The porter, as he struggled with an obstinate window, wondered what -sort of passenger fate would send him next. - - - - -CHAPTER III - -IN DARKEST CHICAGO - - -The castaways from the wrecked taxicab hurried along the doleful -street. Both of them knew their Chicago, but this part of it was not -their Chicago. - -They hailed a pedestrian, to ask where the nearest street car line -might be, and whither it might run. He answered indistinctly from a -discreet distance, as he hastened away. Perhaps he thought their -question merely a footpad's introduction to a sandbagging episode. In -Chicago at night one never knows. - -"As near as I can make out what he said, Marjorie," the lieutenant -pondered aloud, "we walk straight ahead till we come to Umtyump -Street, and there we find a Rarara car that will take us to Bloptyblop -Avenue. I never heard of any such streets, did you?" - -"Never," she panted, as she jog-trotted alongside his military pace. -"Let's take the first car we meet, and perhaps the conductor can put -us off at the street where the minister lives." - -"Perhaps." There was not much confidence in that "perhaps." - -When they reached the street-carred street, they found two tracks, but -nothing occupying them, as far as they could peer either way. A small -shopkeeper in a tiny shop proved to be a delicatessen merchant so -busily selling foreign horrors to aliens, that they learned nothing -from him. - -At length, in the far-away, they made out a headlight, and heard the -grind and squeal of a car. Lieutenant Mallory waited for it, watch in -hand. He boosted Marjorie's elbow aboard and bombarded the conductor -with questions. But the conductor had no more heard of their street -than they had of his. Their agitation did not disturb his stoic calm, -but he invited them to come along to the next crossing, where they -could find another car and more learned conductors; or, what promised -better, perhaps a cab. - -He threw Marjorie into a panic by ordering her to jettison Snoozleums, -but the lieutenant bought his soul for a small price, and overlooked -the fact that he did not ring up their fares. - -The young couple squeezed into a seat and talked anxiously in sharp -whispers. - -"Wouldn't it be terrible, Harry, if, just as we got to the minister's, -we should find papa there ahead of us, waiting to forbid the bands, or -whatever it is? Wouldn't it be just terrible?" - -"Yes, it would, honey, but it doesn't seem probable. There are -thousands of ministers in Chicago. He could never find ours. Fact is. -I doubt if we find him ourselves." - -Her clutch tightened till he would have winced, if he had not been a -soldier. - -"What do you mean, Harry?" - -"Well, in the first place, honey, look what time it is. Hardly more -than time enough to get the train, to say nothing of hunting for that -preacher and standing up through a long rigmarole." - -"Why, Harry Mallory, are you getting ready to jilt me?" - -"Indeed I'm not--not for worlds, honey, but I've got to get that -train, haven't I?" - -"Couldn't you wait over one train--just one tiny little train?" - -"My own, own honey love, you know it's impossible! You must remember -that I've already waited over three trains while you tried to make up -your mind." - -"And you must remember, darling, that it's no easy matter for a girl -to decide to sneak away from home and be married secretly, and go all -the way out to that hideous Manila with no trousseau and no wedding -presents and no anything." - -"I know it isn't, and I waited patiently while you got up the courage. -But now there are no more trains. I shudder to think of this train -being late. We're not due in San Francisco till Thursday evening, and -my transport sails at sunrise Friday morning. Oh, Lord, what if I -should miss that transport! What if I should!" - -"What if we should miss the minister?" - -"It begins to look a great deal like it." - -"But, Harry, you wouldn't desert me now--abandon me to my fate?" - -"Well, it isn't exactly like abandonment, seeing that you could go -home to your father and mother in a taxicab." - -She stared at him in horror. - -"So you don't want me for your wife! You've changed your mind! You're -tired of me already! Only an hour together, and you're sick of your -bargain! You're anxious to get rid of me! You----" - -"Oh, honey, I want you more than anything else on earth, but I'm a -soldier, dearie, a mere lieutenant in the regular army, and I'm the -slave of the Government. I've gone through West Point, and they won't -let me resign respectably and if I did, we'd starve. They wouldn't -accept my resignation, but they'd be willing to courtmartial me and -dismiss me the service in disgrace. Then you wouldn't want to marry -me--and I shouldn't have any way of supporting you if you did. I only -know one trade, and that's soldiering." - -"Don't call it a trade, beloved, it's the noblest profession in all -the world, and you're the noblest soldier that ever was, and in a year -or two you'll be the biggest general in the army." - -He could not afford to shatter such a devout illusion or quench the -light of faith in those beloved and loving eyes. He tacitly admitted -his ability to be promoted commander-in-chief in a year or two. He -allowed that glittering possibility to remain, used it as a basis for -argument. - -"Then, dearest, you must help me to do my duty." - -She clasped his upper arm as if it were an altar and she an Iphigenia -about to be sacrificed to save the army. And she murmured with utter -heroism: - -"I will! Do what you like with me!" - -He squeezed her hand between his biceps and his ribs and accepted the -offering in a look drenched with gratitude. Then he said, -matter-of-factly: - -"We'll see how much time we have when we get to--whatever the name of -that street is." - -The car jolted and wailed on its way like an old drifting rocking -chair. The motorman was in no hurry. The passengers seemed to have no -occasion for haste. Somebody got on or got off at almost every corner, -and paused for conversation while the car waited patiently. But -eventually the conductor put his head in and drawled: - -"Hay! here's where you get off at." - -They hastened to debark and found themselves in a narrow, -gaudily-lighted region where they saw a lordly transfer-distributor, a -profound scholar in Chicago streets. He informed them that the -minister's street lay far back along the path they had come; they -should have taken a car in the opposite direction, transferred at some -remote center, descended at some unheard-of street, walked three -blocks one way and four another, and there they would have been. - -Mallory looked at his watch, and Marjorie's hopes dropped like a -wrecked aeroplane, for he grimly asked how long it would take them to -reach the railroad station. - -"Well, you'd ought to make it in forty minutes," the transfer agent -said--and added, cynically, "if the car makes schedule." - -"Good Lord, the train starts in twenty minutes!" - -"Well, I tell you--take this here green car to Wexford Avenoo--there's -usually a taxicab or two standin' there." - -"Thank you. Hop on, Marjorie." - -Marjorie hopped on, and they sat down, Mallory with eyes and thoughts -on nothing but the watch he kept in his hand. - -During this tense journey the girl perfected her soul for graceful -martyrdom. - -"I'll go to the train with you, Harry, and then you can send me home -in a taxicab." - -Her nether lip trembled and her eyes were filmed, but they were brave, -and her voice was so tender that it wooed his mind from his watch. He -gazed at her, and found her so dear, so devoted and so pitifully -exquisite, that he was almost overcome by an impulse to gather her -into his arms there and then, indifferent to the immediate passengers -or to his far-off military superiors. An hour ago they were young -lovers in all the lilt and thrill of elopement. She had clung to him -in the gloaming of their taxicab, as it sped like a genie at their -whim to the place where the minister would unite their hands and raise -his own in blessing. Thence the new husband would have carried the new -wife away, his very own, soul and body, duty and beauty. Then, ah, -then in their minds the future was an unwaning honeymoon, the journey -across the continent a stroll along a lover's lane, the Pacific ocean -a garden lake, and the Philippines a chain of Fortunate Isles decreed -especially for their Eden. And then the taxicab encountered a -lamppost. They thought they had merely wrecked a motor car--and lo, -they had wrecked a Paradise. - -The railroad ceased to be a lover's lane and became a lingering -torment; the ocean was a weltering Sahara, and the Philippines a Dry -Tortugas of exile. - -Mallory realized for the first time what heavy burdens he had taken on -with his shoulder straps; what a dismal life of restrictions and -hardships an officer's life is bound to be. It was hard to obey the -soulless machinery of discipline, to be a brass-buttoned slave. He -felt all the hot, quick resentment that turns a faithful soldier into -a deserter. But it takes time to evolve a deserter, and Mallory had -only twenty minutes. The handcuffs and leg-irons of discipline hobbled -him. He was only a little cog in a great clock, and the other wheels -were impinging on him and revolving in spite of himself. - -In the close-packed seats where they were jostled and stared at, the -soldier could not even attempt to explain to his fascinated bride the -war of motives in his breast. He could not voice the passionate -rebellion her beauty had whipped up in his soul. Perhaps if Romeo and -Juliet had been forced to say farewell on a Chicago street car instead -of a Veronese balcony, their language would have lacked savor, too. - -Perhaps young Mr. Montague and young Miss Capulet, instead of wailing, -"No, that is not the lark whose notes do beat the vaulty heaven so -high above our heads," would have done no better than Mr. Mallory and -Miss Newton. In any case, the best these two could squeeze out was: - -"It's just too bad, honey." - -"But I guess it can't be helped, dear." - -"It's a mean old world, isn't it?" - -"Awful!" - -And then they must pile out into the street again so lost in woe that -they did not know how they were trampled or elbowed. Marjorie's -despair was so complete that it paralyzed instinct. She forgot -Snoozleums! A thoughtful passenger ran out and tossed the basket into -Mallory's arms even as the car moved off. - -Fortune relented a moment and they found a taxicab waiting where they -had expected to find it. Once more they were cosy in the flying -twilight, but their grief was their only baggage, and the clasp of -their hands talked all the talk there was. - -Anxiety within anxiety tormented them and they feared another wreck. -But as they swooped down upon the station, a kind-faced tower clock -beamed the reassurance that they had three minutes to spare. - -The taxicab drew up and halted, but they did not get out. They were -kissing good-byes, fervidly and numerously, while a grinning -station-porter winked at the winking chauffeur. - -Marjorie simply could not have done with farewells. - -"I'll go to the gate with you," she said. - -He told the chauffeur to wait and take the young lady home. The -lieutenant looked so honest and the girl so sad that the chauffeur -simply touched his cap, though it was not his custom to allow strange -fares to vanish into crowded stations, leaving behind nothing more -negotiable than instructions to wait. - - - - -CHAPTER IV - -A MOUSE AND A MOUNTAIN - - -All the while the foiled elopers were eloping, the San Francisco -sleeper was filling up. It had been the receptacle of assorted lots of -humanity tumbling into it from all directions, with all sorts of -souls, bodies, and destinations. - -The porter received each with that expert eye of his. His car was his -laboratory. A railroad journey is a sort of test-tube of character; -strange elements meet under strange conditions and make strange -combinations. The porter could never foresee the ingredients of any -trip, nor their actions and reactions. - -He had no sooner established Mr. Wedgewood of London and Mr. Ira -Lathrop of Chicago, in comparative repose, than his car was invaded by -a woman who flung herself into the first seat. She was flushed with -running, and breathing hard, but she managed one gasp of relief: - -"Thank goodness, I made it in time." - -The mere sound of a woman's voice in the seat back of him was enough -to disperse Ira Lathrop. With not so much as a glance backward to see -what manner of woman it might be, he jammed his contract into his -pocket, seized his newspapers and retreated to the farthest end of the -car, jouncing down into berth number one, like a sullen snapping -turtle. - -Miss Anne Gattle's modest and homely valise had been brought aboard by -a leisurely station usher, who set it down and waited with a speaking -palm outstretched. She had her tickets in her hand, but transferred -them to her teeth while she searched for money in a handbag old -fashioned enough to be called a reticule. - -The usher closed his fist on the pittance she dropped into it and -departed without comment. The porter advanced on her with a demand for -"Tickets, please." - -She began to ransack her reticule with flurried haste, taking out of -it a small purse, opening that, closing it, putting it back, taking it -out, searching the reticule through, turning out a handkerchief, a few -hairpins, a few trunk keys, a baggage check, a bottle of salts, a card -or two and numerous other maidenly articles, restoring them to place, -looking in the purse again, restoring that, closing the reticule, -setting it down, shaking out a book she carried, opening her old -valise, going through certain white things blushingly, closing it -again, shaking her skirts, and shaking her head in bewilderment. - -She was about to open the reticule again, when the porter exclaimed: - -"I see it! Don't look no mo'. I see it!" - -When she cast up her eyes in despair, her hatbrim had been elevated -enough to disclose the whereabouts of the tickets. With a murmured -apology, he removed them from her teeth and held them under the light. -After a time he said: - -"As neah as I can make out from the--the undigested po'tion of this -ticket, yo' numba is six." - -"That's it--six!" - -"That's right up this way." - -"Let me sit here till I get my breath," she pleaded, "I ran so hard to -catch the train." - -"Well, you caught it good and strong." - -"I'm so glad. How soon do we start?" - -"In about half a houah." - -"Really? Well, better half an hour too soon than half a minute too -late." She said it with such a copy-book primness that the porter set -her down as a school-teacher. It was not a bad guess. She was a -missionary. With a pupil-like shyness he volunteered: - -"Yo' berth is all ready whenever you wishes to go to baid." He caught -her swift blush and amended it to--"to retiah." - -"Retire?--before all the car?" said Miss Anne Gattle, with prim -timidity. "No, thank you! I intend to sit up till everybody else has -retired." - -The porter retired. Miss Gattle took out a bit of more or less useful -fancy stitching and set to work like another Dorcas. Her needle had -not dived in and emerged many times before she was holding it up as a -weapon of defense against a sudden human mountain that threatened to -crush her. - -A vague round face, huge and red as a rising moon, dawned before her -eyes and from it came an uncertain voice: - -"Esscuzhe me, mad'm, no 'fensh intended." - -The words and the breath that carried them gave the startled spinster -an instant proof that her vis-à-vis did not share her Prohibition -principles or practices. She regarded the elephant with mouselike -terror, and the elephant regarded the mouse with elephantine fright, -then he removed himself from her landscape as quickly as he could and -lurched along the aisle, calling out merrily to the porter: - -"Chauffeur! chauffeur! don't go so fasht 'round these corners." - -He collided with a small train-boy singing his nasal lay, but it was -the behemoth and not the train-boy that collapsed into a seat, -sprawling as helplessly as a mammoth oyster on a table-cloth. - -The porter rushed to his aid and hoisted him to his feet with an -uneasy sense of impending trouble. He felt as if someone had left a -monstrous baby on his doorstep, but all he said was: - -"Tickets, please." - -There ensued a long search, fat, flabby hands flopping and fumbling -from pocket to pocket. Once more the porter was the discoverer. - -"I see it. Don't look no mo'. Here it is--up in yo' hatband." He -lifted it out and chuckled. "Had it right next his brains and couldn't -rememba!" He took up the appropriately huge luggage of the bibulous -wanderer and led him to the other end of the aisle. - -"Numba two is yours, sah. Right heah--all nice and cosy, and already -made up." - -The big man looked through the curtains into the cabined confinement, -and groaned: - -"That! Haven't you got a man's size berth?" - -"Sorry, sah. That's as big a bunk as they is on the train." - -"Have I got to be locked up in that pigeon-hole for--for how many days -is it to Reno?" - -"Reno?" The porter greeted that meaningful name with a smile. "We're -doo in Reno the--the--the mawnin' of the fo'th day, sah. Yassah." He -put the baggage down and started away, but the sad fat man seized his -hand, with great emotion: - -"Don't leave me all alone in there, porter, for I'm a broken-hearted -man." - -"Is that so? Too bad, sah." - -"Were you ever a broken-hearted man, porter?" - -"Always, sah." - -"Did you ever put your trust in a false-hearted woman?" - -"Often, sah." - -"Was she ever true to you, porter?" - -"Never, sah." - -"Porter, we are partners in mis-sis-ery." - -And he wrung the rough, black hand with a solemnity that embarrassed -the porter almost as much as it would have embarrassed the passenger -himself if he could have understood what he was doing. The porter -disengaged himself with a patient but hasty: - -"I'm afraid you'll have to 'scuse me. I got to he'p the other -passengers on bode." - -"Don't let me keep you from your duty. Duty is the--the----" But he -could not remember what duty was, and he would have dropped off to -sleep, if he had not been startled by a familiar voice which the -porter had luckily escaped. - -"Pawtah! Pawtah! Can't you raise this light--or rather can't you lower -it? Pawtah! This light is so infernally dim I can't read." - -To the Englishman's intense amazement his call brought to him not the -porter, but a rising moon with the profound query: - -"Whass a li'l thing like dim light, when the light of your life has -gone out?" - -"I beg your pardon?" - -Without further invitation, the mammoth descended on the Englishman's -territory. - -"I'm a broken-hearted man, Mr.--Mr.--I didn't get your name." - -"Er--ah--I dare say." - -"Thanks, I will sit down." He lifted a great carry-all and airily -tossed it into the aisle, set the Gladstone on the lap of the -infuriated Englishman, and squeezed into the seat opposite, making a -sad mix-up of knees. - -"My name's Wellington. Ever hear of li'l Jimmie Wellington? That's -me." - -"Any relation to the Duke?" - -"Nagh!" - -He no longer interested Mr. Wedgewood. But Mr. Wellington was not -aware that he was being snubbed. He went right on getting acquainted: - -"Are you married, Mr.--Mr.----?" - -"No!" - -"My heartfelt congrashlations. Hang on to your luck, my boy. Don't let -any female take it away from you." He slapped the Englishman on the -elbow amiably, and his prisoner was too stifled with wrath to emit -more than one feeble "Pawtah!" - -Mr. Wellington mused on aloud: "Oh, if I had only remained shingle. -But she was so beautiful and she swore to love, honor and obey. Mrs. -Wellington is a queen among women, mind you, and I have nothing to say -against her except that she has the temper of a tarantula." He -italicized the word with a light fillip of his left hand along the -back of the seat. He did not notice that he filliped the angry head of -Mr. Ira Lathrop in the next seat. He went on with his portrait of his -wife. "She has the 'stravaganza of a sultana"--another fillip for Mr. -Lathrop--"the zhealousy of a cobra, the flirtatiousness of a humming -bird." Mr. Lathrop was glaring round like a man-eating tiger, but -Wellington talked on. "She drinks, swears, and smokes cigars, -otherwise she's fine--a queen among women." - -Neither this amazing vision of womankind, nor this beautiful example -of longing for confession and sympathy awakened a response in the -Englishman's frozen bosom. His only action was another violent effort -to disengage his cramped knees from the knees of his tormentor; his -only comment a vain and weakening cry for help, "Pawtah! Pawtah!" - -Wellington's bleary, teary eyes were lighted with triumph. "Finally I -saw I couldn't stand it any longer so I bought a tic-hic-et to Reno. I -'stablish a residensh in six monfths--get a divorce--no shcandal. Even -m'own wife won't know anything about it." - -The Englishman was almost attracted by this astounding picture of the -divorce laws in America. It sounded so barbarically quaint that he -leaned forward to hear more, but Mr. Wellington's hand, like a -mischievous runaway, had wandered back into the shaggy locks atop of -Mr. Lathrop. His right hand did not let his left know what it was -doing, but proceeded quite independently to grip as much of Lathrop's -hair as it would hold. - -Then as Mr. Wellington shook with joy at the prospect of "Dear old -Reno!" he began unconsciously to draw Ira Lathrop's head after his -hair across the seat. The pain of it shot the tears into Lathrop's -eyes, and as he writhed and twisted he was too full of profanity to -get any one word out. - -When he managed to wrench his skull free, he was ready to murder his -tormentor. But as soon as he confronted the doddering and blinking -toper, he was helpless. Drunken men have always been treated with -great tenderness in America, and when Wellington, seeing Lathrop's -white hair, exclaimed with rapture: "Why, hello, Pop! here's Pop!" the -most that Lathrop could do was to tear loose those fat, groping hands, -slap them like a school teacher, and push the man away. - -But that one shove upset Mr. Wellington and sent him toppling down -upon the pit of the Englishman's stomach. - -For Wedgewood, it was suddenly as if all the air had been removed from -the world. He gulped like a fish drowning for lack of water. He was a -long while getting breath enough for words, but his first words were -wild demands that Mr. Wellington remove himself forthwith. - -Wellington accepted the banishment with the sorrowful eyes of a dying -deer, and tottered away wagging his fat head and wailing: - -"I'm a broken-hearted man, and nobody gives a ----." At this point he -caromed over into Ira Lathrop's berth and was welcomed with a savage -roar: - -"What the devil's the matter with you?" - -"I'm a broken-hearted man, that's all." - -"Oh, is that all," Lathrop snapped, vanishing behind his newspaper. -The desperately melancholy seeker for a word of human kindness bleared -at the blurred newspaper wall a while, then waded into a new attempt -at acquaintance. Laying his hand on Lathrop's knee, he stammered: -"Esscuzhe me, Mr.--Mr.----" - -From behind the newspaper came a stingy answer: "Lathrop's my name--if -you want to know." - -"Pleased to meet you, Mr. Lothrop." - -"Lathrop!" - -"Lathrop! My name's Wellington. Li'l Jimmie Wellington. Ever hear of -me?" - -He waited with the genial smile of a famous man; the smile froze at -Lathrop's curt, "Don't think so." - -He tried again: "Ever hear of well-known Chicago belle, Mrs. Jimmie -Wellington?" - -"Yes, I've heard of her!" There was an ominous grin in the tone. - -Wellington waved his hand with modest pride. "Well, I'm Jimmie." - -"Serves you right." - -This jolt was so discourteous that Wellington decided to protest: -"Mister Latham!" - -"Lathrop!" - -The name came out with a whip-snap. He tried to echo it, "La-_throp_!" -"I don't like that Throp. That's a kind of a seasick name, isn't it?" -Finding the newspaper still intervening between him and his prey, he -calmly tore it down the middle and pushed through it like a moon -coming through a cloud. "But a man can't change his name by marrying, -can he? That's the worst of it. A woman can. Think of a heartless -cobra di capello in woman's form wearing my fair name--and wearing it -out. Mr. La-_throp_, did you ever put your trust in a false-hearted -woman?" - -"Never put my trust in anybody." - -"Didn't you ever love a woman?" - -"No!" - -"Well, then, didn't you ever marry a woman?" - -"Not one. I've had the measles and the mumps, but I've never had -matrimony." - -"Oh, lucky man," beamed Wellington. "Hang on to your luck." - -"I intend to," said Lathrop, "I was born single and I like it." - -"Oh, how I envy you! You see, Mrs. Wellington--she's a queen among -women, mind you--a queen among women, but she has the 'stravagance of -a----" - -Lathrop had endured all he could endure, even from a privileged -character like little Jimmy Wellington. He rose to take refuge in the -smoking-room. But the very vigor of this departure only served to help -Wellington to his feet, for he seized Lathrop's coat and hung on, -through the door, down the little corridor, always explaining: - -"Mrs. Wellington is a queen among women, mind you, but I can't stand -her temper any longer." - -He had hardly squeezed into the smoking-room when the porter and an -usher almost invisible under the baggage they carried brought in a new -passenger. Her first question was: - -"Oh, porter, did a box of flowers, or candy, or anything, come for -me?" - -"What name would they be in, miss?" - -"Mrs. Wellington--Mrs. James Wellington." - - - - -CHAPTER V - -A QUEEN AMONG WOMEN - - -Miss Anne Gattle, seated in Mrs. Jimmie Wellington's seat, had not -heard Mr. Jimmie Wellington's sketch of his wife. But she needed -hardly more than a glance to satisfy herself that she and Mrs. Jimmie -were as hopelessly antipathetic as only two polite women can be. - -Mrs. Jimmie was accounted something of a snob in Chicago society, but -perhaps the missionary was a trifle the snobbisher of the two when -they met. - -Miss Gattle could overlook a hundred vices in a Zulu queen more easily -than a few in a fellow countrywoman. She did not like Mrs. Jimmie, and -she was proud of it. - -When the porter said, "I'm afraid you got this lady's seat," Miss -Gattle shot one glance at the intruder and rose stiffly. "Then I -suppose I'll have to----" - -"Oh, please don't go, there's plenty of room," Mrs. Wellington -insisted, pressing her to remain. This nettled Miss Gattle still more, -but she sank back, while the porter piled up expensive traveling-bags -and hat boxes till there was hardly a place to sit. But even at that -Mrs. Jimmie felt called on to apologize: - -"I haven't brought much luggage. How I'll ever live four days with -this, I can't imagine. It will be such a relief to get my trunks at -Reno." - -"Reno?" echoed Miss Gattle. "Do you live there?" - -"Well, theoretically, yes." - -"I don't understand you." - -"I've got to live there to get it." - -"To get it? Oh!" A look of sudden and dreadful realization came over -the missionary. Mrs. Wellington interpreted it with a smile of gay -defiance: - -"Do you believe in divorces?" - -Anne Gattle stuck to her guns. "I must say I don't. I think a law -ought to be passed stopping them." - -"So do I," Mrs. Wellington amiably agreed, "and I hope they'll pass -just such a law--after I get mine." Then she ventured a little shaft -of her own. "You don't believe in divorces. I judge you've never been -married." - -"Not once!" The spinster drew herself up, but Mrs. Wellington disarmed -her with an unexpected bouquet: - -"Oh, lucky woman! Don't let any heartless man delude you into taking -the fatal step." - -Anne Gattle was nothing if not honest. She confessed frankly: "I must -say that nobody has made any violent efforts to compel me to. That's -why I'm going to China." - -"To China!" Mrs. Wellington gasped, hardly believing her ears. "My -dear! You don't intend to marry a laundryman?" - -"The idea! I'm going as a missionary." - -"A missionary? Why leave Chicago?" Mrs. Wellington's eye softened more -or less convincingly: "Oh, lovely! How I should dote upon being a -missionary. I really think that after I get my divorce I might have a -try at it. I had thought of a convent, but being a missionary must be -much more exciting." She dismissed the dream with an abrupt shake of -the head. "Excuse me, but do you happen to have any matches?" - -"Matches! I never carry them!" - -"They never have matches in the women's room, and I've used my last -one." - -Miss Gattle took another reef in her tight lips. "Do you smoke -cigarettes?" - -Mrs. Wellington's echoed disgust with disgust: "Oh, no, indeed. I -loathe them. I have the most dainty little cigars. Did you ever try -one?" - -Miss Gattle stiffened into one exclamation point: "Cigars! Me!" - -Mrs. Jimmie was so well used to being disapproved of that it never -disturbed her. She went on as if the face opposite were not alive -with horror: "I should think that cigars might be a great consolation -to a lady missionary in the long lone hours of--what do missionaries -do when they're not missionarying?" - -"That depends." - -There was something almost spiritual in Mrs. Jimmie's beatific look: -"I can't tell you what consolation my cigars have given me in my -troubles. Mr. Wellington objected--but then Mr. Wellington objected to -nearly everything I did. That's why I am forced to this dreadful -step." - -"Cigars?" - -"Divorces." - -"Divorces!" - -"Well, this will be only my second--my other was such a nuisance. I -got that from Jimmie, too. But it didn't take. Then we made up and -remarried. Rather odd, having a second honeymoon with one's first -husband. But remarriage didn't succeed any better. Jimmie fell off the -water-wagon with an awful splash, and he quite misunderstood my purely -platonic interest in Sammy Whitcomb, a nice young fellow with a fool -of a wife. Did you ever meet Mrs. Sammy Whitcomb--no? Oh, but you are -a lucky woman! Indeed you are! Well, when Jimmie got jealous, I just -gave him up entirely. I'm running away to Reno. I sent a note to my -husband's club, saying that I had gone to Europe, and he needn't try -to find me. Poor fellow, he will. He'll hunt the continent high and -low for me, but all the while I'll be in Nevada. Rather good joke on -little Jimmie, eh?" - -"Excruciating!" - -"But now I must go. Now I must go. I've really become quite addicted -to them." - -"Divorces?" - -"Cigars. Do stay here till I come back. I have so much to say to you." - -Miss Gattle shook her head in despair. She could understand a dozen -heathen dialects better than the speech of so utter a foreigner as her -fellow-countrywoman. Mrs. Jimmie hastened away, rather pleased at the -shocks she had administered. She enjoyed her own electricity. - -In the corridor she administered another thrill--this time to a tall -young man--a stranger, as alert for flirtation as a weasel for -mischief. He huddled himself and his suitcases into as flat a space as -possible, murmuring: - -"These corridors are so narrow, aren't they?" - -"Aren't they?" said Mrs. Jimmie. "So sorry to trouble you." - -"Don't mention it." - -She passed on, their glances fencing like playful foils. Then she -paused: - -"Excuse me. Could you lend me a match? They never have matches in the -Women's Room." - -He succeeded in producing a box after much shifting of burdens, and he -was rewarded with a look and a phrase: - -"You have saved my life." - -He started to repeat his "Don't mention it," but it seemed -inappropriate, so he said nothing, and she vanished behind a door. He -turned away, saying to himself that it promised to be a pleasant -journey. He was halted by another voice--another woman's voice: - -"Pardon me, but is this the car for Reno?" - -He turned to smile, "I believe so!" Then his eyes widened as he -recognized the speaker. - -"Mrs. Sammy Whitcomb!" - -It promised to be a curious journey. - - - - -CHAPTER VI - -A CONSPIRACY IN SATIN - - -The tall man emptied one hand of its suitcase to clasp the hand the -newcomer granted him. He held it fast as he exclaimed: "Don't tell me -that you are bound for Reno!" She whimpered: "I'm afraid so, Mr. -Ashton." - -He put down everything to take her other hand, and tuned his voice to -condolence: "Why, I thought you and Sam Whitcomb were--" - -"Oh, we were until that shameless Mrs. Wellington----" - -"Mrs. Wellington? Don't believe I know her." - -"I thought everybody had heard of Mrs. Jimmie Wellington." - -"Mrs. Jimmie--oh, yes, I've heard of her!" Everybody seemed to have -heard of Mrs. Jimmie Wellington. - -"What a dance she has led her poor husband!" Mrs. Whitcomb said. "And -my poor Sammy fell into her trap, too." - -Ashton, zealous comforter, took a wrathful tone: "I always thought -your husband was the most unmitigated----" But Mrs. Whitcomb bridled -at once. "How dare you criticize Sammy! He's the nicest boy in the -world." - -Ashton recovered quickly. "That's what I started to say. Will he -contest the--divorce?" - -"Of course not," she beamed. "The dear fellow would never deny me -anything. Sammy offered to get it himself, but I told him he'd better -stay in Chicago and stick to business. I shall need such a lot of -alimony." - -"Too bad he couldn't have come along," Ashton insinuated. - -But the irony was wasted, for she sighed: "Yes, I shall miss him -terribly. But we feared that if he were with me it might hamper me in -getting a divorce on the ground of desertion." - -She was trying to look earnest and thoughtful and heartbroken, but the -result was hardly plausible, for Mrs. Sammy Whitcomb could not -possibly have been really earnest or really thoughtful; and her heart -was quite too elastic to break. She proved it instantly, for when she -heard behind her the voice of a young man asking her to let him pass, -she turned to protest, but seeing that he was a handsome young man, -her starch was instantly changed to sugar. And she rewarded his good -looks with a smile, as he rewarded hers with another. - -Then Ashton intervened like a dog in the manger and dragged her off to -her seat, leaving the young man to exclaim: - -"Some tamarind, that!" - -Another young man behind him growled: "Cut out the tamarinds and get -to business. Mallory will be here any minute." - -"I hate to think what he'll do to us when he sees what we've done to -him." - -"Oh, he won't dare to fight in the presence of his little -bridey-widey. Do you see the porter in there?" - -"Yes, suppose he objects." - -"Well, we have the tickets. We'll claim it's our section till Mallory -and Mrs. Mallory come." - -They moved on into the car, where the porter confronted them. When he -saw that they were loaded with bundles of all shapes and sizes, he -waved them away with scorn: - -"The emigrant sleepa runs only Toosdays and Thuzzdays." - -From behind the first mass of packages came a brisk military answer: - -"You black hound! About face--forward march! Section number one." - -The porter retreated down the aisle, apologizing glibly. "'Scuse me -for questionin' you, but you-all's baggage looked kind o' eccentric at -first." - -The two young men dumped their parcels on the seats and began to -unwrap them hastily. - -"If Mallory catches us, he'll kill us," said Lieutenant Shaw. -Lieutenant Hudson only laughed and drew out a long streamer of white -satin ribbon. Its glimmer, and the glimmering eyes of the young man -excited Mrs. Whitcomb so much that after a little hesitance she moved -forward, followed by the jealous Ashton. - -"Oh, what's up?" she ventured. "It looks like something bridal." - -"Talk about womanly intuition!" said Lieutenant Hudson, with an -ingratiating salaam. - -And then they explained to her that their classmate at West Point, -being ordered suddenly to the Philippines, had arranged to elope with -his beloved Marjorie Newton; had asked them to get the tickets and -check the baggage while he stopped at a minister's to "get spliced and -hike for Manila by this train." - -Having recounted this plan in the full belief that it was even at that -moment being carried out successfully, Lieutenant Hudson, with a -ghoulish smile, explained: - -"Being old friends of the bride and groom, we want to fix their -section up in style and make them truly comfortable." - -"Delicious!" gushed Mrs. Whitcomb. "But you ought to have some rice -and old shoes." - -"Here's the rice," said Hudson. - -"Here's the old shoes," said Shaw. - -"Lovely!" cried Mrs. Whitcomb, but then she grew soberer. "I should -think, though, that they--the young couple--would have preferred a -stateroom." - -"Of course," said Hudson, almost blushing, "but it was taken. This was -the best we could do for them." - -"That's why we want to make it nice and bridelike," said Shaw. -"Perhaps you could help us--a woman's touch----" - -"Oh, I'd love to," she glowed, hastening into the section among the -young men and the bundles. The unusual stir attracted the porter's -suspicions. He came forward with a look of authority: - -"'Scuse me, but wha--what's all this?" - -"Vanish--get out," said Hudson, poking a coin at him. As he turned to -obey, Mrs. Whitcomb checked him with: "Oh, Porter, could you get us a -hammer and some nails?" - -The porter almost blanched: "Good Lawd, Miss, you ain't allowin' to -drive nails in that woodwork, is you?" That woodwork was to him what -the altar is to the priest. - -But Hudson, resorting to heroic measures, hypnotized him with a -two-dollar bill: "Here, take this and see nothing, hear nothing, say -nothing." The porter caressed it and chuckled: "I'm blind, deaf and -speechless." He turned away, only to come back at once with a timid -"'Scuse me!" - -"You here yet?" growled Hudson. - -Anxiously the porter pleaded: "I just want to ast one question. Is -you all fixin' up for a bridal couple?" - -"Foolish question, number eight million, forty-three," said Shaw. -"Answer, no, we are." - -The porter's face glistened like fresh stove polish as he gloated over -the prospect. "I tell you, it'll be mahty refreshin' to have a bridal -couple on bode! This dog-on old Reno train don't carry nothin' much -but divorcees. I'm just nachally hongry for a bridal couple." - -"Brile coup-hic-le?" came a voice, like an echo that had somehow -become intoxicated in transit. It was Little Jimmie Wellington looking -for more sympathy. "Whass zis about brile couple?" - -"Why, here's Little Buttercup!" sang out young Hudson, looking at him -in amazed amusement. - -"Did I un'stan' somebody say you're preparing for a brile coupl'?" - -Lieutenant Shaw grinned. "I don't know what you understood, but that's -what we're doing." - -Immediately Wellington's great face began to churn and work like a big -eddy in a river. Suddenly he was weeping. "Excuse these tears, -zhentlemen, but I was once--I was once a b-b-bride myself." - -"He looks like a whole wedding party," was Ashton's only comment on -the copious grief. It was poor Wellington's fate to hunt as vainly for -sympathy as Diogenes for honesty. The decorators either ignored him or -shunted him aside. They were interested in a strange contrivance of -ribbons and a box that Shaw produced. - -"That," Hudson explained, "is a little rice trap. We hang that up -there and when the bridal couple sit down--biff! a shower of rice all -over them. It's bad, eh?" - -Everybody agreed that it was a happy thought and even Jimmie -Wellington, like a great baby, bounding from tears to laughter on the -instant, was chortling: "A rishe trap? That's abslootly -splendid--greates' invensh' modern times. I must stick around and see -her when she flops." And then he lurched forward like a too-obliging -elephant. "Let me help you." - -Mrs. Whitcomb, who had now mounted a step ladder and poised herself as -gracefully as possible, shrieked with alarm, as she saw Wellington's -bulk rolling toward her frail support. - -If Hudson and Shaw had not been football veterans at West Point and -had not known just what to do when the center rush comes bucking the -line, they could never have blocked that flying wedge. But they -checked him and impelled him backward through his own curtains into -his own berth. - -Finding himself on his back, he decided to remain there. And there he -remained, oblivious of the carnival preparations going on just outside -his canopy. - - - - -CHAPTER VII - -THE MASKED MINISTER - - -Being an angel must have this great advantage at least, that one may -sit in the grandstand overlooking the earth and enjoy the ludicrous -blunders of that great blind man's buff we call life. - -This night, if any angels were watching Chicago, the Mallory mix-up -must have given them a good laugh, or a good cry--according to their -natures. - -Here were Mallory and Marjorie, still merely engaged, bitterly -regretting their inability to get married and to continue their -journey together. There in the car were the giggling conspirators -preparing a bridal mockery for their sweet confusion. - -Then the angels might have nudged one another and said: - -"Oh, it's all right now. There goes a minister hurrying to their very -car. Mallory has the license in his pocket, and here comes the parson. -Hooray!" - -And then the angelic cheer must have died out as the one great hurrah -of a crowded ball-ground is quenched in air when the home team's -vitally needed home run swerves outside the line and drops useless as -a stupid foul ball. - -In a shabby old hack, were two of the happiest runaways that ever -sought a train. They were not miserable like the young couple in the -taxicab. They were white-haired both. They had been married for thirty -years. Yet this was their real honeymoon, their real elopement. - -The little woman in the timid gray bonnet clapped her hands and -tittered like a schoolgirl. - -"Oh, Walter, I can't believe we're really going to leave Ypsilanti for -a while. Oh, but you've earned it after thirty years of being a -preacher." - -"Hush. Don't let me hear you say the awful word," said the little old -man in the little black hat and the close-fitting black bib. "I'm so -tired of it, Sally, I don't want anybody on the train to know it." - -"They can't help guessing it, with your collar buttoned behind." - -And then the amazing minister actually dared to say, "Here's where I -change it around." What's more, he actually did it. Actually took off -his collar and buttoned it to the front. The old carriage seemed -almost to rock with the earthquake of the deed. - -"Why, Walter Temple!" his wife exclaimed. "What would they say in -Ypsilanti?" - -"They'll never know," he answered, defiantly. - -"But your bib?" she said. - -"I've thought of that, too," he cried, as he whipped it off and -stuffed it into a handbag. "Look, what I've bought." And he dangled -before her startled eyes a long affair which the sudden light from a -passing lamppost revealed to be nothing less than a flaring red tie. - -The little old lady touched it to make sure she was not dreaming it. -Then, omitting further parley with fate, she snatched it away, put it -round his neck, and, since her arms were embracing him, kissed him -twice before she knotted the ribbon into a flaming bow. She sat back -and regarded the vision a moment, then flung her arms around him and -hugged him till he gasped: - -"Watch out-watch out. Don't crush my cigars." - -"Cigars! Cigars!" she echoed, in a daze. - -And then the astounding husband produced them in proof. - -"Genuine Lillian Russells--five cents straight." - -"But I never saw you smoke." - -"Haven't taken a puff since I was a young fellow," he grinned, wagging -his head. "But now it's my vacation, and I'm going to smoke up." - -She squeezed his hand with an earlier ardor: "Now you're the old -Walter Temple I used to know." - - [Illustration: "NOW IT'S MY VACATION, AND I'M GOING TO SMOKE UP"....] - -"Sally," he said, "I've been traveling through life on a half-fare -ticket. Now I'm going to have my little fling. And you brace up, too, -and be the old mischievous Sally I used to know. Aren't you glad to be -away from those sewing circles and gossip-bees, and----" - -"Ugh! Don't ever mention them," she shuddered. Then she, too, felt a -tinge of recurring springtide. "If you start to smoking, I think I'll -take up flirting once more." - -He pinched her cheek and laughed. "As the saying is, go as far as you -desire and I'll leave the coast clear." - -He kept his promise, too, for they were no sooner on the train and -snugly bestowed in section five, than he was up and off. - -"Where are you going?" she asked. - -"To the smoking-room," he swaggered, brandishing a dangerous looking -cigar. - -"Oh, Walter," she snickered, "I feel like a young runaway." - -"You look like one. Be careful not to let anybody know that you're -a"--he lowered his voice--"an old preacher's wife." - -"I'm as ashamed of it as you are," she whispered. Then he threw her a -kiss and a wink. She threw him a kiss and winked, too. And he went -along the aisle eyeing his cigar gloatingly. As he entered the -smoking-room, lighted the weed and blew out a great puff with a sigh -of rapture, who could have taken him, with his feet cocked up, and -his red tie rakishly askew, for a minister? - -And Sally herself was busy disguising herself, loosening up her hair -coquettishly, smiling the primness out of the set corners of her mouth -and even--let the truth be told at all costs--even passing a -pink-powdered puff over her pale cheeks with guilty surreptition. - -Thus arrayed she was soon joining the conspirators bedecking the bower -for the expected bride and groom. She was the youngest and most -mischievous of the lot. She felt herself a bride again, and vowed to -protect this timid little wife to come from too much hilarity at the -hands of the conspirators. - - - - -CHAPTER VIII - -A MIXED PICKLE - - -Mrs. Whitcomb had almost blushed when she had murmured to Lieutenant -Hudson: - -"I should think the young couple would have preferred a stateroom." - -And Mr. Hudson had flinched a little as he explained: - -"Yes, of course. We tried to get it, but it was gone." - -It was during the excitement over the decoration of the bridal -section, that the stateroom-tenants slipped in unobserved. - -First came a fluttering woman whose youthful beauty had a certain hue -of experience, saddening and wisering. The porter brought her in from -the station-platform, led her to the stateroom's concave door and -passed in with her luggage. But she lingered without, a Peri at the -gate of Paradise. When the porter returned to bow her in, she shivered -and hesitated, and then demanded: - -"Oh, Porter, are you sure there's nobody else in there?" - -The porter chuckled, but humored her panic. - -"I ain't seen nobody. Shall I look under the seat?" - -To his dismay, she nodded her head violently. He rolled his eyes in -wonderment, but returned to the stateroom, made a pretense of -examination, and came back with a face full of reassurance. "No'm, -they's nobody there. Take a mighty small-size burglar to squeeje unda -that baid--er--berth. No'm, nobody there." - -"Oh!" - -The gasp was so equivocal that he made bold to ask: - -"Is you pleased or disappointed?" - -The mysterious young woman was too much agitated to rebuke the -impudence. She merely sighed: "Oh, porter, I'm so anxious." - -"I'm not--now," he muttered, for she handed him a coin. - -"Porter, have you seen anybody on board that looks suspicious?" - -"Evvabody looks suspicious to me, Missy. But what was you -expecting--especial?" - -"Oh, porter, have you seen anybody that looks like a detective in -disguise?" - -"Well, they's one man looks 's if he was disguised as a balloon, but I -don't believe he's no slooch-hound." - -"Well, if you see anything that looks like a detective and he asks for -Mrs. Fosdick----" - -"Mrs. What-dick?" - -"Mrs. Fosdick! You tell him I'm not on board." And she gave him -another coin. - -"Yassum," said the porter, lingering willingly on such fertile soil. -"I'll tell him Mrs. Fosdick done give me her word she wasn't on bode." - -"Yes!--and if a woman should ask you." - -"What kind of a woman?" - -"The hideous kind that men call handsome." - -"Oh, ain't they hideous, them handsome women?" - -"Well, if such a woman asks for Mrs. Fosdick--she's my husband's first -wife--but of course that doesn't interest you." - -"No'm--yes'm." - -"If she comes--tell her--tell her--oh, what shall we tell her?" - -The porter rubbed his thick skull: "Lemme see--we might say you--I -tell you what we'll tell her: we'll tell her you took the train for -New York; and if she runs mighty fast she can just about ketch it." - -"Fine, fine!" And she rewarded his genius with another coin. "And, -porter." He had not budged. "Porter, if a very handsome man with -luscious eyes and a soulful smile asks for me----" - -"I'll th'ow him off the train!" - -"Oh, no--no!--that's my husband--my present husband. You may let him -in. Now is it all perfectly clear, porter?" - -"Oh, yassum, clear as clear." Thus guaranteed she entered the -stateroom, leaving the porter alone with his problem. He tried to work -it out in a semi-audible mumble: "Lemme see! If your present husband's -absent wife gits on bode disguised as a handsome hideous woman I'm to -throw him--her--off the train and let her--him--come in--oh, yassum, -you may rely on me." He bowed and held out his hand again. But she was -gone. He shuffled on into the car. - -He had hardly left the little space before the stateroom when a -handsome man with luscious eyes, but without any smile at all, came -slinking along the corridor and tapped cautiously on the door. Silence -alone answered him at first, then when he had rapped again, he heard a -muffled: - -"Go away. I'm not in." - -He put his lips close and softly called: "Edith!" - -At this Sesame the door opened a trifle, but when he tried to enter, a -hand thrust him back and a voice again warned him off. "You musn't -come in." - -"But I'm your husband." - -"That's just why you musn't come in." The door opened a little wider -to give him a view of a downcast beauty moaning: - -"Oh, Arthur, I'm so afraid." - -"Afraid?" he sniffed. "With your husband here?" - -"That's the trouble, Arthur. What if your former wife should find us -together?" - -"But she and I are divorced." - -"In some states, yes--but other states don't acknowledge the divorce. -That former wife of yours is a fiend to pursue us this way." - -"She's no worse than your former husband. He's pursuing us, too. My -divorce was as good as yours, my dear." - -"Yes, and no better." - -The angels looking on might have judged from the ready tempers of the -newly married and not entirely unmarried twain that their new alliance -promised to be as exciting as their previous estates. Perhaps the man -subtly felt the presence of those eternal eavesdroppers, for he tried -to end the love-duel in the corridor with an appeasing caress and a -tender appeal: "But let's not start our honeymoon with a quarrel." - -His partial wife returned the caress and tried to explain: "I'm not -quarreling with you, dear heart, but with the horrid divorce laws. -Why, oh, why did we ever interfere with them?" - -He made a brave effort with: "We ended two unhappy marriages, Edith, -to make one happy one." - -"But I'm so unhappy, Arthur, and so afraid." - -He seemed a trifle afraid himself and his gaze was askance as he -urged: "But the train will start soon, Edith--and then we shall be -safe." - -Mrs. Fosdick had a genius for inventing unpleasant possibilities. -"But what if your former wife or my former husband should have a -detective on board?" - -"A detective?--poof!" He snapped his fingers in bravado. "You are with -your husband, aren't you?" - -"In Illinois, yes," she admitted, very dolefully. "But when we come to -Iowa, I'm a bigamist, and when we come to Nebraska, you're a bigamist, -and when we come to Wyoming, we're not married at all." - -It was certainly a tangled web they had woven, but a ray of light shot -through it into his bewildered soul. "But we're all right in Utah. -Come, dearest." - -He took her by the elbow to escort her into their sanctuary, but still -she hung back. - -"On one condition, Arthur--that you leave me as soon as we cross the -Iowa state line, and not come back till we get to Utah. Remember, the -Iowa state line!" - -"Oh, all right," he smiled. And seeing the porter, he beckoned him -close and asked with careless indifference: "Oh, Porter, what time do -we reach the Iowa state line?" - -"Two fifty-five in the mawning, sah." - -"Two fifty-five A.M.?" the wretch exclaimed. - -"Two fifty-five A.M., yassah," the porter repeated, and wondered why -this excerpt from the time-table should exert such a dramatic effect -on the luscious-eyed Fosdick. - -He had small time to meditate the puzzle, for the train was about to -be launched upon its long voyage. He went out to the platform, and -watched a couple making that way. As their only luggage was a -dog-basket he supposed that they were simply come to bid some of his -passengers good-bye. No tips were to be expected from such transients, -so he allowed them to help themselves up the steps. - -Mallory and his Marjorie had tried to kiss the farewell of farewells -half a dozen times, but she could not let him go at the gate. She -asked the guard to let her through, and her beauty was bribe enough. - -Again and again, she and Mallory paused. He wanted to take her back to -the taxicab, but she would not be so dismissed. She must spend the -last available second with him. - -"I'll go as far as the steps of the car," she said. When they were -arrived there, two porters, a sleeping car conductor and several -smoking saunterers profaned the tryst. So she whispered that she would -come aboard, for the corridor would be a quiet lane for the last -rites. - -And now that he had her actually on the train, Mallory's whole soul -revolted against letting her go. The vision of her standing on the -platform sad-eyed and lorn, while the train swept him off into space -was unendurable. He shut his eyes against it, but it glowed inside the -lids. - -And then temptation whispered him its old "Why not?" While it was -working in his soul like a fermenting yeast, he was saying: - -"To think that we should owe all our misfortune to an infernal -taxicab's break-down." - -Out of the anguish of her loneliness crept one little complaint: - -"If you had really wanted me, you'd have had two taxicabs." - -"Oh, how can you say that? I had the license bought and the minister -waiting." - -"He's waiting yet." - -"And the ring--there's the ring." He fished it out of his waistcoat -pocket and held it before her as a golden amulet. - -"A lot of good it does now," said Marjorie. "You won't even wait over -till the next train." - -"I've told you a thousand times, my love," he protested, desperately, -"if I don't catch the transport, I'll be courtmartialed. If this train -is late, I'm lost. If you really loved me you'd come along with me." - -Her very eyes gasped at this astounding proposal. - -"Why, Harry Mallory, you know it's impossible." - -Like a sort of benevolent Satan, he laid the ground for his abduction: -"You'll leave me, then, to spend three years without you--out among -those Manila women." - -She shook her head in terror at this vision. "It would be too horrible -for words to have you marry one of those mahogany sirens." - -He held out the apple. "Better come along, then." - -"But how can I? We're not married." - -He answered airily: "Oh, I'm sure there's a minister on board." - -"But it would be too awful to be married with all the passengers -gawking. No, I couldn't face it. Good-bye, honey." - -She turned away, but he caught her arm: "Don't you love me?" - -"To distraction. I'll wait for you, too." - -"Three years is a long wait." - -"But I'll wait, if you will." - -With such devotion he could not tamper. It was too beautiful to risk -or endanger or besmirch with any danger of scandal. He gave up his -fantastic project and gathered her into his arms, crowded her into his -very soul, as he vowed: "I'll wait for you forever and ever and ever." - -Her arms swept around his neck, and she gave herself up as an exile -from happiness, a prisoner of a far-off love: - -"Good-bye, my husband-to-be." - -"Good-bye my wife-that-was-to-have-been-and-will-be-yet-maybe." - -"Good-bye." - -"Good-bye." - -"Good-bye." - -"Good-bye." - -"I must go." - -"Yes, you must." - -"One last kiss." - -"One more--one long last kiss." - -And there, entwined in each other's arms, with lips wedded and eyelids -clinched, they clung together, forgetting everything past, future, or -present. Love's anguish made them blind, mute, and deaf. - -They did not hear the conductor crying his, "All Aboard!" down the -long wall of the train. They did not hear the far-off knell of the -bell. They did not hear the porters banging the vestibules shut. They -did not feel the floor sliding out with them. - -And so the porter found them, engulfed in one embrace, swaying and -swaying, and no more aware of the increasing rush of the train than we -other passengers on the earth-express are aware of its speed through -the ether-routes on its ancient schedule. - -The porter stood with his box-step in his hand, and blinked and -wondered. And they did not even know they were observed. - - - - -CHAPTER IX - -ALL ABOARD! - - -The starting of the train surprised the ironical decorators in the -last stages of their work. Their smiles died out in a sudden shame, as -it came over them that the joke had recoiled on their own heads. They -had done their best to carry out the time-honored rite of making a -newly married couple as miserable as possible--and the newly married -couple had failed to do its share. - -The two lieutenants glared at each other in mutual contempt. They had -studied much at West Point about ambushes, and how to avoid them. -Could Mallory have escaped the pit they had digged for him? They -looked at their handiwork in disgust. The cosy-corner effect of white -ribbons and orange flowers, gracefully masking the concealed -rice-trap, had seemed the wittiest thing ever devised. Now it looked -the silliest. - -The other passengers were equally downcast. Meanwhile the two lovers -in the corridor were kissing good-byes as if they were hoping to store -up honey enough to sustain their hearts for a three years' fast. And -the porter was studying them with perplexity. - -He was used, however, to waking people out of dreamland, and he began -to fear that if he were discovered spying on the lovers, he might -suffer. So he coughed discreetly three or four times. - -Since the increasing racket of the train made no effect on the two -hearts beating as one, the small matter of a cough was as nothing. - -Finally the porter was compelled to reach forward and tap Mallory's -arm, and stutter: - -"'Scuse me, but co-could I git b-by?" - -The embrace was untied, and the lovers stared at him with a dazed, -where-am-I? look. Marjorie was the first to realize what awakened -them. She felt called upon to say something, so she said, as -carelessly as if she had not just emerged from a young gentleman's -arms: - -"Oh, porter, how long before the train starts?" - -"Train's done started, Missy." - -This simple statement struck the wool from her eyes and the cotton -from her ears, and she was wide enough awake when she cried: "Oh, stop -it--stop it!" - -"That's mo'n I can do, Missy," the porter expostulated. - -"Then I'll jump off," Marjorie vowed, making a dash for the door. - -But the porter filled the narrow path, and waved her back. - -"Vestibule's done locked up--train's going lickety-split." Feeling -that he had safely checkmated any rashness, the porter squeezed past -the dumbfounded pair, and went to change his blue blouse for the white -coat of his chambermaidenly duties. Mallory's first wondering thought -was a rapturous feeling that circumstances had forced his dream into a -reality. He thrilled with triumph: "You've got to go with me now." - -"Yes--I've got to go," Marjorie assented meekly; then, sublimely, -"It's fate. Kismet!" - -They clutched each other again in a fiercely blissful hug. Marjorie -came back to earth with a bump: "Are you really sure there's a -minister on board?" - -"Pretty sure," said Mallory, sobering a trifle. - -"But you said you were sure?" - -"Well, when you say you're sure, that means you're not quite sure." - -It was not an entirely satisfactory justification, and Marjorie began -to quake with alarm: "Suppose there shouldn't be?" - -"Oh, then," Mallory answered carelessly, "there's bound to be one -to-morrow." - -Marjorie realized at once the enormous abyss between then and the -morrow, and she gasped: "Tomorrow! And no chaperon! Oh, I'll jump out -of the window." - -Mallory could prevent that, but when she pleaded, "What shall we do?" -he had no solution to offer. Again it was she who received the first -inspiration. - -"I have it," she beamed. - -"Yes, Marjorie?" he assented, dubiously. - -"We'll pretend not to be married at all." - -He seized the rescuing ladder: "That's it! Not married--just friends." - -"Till we can get married----" - -"Yes, and then we can stop being friends." - -"My love--my friend!" They embraced in a most unfriendly manner. - -An impatient yelp from the neglected dog-basket awoke them. - -"Oh, Lord, we've brought Snoozleums." - -"Of course we have." She took the dog from the prison, tucked him -under her arm, and tried to compose her bridal face into a merely -friendly countenance before they entered the car. But she must pause -for one more kiss, one more of those bittersweet good-byes. And -Mallory was nothing loath. - -Hudson and Shaw were still glumly perplexed, when the porter returned -in his white jacket. - -"I bet they missed the train; all this work for nothing," Hudson -grumbled. But Shaw, seeing the porter, caught a gleam of hope, and -asked anxiously: - -"Say, porter, have you seen anything anywhere that looks like a -freshly married pair?" - -"Well," and the porter rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand as -he chuckled, "well, they's a mighty lovin' couple out theah in the -corridor." - -"That's them--they--it!" - -Instantly everything was alive and in action. It was as if a bugle had -shrilled in a dejected camp. - -"Get ready!" Shaw commanded. "Here's rice for everybody." - -"Everybody take an old shoe," said Hudson. "You can't miss in this -narrow car." - -"There's a kazoo for everyone, too," said Shaw, as the outstretched -hands were equipped with wedding ammunition. "Do you know the 'Wedding -March'?" - -"I ought to by this time," said Mrs. Whitcomb. - -Right into the tangle of preparation, old Ira Lathrop stalked, on his -way back to his seat to get more cigars. - -"Have some rice for the bridal couple?" said Ashton, offering him of -his own double-handful. - -But Lathrop brushed him aside with a romance-hater's growl. - -"Watch out for your head, then," cried Hudson, and Lathrop ducked just -too late to escape a neck-filling, hair-filling shower. An old shoe -took him a clip abaft the ear, and the old woman-hater dropped raging -into the same berth where the spinster, Anne Gattle, was trying to -dodge the same downpour. - -Still there was enough of the shrapnel left to overwhelm the two young -"friends," who marched into the aisle, trying to look indifferent and -prepared for nothing on earth less than for a wedding charivari. - -Mallory should have done better than to entrust his plans to fellows -like Hudson and Shaw, whom he had known at West Point for diabolically -joyous hazers and practical jokers. Even as he sputtered rice and -winced from the impact of flying footgear, he was cursing himself as a -double-dyed idiot for asking such men to engage his berth for him. He -had a sudden instinct that they had doubtless bedecked his trunk and -Marjorie's with white satin furbelows and ludicrous labels. But he -could not shelter himself from the white sleet and the black thumps. -He could hardly shelter Marjorie, who cowered behind him and shrieked -even louder than the romping tormentors. - -When the assailants had exhausted the rice and shoes, they charged -down the aisle for the privilege of kissing the bride. Mallory was -dragged and bunted and shunted here and there, and he had to fight his -way back to Marjorie with might and main. He was tugging and striking -like a demon, and yelling, "Stop it! stop it!" - -Hudson took his punishment with uproarious good nature, laughing: - -"Oh, shut up, or we'll kiss you!" - -But Shaw was scrubbing his wry lips with a seasick wail of: - -"Wow! I think I kissed the dog." - -There was, of necessity, some pause for breath, and the combatants -draped themselves limply about the seats. Mallory glared at the twin -Benedict Arnolds and demanded: - -"Are you two thugs going to San Francisco with us?" - -"Don't worry," smiled Hudson, "we're only going as far as Kedzie -Avenue, just to start the honeymoon properly." - -If either of the elopers had been calmer, the solution of the problem -would have been simple. Marjorie could get off at this suburban -station and drive home from there. But their wits were like pied type, -and they were further jumbled, when Shaw broke in with a sudden: -"Come, see the little dovecote we fixed for you." - -Before they knew it, they were both haled along the aisle to the white -satin atrocity. "Love in a bungalow," said Hudson. "Sit down--make -yourselves perfectly at home." - -"No--never--oh, oh, oh!" cried Marjorie, darting away and throwing -herself into the first empty seat--Ira Lathrop's berth. Mallory -followed to console her with caresses and murmurs of, "There, there, -don't cry, dearie!" - -Hudson and Shaw followed close with mawkish mockery: "Don't cry, -dearie." - -And now Mrs. Temple intervened. She had enjoyed the initiation -ceremony as well as anyone. But when the little bride began to cry, -she remembered the pitiful terror and shy shame she had undergone as a -girl-wife, and she hastened to Marjorie's side, brushing the men away -like gnats. - -"You poor thing," she comforted. "Come, my child, lean on me, and have -a good cry." - -Hudson grinned, and put out his own arms: "She can lean on me, if -she'd rather." - -Mrs. Temple glanced up with indignant rebuke: "Her mother is far away, -and she wants a mother's breast to weep on. Here's mine, my dear." - -The impudent Shaw tapped his own military chest: "She can use mine." - -Infuriated at this bride-baiting, Mallory rose and confronted the two -imps with clenched fists: "You're a pretty pair of friends, you are!" - -The imperturbable Shaw put out a pair of tickets as his only defence: -"Here are your tickets, old boy." - -And Hudson roared jovially: "We tried to get you a stateroom, but it -was gone." - -"And here are your baggage checks," laughed Shaw, forcing into his -fists a few pasteboards. "We got your trunks on the train ahead, all -right. Don't mention it--you're entirely welcome." - -It was the porter that brought the first relief from the ordeal. - -"If you gemmen is gettin' off at Kedzie Avenue, you'd better step -smart. We're slowin' up now." - -Marjorie was sobbing too audibly to hear, and Mallory swearing too -inaudibly to heed the opportunity Kedzie Avenue offered. And Hudson -was yelling: "Well, good-bye, old boy and old girl. Sorry we can't go -all the way." He had the effrontery to try to kiss the bride good-bye, -and Shaw was equally bold, but Mallory's fury enabled him to beat them -off. He elbowed and shouldered them down the aisle, and sent after -them one of his own shoes. But it just missed Shaw's flying coattails. - -Mallory stood glaring after the departing traitors. He was glad that -they at least were gone, till he realized with a sickening slump in -his vitals, that they had not taken with them his awful dilemma. And -now the train was once more clickety-clicking into the night and the -West. - - - - -CHAPTER X - -EXCESS BAGGAGE - - -Never was a young soldier so stumped by a problem in tactics as -Lieutenant Harry Mallory, safely aboard his train, and not daring to -leave it, yet hopelessly unaware of how he was to dispose of his -lovely but unlabelled baggage. - -Hudson and Shaw had erected a white satin temple to Hymen in berth -number one, had created such commotion, and departed in such -confusion, that there had been no opportunity to proclaim that he and -Marjorie were "not married--just friends." - -And now the passengers had accepted them as that enormous fund of -amusement to any train, a newly wedded pair. To explain the mistake -would have been difficult, even among friends. But among -strangers--well, perhaps a wiser and a colder brain than Harry -Mallory's could have stood there and delivered a brief oration -restoring truth to her pedestal. But Mallory was in no condition for -such a stoic delivery. - -He mopped his brow in agony, lost in a blizzard of bewilderments. He -drifted back toward Marjorie, half to protect and half for -companionship. He found Mrs. Temple cuddling her close and mothering -her as if she were a baby instead of a bride. - -"Did the poor child run away and get married?" - -Marjorie's frantic "Boo-hoo-hoo" might have meant anything. Mrs. -Temple took it for assent, and murmured with glowing reminiscence: - -"Just the way Doctor Temple and I did." - -She could not see the leaping flash of wild hope that lighted up -Mallory's face. She only heard his voice across her shoulder: - -"Doctor? Doctor Temple? Is your husband a reverend doctor?" - -"A reverend doctor?" the little old lady repeated weakly. - -"Yes--a--a preacher?" - -The poor old congregation-weary soul was abruptly confronted with the -ruination of all the delight in her little escapade with her -pulpit-fagged husband. If she had ever dreamed that the girl who was -weeping in her arms was weeping from any other fright than the usual -fright of young brides, fresh from the preacher's benediction, she -would have cast every other consideration aside, and told the truth. - -But her husband's last behest before he left her had been to keep -their precious pretend-secret. She felt--just then--that a woman's -first duty is to obey her husband. Besides, what business was it of -this young husband's what her old husband's business was? Before she -had fairly begun to debate her duty, almost automatically, with the -instantaneous instinct of self-protection, her lips had uttered the -denial: - -"Oh--he's--just a--plain doctor. There he is now." - -Mallory cast one miserable glance down the aisle at Dr. Temple coming -back from the smoking room. As the old man paused to stare at the -bridal berth, whose preparation he had not seen, he was just enough -befuddled by his first cigar for thirty years to look a trifle tipsy. -The motion of the train and the rakish tilt of his unwonted crimson -tie confirmed the suspicion and annihilated Mallory's new-born hope, -that perhaps repentant fate had dropped a parson at their very feet. - -He sank into the seat opposite Marjorie, who gave him one terrified -glance, and burst into fresh sobs: - -"Oh--oh--boo-hoo--I'm so unhap--hap--py." - -Perhaps Mrs. Temple was a little miffed at the couple that had led her -astray and opened her own honeymoon with a wanton fib. In any case, -the best consolation she could offer Marjorie was a perfunctory pat, -and a cynicism: - -"There, there, dear! You don't know what real unhappiness is yet. Wait -till you've been married a while." - -And then she noted a startling lack of completeness in the bride's -hand. - -"Why--my dear!--where's your wedding ring?" - -With what he considered great presence of mind, Mallory explained: -"It--it slipped off--I--I picked it up. I have it here." And he took -the little gold band from his waistcoat and tried to jam it on -Marjorie's right thumb. - -"Not on the thumb!" Mrs. Temple cried. "Don't you know?" - -"You see, it's my first marriage." - -"You poor boy--this finger!" And Mrs. Temple, raising Marjorie's limp -hand, selected the proper digit, and held it forward, while Mallory -pressed the fatal circlet home. - -And then Mrs. Temple, having completed their installation as man and -wife, utterly confounded their confusion by her final effort at -comfort: "Well, my dears, I'll go back to my seat, and leave you alone -with your dear husband." - -"My dear what?" Marjorie mumbled inanely, and began to sniffle again. -Whereupon Mrs. Temple resigned her to Mallory, and consigned her to -fate with a consoling platitude: - -"Cheer up, my dear, you'll be all right in the morning." - -Marjorie and Mallory's eyes met in one wild clash, and then both -stared into the window, and did not notice that the shades were down. - - - - -CHAPTER XI - -A CHANCE RENCOUNTER - - -While Mrs. Temple was confiding to her husband that the agitated -couple in the next seat had just come from a wedding-factory, and had -got on while he was lost in tobacco land, the people in the seat on -the other side of them were engaged in a little drama of their own. - -Ira Lathrop, known to all who knew him as a woman-hating -snapping-turtle, was so busily engaged trying to drag the farthest -invading rice grains out of the back of his neck, that he was late in -realizing his whereabouts. When he raised his head, he found that he -had crowded into a seat with an uncomfortable looking woman, who -crowded against the window with old-maidenly timidity. - -He felt some apology to be necessary, and he snarled: "Disgusting -things, these weddings!" After he heard this, it did not sound -entirely felicitous, so he grudgingly ventured: "Excuse me--you -married?" - -She denied the soft impeachment so heartily that he softened a -little: - -"You're a sensible woman. I guess you and I are the only sensible -people on this train." - -"It--seems--so," she giggled. It was the first time her spinstership -had been taken as material for a compliment. Something in the girlish -giggle and the strangely young smile that swept twenty years from her -face and belied the silver lines in her hair, seemed to catch the old -bachelor's attention. He stared at her so fiercely that she looked -about for a way of escape. Then a curiously anxious, almost a hungry, -look softened his leonine jowls into a boyish eagerness, and his growl -became a sort of gruff purr: - -"Say, you look something like an old sweetheart--er--friend--of mine. -Were you ever in Brattleboro, Vermont?" - -A flush warmed her cheek, and a sense of home warmed her prim speech, -as she confessed: - -"I came from there originally." - -"So did I," said Ira Lathrop, leaning closer, and beaming like a big -sun: "I don't suppose you remember Ira Lathrop?" - -The old maid stared at the bachelor as if she were trying to see the -boy she had known, through the mask that time had modeled on his face. -And then she was a girl again, and her voice chimed as she cried: - -"Why, Ira!--Mr. Lathrop!--is it you?" - -She gave him her hand--both her hands, and he smothered them in one -big paw and laid the other on for extra warmth, as he nodded his -savage head and roared as gentle as a sucking dove: - -"Well, well! Annie--Anne--Miss Gattle! What do you think of that?" - -They gossiped across the chasm of years about people and things, and -knew nothing of the excitement so close to them, saw nothing of -Chicago slipping back into the distance, with its many lights shooting -across the windows like hurled torches. - -Suddenly a twinge of ancient jealousy shot through the man's heart, -recurring to old emotions. - -"So you're not married, Annie. Whatever became of that fellow who used -to hang round you all the time?" - -"Charlie Selby?" She blushed at the name, and thrilled at the luxury -of meeting jealousy. "Oh, he entered the church. He's a minister out -in Ogden, Utah." - -"I always knew he'd never amount to much," was Lathrop's epitaph on -his old rival. Then he started with a new twinge: "You bound for -Ogden, too?" - -"Oh, no," she smiled, enraptured at the new sensation of making a man -anxious, and understanding all in a flash the motives that make -coquettes. Then she told him her destination. "I'm on my way to -China." - -"China!" he exclaimed. "So'm I!" - -She stared at him with a new thought, and gushed: "Oh, Ira--are you a -missionary, too?" - -"Missionary? Hell, no!" he roared. "Excuse me--I'm an importer--Anne, -I--I----" - -But the sonorous swear reverberated in their ears like a smitten bell, -and he blushed for it, but could not recall it. - - - - -CHAPTER XII - -THE NEEDLE IN THE HAYSTACK - - -The almost-married couple sat long in mutual terror and a common -paralysis of ingenuity. Marjorie, for lack of anything better to do, -was absent-mindedly twisting Snoozleums's ears, while he, that pocket -abridgment of a dog, in a well meaning effort to divert her from her -evident grief, made a great pretence of ferocity, growling and -threatening to bite her fingers off. The new ring attracted his -special jealousy. He was growing discouraged at the ill-success of his -impersonation of a wolf, and dejected at being so crassly ignored, -when he suddenly became, in his turn, a center of interest. - -Marjorie was awakened from her trance of inanition by the porter's -voice. His plantation voice was ordinarily as thick and sweet as his -own New Orleans sorghum, but now it had a bitterness that curdled the -blood: - -"'Scuse me, but how did you-all git that theah dog in this heah cah?" - -"Snoozleums is always with me," said Marjorie briskly, as if that -settled it, and turned for confirmation to the dog himself, "aren't -you, Snoozleums?" - -"Well," the porter drawled, trying to be gracious with his great -power, "the rules don't 'low no live stock in the sleepin' cars, -'ceptin' humans." - -Marjorie rewarded his condescension with a blunt: "Snoozleums is more -human than you are." - -"I p'sume he is," the porter admitted, "but he can't make up berths. -Anyway, the rules says dogs goes with the baggage." - -Marjorie swept rules aside with a defiant: "I don't care. I won't be -separated from my Snoozleums." - -She looked to Mallory for support, but he was too sorely troubled with -greater anxieties to be capable of any action. - -The porter tried persuasion: "You betta lemme take him, the conducta -is wuss'n what I am. He th'owed a couple of dogs out the window trip -befo' last." - -"The brute!" - -"Oh, yassum, he is a regulah brute. He just loves to hear 'm splosh -when they light." - -Noting the shiver that shook the girl, the porter offered a bit of -consolation: - -"Better lemme have the pore little thing up in the baggage cah. He'll -be in charge of a lovely baggage-smasher." - -"Are you sure he's a nice man?" - -"Oh, yassum, he's death on trunks, but he's a natural born angel to -dogs." - -"Well, if I must, I must," she sobbed. "Poor little Snoozleums! Can he -come back and see me to-morrow?" Marjorie's tears were splashing on -the puzzled dog, who nestled close, with a foreboding of disaster. - -"I reckon p'haps you'd better visit him." - -"Poor dear little Snoozleums--good night, my little darling. Poor -little child--it's the first night he's slept all by his 'ittle -lonesome, and----" - -The porter was growing desperate. He clapped his hands together -impatiently and urged: "I think I hear that conducta comin'." - -The ruse succeeded. Marjorie fairly forced the dog on him. -"Quick--hide him--hurry!" she gasped, and sank on the seat completely -crushed. "I'll be so lonesome without Snoozleums." - -Mallory felt called upon to remind her of his presence. "I--I'm here, -Marjorie." She looked at him just once--at him, the source of all her -troubles--buried her head in her arms, and resumed her grief. Mallory -stared at her helplessly, then rose and bent over to whisper: - -"I'm going to look through the train." - -"Oh, don't leave me," she pleaded, clinging to him with a dependence -that restored his respect. - -"I must find a clergyman," he whispered. "I'll be back the minute I -find one, and I'll bring him with me." - - [Illustration: MARJORIE FAIRLY FORCED THE DOG ON HIM....] - -The porter thought he wanted the dog back, and quickened his pace -till he reached the corridor, where Mallory overtook him and asked, in -an effort at casual indifference, if he had seen anything of a -clergyman on board. - -"Ain't seen nothin' that even looks like one," said the porter. Then -he hastened ahead to the baggage car with the squirming Snoozleums, -while Mallory followed slowly, going from seat to seat and car to car, -subjecting all the males to an inspection that rendered some of them -indignant, others of them uneasy. - -If dear old Doctor Temple could only have known what Mallory was -hunting, he would have snatched off the mask, and thrown aside the -secular scarlet tie at all costs. But poor Mallory, unable to -recognize a clergyman so dyed-in-the-wool as Doctor Temple, sitting in -the very next seat--how could he be expected to pick out another in -the long and crowded train? - -All clergymen look alike when they are in convention assembled, but -sprinkled through a crowd they are not so easily distinguished. - -In the sleeping car bound for Portland, Mallory picked one man as a -clergyman. He had a lean, ascetic face, solemn eyes, and he was -talking to his seat-mate in an oratorical manner. Mallory bent down -and tapped the man's shoulder. - -The effect was surprising. The man jumped as if he were stabbed, and -turned a pale, frightened face on Mallory, who murmured: - -"Excuse me, do you happen to be a clergyman?" - -A look of relief stole over the man's features, followed closely by a -scowl of wounded vanity: - -"No, damn you, I don't happen to be a parson. I have chosen to -be--well, if you had watched the billboards in Chicago during our run, -you would not need to ask who I am!" - -Mallory mumbled an apology and hurried on, just overhearing his -victim's sigh: - -"Such is fame!" - -He saw two or three other clerical persons in that car, but feared to -touch their shoulders. One man in the last seat held him specially, -and he hid in the turn of the corridor, in the hope of eavesdropping -some clue. This man was bent and scholastic of appearance, and wore -heavy spectacles and a heavy beard, which Mallory took for a guaranty -that he was not another actor. And he was reading what appeared to be -printer's proofs. Mallory felt certain that they were a volume of -sermons. He lingered timorously in the environs for some time before -the man spoke at all to the dreary-looking woman at his side. Then the -stranger spoke. And this is what he said and read: - -"I fancy this will make the bigots sit up and take notice, mother: 'If -there ever was a person named Moses, it is certain, from the writings -ascribed to him, that he disbelieved the Egyptian theory of a life -after death, and combated it as a heathenish superstition. The Judaic -idea of a future existence was undoubtedly acquired from the -Assyrians, during the captivity.'" - -He doubtless read much more, but Mallory fled to the next car. There -he found a man in a frock coat talking solemnly to another of equal -solemnity. The seat next them was unoccupied, and Mallory dropped into -it, perking his ears backward for news. - -"Was you ever in Moline?" one voice asked. - -"Was I?" the other muttered. "Wasn't I run out of there by one of my -audiences. I was givin' hypnotic demonstrations, and I had a run-in -with one of my 'horses,' and he done me dirt. Right in the midst of -one of his cataleptic trances, he got down from the chairs where I had -stretched him out and hollered: 'He's a bum faker, gents, and owes me -two weeks' pay.' Thank Gawd, there was a back door openin' on a dark -alley leadin' to the switch yard. I caught a caboose just as a freight -train was pullin' out." - -Mallory could hardly get strength to rise and continue his search. On -his way forward he met the conductor, crossing a vestibule between -cars. A happy thought occurred to Mallory. He said: - -"Excuse me, but have you any preachers on board?" - -"None so far." - -"Are you sure?" - -"Positive." - -"How can you tell?" - -"Well, if a grown man offers me a half-fare ticket, I guess that's a -pretty good sign, ain't it?" - -Mallory guessed that it was, and turned back, hopeless and helpless. - - - - -CHAPTER XIII - -HOSTILITIES BEGIN - - -During Mallory's absence, Marjorie had met with a little adventure of -her own. Ira Lathrop finished his re-encounter with Anne Gattle -shortly after Mallory set out stalking clergymen. In the mingled -confusion of finding his one romantic flame still glowing on a vestal -altar, and of shocking her with an escape of profanity, he backed away -from her presence, and sank into his own berth. - -He realized that he was not alone. Somebody was alongside. He turned -to find the great tear-sprent eyes of Marjorie staring at him. He rose -with a recrudescence of his woman-hating wrath, and dashing up the -aisle, found the porter just returning from the baggage car. He seized -the black factotum and growled: - -"Say, porter, there's a woman in my berth." - -The porter chuckled, incredulous: - -"Woman in yo' berth!" - -"Yes--get her out." - -"Yassah," the porter nodded, and advanced on Marjorie with a gentle, -"'Scuse me, missus--ye' berth is numba one." - -"I don't care," snapped Marjorie, "I won't take it." - -"But this un belongs to that gentleman." - -"He can have mine--ours--Mr. Mallory's," cried Marjorie, pointing to -the white-ribboned tent in the farther end of the car. Then she -gripped the arms of the seat, as if defying eviction. The porter -stared at her in helpless chagrin. Then he shuffled back and murmured: -"I reckon you'd betta put her out." - -Lathrop withered the coward with one contemptuous look, and strode -down the aisle with a determined grimness. He took his ticket from his -pocket as a clinching proof of his title, and thrust it out at -Marjorie. She gave it one indifferent glance, and then her eyes and -mouth puckered, as if she had munched a green persimmon, and a long -low wail like a distant engine-whistle, stole from her lips. Ira -Lathrop stared at her in blank wrath, doddered irresolutely, and -roared: - -"Agh, let her have it!" - -The porter smiled triumphantly, and said: "She says you kin have her -berth." He pointed at the bridal arbor. Lathrop almost exploded at the -idea. - -Now he felt a hand on his shoulder, and turned to see Little Jimmie -Wellington emerging from his berth with an enormous smile: - -"Say, Pop, have you seen lovely rice-trap? Stick around till she -flops." - -But Lathrop flung away to the smoking room. Little Jimmie turned to -the jovial negro: - -"Porter, porter." - -"I'm right by you." - -"What time d'you say we get to Reno?" - -"Mawnin' of the fo'th day, sah." - -"Well, call me just before we roll in." - -And he rolled in. His last words floated down the aisle and met Mrs. -Little Jimmie Wellington just returning from the Women's Room, where -she had sought nepenthe in more than one of her exquisite little -cigars. The familiar voice, familiarly bibulous, smote her ear with -amazement. She beckoned the porter to her anxiously. - -"Porter! Porter! Do you know the name of the man who just hurried in?" - -"No'm," said the porter. "I reckon he's so broken up he ain't got any -name left." - -"It couldn't be," Mrs. Jimmie mused. - -"Things can be sometimes," said the porter. - -"You may make up my berth now," said Mrs. Wellington, forgetting that -Anne Gattle was still there. Mrs. Wellington hastened to apologize, -and begged her to stay, but the spinster wanted to be far away from -the disturbing atmosphere of divorce. She was dreaming already with -her eyes open, and she sank into number six in a lotus-eater's -reverie. - -Mrs. Wellington gathered certain things together and took up her -handbag, to return to the Women's Room, just as Mrs. Whitcomb came -forth from the curtains of her own berth, where she had made certain -preliminaries to disrobing, and put on a light, decidedly negligée -negligée. - -The two women collided in the aisle, whirled on one another, as women -do when they jostle, recognized each other with wild stares of -amazement, set their teeth, and made a simultaneous dash along the -corridor, shoulder wrestling with shoulder. They reached the door -marked "Women" at the same instant, and as neither would have dreamed -of offering the other a courtesy, they squeezed through together in a -Kilkenny jumble. - - - - -CHAPTER XIV - -THE DORMITORY ON WHEELS - - -Of all the shocking institutions in human history, the sleeping car is -the most shocking--or would be, if we were not so used to it. There -can be no doubt that we are the most moral nation on earth, for we -admit it ourselves. Perhaps we prove it, too, by the Arcadian -prosperity of these two-story hotels on wheels, where miscellaneous -travelers dwell in complete promiscuity, and sleep almost side by -side, in apartments, or compartments, separated only by a plank and a -curtain, and guarded only by one sleepy negro. - -After the fashion of the famous country whose inhabitants earned a -meagre sustenance by taking in each other's washing, so in Sleeping -Carpathia we attain a meagre respectability by everybody's chaperoning -everybody else. - -So topsy-turvied, indeed, are our notions, once we are aboard a train, -that the staterooms alone are regarded with suspicion; we question the -motives of those who must have a room to themselves!--a room with a -real door! that locks!! - -And, now, on this sleeping car, prettily named "Snowdrop," scenes were -enacting that would have thrown our great-grandmothers into -fits--scenes which, if we found them in France, or Japan, we should -view with alarm as almost unmentionable evidence of the moral -obliquity of those nations. - -But this was our own country--the part of it which admits that it is -the best part--the moralest part, the staunch Middle West. This was -Illinois. Yet dozens of cars were beholding similar immodesties in -chastest Illinois, and all over the map, thousands of people, in -hundreds of cars, were permitting total strangers to view preparations -which have always, hitherto, been reserved for the most intimate and -legalized relations. - -The porter was deftly transforming the day-coach into a narrow lane -entirely surrounded by portières. Behind most of the portières, -fluttering in the lightest breeze, and perilously following the hasty -passer-by, homely offices were being enacted. The population of this -little town was going to bed. The porter was putting them to sleep as -if they were children in a nursery, and he a black mammy. - -The frail walls of little sanctums were bulging with the bodies of -people disrobing in the aisle, with nothing between them and the -beholder's eye but a clinging curtain that explained what it did not -reveal. From apertures here and there disembodied feet were protruding -and mysterious hands were removing shoes and other things. - -Women in risky attire were scooting to one end of the car, and men in -shirt sleeves, or less, were hastening to the other. - -When Mallory returned to the "Snowdrop," his ear was greeted by the -thud of dropping shoes. He found Marjorie being rapidly immured, like -Poe's prisoner, in a jail of closing walls. - -She was unspeakably ill at ease, and by the irony of custom, the one -person on whom she depended for protection was the one person whose -contiguity was most alarming--and all for lack of a brief trialogue, -with a clergyman, as the _tertium quid_. - -When Mallory's careworn face appeared round the edge of the partition -now erected between her and the abode of Doctor and Mrs. Temple, -Marjorie shivered anew, and asked with all anxiety: - -"Did you find a minister?" - -Perhaps the Recording Angel overlooked Mallory's answer: "Not a damn' -minister." - -When he dropped at Marjorie's side, she edged away from him, pleading: -"Oh, what shall we do?" - -He answered dismally and ineffectively: "We'll have to go on -pretending to be--just friends." - -"But everybody thinks we're married." - -"That's so!" he admitted, with the imbecility of fatigued hope. They -sat a while listening to the porter slipping sheets into place and -thumping pillows into cases, a few doors down the street. He would be -ready for them at any moment. Something must be done, but what? what? - - - - -CHAPTER XV - -A PREMATURE DIVORCE - - -Suddenly Marjorie's heart gave a leap of joy. She was having another -idea. "I'll tell you, Harry. We'll pretend to quarrel, and then----" - -"And then you can leave me in high dudgeon." - -The ruse struck him as a trifle unconvincing. "Don't you think it -looks kind of improbable on--on--such an occasion?" - -Marjorie blushed, and lowered her eyes and her voice: "Can you suggest -anything better?" - -"No, but----" - -"Then, we'll have to quarrel, darling." - -He yielded, for lack of a better idea: "All right, beloved. How shall -we begin?" - -On close approach, the idea did seem rather impossible to her. "How -could I ever quarrel with you, my love?" she cooed. - -He gazed at her with a rush of lovely tenderness: "And how could I -ever speak crossly to you?" - -"We never shall have a harsh word, shall we?" she resolved. - -"Never!" he seconded. So that resolution passed the House -unanimously. - -They held hands in luxury a while, then she began again: "Still, we -must pretend. You start it, love." - -"No, you start it," he pleaded. - -"You ought to," she beamed. "You got me into this mess." - -The word slipped out. Mallory started: "Mess! How is it my fault? Good -Lord, are you going to begin chucking it up?" - -"Well, you must admit, darling," Marjorie urged, "that you've bungled -everything pretty badly." - -It was so undeniable that he could only groan: "And I suppose I'll -hear of this till my dying day, dearest." - -Marjorie had a little temper all her own. So she defended it: "If you -are so afraid of my temper, love, perhaps you'd better call it all off -before it's too late." - -"I didn't say anything about your temper, sweetheart," Mallory -insisted. - -"You did, too, honey. You said I'd chuck this up till your dying day. -As if I had such a disposition! You can stay here." She rose to her -feet. He pressed her back with a decisive motion, and demanded: "Where -are you going?" - -"Up in the baggage car with Snoozleums," she sniffled. "He's the only -one that doesn't find fault with me." - -Mallory was stung to action by this crisis: "Wait," he said. He leaned -out and motioned down the alley. "Porter! Wait a moment, darling. -Porter!" - -The porter arrived with a half-folded blanket in his hands, and his -usual, "Yassah!" - -Beckoning him closer, Mallory mumbled in a low tone: "Is there an -extra berth on this car?" - -The porter's eyes seemed to rebuke his ears. "Does you want this upper -made up?" - -"No--of course not." - -"Ex--excuse me, I thought----" - -"Don't you dare to think!" Mallory thundered. "Isn't there another -lower berth?" - -The porter breathed hard, and gave this bridal couple up as a riddle -that followed no known rules. He went to find the sleeping car -conductor, and returned with the information that the diagram showed -nobody assigned to number three. - -"Then I'll take number three," said Mallory, poking money at the -porter. And still the porter could not understand. - -"Now, lemme onderstan' you-all," he stammered. "Does you both move -over to numba three, or does yo'--yo' lady remain heah, while jest you -preambulates?" - -"Just I preambulate, you black hound!" Mallory answered, in a -threatening tone. The porter could understand that, at least, and he -bristled away with a meek: "Yassah. Numba three is yours, sah." - -The troubled features of the baffled porter cleared up as by magic -when he arrived at number three, for there he found his tyrant and -tormentor, the English invader. - -He remembered how indignantly Mr. Wedgewood had refused to show his -ticket, how cocksure he was of his number, how he had leased the -porter's services as a sort of private nurse, and had paid no advance -royalties. - -And now he was sprawled and snoring majestically among his many -luggages, like a sleeping lion. Revenge tasted good to the humble -porter; it tasted like a candied yam smothered in 'possum gravy. He -smacked his thick lips over this revenge. With all the insolence of a -servant in brief authority, he gloated over his prey, and prodded him -awake. Then murmured with hypocritical deference: "Excuse me, but -could I see yo' ticket for yo' seat?" - -"Certainly not! It's too much trouble," grumbled the half asleeper. -"Confound you!" - -The porter lured him on: "Is you sho' you got one?" - -Wedgewood was wide awake now, and surly as any Englishman before -breakfast: "Of cawse I'm shaw. How dare you?" - -"Too bad, but I'm 'bleeged to ask you to gimme a peek at it." - -"This is an outrage!" - -"Yassah, but I just nachelly got to see it." - -Wedgewood gathered himself together, and ransacked his many pockets -with increasing anger, muttering under his breath. At length he -produced the ticket, and thrust it at the porter: "Thah, you idiot, -are you convinced now?" - -The porter gazed at the billet with ill-concealed triumph. "Yassah. -I's convinced," Mr. Wedgewood settled back and closed his eyes. "I's -convinced that you is in the wrong berth!" - -"Impossible! I won't believe you!" the Englishman raged, getting to -his feet in a fury. - -"Perhaps you'll believe Mista Ticket," the porter chortled. "He says -numba ten, and that's ten across the way and down the road a piece." - -"This is outrageous! I decline to move." - -"You may decline, but you move just the same," the porter said, -reaching out for his various bags and carryalls. "The train moves and -you move with it." - -Wedgewood stood fast: "You had no right to put me in here in the first -place." - -The porter disdained to refute this slander. He stumbled down the -aisle with the bundles. "It's too bad, it's sutt'nly too bad, but you -sholy must come along." - -Wedgewood followed, gesticulating violently. - -"Here--wait--how dare you! And that berth is made up. I don't want to -go to bed now!" - -"Mista Ticket says, 'Go to baid!'" - -"Of all the disgusting countries! Heah, don't put that thah--heah." - -The porter flung his load anywhere, and absolved himself with a curt, -"I's got otha passengers to wait on now." - -"I shall certainly report you to the company," the Englishman fumed. - -"Yassah, I p'sume so." - -"Have I got to go to bed now? Really, I----" but the porter was gone, -and the irate foreigner crawled under his curtains, muttering: "I -shall write a letter to the _London Times_ about this." - -To add to his misery, Mrs. Whitcomb came from the Women's Room, and as -she passed him, she prodded him with one sharp elbow and twisted the -corner of her heel into his little toe. He thrust his head out with -his fiercest, "How dare you!" But Mrs. Whitcomb was fresh from a -prolonged encounter with Mrs. Wellington, and she flung back a -venomous glare that sent the Englishman to cover. - -The porter reveled in his victory till he had to dash out to the -vestibule to give vent to hilarious yelps of laughter. When he had -regained composure, he came back to Mallory, and bent over him to say: - -"Yo' berth is empty, sah. Shall I make it up?" - -Mallory nodded, and turned to Marjorie, with a sad, "Good night, -darling." - -The porter rolled his eyes again, and turned away, only to be -recalled by Marjorie's voice: "Porter, take this old handbag out of -here." - -The porter thought of the vanquished Lathrop, exiled to the smoking -room, and he answered: "That belongs to the gemman what owns this -berth." - -"Put it in number one," Marjorie commanded, with a queenly gesture. - -The porter obeyed meekly, wondering what would happen next. He had no -sooner deposited Lathrop's valise among the incongruous white ribbons, -than Marjorie recalled him to say: "And, Porter, you may bring me my -own baggage." - -"Yo' what--missus?" - -"Our handbags, idiot," Mallory explained, peevishly. - -"I ain't seen no handbags of you-alls," the porter protested. "You-all -didn't have no handbags when you got on this cah." - -Mallory jumped as if he had been shot. "Good Lord, I remember! We left -'em in the taxicab!" - -The porter cast his hands up, and walked away from the tragedy. -Marjorie stared at Mallory in horror. - -"We had so little time to catch the train," Mallory stammered. -Marjorie leaped to her feet: "I'm going up in the baggage car." - -"For the dog?" - -"For my trunk." - -And now Mallory annihilated her completely, for he gasped: "Our -trunks went on the train ahead!" - -Marjorie fell back for one moment, then bounded to her feet with -shrill commands: "Porter! Porter! I want you to stop this train this -minute!" - -The porter called back from the depths of a berth: "This train don't -stop till to-morrow noon." - -Marjorie had strength enough for only one vain protest: "Do you mean -to say that I've got to go to San Francisco in this waist--a waist -that has seen a whole day in Chicago?" - -The best consolation Mallory could offer was companionship in misery. -He pushed forward one not too immaculate cuff. "Well, this is the only -linen I have." - -"Don't speak to me," snapped Marjorie, beating her heels against the -floor. - -"But, my darling!" - -"Go away and leave me. I hate you!" - -Mallory rose up, and stumbling down the aisle, plounced into berth -number three, an allegory of despair. - -About this time, Little Jimmie Wellington, having completed more or -less chaotic preparations for sleep, found that he had put on his -pyjamas hindside foremost. After vain efforts to whirl round quickly -and get at his own back, he put out a frowsy head, and called for -help. - -"Say, Porter, Porter!" - -"I'm still on the train," answered the porter, coming into view. - -"You'll have to hook me up." - -The porter rendered what aid and correction he could in Wellington's -hippopotamine toilet. Wellington was just wide enough awake to discern -the undisturbed bridal-chamber. He whined: - -"Say, Porter, that rice-trap. Aren't they going to flop the -rice-trap?" - -The porter shook his head sadly. "Don't look like that floppers -a'goin' to flip. That dog-on bridal couple is done divorced a'ready!" - - - - -CHAPTER XVI - -GOOD NIGHT, ALL! - - -The car was settling gradually into peace. But there was still some -murmur and drowsy energy. Shoes continued to drop, heads to bump -against upper berths, the bell to ring now and then, and ring again -and again. - -The porter paid little heed to it; he was busy making up number five -(Ira Lathrop's berth) for Marjorie, who was making what preparations -she could for her trousseauless, husbandless, dogless first night out. - -Finally the Englishman, who had almost rung the bell dry of -electricity, shoved from his berth his indignant and undignified head. -Once more the car resounded with the cry of "Pawtah! Pawtah!" - -The porter moved up with noticeable deliberation. "Did you ring, sah?" - -"Did I ring! Paw-tah, you may draw my tub at eight-thutty in the -mawning." - -"Draw yo'--what, sah?" the porter gasped. - -"My tub." - -"Ba-ath tub?" - -"Bahth tub." - -"Lawdy, man. Is you allowin' to take a ba-ath in the mawnin'?" - -"Of course I am." - -"Didn't you have one befo' you stahted?" - -"How dare you! Of cawse I did." - -"Well, that's all you git." - -"Do you mean to tell me that there is no tub on this beastly train?" -Wedgewood almost fell out of bed with the shock of this news. - -"We do not carry tubs--no, sah. There's a lot of tubs in San -Francisco, though." - -"No tub on this train for four days!" Wedgewood sighed. "But whatever -does one do in the meanwhile?" - -"One just waits. Yassah, one and all waits." - -"It's ghahstly, that's what it is, ghahstly." - -"Yassah," said the porter, and mumbled as he walked away, "but the -weather is gettin' cooler." - -He finished preparing Marjorie's bunk, and was just suggesting that -Mallory retreat to the smoking room while number three was made up, -when there was a commotion in the corridor, and a man in checked -overalls dashed into the car. - -His ear was slightly red, and he held at arm's length, as if it were a -venomous monster, Snoozleums. And he yelled: - -"Say, whose durn dog is this? He bit two men, and he makes so much -noise we can't sleep in the baggage car." - -Marjorie went flying down the aisle to reclaim her lost lamb in wolf's -clothing, and Snoozleums, the returned prodigal, yelped and leaped, -and told her all about the indignities he had been subjected to, and -his valiant struggle for liberty. - -Marjorie, seeing only Snoozleums, stepped into the fatal berth number -one, and paid no heed to the dangling ribbons. Mallory, eager to -restore himself to her love by loving her dog, crowded closer to her -side, making a hypocritical ado over the pup. - -Everybody was popping his or her face out to learn the cause of such -clamor. Among the bodiless heads suspended along the curtains, like -Dyak trophies, appeared the great mask of Little Jimmie Wellington. He -had been unable to sleep for mourning the wanton waste of that lovely -rice-trap. - -When he peered forth, his eyes hardly believed themselves. The elusive -bride and groom were actually in the trap--the hen pheasant and the -chanticleer. But the net did not fall. He waited to see them sit down, -and spring the infernal machine. But they would not sit. - -In fact, Marjorie was muttering to Harry--tenderly, now, since he had -won her back by his efforts to console Snoozleums--she was muttering -tenderly: - -"We must not be seen together, honey. Go away, I'll see you in the -morning." - -And Mallory was saying with bitterest resignation: "Good night--my -friend." - -And they were shaking hands! This incredible bridal couple was shaking -hands with itself--disintegrating! Then Wellington determined to do at -least his duty by the sacred rites. - -The gaping passengers saw what was probably the largest pair of -pyjamas in Chicago. They saw Little Jimmie, smothering back his -giggles like a schoolboy, tiptoe from his berth, enter the next berth, -brushing the porter aside, climb on the seat, and clutch the ribbon -that pulled the stopper from the trap. - -Down upon the unsuspecting elopers came this miraculous cloudburst of -ironical rice, and with it came Little Jimmie Wellington, who lost -what little balance he had, and catapulted into their midst like the -offspring of an iceberg. - -It was at this moment that Mrs. Wellington, hearing the loud cries of -the panic-stricken Marjorie, rushed from the Women's Room, -absent-mindedly combing a totally detached section of her hair. She -recognized familiar pyjamas waving in air, and with one faint gasp: -"Jimmie! on this train!" she swooned away. She would have fallen, but -seeing that no one paid any attention to her, she recovered -consciousness on her own hook, and vanished into her berth, to -meditate on the whys and wherefores of her husband's presence in this -car. - - [Illustration: DOWN UPON THE UNSUSPECTING ELOPERS CAME THIS - MIRACULOUS CLOUDBURST OF IRONICAL RICE....] - -Dr. Temple in a nightgown and trousers, Roger Ashton in a collarless -estate, and the porter, managed to extricate Mr. Wellington from -his plight, and stow him away, though it was like putting a whale to -bed. - -Mallory, seeing that Marjorie had fled, vented his wild rage against -fate in general, and rice traps in particular, by tearing the bridal -bungalow to pieces, and then he stalked into the smoking room, where -Ira Lathrop, homeless and dispossessed, was sound asleep, with his -feet in the chair. - -He was dreaming that he was a boy in Brattleboro, the worst boy in -Brattleboro, trying to get up the courage to spark pretty Anne Gattle, -and throwing rocks at the best boy in town, Charlie Selby, who was -always at her side. The porter woke Ira, an hour later, and escorted -him to the late bridal section. - -Marjorie had fled with her dog, as soon as she could grope her way -through the deluge of rice. She hopped into her berth, and spent an -hour trying to clear her hair of the multitudinous grains. And as for -Snoozleums, his thick wool was so be-riced that for two days, whenever -he shook himself, he snew. - -Eventually, the car quieted, and nothing was heard but the rumble and -click of the wheels on the rails, the creak of timbers, and the -frog-like chorus of a few well-trained snorers. As the porter was -turning down the last of the lights, a rumpled pate was thrust from -the stateroom, and the luscious-eyed man whispered: - -"Porter, what time did you say we crossed the Iowa State line?" - -"Two fifty-five A.M." - -From within the stateroom came a deep sigh, then with a dismal groan: -"Call me at two fifty-five A.M.," the door was closed. - -Poor Mallory, pyjamaless and night-shirtless, lay propped up on his -pillows, staring out of the window at the swiftly shifting night -scene. The State of Illinois was being pulled out from under the train -like a dark rug. - -Farmhouses gleamed or dreamed lampless. The moonlight rippled on -endless seas of wheat and Indian corn. Little towns slid up and away. -Large towns rolled forward, and were left behind. Ponds, marshes, -brooks, pastures, thickets and great gloomy groves flowed past as on a -river. But the same stars and the moon seemed to accompany the train. -If the flying witness had been less heavy of heart, he would have -found the reeling scene full of grace and night beauty. But he could -not see any charm in all the world, except his tantalizing other self, -from whom a great chasm seemed to divide him, though she was only two -windows away. - -He had not yet fallen asleep, and he was still pondering how to attain -his unmarried, unmarriable bride, when the train rolled out in air -above a great wide river, very noble under the stars. He knew it for -the Mississippi. He heard a faint knocking on a door at the other end -of the car. He heard sounds as of kisses, and then somebody tiptoed -along the aisle stealthily. He did not know that another bridegroom -was being separated from his bride because they were too much married. - -Somewhere in Iowa he fell asleep. - - - - -CHAPTER XVII - -LAST CALL FOR BREAKFAST - - -It was still Iowa when Mallory awoke. Into his last moments of heavy -sleep intruded a voice like a town-crier's voice, crying: - -"Lass call for breakfuss in the Rining Rar," and then, again louder, -"Lass call for breakfuss in Rinin-rar," and, finally and faintly, -"Lasscall breakfuss ri'rar." - -Mallory pushed up his window shade. The day was broad on rolling -prairies like billows established in the green soil. He peeked through -his curtains. Most of the other passengers were up and about, their -beds hidden and beddings stowed away behind the bellying veneer of the -upperworks of the car. All the berths were made up except his own and -number two, in the corner, where Little Jimmie Wellington's nose still -played a bagpipe monody, and one other berth, which he recognized as -Marjorie's. - -His belated sleep and hers had spared them both the stares and -laughing chatter of the passengers. But this bridal couple's two -berths, standing like towers among the seats had provided -conversation for everybody, had already united the casual group of -strangers into an organized gossip-bee. - -Mallory got into his shoes and as much of his clothes as was necessary -for the dash to the washroom, and took on his arm the rest of his -wardrobe. Just as he issued from his lonely chamber, Marjorie appeared -from hers, much disheveled and heavy-eyed. The bride and groom -exchanged glances of mutual terror, and hurried in opposite -directions. - -The spickest and spannest of lieutenants soon realized that he was -reduced to wearing yesterday's linen as well as yesterday's beard. -This was intolerable. A brave man can endure heartbreaks, loss of -love, honor and place, but a neat man cannot abide the traces of time -in his toilet. Lieutenant Mallory had seen rough service in camp and -on long hikes, when he gloried in mud and disorder, and he was to see -campaigns in the Philippines, when he should not take off his shoes or -his uniform for three days at a time. But that was the field, and this -car was a drawing room. - -In this crisis in his affairs, Little Jimmie Wellington waddled into -the men's room, floundering about with every lurch of the train, like -a cannon loose in the hold of a ship. He fumbled with the handles on a -basin, and made a crazy toilet, trying to find some abatement of his -fever by filling a glass at the ice-water tank and emptying it over -his head. - -These drastic measures restored him to some sort of coherency, and -Mallory appealed to him for help in the matter of linen. Wellington -effusively offered him everything he had, and Mallory selected from -his store half a dozen collars, any one of which would have gone round -his neck nearly twice. - -Wellington also proffered his safety razor, and made him a present of -a virgin wafer of steel for his very own. - -With this assistance, Mallory was enabled to make himself fairly -presentable. When he returned to his seat, the three curtained rooms -had been whisked away by the porter. There was no place now to hide -from the passengers. - -He sat down facing the feminine end of the car, watching for Marjorie. -The passengers were watching for her, too, hoping to learn what -unheard-of incident could have provoked the quarrel that separated a -bride and groom at this time, of all times. - -To the general bewilderment, when Marjorie appeared, Mallory and she -rushed together and clasped hands with an ardor that suggested a -desire for even more ardent greeting. The passengers almost sprained -their ears to hear how they would make up such a dreadful feud. But -all they heard was: "We'll have to hurry, Marjorie, if we want to get -any breakfast." - -"All right, honey. Come along." - -Then the inscrutable couple scurried up the aisle, and disappeared in -the corridor, leaving behind them a mighty riddle. They kissed in the -corridor of that car, kissed in the vestibule, kissed in the two -corridors of the next car, and were caught kissing in the next -vestibule by the new conductor. - -The dining car conductor, who flattered himself that he knew a bride -and groom when he saw them, escorted them grandly to a table for two; -and the waiter fluttered about them with extraordinary consideration. - -They had a plenty to talk of in prospect and retrospect. They both -felt sure that a minister lurked among the cars somewhere, and they -ate with a zest to prepare for the ceremony, arguing the best place -for it, and quarreling amorously over details. Mallory was for one of -the vestibules as the scene of their union, but Marjorie was for the -baggage car, till she realized that Snoozleums might be unwilling to -attend. Then she swung round to the vestibule, but Mallory shifted to -the observation platform. - -Marjorie had left Snoozleums with Mrs. Temple, who promised to hide -him when the new conductor passed through the car, and she reminded -Harry to get the waiter to bring them a package of bones for their -only "child," so far. - -On the way back from the dining car they kissed each other good-bye -again at all the trysting places they had sanctified before. The sun -was radiant, the world good, and the very train ran with jubilant -rejoicing. They could not doubt that a few more hours would see them -legally man and wife. - -Mallory restored Marjorie to her place in their car, and with smiles -of assurance, left her for another parson-hunt through the train. She -waited for him in a bridal agitation. He ransacked the train forward -in vain, and returned, passing Marjorie with a shake of the head and a -dour countenance. He went out to the observation platform, where he -stumbled on Ira Lathrop and Anne Gattle, engaged in a conversation of -evident intimacy, for they jumped when he opened the door, as if they -were guilty of some plot. - -Mallory mumbled his usual, "Excuse me," whirled on his heel, and -dragged his discouraged steps back through the Observation Room, where -various women and a few men of evident unclericality were draped -across arm chairs and absorbed in lazy conversation or bobbing their -heads over magazines that trembled with the motion of the train. - -Mrs. Wellington was busily writing at the desk, but he did not know -who she was, and he did not care whom she was writing to. He did not -observe the baleful glare of Mrs. Whitcomb, who sat watching Mrs. -Wellington, knowing all too well who she was, and suspecting the -correspondent--Mrs. Whitcomb was tempted to spell the word with one -"r." - -Mallory stumbled into the men's portion of the composite car. Here he -nodded with a sickly cheer to the sole occupant, Dr. Temple, who was -looking less ministerial than ever in an embroidered skull cap. The -old rascal was sitting far back on his lumbar vertebræ. One of his -hands clasped a long glass filled with a liquid of a hue that -resembled something stronger than what it was--mere ginger ale. The -other hand toyed with a long black cigar. The smoke curled round the -old man's head like the fumes of a sultan's narghilé, and through the -wisps his face was one of Oriental luxury. - -Mallory's eyes were caught from this picture of beatitude by the -entrance, at the other door, of a man who had evidently swung aboard -at the most recent stop--for Mallory had not seen him. His gray hair -was crowned with a soft black hat, and his spare frame was swathed in -a frock coat that had seen better days. His soft gray eyes seemed to -search timidly the smoke-clouded atmosphere, and he had a bashful air -which Mallory translated as one of diffidence in a place where liquors -and cigars were dispensed. - -With equal diffidence Mallory advanced, and in a low tone accosted the -newcomer cautiously: - -"Excuse me--you look like a clergyman." - -"The hell you say!" - -Mallory pursued the question no further. - - - - -CHAPTER XVIII - -IN THE COMPOSITE CAR - - -It was the gentle stranger's turn to miss his guess. He bent over the -chair into which Mallory had flopped, and said in a tense, low tone: -"You look like a t'oroughbred sport. I'm trying to make up a game of -stud poker. Will you join me?" - -Mallory shook his heavy head in refusal, and with dull eyes watched -the man, whose profession he no longer misunderstood, saunter up to -the blissful Doctor from Ypsilanti, and murmur again: - -"Will you join me?" - -"Join you in what, sir?" said Dr. Temple, with alert courtesy. - -"A little game." - -"I don't mind," the doctor smiled, rising with amiable readiness. "The -checkers are in the next room." - -"Quit your kiddin'," the stranger coughed. "How about a little -freeze-out?" - -"Freeze-out?" said Dr. Temple. "It sounds interesting. Is it something -like authors?" - -The newcomer shot a quick glance at this man, whose innocent air he -suspected. But he merely drawled: "Well, you play it with cards." - -"Would you mind teaching me the rules?" said the old sport from -Ypsilanti. - -The gambler was growing suspicious of this too, too childlike -innocence. He whined: "Say, what's your little game, eh?" but decided -to risk the venture. He sat down at a table, and Dr. Temple, bringing -along his glass, drew up a chair. The gambler took a pack of cards -from his pocket, and shuffled them with a snap that startled Dr. -Temple and a dexterity that delighted him. - -"Go on, it's beautiful to see," he exclaimed. The gambler set the pack -down with the one word "Cut!" but since the old man made no effort to -comply, the gambler did not insist. He took up the pack again and ran -off five cards to each place with a grace that staggered the doctor. - -Mallory was about to intervene for the protection of the guileless -physician when the conductor chanced to saunter in. - -The gambler, seeing him, snatched Dr. Temple's cards from his hand and -slipped the pack into his pocket. - -"What's the matter now?" Dr. Temple asked, but the newcomer huskily -answered: "Wait a minute. Wait a minute." - -The conductor took in the scene at a glance and, stalking up to the -table, spoke with the grimness of a sea-captain: "Say, I've got my eye -on you. Don't start nothin'." - -The stranger stared at him wonderingly and demanded: "Why, what you -drivin' at?" - -"You know all right," the conductor growled, and then turned on the -befuddled old clergyman, "and you, too." - -"Me, too?" the preacher gasped. - -"Yes, you, too," the conductor repeated, shaking an accusing -forefinger under his nose. "Your actions have been suspicious from the -beginning. We've all been watching you." - -Dr. Temple was so agitated that he nearly let fall his secret. "Why, -do you realize that I'm a----" - -"Ah, don't start that," sneered the conductor, "I can spot a gambler -as far as I can see one. You and your side partner here want to look -out, that's all, or I'll drop you at the next tank." Then he walked -out, his very shoulder blades uttering threats. - -Dr. Temple stared after him, but the gambler stared at Dr. Temple with -a mingling of accusation and of homage. "So you're one of us," he -said, and seizing the old man's limp hand, shook it heartily: "I got -to slip it to you. Your make-up is great. You nearly had me for a -come-on. Great!" - -And then he sauntered out, leaving the clergyman's head swimming. Dr. -Temple turned to Mallory for explanations, but Mallory only waved him -away. He was not quite convinced himself. He was convinced only that -whatever else anybody might be, nobody apparently desired to be a -clergyman in these degenerate days. - -The conductor returned and threw into Dr. Temple the glare of two -basilisk eyes. The old man put out a beseeching hand and began: - -"My good man, you do me a grave injustice." - -The conductor snapped back: "You say a word to me and I'll do you -worse than that. And if I spot you with a pack of cards in your hand -again, I'll tie you to the cow-ketcher." - -Then he marched off again. The doctor fell back into a chair, trying -to figure it out. Then Ashton and Fosdick and little Jimmie Wellington -and Wedgewood strolled in and, dropping into chairs, ordered drinks. -Before the doctor could ask anybody to explain, Ashton was launched on -a story. His mind was a suitcase full of anecdotes, mostly of the -smoking-room order. - -Wherever three or four men are gathered together, they rapidly -organize a clearing-house of off-color stories. The doctor listened in -spite of himself, and in spite of himself he was amused, for stories -that would be stupid if they were decent, take on a certain verve and -thrill from their very forbiddenness. - -The dear old clergyman felt that it would be priggish to take flight, -but he could not make the corners of his mouth behave. Strange -twitchings of the lips and little steamy escapes of giggle-jets -disturbed him. And when Ashton, who was a practiced raconteur, -finished a drolatic adventure with the epilogue, "And the next morning -they were at Niagara Falls," the old doctor was helpless with -laughter. Some superior force, a devil no doubt, fairly shook him with -glee. - -"Oh, that's bully," he shrieked, "I haven't heard a story like that -for ages." - -"Why, where have you been, Dr. Temple?" asked Ashton, who could not -imagine where a man could have concealed himself from such stories. -But he laughed loudest of all when the doctor answered: "You see, I -live in Ypsilanti. They don't tell me stories like that." - -"They--who?" said Fosdick. - -"Why, my pa--my patients," the doctor explained, and laughed so hard -that he forgot to feel guilty, laughed so hard that his wife in the -next room heard him and giggled to Mrs. Whitcomb: - -"Listen to dear Walter. He hasn't laughed like that since he was a--a -medical student." Then she buried her face guiltily in a book. - -"Wasn't it good?" Dr. Temple demanded, wiping his streaming eyes and -nudging the solemn-faced Englishman, who understood his own nation's -humor, but had not yet learned the Yankee quirks. - -Wedgewood made a hollow effort at laughter and answered: -"Extremely--very droll, but what I don't quite get was--why the -porter said----" The others drowned him in a roar of laughter, but -Ashton was angry. "Why, you blamed fool, that's where the joke came -in. Don't you see, the bridegroom said to the bride----" then he -lowered his voice and diagrammed the story on his fingers. - -Mrs. Temple was still shaking with sympathetic laughter, never -dreaming what her husband was laughing at. She turned to Mrs. -Whitcomb, but Mrs. Whitcomb was still glaring at Mrs. Wellington, who -was still writing with flying fingers and underscoring every other -word. - -"Some people seem to think they own the train," Mrs. Whitcomb raged. -"That creature has been at the writing desk an hour. The worst of it -is, I'm sure she's writing to _my_ husband." - -Mrs. Temple looked shocked, but another peal of laughter came through -the partition between the male and female sections of the car, and she -beamed again. Then Mrs. Wellington finished her letter, glanced it -over, addressed an envelope, sealed and stamped it with a deliberation -that maddened Mrs. Whitcomb. When at last she rose, Mrs. Whitcomb was -in the seat almost before Mrs. Wellington was out of it. - -Mrs. Wellington paused at another wave of laughter from the men's -room. She commented petulantly: - -"What good times men have. They've formed a club in there already. We -women can only sit around and hate each other." - -"Why, I don't hate anybody, do you?" Mrs. Temple exclaimed, looking up -from the novel she had found on the book shelves. Mrs. Wellington -dropped into the next chair: - -"On a long railroad journey I hate everybody. Don't you hate long -journeys?" - -"It's the first I ever took," Mrs. Temple apologized, radiantly, "And -I'm having the--what my oldest boy would call the time of my life. And -dear Walter--such goings on for him! A few minutes ago I strolled by -the door and I saw him playing cards with a stranger, and smoking and -drinking, too, all at once." - -"Boys will be boys," said Mrs. Wellington. - -"But for Dr. Temple of all people----" - -"Why shouldn't a doctor? It's a shame the way men have everything. -Think of it, a special smoking room. And women have no place to take a -puff except on the sly." - -Mrs. Temple stared at her in awe: "The woman in this book -smokes!--perfumed things!" - -"All women smoke nowadays," said Mrs. Wellington, carelessly. "Don't -you?" - -The politest thing Mrs. Temple could think of in answer was: "Not -yet." - -"Really!" said Mrs. Wellington, "Don't you like tobacco?" - -"I never tried it." - -"It's time you did. I smoke cigars myself." - -Mrs. Temple almost collapsed at this double shock: "Ci--cigars?" - -"Yes; cigarettes are too strong for me; will you try one of my pets?" - -Mrs. Temple was about to express her repugnance at the thought, but -Mrs. Wellington thrust before her a portfolio in which nestled such -dainty shapes of such a warm and winsome brown, that Mrs. Temple -paused to stare, and, like Mother Eve, found the fruit of knowledge -too interesting once seen to reject with scorn. She hung over the -cigar case in hesitant excitement one moment too long. Then she said -in a trembling voice: "I--I should like to try once--just to see what -it's like. But there's no place." - -Mrs. Wellington felt that she had already made a proselyte to her own -beloved vice, and she rushed her victim to the precipice: "There's the -observation platform, my dear. Come on out." - -Mrs. Temple was shivering with dismay at the dreadful deed: "What -would they say in Ypsilanti?" - -"What do you care? Be a sport. Your husband smokes. If it's right for -him, why not for you?" - -Mrs. Temple set her teeth and crossed the Rubicon with a resolute "I -will!" - -Mrs. Wellington led the timid neophyte along the wavering floor of -the car and flung back the door of the observation car. She found Ira -Lathrop holding Anne Gattle's hand and evidently explaining something -of great importance, for their heads were close together. They rose -and with abashed faces and confused mumblings of half swallowed -explanations, left the platform to Mrs. Wellington and her new pupil. - -Shortly afterward Little Jimmie Wellington grew restive and set out -for a brief constitutional and a breath of air. He carried a siphon to -which he had become greatly attached, and made heavy going of the -observation room, but reached the door in fairly good order. He swung -it open and brought in with it the pale and wavering ghost of Mrs. -Temple, who had been leaning against it for much-needed support. -Wellington was stupefied to observe smoke pouring round Mrs. Temple's -form, and he resolved to perform a great life-saving feat. He decided -that the poor little woman was on fire and he poised the siphon like a -fire extinguisher, with the noble intention of putting her out. - -He pressed the handle, and a stream of vichy shot from the nozzle. - -Fortunately, his aim was so very wobbly that none of the extinguisher -touched Mrs. Temple. - -Wellington was about to play the siphon at her again when he saw her -take from her lips a toy cigar and emit a stream of cough-shaken -smoke. The poor little experimentalist was too wretched to notice -even so large a menace as Wellington. She threw the cigar away and -gasped: - -"I think I've had enough." - -From the platform came a voice very well known to Little Jimmie. It -said: "You'll like the second one better." - -Mrs. Temple shuddered at the thought, but Wellington drew himself up -majestically and called out: - -"Like second one better, eh? I suppozhe it's the same way with -husbandsh." - -Then he stalked back to the smoking room, feeling that he had -annihilated his wife, but knowing from experience that she always had -a come-back. He knew it would be good, but he was afraid to hear it. -He rolled into the smoking room, and sprawling across Doctor Temple's -shoulders, dragged him from the midst of a highly improper story with -alarming news. - -"Doc., your wife looks kind o' seedy. Better go to her at once." - -Dr. Temple leaped to his feet and ran to his wife's aid. He found her -a dismal, ashen sight. - -"Sally! What on earth ails you?" - -"Been smok-oking," she hiccoughed. - -The world seemed to be crashing round Dr. Temple's head. He could only -gurgle, "Sally!" - -Mrs. Temple drew herself up with weak defiance: "Well, I saw you -playing cards and drinking." - -In the presence of such innocent deviltry he could only smile: "Aren't -we having an exciting vacation? But to think of you smoking!--and a -cigar!" - -She tossed her head in pride. "And it didn't make me sick--much." She -clutched a chair. He tried to support her. He could not help -pondering: "What would they say in Yp-hip-silanti?" - -"Who cares?" she laughed. "I--I wish the old train wouldn't rock so." - -"I--I've smoked too much, too," said Dr. Temple with perfect truth, -but Mrs. Temple, remembering that long glass she had seen, narrowed -her eyes at him: "Are you sure it was the smoke?" - -"Sally!" he cried, in abject horror at her implied suspicion. - -Then she turned a pale green. "Oh, I feel such a qualm." - -"In your conscience, Sally?" - -"No, not in my conscience. I think I'll go back to my berth and lie -down." - -"Let me help you, Mother." - -And Darby and Joan hurried along the corridor, crowding it as they -were crowding their vacation with belated experience. - - - - -CHAPTER XIX - -FOILED! - - -It was late in the forenoon before the train came to the end of its -iron furrow across that fertile space between two of the world's -greatest rivers, which the Indians called "Iowa," nobody knows exactly -why. In contrast with the palisades of the Mississippi, the Missouri -twists like a great brown dragon wallowing in congenial mud. The water -itself, as Bob Brudette said, is so muddy that the wind blowing across -it raises a cloud of dust. - -A sonorous bridge led the way into Nebraska, and the train came to a -halt at Omaha. Mallory and Marjorie got out to stretch their legs and -their dog. If they had only known that the train was to stop there the -quarter of an hour, and if they had only known some preacher there and -had had him to the station, the ceremony could have been consummated -then and there. - -The horizon was fairly saw-toothed with church spires. There were -preachers, preachers everywhere, and not a dominie to do their deed. - -After they had strolled up and down the platform, and up and down, -and up and down till they were fain of their cramped quarters again, -Marjorie suddenly dug her nails into Mallory's arm. - -"Honey! look!--look!" - -Honey looked, and there before their very eyes stood as clerical a -looking person as ever announced a strawberry festival. - -Mallory stared and stared, till Marjorie said: - -"Don't you see? stupid! it's a preacher! a preacher!" - -"It looks like one," was as far as Mallory would commit himself, and -he was turning away. He had about come to the belief that anything -that looked like a parson was something else. But Marjorie whirled him -round again, with a shrill whisper to listen. And he overheard in -tones addicted to the pulpit: - -"Yes, deacon, I trust that the harvest will be plentiful at my new -church. It grieves me to leave the dear brothers and sisters in the -Lord in Omaha, but I felt called to wider pastures." - -And a lady who was evidently Mrs. Deacon spoke up: - -"We'll miss you terrible. We all say you are the best pastor our -church ever had." - -Mallory prepared to spring on his prey and drag him to his lair, but -Marjorie held him back. - -"He's taking our train, Lord bless his dear old soul." - -And Mallory could have hugged him. But he kept close watch. To the -rapture of the wedding-hungry twain, the preacher shook hands with -such of his flock as had followed him to the station, picked up his -valise and walked up to the porter, extending his ticket. - -But the porter said--and Mallory could have throttled him for saying -it: - -"'Scuse me, posson, but that's yo' train ova yonda. You betta move -right smaht, for it's gettin' ready to pull out." - -With a little shriek of dismay, the parson clutched his valise and set -off at a run. Mallory dashed after him and Marjorie after Mallory. -They shouted as they ran, but the conductor of the east-bound train -sang out "All aboard!" and swung on. - -The parson made a sprint and caught the ultimate rail of the moving -train. Mallory made a frantic leap at a flying coat-tail and missed. -As he and Marjorie stood gazing reproachfully at the train which was -giving a beautiful illustration of the laws of retreating perspective, -they heard wild howls of "Hi! hi!" and "Hay! hay!" and turned to see -their own train in motion, and the porter dancing a Zulu step -alongside. - - - - -CHAPTER XX - -FOILED AGAIN - - -Mallory tucked Marjorie under his arm and Marjorie tucked Snoozleums -under hers, and they did a Sort of three-legged race down the -platform. The porter was pale blue with excitement, and it was with -the last gasp of breath in all three bodies that they scrambled up the -steps of the only open vestibule. - -The porter was mad enough to give them a piece of his mind, and they -were meek enough to take it without a word of explanation or -resentment. - -And the train sped on into the heart of Nebraska, along the unpoetic -valley of the Platte. When lunch-time came, they ate it together, but -in gloomy silence. They sat in Marjorie's berth throughout the -appallingly monotonous afternoon in a stupor of disappointment and -helpless dejection, speaking little and saying nothing then. - -Whenever the train stopped, Mallory watched the on-getting passengers -with his keenest eye. He had a theory that since most people who -looked like preachers were decidedly lay, it might be well to take a -gambler's chance and accost the least ministerial person next. - -So, in his frantic anxiety, he selected a horsey-looking individual -who got on at North Platte. He looked so much like a rawhided ranchman -that Mallory stole up on him and asked him to excuse him, but did he -happen to be a clergyman? The man replied by asking Mallory if he -happened to be a flea-bitten maverick, and embellished his question -with a copious flow of the words ministers use, but with a secular -arrangement of them. In fact he split one word in two to insert a -double-barrelled curse. All that Mallory could do was to admit that he -was a flea-bitten what-he-said, and back away. - -After that, if a vicar in full uniform had marched down the aisle -heading a procession of choir-boys, Mallory would have suspected him. -He vowed in his haste that Marjorie might die an old maid before he -would approach anybody else on that subject. - -Nebraska would have been a nice long state for a honeymoon, but its -four hundred-odd miles were a dreary length for the couple so near and -yet so far. The railroad clinging to the meandering Platte made the -way far longer, and Mallory and Marjorie felt like Pyramus and Thisbe -wandering along an eternal wall, through which they could see, but not -reach, one another. - -They dined together as dolefully as if they had been married for forty -years. Then the slow twilight soaked them in its melancholy. The -porter lighted up the car, and the angels lighted up the stars, but -nothing lighted up their hopes. - -"We've got to quarrel again, my beloved," Mallory groaned to Marjorie. - -Somehow they were too dreary even to nag one another with an outburst -for the benefit of the eager-eyed passengers. - -A little excitement bestirred them as they realized that they were -confronted with another night-robeless night and a morrow without -change of gear. - -"What a pity that we left our things in the taxicab," Marjorie sighed. -And this time she said, "we left them," instead of "you left them." It -was very gracious of her, but Mallory did not acknowledge the -courtesy. Instead he gave a start and a gasp: - -"Good Lord, Marjorie, we never paid the second taxicab!" - -"Great heavens, how shall we ever pay him? He's been waiting there -twenty-four hours. How much do you suppose we owe him?" - -"About a year of my pay, I guess." - -"You must send him a telegram of apology and ask him to read his -meter. He was such a nice man--the kindest eyes--for a chauffeur." - -"But how can I telegraph him? I don't know his name, or his number, -or his company, or anything." - -"It's too bad. He'll go through life hating us and thinking we cheated -him." - -"Well, he doesn't know our names either." - -And then they forgot him temporarily for the more immediate need of -clothes. All the passengers knew that they had left behind what -baggage they had not sent ahead, and much sympathy had been expressed. -But most people would rather give you their sympathy than lend you -their clothes. Mallory did not mind the men, but Marjorie dreaded the -women. She was afraid of all of them but Mrs. Temple. - -She threw herself on the little lady's mercy and was asked to help -herself. She borrowed a nightgown of extraordinary simplicity, a shirt -waist of an ancient mode, and a number of other things. - -If there had been anyone there to see she would have made a most -anachronistic bride. - -Mallory canvassed the men and obtained a shockingly purple shirt from -Wedgewood, who meant to put him at his ease, but somehow failed when -he said in answer to Mallory's thanks: - -"God bless my soul, old top, don't you think of thanking me. I ought -to thank you. You see, the idiot who makes my shirts, made that by -mistake, and I'd be no end grateful if you'd jolly well take the -loathsome thing off my hands. I mean to say, I shouldn't dream of -being seen in it myself. You quite understand, don't you?" - -Ashton contributed a maroon atrocity in hosiery, with equal tact: - -"If they fit you, keep 'em. I got stung on that batch of socks. That -pair was originally lavender, but they washed like that. Keep 'em. I -wouldn't be found dead in 'em." - -The mysterious Fosdick, who lived a lonely life in the Observation car -and slept in the other sleeper, lent Mallory a pair of pyjamas -evidently intended for a bridegroom of romantic disposition. Mallory -blushed as he accepted them and when he found himself in them, he -whisked out the light, he was so ashamed of himself. - -Once more the whole car gaped at the unheard of behavior of its newly -wedded pair. The poor porter had been hungry for a bridal couple, but -as he went about gathering up the cast-off footwear of his large -family and found Mallory's big shoes at number three and Marjorie's -tiny boots at number five, he shook his head and groaned. - -"Times has suttainly changed for the wuss if this is a bridal couple, -gimme divorcees." - - - - -CHAPTER XXI - -MATRIMONY TO AND FRO - - -And the next morning they were in Wyoming--well toward the center of -that State. They had left behind the tame levels and the truly rural -towns and they were among foothills and mountains, passing cities of -wildly picturesque repute, like Cheyenne, and Laramie, Bowie, and -Medicine Bow, and Bitter Creek, whose very names imply literature and -war whoops, cow-boy yelps, barking revolvers, another redskin biting -the dust, cattle stampedes, town-paintings, humorous lynchings and -bronchos in epileptic frenzy. - -But the talk of this train was concerned with none of these wonders, -which the novelists and the magazinist have perhaps a trifle -overpublished. The talk of this train was concerned with the eighth -wonder of the world, a semi-detached bridal couple. - -Mrs. Whitcomb was eager enough to voice the sentiment of the whole -populace, when she looked up from her novel in the observation room -and, nudging Mrs. Temple, drawled: "By the way, my dear, has that -bridal couple made up its second night's quarrel yet?" - -"The Mallorys?" Mrs. Temple flushed as she answered, mercifully. "Oh, -yes, they were very friendly again this morning." - -Mrs. Whitcomb's countenance was cynical: "My dear, I've been married -twice and I ought to know something about honeymoons, but this -honeyless honeymoon----" she cast up her eyes and her hands in -despair. - -The women were so concerned about Mr. and "Mrs." Mallory, that they -hardly noticed the uncomfortable plight of the Wellingtons, or the -curious behavior of the lady from the stateroom who seemed to be -afraid of something and never spoke to anybody. The strange behavior -of Anne Gattle and Ira Lathrop even escaped much comment, though they -were forever being stumbled on when anybody went out to the -observation platform. When they were dislodged from there, they sat -playing checkers and talking very little, but making eyes at one -another and sighing like furnaces. - -They had evidently concocted some secret of their own, for Ira, -looking at his watch, murmured sentimentally to Anne: "Only a few -hours more, Annie." - -And Anne turned geranium-color and dropped a handful of checkers. "I -don't know how I can face it." - -Ira growled like a lovesick lion: "Aw, what do you care?" - -"But I was never married before, Ira," Anne protested, "and on a -train, too." - -"Why, all the bridal couples take to the railroads." - -"I should think it would be the last place they'd go," said Anne--a -sensible woman, Anne! "Look at the Mallories--how miserable they are." - -"I thought they were happy," said Ira, whose great virtue it was to -pay little heed to what was none of his business. - -"Oh, Ira," cried Anne, "I hope we shan't begin to quarrel as soon as -we are married." - -"As if anybody could quarrel with you, Anne," he said. - -"Do you think I'll be so monotonous as that?" she retorted. - -Her spunk delighted him beyond words. He whispered: "Anne, you're so -gol-darned sweet if I don't get a chance to kiss you, I'll bust." - -"Why, Ira--we're on the train." - -"Da--darn the train! Who ever heard of a fellow proposing and getting -engaged to a girl and not even kissing her." - -"But our engagement is so short." - -"Well, I'm not going to marry you till I get a kiss." - -Perhaps innocent old Anne really believed this blood-curdling threat. -It brought her instantly to terms, though she blushed: "But -everybody's always looking." - -"Come out on the observation platform." - -"Oh, Ira, again?" - -"I dare you." - -"I take you--but" seeing that Mrs. Whitcomb was trying to overhear, -she whispered: "let's pretend it's the scenery." - -So Ira rose, pushed the checkers aside, and said in an unusually -positive tone: "Ah, Miss Gattle, won't you have a look at the -landscape?" - -"Oh, thank you, Mr. Lathrop," said Anne, "I just love scenery." - -They wandered forth like the Sleeping Beauty and her princely -awakener, and never dreamed what gigglings and nudgings and wise -head-noddings went on back of them. Mrs. Wellington laughed loudest of -all at the lovers whose heads had grown gray while their hearts were -still so green. - -It was shortly after this that the Wellingtons themselves came into -prominence in the train life. - -As the train approached Green River, and its copper-basined stream, -the engineer began to set the air-brakes for the stop. Jimmie -Wellington, boozily half-awake in the smoking room, wanted to know -what the name of the station was. Everybody is always eager to oblige -a drunken man, so Ashton and Fosdick tried to get a window open to -look out. - -The first one they labored at, they could not budge after a -biceps-breaking tug. The second flew up with such ease that they went -over backward. Ashton put his head out and announced that the -approaching depot was labelled "Green River." Wellington burbled: -"What a beautiful name for a shtation." - -Ashton announced that there was something beautifuller still on the -platform--"Oh, a peach!--a nectarine! and she's getting on this -train." - -Even Doctor Temple declared that she was a dear little thing, wasn't -she? - -Wellington pushed him aside, saying: "Stand back, Doc., and let me -see; I have a keen sense of beau'ful." - -"Be careful," cried the doctor, "he'll fall out of the window." - -"Not out of that window," Ashton sagely observed, seeing the bulk of -Wellington. As the train started off again, Little Jimmie distributed -alcoholic smiles to the Green Riverers on the platform and called out: - -"Goo'bye, ever'body. You're all abslootly--ow! ow!" He clapped his -hand to his eye and crawled back into the car, groaning with pain. - -"What's the matter," said Wedgewood. "Got something in your eye?" - -"No, you blamed fool. I'm trying to look through my thumb." - -"Poor fellow!" sympathized Doctor Temple, "it's a cinder!" - -"A cinder! It's at leasht a ton of coal." - -"I say, old boy, let me have a peek," said Wedgewood, screwing in his -monocle and peering into the depths of Wellington's eye. "I can't see -a bally thing." - -"Of course not, with that blinder on," growled the miserable wretch, -weeping in spite of himself and rubbing his smarting orb. - -"Don't rub that eye," Ashton counselled, "rub the other eye." - -"It's my eye; I'll rub it if I want to. Get me a doctor, somebody. I'm -dying." - -"Here's Doctor Temple," said Ashton, "right on the job." Wellington -turned to the old clergyman with pathetic trust, and the deceiver -writhed in his disguise. The best he could think of was: "Will -somebody lend me a lead pencil?" - -"What for?" said Wellington, uneasily. - -"I am going to roll your upper lid up on it," said the Doctor. - -"Oh, no, you're not," said the patient. "You can roll your own lids!" - -Then the conductor, still another conductor, wandered on the scene and -asked as if it were not a world-important matter: "What's the -matter--pick up a cinder?" - -"Yes. Perhaps you can get it out," the alleged doctor appealed. - -The conductor nodded: "The best way is this--take hold of the -winkers." - -"The what?" mumbled Wellington. - -"Grab the winkers of your upper eyelid in your right hand----" - -"I've got 'em." - -"Now grab the winkers of your lower eyelid in your left hand. Now -raise the right hand, push the under lid under the overlid and haul -the overlid over the underlid; when you have the overlid well over the -under----" - -Wellington waved him away: "Say, what do you think I'm trying to do? -stuff a mattress? Get out of my way. I want my wife--lead me to my -wife." - -"An excellent idea," said Dr. Temple, who had been praying for a -reconciliation. - -He guided Wellington with difficulty to the observation room and, -finding Mrs. Wellington at the desk as usual, he began: "Oh, Mrs. -Wellington, may I introduce you to your husband?" - -Mrs. Wellington rose haughtily, caught a sight of her suffering -consort and ran to him with a cry of "Jimmie!" - -"Lucretia!" - -"What's happened--are you killed?" - -"I'm far from well. But don't worry. My life insurance is paid up." - -"Oh, my poor little darling," Mrs. Jimmie fluttered, "What on earth -ails you?" She turned to the doctor. "Is he going to die?" - -"I think not," said the doctor. "It's only a bad case of -cinder-in-the-eyetis." - -Thus reassured, Mrs. Wellington went into the patient's eye with her -handkerchief. "Is that the eye?" she asked. - -"No!" he howled, "the other one." - -She went into that and came out with the cinder. - -"There! It's just a tiny speck." - -Wellington regarded the mote with amazement. "Is that all? It felt as -if I had Pike's Peak in my eye." Then he waxed tender. "Oh, Lucretia, -how can I ever----" - -But she drew away with a disdainful: "Give me back my hand, please." - -"Now, Lucretia," he protested, "don't you think you're carrying this -pretty far?" - -"Only as far as Reno," she answered grimly, which stung him to retort: -"You'd better take the beam out of your own eye, now that you've taken -the cinder out of mine," but she, noting that they were the center of -interest, observed: "All the passengers are enjoying this, my dear. -You'd better go back to the café." - -Wellington regarded her with a revulsion to wrath. He thundered at -her: "I will go back, but allow me to inform you, my dear madam, that -I'll not drink another drop--just to surprise you." - -Mrs. Wellington shrugged her shoulders at this ancient threat and -Jimmie stumbled back to his lair, whither the men followed him. -Feeling sympathy in the atmosphere, Little Jimmie felt impelled to -pour out his grief: - -"Jellmen, I'm a brok'n-heartless man. Mrs. Well'n'ton is a queen among -women, but she has temper of tarant----" - -Wedgewood broke in: "I say, old boy, you've carried this ballast for -three days now, wherever did you get it?" - -Wellington drew himself up proudly for a moment before he slumped back -into himself. "Well, you see, when I announced to a few friends that I -was about to leave Mrs. Well'n'ton forever and that I was going out -to--to--you know." - -"Reno. We know. Well?" - -"Well, a crowd of my friends got up a farewell sort of divorce -breakfast--and some of 'em felt so very sad about my divorce that they -drank a little too much, and the rest of my friends felt so very glad -about my divorce, that they drank a little too much. And, of course, I -had to join both parties." - -"And that breakfast," said Ashton, "lasted till the train started, -eh?" - -Wellington glowered back triumphantly. "Lasted till the train started? -Jellmen, that breakfast is going yet!" - - - - -CHAPTER XXII - -IN THE SMOKING ROOM - - -Wellington's divorce breakfast reminded Ashton of a story. Ashton was -one of the great That-Reminds-Me family. Perhaps it was to the credit -of the Englishman that he missed the point of this story, even though -Jimmie Wellington saw it through his fog, and Dr. Temple turned red -and buried his eyes in the eminently respectable pages of the -_Scientific American_. - -Ashton and Wellington and Fosdick exchanged winks over the Britisher's -stare of incomprehension, and Ashton explained it to him again in -words of one syllable, with signboards at all the difficult spots. - -Finally a gleam of understanding broke over Wedgewood's face and he -tried to justify his delay. - -"Oh, yes, of cawse I see it now. Yes, I rather fancy I get you. It's -awfully good, isn't it? I think I should have got it before but I'm -not really myself; for two mawnings I haven't had my tub." - -Wellington shook with laughter: "If you're like this now, what will -you be when you get to Sin san frasco--I mean Frinsansisco--well, you -know what I mean." - -Ashton reached round for the electric button as if he were conferring -a favor: "The drinks are on you, Wedgewood. I'll ring." And he rang. - -"Awf'lly kind of you," said Wedgewood, "but how do you make that out?" - -"The man that misses the point, pays for the drinks." And he rang -again. Wellington protested. - -"But I've jolly well paid for all the drinks for two days." - -Wellington roared: "That's another point you've missed." And Ashton -rang again, but the pale yellow individual who had always answered the -bell with alacrity did not appear. "Where's that infernal buffet -waiter?" Ashton grumbled. - -Wedgewood began to titter. "We were out of Scotch, so I sent him for -some more." - -"When?" - -"Two stations back. I fancy we must have left him behind." - -"Well, why in thunder didn't you say so?" Ashton roared. - -"It quite escaped my mind," Wedgewood grinned. "Rather good joke on -you fellows, what?" - -"Well, I don't see the point," Ashton growled, but the triumphant -Englishman howled: "That's where _you_ pay!" - -Wedgewood had his laugh to himself, for the others wanted to murder -him. Ashton advised a lynching, but the conductor arrived on the scene -in time to prevent violence. - -Fosdick informed him of the irretrievable loss of the useful buffet -waiter. The conductor promised to get another at Ogden. - -Ashton wailed: "Have we got to sit here and die of thirst till then?" - -The conductor refused to "back up for a coon," but offered to send in -a sleeping-car porter as a temporary substitute. - -As he started to go, Fosdick, who had been incessantly consulting his -watch, checked him to ask: "Oh, conductor, when do we get to the -State-line of dear old Utah?" - -"Dear old Utah!" the conductor grinned. "We'd 'a' been there already -if we hadn't 'a' fell behind a little." - -"Just my luck to be late," Fosdick moaned. - -"What you so anxious to be in Utah for, Fosdick?" Ashton asked, -suspiciously. "You go on to 'Frisco, don't you?" - -Fosdick was evidently confused at the direct question. He tried to -dodge it: "Yes, but--funny how things have changed. When we started, -nobody was speaking to anybody except his wife, now----" - -"Now," said Ashton, drily, "everybody's speaking to everybody except -his wife." - -"You're wrong there," Little Jimmie interrupted. "I wasn't speaking -to my wife in the first place. We got on as strangersh and we're -strangersh yet. Mrs. Well'n'ton is a----" - -"A queen among women, we know! Dry up," said Ashton, and then they -heard the querulous voice of the porter of their sleeping car: "I tell -you, I don't know nothin' about the buffet business." - -The conductor pushed him in with a gruff command: "Crawl in that cage -and get busy." - -Still the porter protested: "Mista Pullman engaged me for a sleepin' -car, not a drinkin' car. I'm a berth-maker, not a mixer." He cast a -resentful glance through the window that served also as a bar, and his -whole tone changed: "Say, is you goin' to allow me loose amongst all -them beautiful bottles? Say, man, if you do, I can't guarantee my -conduck." - -"If you even sniff one of those bottles," the conductor warned him, -"I'll crack it over your head." - -"That won't worry me none--as long as my mouf's open." He smacked his -chops over the prospect of intimacy with that liquid treasury. "Lordy! -Well, I'll try to control my emotions--but remember, I don't guarantee -nothin'." - -The conductor started to go, but paused for final instructions: "And -remember--after we get to Utah you can't serve any hard liquor at -all." - -"What's that? Don't they 'low nothin' in that old Utah but ice-cream -soda?" - -"That's about all. If you touch a drop, I'll leave you in Utah for -life." - -"Oh, Lordy, I'll be good!" - -The conductor left the excited black and went his way. Ashton was the -first to speak: "Say, Porter, can you mix drinks?" - -The porter ruminated, then confessed: "Well, not on the outside, no, -sir. If you-all is thirsty you better order the simplest things you -can think of. If you was to command anything fancy, Lord knows what -you'd get. Supposin' you was to say, 'Gimme a Tom Collins.' I'd be -just as liable as not to pass you a Jack Johnson." - -"Well, can you open beer?" - -"Oh, I'm a natural born beer-opener." - -"Rush it out then. My throat is as full of alkali dust as these -windows." - -The porter soon appeared with a tray full of cotton-topped glasses. -The day was hot and the alkali dust very oppressive, and the beer was -cold. Dr. Temple looked on it when it was amber, and suffered himself -to be bullied into taking a glass. - -He felt that he was the greatest sinner on earth, but worst of all was -the fact that when he had fallen, the forbidden brew was not sweet. He -was inexperienced enough to sip it and it was like foaming quinine on -his palate. But he kept at it from sheer shame, and his luxurious -transgression was its own punishment. - -The doleful Mallory was on his way to join the "club". Crossing the -vestibule he had met the conductor, and had ventured to quiz him along -the old lines: - -"Excuse me, haven't you taken any clergymen on board this train yet?" - -"Devil a one." - -"Don't you ever carry any preachers on this road?" - -"Usually we get one or two. Last trip we carried a whole Methodist -convention." - -"A whole convention last trip! Just my luck!" - -The unenlightened conductor turned to call back: "Say, up in the -forward car we got a couple of undertakers. They be of any use to -you?" - -"Not yet." - -Then Mallory dawdled on into the smoking room, where he found his own -porter, who explained that he had been "promoted to the bottlery." - -"Do we come to a station stop soon?" Mallory asked. - -"Well, not for a considerable interval. Do you want to get out and -walk up and down?" - -"I don't," said Mallory, taking from under his coat Snoozleums, whom -he had smuggled past the new conductor. "Meanwhile, Porter, could you -give him something to eat to distract him?" - -The porter grinned, and picking up a bill of fare held it out. "I got -a meenuel. It ain't written in dog, but you can explain it to him. -What would yo' canine desiah, sah?" - -Snoozleums put out a paw and Mallory read what it indicated: "He says -he'd like a filet Chateaubriand, but if you have any old bones, he'll -take those." The porter gathered Snoozleums in and disappeared with -him into the buffet, Mallory calling after him: "Don't let the -conductor see him." - -Dr. Temple advanced on the disconsolate youth with an effort at cheer: -"How is our bridegroom this beautiful afternoon?" - -Mallory glanced at his costume: "I feel like a rainbow gone wrong. -Just my luck to have to borrow from everybody. Look at me! This collar -of Mr. Wellington's makes me feel like a peanut in a rubber tire." He -turned to Fosdick. - -"I say, Mr. Fosdick, what size collar do you wear?" - -"Fourteen and a half," said Fosdick. - -"Fourteen and a half!--why don't you get a neck? You haven't got a -plain white shirt, have you? Our English friend lent me this, but it's -purple, and Mr. Ashton's socks are maroon, and this peacock blue tie -is very unhappy." - -"I think I can fit you out," said Fosdick. - -"And if you had an extra pair of socks," Mallory pleaded,--"just one -pair of unemotional socks." - -"I'll show you my repertoire." - -"All right, I'll see you later." Then he went up to Wellington, with -much hesitance of manner. "By the way, Mr. Wellington, do you suppose -Mrs. Wellington could lend Miss--Mrs.--could lend Marjorie -some--some----" - -Wellington waved him aside with magnificent scorn: "I am no longer in -Mrs. Wellington's confidence." - -"Oh, excuse me," said Mallory. He had noted that the Wellingtons -occupied separate compartments, but for all he knew their reason was -as romantic as his own. - - - - -CHAPTER XXIII - -THROUGH A TUNNEL - - -Mrs. Jimmie Wellington, who had traveled much abroad and learned in -England the habit of smoking in the corridors of expensive hotels, had -acquired also the habit, as travelers do, of calling England freer -than America. She determined to do her share toward the education of -her native country, and chose, for her topic, tobacco as a feminine -accomplishment. - -She had grown indifferent to stares and audible comment and she could -fight a protesting head waiter to a standstill. If monuments and -tablets are ever erected to the first woman who smoked publicly in -this place or that, Mrs. Jimmie Wellington will be variously -remembered and occupy a large place in historical record. - -The narrow confines of the women's room on the sleeping car soon -palled on her, and she objected to smoking there except when she felt -the added luxury of keeping some other woman outside--fuming, but not -smoking. And now Mrs. Jimmie had staked out a claim on the observation -platform. She sat there, puffing like a major-general, and in one -portion of Nebraska two farmers fell off their agricultural vehicles -at the sight of her cigar-smoke trailing after the train. In Wyoming -three cowboys followed her for a mile, yipping and howling their -compliments. - -Feeling the smoke mood coming on, Mrs. Wellington invited Mrs. Temple -to smoke with her, but Mrs. Temple felt a reminiscent qualm at the -very thought, so Mrs. Jimmie sauntered out alone, to the great -surprise of Ira Lathrop, whose motto was, "Two heads are better than -one," and who was apparently willing to wait till Anne Gattle's head -grew on his shoulder. - -"I trust I don't intrude," Mrs. Wellington said. - -"Oh, no. Oh, yes." Anne gasped in fiery confusion as she fled into the -car, followed by the purple-faced Ira, who slammed the door with a -growl: "That Wellington woman would break up anything." - -The prim little missionary toppled into the nearest chair: "Oh, Ira, -what will she think?" - -"She can't think!" Ira grumbled. "In a little while she'll know." - -"Don't you think we'd better tell everybody before they begin to -talk?" - -Ira glowed with pride at the thought and murmured with all the ardor -of a senile Romeo: "I suppose so, ducky darling. I'll break it--I mean -I'll tell it to the men, and you tell the women." - -"All right, dear, I'll obey you," she answered, meekly. - -"Obey me!" Ira laughed with boyish swagger. "And you a missionary!" - -"Well, I've converted one heathen, anyway," said Anne as she darted -down the corridor, followed by Ira, who announced his intention to "go -to the baggage car and dig up his old Prince Albert." - -In their flight forward they passed the mysterious woman in the -stateroom. They were too full of their own mystery to give thought to -hers. Mrs. Fosdick went timidly prowling toward the observation car, -suspecting everybody to be a spy, as Mallory suspected everybody to be -a clergyman in disguise. - -As she stole along the corridor past the men's clubroom she saw her -husband--her here-and-there husband--wearily counting the telegraph -posts and summing them up into miles. She tapped on the glass and -signalled to him, then passed on. - -He answered with a look, then pretended not to have noticed, and -waited a few moments before he rose with an elaborate air of -carelessness. He beckoned the porter and said: - -"Let me know the moment we enter Utah, will you?" - -"Yassah. We'll be comin' along right soon now. We got to pass through -the big Aspen tunnel, after that, befo' long, we splounce into old -Utah." - -"Don't forget," said Fosdick, as he sauntered out. Ashton perked up -his ears at the promise of a tunnel and kept his eye on his watch. - -Fosdick entered the observation room with a hungry look in his -luscious eyes. His now-and-then wife put up a warning finger to -indicate Mrs. Whitcomb's presence at the writing desk. - -Fosdick's smile froze into a smirk of formality and he tried to chill -his tone as if he were speaking to a total stranger. - -"Good afternoon." - -Mrs. Fosdick answered with equal ice: "Good afternoon. Won't you sit -down?" - -"Thanks. Very picturesque scenery, isn't it?" - -"Isn't it?" Fosdick seated himself, looked about cautiously, noted -that Mrs. Whitcomb was apparently absorbed in her letter, then lowered -his voice confidentially. His face kept up a strained pretense of -indifference, but his whisper was passionate with longing: - -"Has my poor little wifey missed her poor old hubby?" - -"Oh, so much!" she whispered. "Has poor little hubby missed his poor -old wife?" - -"Horribly. Was she lonesome in that dismal stateroom all by herself?" - -"Oh, so miserable! I can't stand it much longer." - -Fosdick's face blazed with good news: "In just a little while we come -to the Utah line--then we're safe." - -"God bless Utah!" - -The rapture died from her face as she caught sight of Dr. Temple, who -happened to stroll in and go to the bookshelves, and taking out a book -happened to glance near-sightedly her way. - -"Be careful of that man, dearie," Mrs. Fosdick hissed out of one side -of her mouth. "He's a very strange character." - -Her husband was infected with her own terror. He asked, huskily: "What -do you think he is?" - -"A detective! I'm sure he's watching us. He followed you right in -here." - -"We'll be very cautious--till we get to Utah." - -The old clergyman, a little fuzzy in brain from his début in beer, -continued innocently to confirm the appearance of a detective by -drifting aimlessly about. He was looking for his wife, but he kept -glancing at the uneasy Fosdicks. He went to the door, opened it, saw -Mrs. Wellington finishing a cigar, and retreated precipitately. Seeing -Mrs. Temple wandering in the corridor, he motioned her to a chair near -the Fosdicks and she sat by his side, wondering at his filmy eyes. - -The Fosdicks, glancing uncomfortably at Dr. Temple, rose and selected -other chairs further away. Then Roger Ashton sauntered in, his eyes -searching for a proper companion through the tunnel. - -He saw Mrs. Wellington returning from the platform, just tossing away -her cigar and blowing out the last of its grateful vapor. - -With an effort at sarcasm, he went to her and offered her one of his -own cigars, smiling: "Have another." - -She took it, looked it over, and parried his irony with a formula she -had heard men use when they hate to refuse a gift-cigar: "Thanks. I'll -smoke it after dinner, if you don't mind." - -"Oh, I don't mind," he laughed, then bending closer he murmured: "They -tell me we are coming to a tunnel, a nice, long, dark, dismal tunnel." - -Mrs. Wellington would not take a dare. She felt herself already -emancipated from Jimmie. So she answered Ashton's hint with a laughing -challenge: - -"How nice of the conductor to arrange it." - -Ashton smacked his lips over the prospect. - -And now the porter, having noted Ashton's impatience to reach the -tunnel, thought to curry favor and a quarter by announcing its -approach. He bustled in and made straight for Ashton just as the -tunnel announced itself with a sudden swoop of gloom, a great increase -of the train-noises and a far-off clang of the locomotive bell. - -Out of the Egyptian darkness came the unmistakable sounds of -osculation in various parts of the room. Doubtless, it was repeated in -other parts of the train. There were numerous cooing sounds, too, but -nobody spoke except Mrs. Temple, who was heard to murmur: - -"Oh, Walter, dear, what makes your breath so funny!" - -Next came a little yowl of pain in Mrs. Fosdick's voice, and then -daylight flooded the car with a rush, as if time had made an instant -leap from midnight to noon. There were interesting disclosures. - -Mrs. Temple was caught with her arms round the doctor's neck, and she -blushed like a spoony girl. Mrs. Fosdick was trying to disengage her -hair from Mr. Fosdick's scarf-pin. Mrs. Whitcomb alone was deserted. -Mr. Ashton was gazing devotion at Mrs. Wellington and trying to tell -her with his eyes how velvet he had found her cheek. - -But she was looking reproachfully at him from a chair, and saying, not -without regret: - -"I heard everybody kissing everybody, but I was cruelly neglected." - -Ashton's eyes widened with unbelief, he heard a snicker at his elbow, -and whirled to find the porter rubbing his black velvet cheek and -writhing with pent-up laughter. - -Mrs. Wellington glanced the same way, and a shriek of understanding -burst from her. It sent the porter into a spasm of yah-yahs till he -caught Ashton's eyes and saw murder in them. The porter fled to the -platform and held the door fast, expecting to be lynched. - -But Ashton dashed away in search of concealment and soap. - -The porter remained on the platform for some time, planning to leap -overboard and take his chances rather than fall into Ashton's hands, -but at length, finding himself unpursued, he peered into the car and, -seeing that Ashton had gone, he returned to his duties. He kept a -close watch on Ashton, but on soberer thoughts Ashton had decided that -the incident would best be consigned to silence and oblivion. But for -all the rest of that day he kept rubbing his lips with his -handkerchief. - -The porter, noting that the train had swept into a granite gorge like -an enormously magnified aisle in a made-up sleeping car, recognized -the presence of Echo Canyon, and with it the entrance into Utah. He -hastened to impart the tidings to Mr. Fosdick and held out his hand as -he extended the information. - -Fosdick could hardly believe that his twelve-hundred-mile exile was -over. - -"We're in Utah?" he exclaimed. - -"Yassah," and the porter shoved his palm into view. Fosdick filled it -with all his loose change, then whirled to his wife and cried: - -"Edith! We are in Utah now! Embrace me!" - -She flung herself into his arms with a gurgle of bliss. The other -passengers gasped with amazement. This sort of thing was permissible -enough in a tunnel, but in the full light of day----! - -Fosdick, noting the sensation he had created, waved his hand -reassuringly and called across his wife's shoulder: - -"Don't be alarmed, ladies and gentlemen. She's my wife!" He added in a -whisper meant for her ear alone: "At least till we get to Nevada!" - -Then she whispered something in his ear and they hurried from the car. -They left behind them a bewilderment that eclipsed the wonder of the -Mallories. That couple spoke to each other at least during the day -time. Here was a married pair that did not speak at all for two days -and two nights and then made a sudden and public rush to each other's -arms! - -Dr. Temple summed up the general feeling when he said: - -"I don't believe in witches, but if I did, I'd believe that this train -is bewitched." - -Later he decided that Fosdick was a Mormon elder and that Mrs. Fosdick -was probably a twelfth or thirteenth spouse he was smuggling in from -the East. The theory was not entirely false, for Fosdick was one of -the many victims of the crazy-quilt of American divorce codes, though -he was the most unwilling of polygamists. And Dr. Temple gave up his -theory in despair the next morning when he found the Fosdicks still on -the train, and once more keeping aloof from each other. - - - - -CHAPTER XXIV - -THE TRAIN BUTCHER - - -Mallory was dragging out a miserable existence with a companion who -was neither maid, wife, nor widow and to whom he was neither bachelor, -husband, nor relict. - -They were suffering brain-fag from their one topic of conversation, -and heart-fag from rapture deferred. Marjorie had pretended to take a -nap and Mallory had pretended that he would leave her for her own -sake. Their contradictory chains were beginning to gall. - -Mallory sat in the smoking room, and threw aside a half-finished -cigar. Life was indeed nauseous when tobacco turned rank on his lips. -He watched without interest the stupendous scenery whirling past the -train; granite ravines, infernal grotesques of architecture and -diablerie, the Giant's Teapot, the Devil's Slide, the Pulpit Rock, the -Hanging Rock, splashes of mineral color, as if titanic paint pots had -been spilled or flung against the cliffs, sudden hushes of green -pine-worlds, dreary graveyards of sand and sagebrush, mountain streams -in frothing panics. - -His jaded soul could not respond to any of these thrillers, the -dime-novels and melodramatic third-acts of Nature. But with the -arrival of a train-boy, who had got on at Evanston with a batch of -Salt Lake City newspapers, he woke a little. - -The other men came trooping round, like sheep at a herd-boy's whistle -or chickens when a pan of grain is brought into the yard. The train -"butcher" had a nasal sing-song, but his strain might have been the -Pied Piper's tune emptying Hamelin of its grown-ups. The charms of -flirtation, matrimonial bliss and feminine beauty were forgotten, and -the males flocked to the delights of stock-market reports, political -or racing or dramatic or sporting or criminal news. Even Ashton braved -the eyes of his fellow men for the luxury of burying his nose in a -fresh paper. - -"Papers, gents? Yes? No?" the train butcher chanted. "Salt Lake -papers, Ogden papers, all the latest papers, comic papers, magazines, -periodicals." - -"Here, boy," said Ashton, snapping his fingers, "what's the latest New -York paper?" - -"Last Sat'day's." - -"Six days old? I read that before I left New York. Well, give me that -Salt Lake paper. It has yesterday's stock market, I suppose." - -"Yes, sir." He passed over the sheet and made change, without abating -his monody: "Papers, gents. Yes? No? Salt Lake pa----" - -"Whash latesh from Chicago?" said Wellington. - -"Monday's." - -"I read that before--that breakfast began," laughed Little Jimmie. -"Well, give me _Salt Lake Bazoo_. It has basheball news, I s'pose." - -"Yes, sir," the butcher answered, and his tone grew reverent as he -said: "The Giants won. Mr. Mattyson was pitching. Papers, gents, all -the latest papers, magazines, periodicals." - -Wedgewood extended a languid hand: "What's the latest issue of the -_London Times_?" - -"Never heard of it." - -Wedgewood almost fainted, and returned to his Baedeker of the United -States. - -Dr. Temple summoned the lad: "I don't suppose you have the _Ypsilanti -Eagle_?" - -The butcher regarded him with pity, and sniffed: "I carry newspapers, -not poultry." - -"Well, give me the----" he saw a pink weekly of rather picturesque -appearance, and the adventure attracted him. "I'll take this--also the -_Outlook_." He folded the pink within the green, and entered into a -new and startling world--a sort of journalistic slumming tour. - -"Give me any old thing," said Mallory, and flung open an Ogden journal -till he found the sporting page, where his eyes brightened. "By jove, -a ten-inning game! Matthewson in the box!" - -"Mattie is most intelleckshal pitcher in the world," said Little -Jimmie, and then everybody disappeared behind paper ramparts, while -the butcher lingered to explain to the porter the details of the great -event. - -About this time, Marjorie, tired of her pretence at slumber, strolled -into the observation car, glancing into the men's room, where she saw -nothing but newspapers. Then Mrs. Wellington saw her, and smiled: -"Come in and make yourself at home." - -"Thanks," said Marjorie, bashfully, "I was looking for my--my----" - -"Husband?" - -"My dog." - -"How is he this morning?" - -"My dog?" - -"Your husband." - -"Oh, he's as well as could be expected." - -"Where did you get that love of a waist?" Mrs. Wellington laughed. - -"Mrs. Temple lent it to me. Isn't it sweet?" - -"Exquisite! The latest Ypsilanti mode." - -Marjorie, suffering almost more acutely from being badly frocked than -from being duped in her matrimonial hopes, threw herself on Mrs. -Wellington's mercy. - -"I'm so unhappy in this. Couldn't you lend me or sell me something a -little smarter?" - -"I'd love to, my dear," said Mrs. Wellington, "but I left home on -short notice myself. I shall need all my divorce trousseau in Reno. -Otherwise--I--but here's your husband. You two ought to have some -place to spoon. I'll leave you this whole room." - -And she swept out, nodding to Mallory, who had divined Marjorie's -presence, and felt the need of being near her, though he also felt the -need of finishing the story of the great ball game. Husband-like, he -felt that he was conferring sufficient courtesy in throwing a casual -smile across the top of the paper. - -Marjorie studied his motley garb, and her own, and groaned: - -"We're a sweet looking pair, aren't we?" - -"Mr. and Miss Fit," said Mallory, from behind the paper. - -"Oh, Harry, has your love grown cold?" she pleaded. - -"Marjorie, how can you think such a thing?" still from behind the -paper. - -"Well, Mrs. Wellington said we ought to have some place to spoon, and -she went away and left us, and--there you stand--and----" - -This pierced even the baseball news, and he threw his arms around her -with glow of devotion. - -She snuggled closer, and cooed: "Aren't we having a nice long -engagement? We've traveled a million miles, and the preacher isn't in -sight yet. What have you been reading--wedding announcements?" - -"No--I was reading about the most wonderful exhibition. Mattie was in -the box--and in perfect form." - -"Mattie?" Marjorie gasped uneasily. - -"Mattie!" he raved, "and in perfect form." - -And now the hidden serpent of jealousy, which promised to enliven -their future, lifted its head for the first time, and Mallory caught -his first glimpse of an unsuspected member of their household. -Marjorie demanded with an ominous chill: - -"And who's Mattie? Some former sweetheart of yours?" - -"My dear," laughed Mallory. - -But Marjorie was up and away, with apt temper: "So Mattie was in the -box, was she? What is it to you, where she sits? You dare to read -about her and rave over her perfect form, while you neglect your -wife--or your--oh, what am I, anyway?" - -Mallory stared at her in amazement. He was beginning to learn what -ignorant heathen women are concerning so many of the gods and -demi-gods of mankind. Then, with a tenderness he might not always -show, he threw the paper down and took her in his arms: "You poor -child. Mattie is a man--a pitcher--and you're the only woman I ever -loved--and you are liable to be my wife any minute." - -The explanation was sufficient, and she crawled into the shelter of -his arm with little noises that served for apology, forgiveness and -reconciliation. Then he made the mistake of mentioning the sickening -topic of deferred hope: - -"A minister's sure to get on at the next stop--or the next." - -Marjorie's nerves were frayed by too much enduring, and it took only a -word to set them jangling: "If you say minister to me again, I'll -scream." Then she tried to control herself with a polite: "Where is -the next stop?" - -"Ogden." - -"Where's that? On the map?" - -"Well, it's in Utah." - -"Utah!" she groaned. "They marry by wholesale there, and we can't even -get a sample." - - - - -CHAPTER XXV - -THE TRAIN WRECKER - - -The train-butcher, entering the Observation Room, found only a loving -couple. He took in at a glance their desire for solitude. A large part -of his business was the forcing of wares on people who did not want -them. - -His voice and his method suggested the mosquito. Seeing Mallory and -Marjorie mutually absorbed in reading each other's eyes, and evidently -in need of nothing on earth less than something else to read, the -train-butcher decided that his best plan of attack was to make himself -a nuisance. It is a plan successfully adopted by organ-grinders, -street pianists and other blackmailers under the guise of art, who -have nothing so welcome to sell as their absence. - -Mallory and Marjorie heard the train-boy's hum, but they tried to -ignore it. - -"Papers, gents and ladies? Yes? No? Paris fashions, lady?" - -He shoved a large periodical between their very noses, but Marjorie -threw it on the floor, with a bitter glance at her own borrowed -plumage: - -"Don't show me any Paris fashions!" Then she gave the boy his congé by -resuming her chat with Mallory: "How long do we stop at Ogden?" - -The train-boy went right on auctioning his papers and magazines, and -poking them into the laps of his prey. And they went right on talking -to one another and pushing his papers and magazines to the floor. - -"I think I'd better get off at Ogden, and take the next train back. -That's just what I'll do. Nothing, thank you!" this last to the -train-boy. - -"But you can't leave me like this," Mallory urged excitedly, with a -side glance of "No, no!" to the train-boy. - -"I can, and I must, and I will," Marjorie insisted. "I'll go pack my -things now." - -"But, Marjorie, listen to me." - -"Will you let me alone!" This to the gadfly, but to Mallory a dejected -wail: "I--I just remembered. I haven't anything to pack." - -"And you'll have to give back that waist to Mrs. Temple. You can't get -off at Ogden without a waist." - -"I'll go anyway. I want to get home." - -"Marjorie, if you talk that way--I'll throw you off the train!" - -She gasped. He explained: "I wasn't talking to you; I was trying to -stop this phonograph." Then he rose, and laid violent hands on the -annoyer, shoved him to the corridor, seized his bundle of papers from -his arm, and hurled them at his head. They fell in a shower about the -train-butcher, who could only feel a certain respect for the one man -who had ever treated him as he knew he deserved. He bent to pick up -his scattered merchandise, and when he had gathered his stock -together, put his head in, and sang out a sincere: - -"Excuse me." - -But Mallory did not hear him, he was excitedly trying to calm the -excited girl, who, having eloped with him, was preparing now to elope -back without him. - -"Darling, you can't desert me now," he pleaded, "and leave me to go on -alone?" - -"Well, why don't you do something?" she retorted, in equal -desperation. "If I were a man, and I had the girl I loved on a train, -I'd get her married if I had to wreck the----" she caught her breath, -paused a second in intense thought, and then, with sudden radiance, -cried: "Harry, dear!" - -"Yes, love!" - -"I have an idea--an inspiration!" - -"Yes, pet," rather dubiously from him, but with absolute exultation -from her: "Let's wreck the train!" - -"I don't follow you, sweetheart." - -"Don't you see?" she began excitedly. "When there are train wrecks a -lot of people get killed, and things. A minister always turns up to -administer the last something or other--well----" - -"Well?" - -"Well, stupid, don't you see? We wreck a train, a minister comes, we -nab him, he marries us, and--there we are! Everything's lovely!" - -He gave her one of those looks with which a man usually greets what a -woman calls an inspiration. He did not honor her invention with -analysis. He simply put forward an objection to it, and, man-like, -chose the most hateful of all objections: - -"It's a lovely idea, but the wreck would delay us for hours and hours, -and I'd miss my transport----" - -"Harry Mallory, if you mention that odious transport to me again, I -know I'll have hydrophobia. I'm going home." - -"But, darling," he pleaded, "you can't desert me now, and leave me to -go on alone?" She had her answer glib: - -"If you really loved me, you'd----" - -"Oh, I know," he cut in. "You've said that before. But I'd be -court-martialled. I'd lose my career." - -"What's a career to a man who truly loves?" - -"It's just as much as it is to anybody else--and more." - -She could hardly controvert this gracefully, so she sank back with -grim resignation. "Well, I've proposed my plan, and you don't like -it. Now, suppose you propose something." - -The silence was oppressive. They sat like stoughton bottles. There the -conductor found them some time later. He gave them a careless look, -selected a chair at the end of the car, and began to sort his tickets, -spreading them out on another chair, making notes with the pencil he -took from atop his ear, and shoved back from time to time. - -Ages seemed to pass, and Mallory had not even a suggestion. By this -time Marjorie's temper had evaporated, and when he said: "If we could -only stop at some town for half an hour," she said: "Maybe the -conductor would hold the train for us." - -"I hardly think he would." - -"He looks like an awfully nice man. You ask him." - -"Oh, what's the use?" - -Marjorie was getting tired of depending on this charming young man -with the very bad luck. She decided to assume command herself. She -took recourse naturally to the original feminine methods: "I'll take -care of him," she said, with resolution. "A woman can get a man to do -almost anything if she flirts a little with him." - -"Marjorie!" - -"Now, don't you mind anything I do. Remember, it's all for love of -you--even if I have to kiss him." - -"Marjorie, I won't permit----" - -"You have no right to boss me--yet. You subside." She gave him the -merest touch, but he fell backward into a chair, utterly aghast at the -shameless siren into which desperation had altered the timid little -thing he thought he had chosen to love. He was being rapidly initiated -into the complex and versatile and fearfully wonderful thing a woman -really is, and he was saying to himself, "What have I married?" -forgetting, for the moment, that he had not married her yet, and that -therein lay the whole trouble. - - - - -CHAPTER XXVI - -DELILAH AND THE CONDUCTOR - - -Like the best of women and the worst of men, Marjorie was perfectly -willing to do evil, that good might come of it. She advanced on the -innocent conductor, as the lady from Sorek must have sidled up to -Samson, coquetting with one arch hand and snipping the shears with the -other. - -The stupefied Mallory saw Marjorie in a startling imitation of herself -at her sweetest; only now it was brazen mimicry, yet how like! She -went forward as the shyest young thing in the world, pursed her lips -into an ecstatic simper, and began on the unsuspecting official: - -"Isn't the country perfectly----" - -"Yes, but I'm getting used to it," the conductor growled, without -looking up. - -His curt indifference jolted Marjorie a trifle, but she rallied her -forces, and came back with: "How long do we stop at Ogden?" - -"Five minutes," very bluntly. - -Marjorie poured maple syrup on her tone, as she purred: "This train of -yours is an awfully fast train, isn't it?" - -"Sort of," said the conductor, with just a trace of thaw. What -followed made him hold his breath, for the outrageous little hussy was -actually saying: "The company must have a great deal of confidence in -you to entrust the lives and welfare of so many people to your -presence of mind and courage." - -"Well, of course, I can't say as to that----" Even Mallory could see -that the man's reserve was melting fast as Marjorie went on with -relentless treacle: - -"Talk about soldiers and firemen and life-savers! I think it takes a -braver man than any of those to be a conductor--really." - -"Well, it is a kind of a responsible job." The conductor swelled his -chest a little at that, and Marjorie felt that he was already hers. -She hammered the weak spot in his armor: - -"Responsible! I should say it is. Mr. Mallory is a soldier, but -soldiers are such ferocious, destructive people, while conductors save -lives, and--if I were only a man I think it would be my greatest -ambition to be a conductor--especially on an overland express." - -The conductor told the truth, when he confessed: "Well, I never heard -it put just that way." Then he spoke with a little more pride, hoping -to increase the impression he felt he was making: "The main thing, of -course, is to get my train through On Time!" - -This was a facer. He was going to get his train through On Time just -to oblige Marjorie. She stammered: - -"I don't suppose the train, by any accident, would be delayed in -leaving Ogden?" - -"Not if I can help it," the hero averred, to reassure her. - -"I wish it would," Marjorie murmured. - -The conductor looked at her in surprise: "Why, what's it to you?" She -turned her eyes on him at full candle power, and smiled: - -"Oh, I just wanted to do a little shopping there." - -"Shopping! While the train waits! Excuse me!" - -"You see," Marjorie fluttered, "by a sad mistake, my baggage isn't on -the train. And I haven't any--any--I really need to buy some--some -things very badly. It's awfully embarrassing to be without them." - -"I can imagine," the conductor mumbled. "Why don't you and your -husband drop off and take the next train?" - -"My husb--Mr. Mallory has to be in San Francisco by to-morrow night. -He just has to!" - -"So have I." - -"But to oblige me? To save me from distress--don't you think you -could?" Like a sweet little child she twisted one of the brass buttons -on his coat sleeve, and wheedled: "Don't you think you might hold the -train just a little tiny half hour?" - -He was sorry, but he didn't see how he could. Then she took his -breath away again by asking, out of a clear sky: "Are you married?" - -He was as awkward as if she had proposed to him, she answered for him: -"Oh, but of course you are. The women wouldn't let a big, handsome, -noble brave giant like you escape long." He mopped his brow in agony -as she went on: "I'm sure you're a very chivalrous man. I'm sure you -would give your life to rescue a maiden in distress. Well, here's your -chance. Won't you please hold the train?" - -She actually had her cheek almost against his shoulder, though she had -to poise atiptoe to reach him. Mallory's dismay was changing to a -boiling rage, and the conductor was a pitiable combination of Saint -Anthony and Tantalus. "I--I'd love to oblige you," he mumbled, "but it -would be as much as my job's worth." - -"How much is that?" Marjorie asked, and added reassuringly, "If you -lost your job I'm sure my father would get you a better one." - -"Maybe," said the conductor, "but--I got this one." - -Then his rolling eyes caught sight of the supposed husband -gesticulating wildly and evidently clearing for action. He warned -Marjorie: "Say, your husband is motioning at you." - -"Don't mind him," Marjorie urged, "just listen to me. I implore you. -I----" Seeing that he was still resisting, she played her last card, -and, crying, "Oh, you can't resist my prayers so cruelly," she threw -her arms around his neck, sobbing, "Do you want to break my heart?" - -Mallory rushed into the scene and the conductor, tearing Marjorie's -arms loose, retreated, gasping, "No! and I don't want your husband to -break my head." - -Mallory dragged Marjorie away, but she shook her little fist at the -conductor, crying: "Do you refuse? Do you dare refuse?" - -"I've got to," the conductor abjectly insisted. - -Marjorie blazed with fury and the siren became a Scylla. "Then I'll -see that my father gets you discharged. If you dare to speak to me -again, I'll order my husband to throw you off this train. To think of -being refused a simple little favor by a mere conductor! of a stupid -old emigrant train!! of all things!!!" - -Then she hurled herself into a chair and pounded her heels on the -floor in a tantrum that paralyzed Mallory. Even the conductor tapped -him on the shoulder and said: "You have my sympathy." - - - - -CHAPTER XXVII - -THE DOG-ON DOG AGAIN - - -As the conductor left the Mallorys to their own devices, it rushed -over him anew what sacrilege had been attempted--a fool bride had -asked him to stop the Trans-American of all trains!--to go shopping of -all things! - -He stormed into the smoking room to open the safety valve of his -wrath, and found the porter just coming out of the buffet cell with a -tray, two hollow-stemmed glasses and a bottle swaddled in a napkin. - -"Say, Ellsworth, what in ---- do you suppose that female back there -wants?--wants me to hold the Trans-American while----" - -But the porter was in a flurry himself. He was about to serve -champagne, and he cut the conductor short: - -"'Scuse me, boss, but they's a lovin' couple in the stateroom forward -that is in a powerful hurry for this. I can't talk to you now. I'll -see you later." And he swaggered off, leaving the door of the buffet -open. The conductor paused to close it, glanced in, started, stared, -glared, roared: "What's this! Well, I'll be--a dog smuggled in here! -I'll break that coon's head. Come out of there, you miserable or'nary -hound." He seized the incredulous Snoozleums by the scruff of his -neck, growling, "It's you for the baggage car ahead," and dashed out -with his prey, just as Mallory, now getting new bearings on Marjorie's -character, spoke across the rampart of his Napoleonically folded arms: - -"Well, you're a nice one!--making violent love to a conductor before -my very eyes. A minute more and I would have----" - -She silenced him with a snap: "Don't you speak to me! I hate you! I -hate all men. The more I know men the more I like----" this reminded -her, and she asked anxiously: "Where is Snoozleums?" - -Mallory, impatient at the shift of subject, snapped back: "Oh, I left -him in the buffet with the waiter. What I want to know is how you dare -to----" - -"Was it a colored waiter?" - -"Of course. But I'm not speaking of----" - -"But suppose he should bite him?" - -"Oh, you can't hurt those nigger waiters. I started to say----" - -"But I can't have Snoozleums biting colored people. It might not agree -with him. Get him at once." - -Mallory trembled with suppressed rage like an overloaded boiler, but -he gave up and growled: "Oh, Lord, all right. I'll get him when I've -finished----" - -"Go get him this minute. And bring the poor darling back to his -mother." - -"His mother! Ye gods!" cried Mallory, wildly. He turned away and -dashed into the men's room with a furious: "Where's that damned dog?" - -He met the porter just returning. The porter smiled: "He's right in -heah, sir," and opened the buffet door. His eyes popped and his jaw -sagged: "Why, I lef' him here just a minute ago." - -"You left the window open, too," Mallory observed. "Well, I guess he's -gone." - -The porter was panic stricken: "Oh, I'm turrible sorry, boss, I -wouldn't have lost dat dog for a fortune. If you was to hit me with a -axe I wouldn't mind." - -To his utter befuddlement, Mallory grinned and winked at him, and -murmured: "Oh, that's all right. Don't worry." And actually laid half -a dollar in his palm. Leaving the black lids batting over the starting -eyes, Mallory pulled his smile into a long face and went back to -Marjorie like an undertaker: "My love, prepare yourself for bad news." - -Marjorie looked up, startled and apprehensive: "Snoozleums is ill. He -did bite the darkey." - -"Worse than that--he--he--fell out of the window." - -"When!" she shrieked, "in heaven's name--when?" - -"He was there just a minute ago, the waiter says." - -Marjorie went into instant hysterics, wringing her hands and sobbing: -"Oh, my darling, my poor child--stop the train at once!" - -She began to pound Mallory's shoulders and shake him frantically. He -had never seen her this way either. He was getting his education in -advance. He tried to calm her with inexpert words: "How can I stop the -train? Now, dearie, he was a nice dog, but after all, he was only a -dog." - -She rounded on him like a panther: "Only a dog! He was worth a dozen -men like you. You find the conductor at once, command him to stop this -train--and back up! I don't care if he has to go back ten miles. Run, -tell him at once. Now, you run!" - -Mallory stared at her as if she had gone mad, but he set out to run -somewhere, anywhere. Marjorie paced up and down distractedly, tearing -her hair and moaning, "Snoozleums, Snoozleums! My child. My poor -child!" At length her wildly roving eyes noted the bell rope. She -stared, pondered, nodded her head, clutched at it, could not reach it, -jumped for it several times in vain, then seized a chair, swung it -into place, stood up in it, gripped the rope, and came down on it with -all her weight, dropping to the floor and jumping up and down in a -frenzied dance. In the distance the engine could be heard faintly -whistling, whistling for every pull. - -The engineer, far ahead, could not imagine what unheard-of crisis -could bring about such mad signals. The fireman yelled: - -"I bet that crazy conductor is attacked with an epilettic fit." - -But there was no disputing the command. The engine was reversed, the -air brakes set, the sand run out and every effort made to pull the -iron horse, as it were, back on its haunches. - -The grinding, squealing, jolting, shook the train like an earthquake. -The shrieking of the whistle froze the blood like a woman's cry of -"Murder!" in the night. The women among the passengers echoed the -screams. The men turned pale and braced themselves for the shock of -collision. Some of them were mumbling prayers. Dr. Temple and Jimmie -Wellington, with one idea in their dissimilar souls, dashed from the -smoking room to go to their wives. - -Ashton and Wedgewood, with no one to care for but themselves, seized -windows and tried to fight them open. At last they budged a sash and -knelt down to thrust their heads out. - -"I don't see a beastly thing ahead," said Wedgewood, "except the heads -of other fools." - -"We're slowing down though," said Ashton, "she stops! We're safe. -Thank God!" And he collapsed into a chair. Wedgewood collapsed into -another, gasping: "Whatevah are we safe from, I wondah?" - -The train-crew and various passengers descended and ran alongside the -train asking questions. Panic gave way to mystery. Even Dr. Temple -came back into the smoking room to finish a precious cigar he had been -at work on. He was followed by Little Jimmie, who had not quite -reached his wife when the stopping of the train put an end to his -excuse for chivalry. He was regretfully mumbling: - -"It would have been such a good shansh to shave my life's wife--I mean -my--I don't know what I mean." He sank into a chair and ordered a -drink; then suddenly remembered his vow, and with great heroism, -rescinded the order. - -Mallory, finding that the train was checked just before he reached the -conductor, saw that official's bewildered wrath at the stoppage and -had a fearsome intuition that Marjorie had somehow done the deed. He -hurried back to the observation room, where he found her charging up -and down, still distraught. He paused at a safe distance and said: - -"The train has stopped, my dear. Somebody rang the bell." - -"I guess somebody did!" Marjorie answered, with a proud toss of the -head. "Where's the conductor?" - -"He's looking for the fellow that pulled the rope." - -"You go tell him to back up--and slowly, too." - -"No, thank you!" said Mallory. He was a brave young man, but he was -not bearding the conductors of stopped expresses. Already the -conductor's voice was heard in the smoking room, where he appeared -with the rush and roar of a Bashan bull. "Well!" he bellowed, "which -one of you guys pulled that rope?" - -"It was nobody here, sir," Dr. Temple meekly explained. The conductor -transfixed him with a baleful glare: "I wouldn't believe a gambler on -oath. I bet you did it." - -"I assure you, sir," Wedgewood interposed, "he didn't touch it. I was -heah." - -The conductor waved him aside and charged into the observation room, -followed by all the passengers in an awe struck rabble. Here, too, the -conductor thundered: "Who pulled that rope? Speak up somebody." - -Mallory was about to sacrifice himself to save Marjorie, but she met -the conductor's black rage with the withering contempt of a young -queen: "I pulled the old rope. Whom did you suppose?" - -The conductor almost dropped with apoplexy at finding himself with -nobody to vent his immense rage on, but this pink and white slip. -"You!" he gulped, "well, what in----Say, in the name of--why, don't -you know it's a penitentiary offense to stop a train this way?" - -Marjorie tossed her head a little higher, grew a little calmer: "What -do I care? I want you to back up." - -The conductor was reduced to a wet rag, a feeble echo: "Back up--the -train up?" - -"Yes, back the train up," Marjorie answered, resolutely, "and go -slowly till I tell you to stop." - -The conductor stared at her a moment, then whirled on Mallory: "Say, -what in hell's the matter with your wife?" - -Mallory was saved from the problem of answering by Marjorie's abrupt -change from a young Tsarina rebuking a serf, to a terrified mother. -She flung out imploring palms and with a gush of tears pleaded: "Won't -you please back up? My darling child fell off the train." - -The conductor's rage fell away in an instant. "Your child fell off the -train!" he gasped. "Good Lord! How old was he?" - -With one hand he was groping for the bell cord to give the signal, -with the other he opened the door to look back along the track. - -"He was two years old," Marjorie sobbed. - -"Oh, that's too bad!" the conductor groaned. "What did he look like?" - -"He had a pink ribbon round his neck." - -"A pink ribbon--oh, the poor little fellow! the poor little fellow!" - -"And a long curly tail." - -The conductor swung round with a yell: "A curly tail!--your son?" - -"My dog!" Marjorie roared back at him. - -The conductor's voice cracked weakly as he shrieked: "Your dog! You -stopped this train for a fool dog?" - -"He wasn't a fool dog," Marjorie retorted, facing him down, "he knows -more than you do." - -The conductor threw up his hands: "Well, don't you women beat----" He -studied Marjorie as if she were some curious freak of nature. Suddenly -an idea struck into his daze: "Say, what kind of a dog was it?--a -measly little cheese-hound?" - -"He was a noble, beautiful soul with wonderful eyes and adorable -ears." - -The conductor was growing weaker and weaker: "Well, don't worry. I got -him. He's in the baggage car." - -Marjorie stared at him unbelievingly. The news seemed too gloriously -beautiful to be true. "He isn't dead--Snoozleums is not dead!" she -cried, "he lives! He lives! You have saved him." And once more she -flung herself upon the conductor. He tried to bat her off like a gnat, -and Mallory came to his rescue by dragging her away and shoving her -into a chair. But she saw only the noble conductor: "Oh, you dear, -good, kind angel. Get him at once." - -"He stays in the baggage car," the conductor answered, firmly and as -he supposed, finally. - -"But Snoozleums doesn't like baggage cars," Marjorie smiled. "He won't -ride in one." - -"He'll ride in this one or I'll wring his neck." - -"You fiend in human flesh!" Marjorie shrank away from him in horror, -and he found courage to seize the bell rope and yank it viciously with -a sardonic: "Please, may I start this train?" - -The whistle tooted faintly. The bell began to hammer, the train to -creak and writhe and click. The conductor pulled his cap down hard and -started forward. Marjorie seized his sleeve: "Oh, I implore you, don't -consign that poor sweet child to the horrid baggage car. If you have a -human heart in your breast, hear my prayer." - -The conductor surrendered unconditionally: "Oh, Lord, all right, all -right. I'll lose my job, but if you'll keep quiet, I'll bring him to -you." And he slunk out meekly, followed by the passengers, who were -shaking their heads in wonderment at this most amazing feat of this -most amazing bride. - -When they were alone once more, Marjorie as radiant as April after a -storm, turned her sunshiny smile on Mallory: - -"Isn't it glorious to have our little Snoozleums alive and well?" - -But Mallory was feeling like a March day. He answered with a sleety -chill: "You care more for the dog than you do for me." - -"Why shouldn't I?" Marjorie answered with wide eyes, "Snoozleums never -would have brought me on a wild goose elopement like this. Heaven -knows he didn't want to come." - -Mallory repeated the indictment: "You love a dog better than you love -your husband." - -"My what?" Marjorie laughed, then she spoke with lofty condescension: -"Harry Mallory, if you're going to be jealous of that dog, I'll never -marry you the longest day I live." - -"So you'll let a dog come between us?" he demanded. - -"I wouldn't give up Snoozleums for a hundred husbands," she retorted. - -"I'm glad to know it in time," Mallory said. "You'd better give me -back that wedding ring." - -Marjorie's heart stopped at this, but her pride was in arms. She drew -herself up, slid the ring from her finger, and held it out as if she -scorned it: "With pleasure. Good afternoon, Mr. Mallory." - -Mallory took it as if it were the merest trifle, bowed and murmured: -"Good afternoon, Miss Newton." - -He stalked out and she turned her back on him. A casual witness would -have said that they were too indifferent to each other even to feel -anger. As a matter of romantic fact, each was on fire with love, and -aching madly with regret. Each longed for strength to whirl round with -outflung arms of reconciliation, and neither could be so brave. And so -they parted, each harking back fiercely for one word of recall from -the other. But neither spoke, and Marjorie sat staring at nothing -through raining eyes, while Mallory strode into the Men's Room as -melancholy as Hamlet with Yorick's skull in his hands. - -It was their first great quarrel, and they were convinced that the -world might as well come to an end. - - - - -CHAPTER XXVIII - -THE WOMAN-HATER'S RELAPSE - - -The observation room was as lonely as a deserted battle-field and -Marjorie as doleful as a wounded soldier left behind, and perishing of -thirst, when the conductor came back with Snoozleums in his arms. - -He regarded with contemptuous awe the petty cause of so great an event -as the stopping of the Trans-American. He expected to see Marjorie -receive the returned prodigal with wild rapture, but she didn't even -smile when he said: - -"Here's your powder-puff." - -She just took Snoozleums on her lap, and, looking up with wet eyes and -a sad smile, murmured: - -"Thank you very much. You're the nicest conductor I ever met. If you -ever want another position, I'll see that my father gets you one." - -It was like offering the Kaiser a new job, but the conductor swallowed -the insult and sought to repay it with irony. - -"Thanks. And if you ever want to run this road for a couple of weeks, -just let me know." - -Marjorie nodded appreciatively and said: "I will. You're very kind." - -And that completed the rout of that conductor. He retired in disorder, -leaving Marjorie to fondle Snoozleums with a neglectful indifference -that would have greatly flattered Mallory, if he could have seen -through the partition that divided them. - -But he was witnessing with the cynical superiority of an aged and -disillusioned man the, to him, childish behavior of Ira Lathrop, an -eleventh-hour Orlando. - -For just as Mallory moped into the smoking-room at one door, Ira -Lathrop swept in at the other, his face rubicund with embarrassment -and ecstasy. He had donned an old frock coat with creases like ruts -from long exile in his trunk. But he was feeling like an heir -apparent; and he startled everybody by his jovial hail: - -"Well, boys--er--gentlemen--the drinks are on me. Waiter, take the -orders." - -Little Jimmie woke with a start, rose hastily to his feet and saluted, -saying: "Present! Who said take the orders?" - -"I did," said Lathrop, "I'm giving a party. Waiter, take the orders." - -"Sarsaparilla," said Dr. Temple, but they howled him down and ordered -other things. The porter shook his head sadly: "Nothin' but sof' -drinks in Utah, gemmen." - -A groan went up from the club-members, and Lathrop groaned loudest of -all: - -"Well, we've got to drink something. Take the orders. We'll all have -sarsaparilla." - -Little Jimmie Wellington came to the rescue. - -"Don't do anything desperate, gentlemen," he said, with a look of -divine philanthropy. "The bar's closed, but Little Jimmie Wellington -is here with the life preserver." From his hip-pocket he produced a -silver flask that looked to be big enough to carry a regiment through -the Alps. It was greeted with a salvo, and Lathrop said to Jimmie: "I -apologize for everything I have said--and thought--about you." He -turned to the porter: "There ain't any law against giving this away, -is there?" - -The porter grinned: "Not if you-all bribe the exercise-inspector." And -he held out a glass for the bribe, murmuring, "Don't git tired," as it -was poured. He set it inside his sanctum and then bustled round with -ice-filled glasses and a siphon. - -When Little Jimmie offered of the flask to Dr. Temple, the clergyman -put out his hand with a politely horrified: "No, thank you." - -Lathrop frightened him with a sudden comment: "Look at that gesture! -Doc, I'd almost swear you were a parson." - -Mallory whirled on him with the eyes of a hawk about to pounce, and -"The very idea!" was the best disclaimer Dr. Temple could manage, -suddenly finding himself suspected. Ashton put in with, "The only way -to disprove it, Doc, is to join us." - -The poor old clergyman, too deeply involved in his deception to brave -confession now, decided to do and dare all. He stammered, -"Er--ah--certainly," and held out his hand for his share of the -poison. Little Jimmie winked at the others and almost filled the -glass. The innocent doctor bowed his thanks. When the porter reached -him and prepared to fill the remainder of the glass from the siphon, -the parson waved him aside with a misguided caution: - -"No, thanks. I'll not mix them." - -Mallory turned away with a sigh: "He takes his straight. He's no -parson." - -Then they forgot the doctor in curiosity as to Lathrop's sudden spasm -of generosity--with Wellington's liquor. Wedgewood voiced the general -curiosity when he said: - -"What's the old woman-hater up to now?" - -"Woman-hater?" laughed Ira. "It's the old story. I'm going to follow -Mallory's example--marriage." - -"I hope you succeed," said Mallory. - -"Wherever did you pick up the bride?" said Wedgewood, mellowing with -the long glass in his hand. - -"Brides are easy," said Mallory, with surprising cynicism. "Where do -you get the parson?" - -"Hang the parson," Wedgewood repeated, "Who's the gel?" - -"I'll bet I know who she is," Ashton interposed; "it's that nectarine -of a damsel who got on at Green River." - -"Not the same!" Lathrop roared. "I found my bride blooming here all -the while. Girl I used to spark back in Brattleboro, Vermont. I've -been vowing for years that I'd live and die an old maid. I've kept my -head out of the noose all this time--till I struck this train and met -up with Anne. We got to talking over old times--waking up old -sentiments. She got on my nerves. I got on hers. Finally I said, 'Aw, -hell, let's get married. Save price of one stateroom to China anyway.' -She says, 'Damned if I don't!'--or words to that effect." - -Mallory broke in with feverish interest: "But you said you were going -to get married on this train." - -"Nothing easier. Here's How!" and he raised his glass, but Mallory -hauled it down to demand: "How? that's what I want to know. How are -you going to get married on this parsonless express. Have you got a -little minister in your suitcase?" - -Ira beamed with added pride as he explained: - -"Well, you see, when I used to court Anne I had a rival--Charlie Selby -his name was. I thought he cut me out, but he became a clergyman in -Utah--Oh, Charlie! I telegraphed him that I was passing through -Ogden, and would he come down to the train and marry me to a charming -lady. He always wanted to marry Anne. I thought it would be a durned -good joke to let him marry her--to me." - -"D-did he accept?" Mallory asked, excitedly, "is he coming?" - -"He is--he did--here's his telegram," said Ira. "He brings the license -and the ring." He passed it over, and as Mallory read it a look of -hope spread across his face. But Ira was saying: "We're going to have -the wedding obsequies right here in this car. You're all invited. Will -you come?" - -There was a general yell of acceptance and Ashton began to sing, -"There was I waiting at the church." Then he led a sort of Indian -war-dance round the next victim of the matrimonial stake. At the end -of the hullaballoo all the men charged their glasses, and drained them -with an uproarious "How!" - -Poor Doctor Temple had taken luxurious delight in the success of his -disguise and in the prospect of watching some other clergyman working -while he rested. He joined the dance as gaily, if not as gracefully, -as any of the rest, and in a final triumph of recklessness, he tossed -off a bumper of straight whisky. - -Instantly his "How!" changed to "Wow!" and then his throat clamped -fast with a terrific spasm that flung the tears from his eyes. He bent -and writhed in a silent paroxysm till he was pounded and shaken back -to life and water poured down his throat to reopen a passage. - -The others thought he had merely choked and made no comment other than -sympathy. They could not have dreamed that the old "physician" was as -ignorant of the taste as of the vigor of pure spirits. - -After a riot of handshaking and good wishes, Ira was permitted to -escape with his life. Mallory followed him to the vestibule, where he -caught him by the sleeve with an anxious: - -"Excuse me." - -"Well, my boy----" - -"Your minister--after you get through with him--may I use him?" - -"May you--what? Why do you want a minister?" - -"To get married." - -"Again? Good Lord, are you a Mormon?" - -"Me a Mormon!" - -"Then what do you want with an extra wife? It's against the law--even -in Utah." - -"You don't understand." - -"My boy, one of us is disgracefully drunk." - -"Well, I'm not," said Mallory, and then after a fierce inner debate, -he decided to take Lathrop into his confidence. The words came hard -after so long a duplicity, but at last they were out: - -"Mr. Lathrop, I'm not really married to my wife." - -"You young scoundrel!" - -But his fury changed to pity when he heard the history of Mallory's -ill-fated efforts, and he promised not only to lend Mallory his -minister at secondhand, but also to keep the whole affair a secret, -for Mallory explained his intention of having his own ceremony in the -baggage-car, or somewhere out of sight of the other passengers. - -Mallory's face was now aglow as the cold embers of hope leaped into -sudden blaze. He wrung Lathrop's hand, saying: "Lord love you, you've -saved my life--wife--both." - -Then he turned and ran to Marjorie with the good news. He had quite -forgotten their epoch-making separation. And she was so glad to see -him smiling at her again that she forgot it, too. He came tearing into -the observation room and took her by the shoulders, whispering: "Oh, -Marjorie, Marjorie, I've got him! I've got him!" - -"No, I've got him," she said, swinging Snoozleums into view. - -Mallory swung him back out of the way: "I don't mean a poodle, I mean -a parson. I've got a parson." - -"No! I can't believe it! Where is he?" She began to dance with -delight, but she stopped when he explained: - -"Well, I haven't got him yet, but I'm going to get one." - -"What--again?" she groaned, weary of this old bunco game of hope. - -"It's a real live one this time," Mallory insisted. "Mr. Lathrop has -ordered a minister and he's going to lend him to me as soon as he's -through with him, and we'll be married on this train." - -Marjorie was overwhelmed, but she felt it becoming in her to be a -trifle coy. So she pouted: "But you won't want me for a bride now. I'm -such a fright." - -He took the bait, hook and all: "I never saw you looking so adorable." - -"Honestly? Oh, but it will be glorious to be Mrs. First Lieutenant -Mallory." - -"Glorious!" - -"I must telegraph home--and sign my new name. Won't mamma be pleased?" - -"Won't she?" said Mallory, with just a trace of dubiety. - -Then Marjorie grew serious with a new idea: "I wonder if mamma and -papa have missed me yet?" - -Mallory laughed: "After three days' disappearance, I shouldn't be -surprised." - -"Perhaps they are worrying about me." - -"I shouldn't be surprised." - -"The poor dears! I'd better write them a telegram at once." - -"An excellent idea." - -She ran to the desk, found blank forms and then paused with knitted -brow: "It will be very hard to say all I've got to say in ten words." - -"Hang the expense," Mallory sniffed magnificently, "I'm paying your -bills now." - -But Marjorie tried to look very matronly: "Send a night letter in the -day time! No, indeed, we must begin to economize." - -Mallory was touched by this new revelation of her future housewifely -thrift. He hugged her hard and reminded her that she could send a -day-letter by wire. - -"An excellent idea," she said. "Now, don't bother me. You go on and -read your paper, read about Mattie. I'll never be jealous of -her--him--of anybody--again." - -"You shall never have cause for jealousy, my own." - -But fate was not finished with the initiation of the unfortunate pair, -and already new trouble was strolling in their direction. - - - - -CHAPTER XXIX - -JEALOUSY COMES ABOARD - - -There was an air of domestic peace in the observation room, where -Mallory and Marjorie had been left to themselves for some time. But -the peace was like the ominous hush that precedes a tempest. - -Mallory was so happy with everything coming his way, that he was even -making up with Snoozleums, stroking the tatted coat with one hand and -holding up his newspaper with the other. He did not know all that was -coming his way. The blissful silence was broken first by Marjorie: - -"How do you spell Utah?--with a y?" - -"Utah begins with You," he said--and rather liked his wit, listened -for some recognition, and rose to get it, but she waved him away. - -"Don't bother me, honey. Can't you see I'm busy?" - -He kissed her hair and sauntered back, dividing his attention between -Snoozleums and the ten-inning game. - -And now there was a small commotion in the smoking room. Through the -glass along the corridor the men caught sight of the girl who had got -on at Green River. Ashton saw her first and she saw him. - -"There she goes," Ashton hissed to the others, "look quick! There's -the nectarine." - -"My word! She's a little bit of all right, isn't she?" - -Even Dr. Temple stared at her with approval: "Dear little thing, isn't -she?" - -The girl, very consciously unconscious of the admiration, moved -demurely along, with eyes downcast, but at such an angle that she -could take in the sensation she was creating; she went along picking -up stares as if they were bouquets. - -Her demeanor was a remarkable compromise between outrageous flirtation -and perfect respectability. But she was looking back so intently that -when she moved into the observation room she walked right into the -newspaper Mallory was holding out before him. - -Both said: "I beg your pardon." - -When Mallory lowered the paper, both stared till their eyes almost -popped. Her amazement was one of immediate rapture. He looked as if he -would have been much obliged for a volcanic crater to sink into. - -"Harry!" she gasped, and let fall her handbag. - -"Kitty!" he gasped, and let fall his newspaper. Both bent, he handed -her the newspaper and tossed the handbag into a chair; saw his -mistake, withdrew the newspaper and proffered her Snoozleums. Marjorie -stopped writing, pen poised in air, as if she had suddenly been -petrified. - -The newcomer was the first to speak. She fairly gushed: "Harry -Mallory--of all people." - -"Kitty! Kathleen! Miss Llewellyn!" - -"Just to think of meeting you again." - -"Just to think of it." - -"And on this train of all places." - -"On this train of all places!" - -"Oh, Harry, Harry!" - -"Oh, Kitty, Kitty, Kitty!" - -"You dear fellow, it's so long since I saw you last." - -"So long." - -"It was at that last hop at West Point, remember?--why, it seems only -yesterday, and how well you are looking. You are well, aren't you?" - -"Not very." He was mopping his brow in anguish, and yet the room -seemed strangely cold. - -"Of course you look much better in your uniform. You aren't wearing -your uniform, are you?" - -"No, this is not my uniform." - -"You haven't left the army, have you?" - -"I don't know yet." - -"Don't ever do that. You are just beautiful in brass buttons." - -"Thanks." - -"Harry!" - -"What's the matter now?" - -"This tie, this green tie, isn't this the one I knitted you?" - -"I am sure I don't know, I borrowed it from the conductor." - -"Don't you remember? I did knit you one." - -"Did you? I believe you did! I think I wore it out." - -"Oh, you fickle boy. But see what I have. What's this?" - -He stared through the glassy eyes of complete helplessness. "It looks -like a bracelet." - -"Don't tell me you don't remember this!--the little bangle bracelet -you gave me." - -"D-did I give you a baygled branglet?" - -"Of course you did. And the inscription. Don't you remember it?" - -She held her wrist in front of his aching eyes and he perused as if it -were his own epitaph, what she read aloud for him. "_From Harry to -Kitty, the Only Girl I Ever Loved._" - -"Good night!" he sighed to himself, and began to mop his brow with -Snoozleums. - -"You put it on my arm," said Kathleen, with a moonlight sigh, "and -I've always worn it." - -"Always?" - -"Always! no matter whom I was engaged to." - -The desperate wretch, who had not dared even to glance in Marjorie's -direction, somehow thought he saw a straw of self-defense. "You were -engaged to three or four others when I was at West Point." - -"I may have been engaged to the others," said Kathleen, moon-eyeing -him, "but I always liked you best, Clifford--er, Tommy--I mean Harry." - -"You got me at last." - -Kathleen fenced back at this: "Well, I've no doubt you have had a -dozen affairs since." - -"Oh, no! My heart has only known one real love." He threw this over -her head at Marjorie, but Kathleen seized it, to his greater -confusion: "Oh, Harry, how sweet of you to say it. It makes me feel -positively faint," and she swooned his way, but he shoved a chair -forward and let her collapse into that. Thinking and hoping that she -was unconscious, he made ready to escape, but she caught him by the -coat, and moaned: "Where am I?" and he growled back: - -"In the Observation Car!" - -Kathleen's life and enthusiasm returned without delay: "Fancy meeting -you again! I could just scream." - -"So could I." - -"You must come up in our car and see mamma." - -"Is Ma-mamma with you?" Mallory stammered, on the verge of imbecility. - -"Oh, yes, indeed, we're going around the world." - -"Don't let me detain you." - -"Papa is going round the world also." - -"Is papa on this train, too?" - -At last something seemed to embarrass her a trifle: "No, papa went on -ahead. Mamma hopes to overtake him. But papa is a very good traveler." - -Then she changed the subject. "Do come and meet mamma. It would cheer -her up so. She is so fond of you. Only this morning she was saying, -'Of all the boys you were ever engaged to, Kathleen, the one I like -most of all was Edgar--I mean Clarence--er--Harry Mallory." - -"Awfully kind of her." - -"You must come and see her--she's some stouter now!" - -"Oh, is she? Well, that's good." - -Mallory was too angry to be sane, and too helpless to take advantage -of his anger. He wondered how he could ever have cared for this -molasses and mucilage girl. He remembered now that she had always had -these same cloying ways. She had always pawed him and, like everybody -but the pawers, he hated pawing. - -It would have been bad enough at any time to have Kathleen hanging on -his coat, straightening his tie, leaning close, smiling up in his -eyes, losing him his balance, recapturing him every time he edged -away. But with Marjorie as the grim witness it was maddening. - -He loathed and abominated Kathleen Llewellyn, and if she had only been -a man, he could cheerfully have beaten her to a pulp and chucked her -out of the window. But because she was a helpless little baggage, he -had to be as polite as he could while she sat and tore his plans to -pieces, embittered Marjorie's heart against him, and either ended all -hopes of their marriage, or furnished an everlasting rancor to be -recalled in every quarrel to their dying day. Oh, etiquette, what -injustices are endured in thy name! - -So there he sat, sweating his soul's blood, and able only to spar for -time and wonder when the gong would ring. And now she was off on a new -tack: - -"And where are you bound for, Harry, dear?" - -"The Philippines," he said, and for the first time there was something -beautiful in their remoteness. - -"Perhaps we shall cross the Pacific on the same boat." - -The first sincere smile he had experienced came to him: "I go on an -army transport, fortu--unfortunately." - -"Oh, I just love soldiers. Couldn't mamma and I go on the transport? -Mamma is very fond of soldiers, too." - -"I'm afraid it couldn't be arranged." - -"Too bad, but perhaps we can stop off and pay you a visit. I just -love army posts. So does mamma." - -"Oh, do!" - -"What will be your address?" - -"Just the Philippines--just the Philippines." - -"But aren't there quite a few of them?" - -"Only about two thousand." - -"Which one will you be on?" - -"I'll be on the third from the left," said Mallory, who neither knew -nor cared what he was saying. Marjorie had endured all that she could -stand. She rose in a tightly leashed fury. - -"I'm afraid I'm in the way." - -Kathleen turned in surprise. She had not noticed that anyone was near. -Mallory went out of his head completely. "Oh, don't go--for heaven's -sake don't go," he appealed to Marjorie. - -"A friend of yours?" said Kathleen, bristling. - -"No, not a friend," in a chaotic tangle, -"Mrs.--Miss--Miss--Er--er--er----" - -Kathleen smiled: "Delighted to meet you, Miss Ererer." - -"The pleasure is all mine," Marjorie said, with an acid smile. - -"Have you known Harry long?" said Kathleen, jealously, "or are you -just acquaintances on the train?" - -"We're just acquaintances on the train!" - -"I used to know Harry very well--very well indeed." - -"So I should judge. You won't mind if I leave you to talk over old -times together?" - -"How very sweet of you." - -"Oh, don't mention it." - -"But, Marjorie," Mallory cried, as she turned away. Kathleen started -at the ardor of his tone, and gasped: "Marjorie! Then he--you----" - -"Not at all--not in the least," said Marjorie. - -At this crisis the room was suddenly inundated with people. Mrs. -Whitcomb, Mrs. Wellington, Mrs. Temple and Mrs. Fosdick, all trying to -look like bridesmaids, danced in, shouting: - -"Here they come! Make way for the bride and groom!" - - - - -CHAPTER XXX - -A WEDDING ON WHEELS - - -The commotion of the matrimony-mad women brought the men trooping in -from the smoking room and there was much circumstance of decorating -the scene with white satin ribbons, a trifle crumpled and dim of -luster. Mrs. Whitcomb waved them at Mallory with a laugh: - -"Recognize these?" - -He nodded dismally. His own funeral baked meats were coldly furnishing -forth a wedding breakfast for Ira Lathrop. Mrs. Wellington was moving -about distributing kazoos and Mrs. Temple had an armload of old shoes, -some of which had thumped Mallory on an occasion which seemed so -ancient as to be almost prehistoric. - -Fosdick was howling to the porter to get some rice, quick! - -"How many portions does you approximate?" - -"All you've got." - -"Boiled or fried?" - -"Any old way." The porter ran forward to the dining-car for the -ammunition. - -Mrs. Temple whispered to her husband: "Too bad you're not officiating, -Walter." But he cautioned silence: - -"Hush! I'm on my vacation." - -The train was already coming into Ogden. Noises were multiplying and -from the increase of passing objects, the speed seemed to be taking on -a spurt. The bell was clamoring like a wedding chime in a steeple. - -Mrs. Wellington was on a chair fastening a ribbon round one of the -lamps, and Mrs. Whitcomb was on another chair braiding the bell rope -with withered orange branches, when Ashton, with kazoo all ready, -called out: - -"What tune shall we play?" - -"I prefer the Mendelssohn Wedding March," said Mrs. Whitcomb, but Mrs. -Wellington glared across at her. - -"I've always used the Lohengrin." - -"We'll play 'em both," said Dr. Temple, to make peace. - -Mrs. Fosdick murmured to her spouse: "The old Justice of the Peace -didn't give us any music at all," and received in reward one of his -most luscious-eyed looks, and a whisper: "But he gave us each other." - -"Now and then," she pouted. - -"But where are the bride and groom?" - -"Here they come--all ready," cried Ashton, and he beat time while -some of the guests kazooed at Mendelssohn's and some Wagner's bridal -melodies, and others just made a noise. - -Ira Lathrop and Anne Gattle, looking very sheepish, crowded through -the narrow corridor and stood shamefacedly blushing like two school -children about to sing a duet. - -The train jolted to a dead stop. The conductor called into the car: -"Ogden! All out for Ogden!" and everybody stood watching and waiting. - -Ira, seeing Mallory, edged close and whispered: "Stand by to catch the -minister on the rebound." - -But Mallory turned away. What use had he now for ministers? His plans -were shattered ruins. - -The porter came flying in with two large bowls of rice, and shouting, -"Here comes the 'possum--er posson." Seeing Marjorie, he said: "Shall -I perambulate Mista Snoozleums?" - -She handed the porter her only friend and he hurried out, as a lean -and professionally sad ascetic hurried in. He did not recognize his -boyish enemy in the gray-haired, red-faced giant that greeted him, but -he knew that voice and its gloating irony: - -"Hello, Charlie." - -He had always found that when Ira grinned and was cordial, some -trouble was in store for him. He wondered what rock Ira held behind -his back now, but he forced an uneasy cordiality: "And is this you, -Ira? Well, well! It is yeahs since last we met. And you're just -getting married. Is this the first time, Ira?" - -"First offense, Charlie." - -The levity shocked Selby, but a greater shock was in store, for when -he inquired: "And who is the--er--happy--bride?" the triumphant -Lathrop snickered: "I believe you used to know her. Anne Gattle." - -This was the rock behind Ira's back, and Selby took it with a wince: -"Not--my old----" - -"The same. Anne, you remember, Charlie." - -"Oh, yes," said Anne, "How do you do, Charlie?" And she put out a shy -hand, which he took with one still shyer. He was so unsettled that he -stammered: "Well, well, I had always hoped to marry you, Anne, but not -just this way." - -Lathrop cut him short with a sharp: "Better get busy--before the train -starts. And I'll pay you in advance before you set off the fireworks." - -The flippancy pained the Rev. Charles, but he was resuscitated by one -glance at the bill that Ira thrust into his palm. If a man's gratitude -for his wife is measured by the size of the fee he hands the enabling -parson, Ira was madly in love with Anne. The Rev. Charles had a -reminiscent suspicion that it was probably a counterfeit, but for once -he did Ira an injustice. - -The minister was in such a flutter from losing his boyhood love, and -gaining so much money all at once and from performing the marriage on -a train, that he made numerous errors in the ceremony, but nobody -noticed them, and the spirit, if not the letter of the occasion, was -there and the contract was doubtless legal enough. - -The ritual began with the pleasant murmur of the preacher's voice, and -the passengers crowded round in a solemn calm, which was suddenly -violated by a loud yelp of laughter from Wedgewood, who emitted guffaw -after guffaw and bent double and opened out again, like an agitated -umbrella. - -The wedding-guests turned on him visages of horror, and hissed silence -at him. Ashton seized him, shook him, and muttered: - -"What the--what's the matter with you?" - -The Englishman shook like a boy having a spasm of giggles at a -funeral, and blurted out the explanation: - -"That story about the bridegroom--I just saw the point!" - -Ashton closed his jaw by brute force and watched over him through the -rest of the festivity. - - - - -CHAPTER XXXI - -FOILED YET AGAIN - - -Mallory had fled from the scene at the first hum of the minister's -words. His fate was like alkali on his palate. For twelve hundred -miles he had ransacked the world for a minister. When one dropped on -the train like manna through the roof, even this miracle had to be -checkmated by a perverse miracle that sent to the train an early -infatuation, a silly affair that he himself called puppy-love. And now -Marjorie would never marry him. He did not blame her. He blamed fate. - -He was in solitude in the smoking room. The place reeked with drifting -tobacco smoke and the malodor of cigar stubs and cigarette ends. His -plans were as useless and odious as cigarette ends. He dropped into a -chair his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands--Napoleon on -St. Helena. - -And then, suddenly he heard Marjorie's voice. He turned and saw her -hesitating in the doorway. He rose to welcome her, but the smile died -on his lips at her chilly speech: - -"May I have a word with you, sir?" - -"Of course. The air's rather thick in here," he apologized. - -"Just wait!" she said, ominously, and stalked in like a young Zenobia. -He put out an appealing hand: "Now, Marjorie, listen to reason. Of -course I know you won't marry me now." - -"Oh, you know that, do you?" she said, with a squared jaw. - -"But, really, you ought to marry me--not merely because I love -you--and you're the only girl I ever----" He stopped short and she -almost smiled as she taunted him: "Go on--I dare you to say it." - -He swallowed hard and waived the point: "Well, anyway, you ought to -marry me--for your own sake." - -Then she took his breath away by answering: "Oh, I'm going to marry -you, never fear." - -"You are," he cried, with a rush of returning hope. "Oh, I knew you -loved me." - -She pushed his encircling arms aside: "I don't love you, and that's -why I'm going to marry you." - -"But I don't understand." - -"Of course not," she sneered, as if she were a thousand years old, -"you're only a man--and a very young man." - -"You've ceased to love me," he protested, "just because of a little -affair I had before I met you?" - -Marjorie answered with world-old wisdom: "A woman can forgive a man -anything except what he did before he met her." - -He stared at her with masculine dismay at feminine logic: "If you -can't forgive me, then why do you marry me?" - -"For revenge!" she cried. "You brought me on this train all this -distance to introduce me to a girl you used to spoon with. And I don't -like her. She's awful!" - -"Yes, she is awful," Mallory assented. "I don't know how I ever----" - -"Oh, you admit it!" - -"No." - -"Well, I'm going to marry you--now--this minute--with that preacher, -then I'm going to get off at Reno and divorce you." - -"Divorce me! Good Lord! On what grounds?" - -"On the grounds of Miss Kitty--Katty--Llewellington--or whatever her -name is." - -Mallory was groggy with punishment, and the vain effort to foresee her -next blow. "But you can't name a woman that way," he pleaded, "for -just being nice to me before I ever met you." - -"That's the worst kind of unfaithfulness," she reiterated. "You should -have known that some day you would meet me. You should have saved your -first love for me." - -"But last love is best," Mallory interposed, weakly. - -"Oh, no, it isn't, and if it is, how do I know I'm to be your last -love? No, sir, when I've divorced you, you can go back to your first -love and go round the world with her till you get dizzy." - -"But I don't want her for a wife," Mallory urged, "I want you." - -"You'll get me--but not for long. And one other thing, I want you to -get that bracelet away from that creature. Do you promise?" - -"How can I get it away?" - -"Take it away! Do you promise?" - -Mallory surrendered completely. Anything to get Marjorie safely into -his arms: "I promise anything, if you'll really marry me." - -"Oh, I'll marry you, sir, but not really." - -And while he stared in helpless awe at the cynic and termagant that -jealousy had metamorphosed this timid, clinging creature into, they -heard the conductor's voice at the rear door of the car: "Hurry -up--we've got to start." - -They heard Lathrop's protest: "Hold on there, conductor," and Selby's -plea: "Oh, I say, my good man, wait a moment, can't you?" - -The conductor answered with the gruffness of a despot: "Not a minute. -I've my orders to make up lost time. All aboard!" - -While the minister was tying the last loose ends of the matrimonial -knot, Mallory and Marjorie were struggling through the crowd to get at -him. Just as they were near, they were swept aside by the rush of the -bride and groom, for the parson's "I pronounce you man and wife," -pronounced as he backed toward the door, was the signal for another -wedding riot. - -Once more Ira and Anne were showered with rice. This time it was their -own. Ira darted out into the corridor, haling his brand-new wife by -the wrist, and the wedding guests pursued them across the vestibule, -through the next car, and on, and on. - -Nobody remained to notice what happened to the parson. Having -performed his function, he was without further interest or use. But to -Mallory and Marjorie he was vitally necessary. - -Mallory caught his hand as it turned the knob of the door and drew him -back. Marjorie, equally determined, caught his other elbow: - -"Please don't go," Mallory urged, "until you've married us." - -The Reverend Charles stared at his captors in amazement: - -"But my dear man, the train's moving." - -Marjorie clung all the tighter and invited him to "Come on to the next -stop." - -"But my dear lady," Selby gasped, "it's impossible." - -"You've just got to," Mallory insisted. - -"Release me, please." - -"Never!" - -"How dare you!" the parson shrieked, and with a sudden wriggle writhed -out of his coat, leaving it in Marjorie's hands. He darted to the door -and flung it open, with Mallory hot after him. - -The train was kicking up a cloud of dust and getting its stride. The -kidnapped clergyman paused a moment, aghast at the speed with which -the ground was being paid out. Then he climbed the brass rail and, -with a hasty prayer, dropped overboard. - -Mallory lunged at him, and seized him by his reversed collar. But the -collar alone remained in his clutch. The parson was almost lost in the -dust he created as he struck, bounded and rolled till he came to a -stop, with his stars and his prayers to thank for injuries to nothing -worse than his dignity and other small clothes. - -Mallory returned to the observation room and flung the collar and bib -to the floor in a fury of despair, howling: - -"He got away! He got away!" - - - - -CHAPTER XXXII - -THE EMPTY BERTH - - -The one thing Mallory was beginning to learn about Marjorie was that -she would never take the point of view he expected, and never proceed -along the lines of his logic. - -She had grown furious at him for what he could not help. She had told -him that she would marry him out of spite. She had commanded him to -pursue and apprehend the flying parson. He failed and returned -crestfallen and wondering what new form her rage would take. - -And, lo and behold, when she saw him so downcast and helpless, she -rushed to him with caresses, cuddled his broad shoulders against her -breast, and smothered him. It was the sincerity of his dejection and -the complete helplessness he displayed that won her woman's heart. - -Mallory gazed at her with almost more wonderment than delight. This -was another flashlight on her character. Most courtships are conducted -under a rose-light in which wooer and wooed wear their best clothes or -their best behavior; or in a starlit, moonlit, or gaslit twilight -where romance softens angles and wraps everything in velvet shadow. -Then the two get married and begin to live together in the cold, gray -daylight of realism, with undignified necessities and harrowing -situations at every step, and disillusion begins its deadly work. - -This young couple was undergoing all the inconveniences and -temper-exposures of marriage without its blessed compensations. They -promised to be well acquainted before they were wed. If they still -wanted each other after this ordeal, they were pretty well assured -that their marriage would not be a failure. - -Mallory rejoiced to see that the hurricane of Marjorie's jealousy had -only whipped up the surface of her soul. The great depths were still -calm and unmoved, and her love for him was in and of the depths. - -Soon after leaving Ogden, the train entered upon the great bridge -across the Great Salt Lake. The other passengers were staring at the -enormous engineering masterpiece and the conductor was pointing out -that, in order to save forty miles and the crossing of two mountain -chains, the railroad had devoted four years of labor and millions of -dollars to stretching a thirty-mile bridge across this inland ocean. - -But Marjorie and Mallory never noticed it. They were absorbed in -exploring each other's souls, and they had safely bridged the Great -Salt Lake which the first big bitter jealousy spreads across every -matrimonial route. - -They were undisturbed in their voyage, for all the other passengers -had their noses flattened against the window panes of the other -cars--all except one couple, gazing each at each through time-wrinkled -eyelids touched with the magic of a tardy honeymoon. - -For all that Anne and Ira knew, the Great Salt Lake was a moon-swept -lagoon, and the arid mountains of Nevada which the train went scaling, -were the very hillsides of Arcadia. - -But the other passengers soon came trooping back into the observation -room. Ira had told them nothing of Mallory's confession. In the first -place, he was a man who had learned to keep a secret, and in the -second place, he had forgotten that such persons as Mallory or his -Marjorie existed. All the world was summed up in the fearsomely happy -little spinster who had moved up into his section--the section which -had begun its career draped in satin ribbons unwittingly prophetic. - -The communion of Mallory and Marjorie under the benison of -reconciliation was invaded by the jokes of the other passengers, -unconsciously ironic. - -Dr. Temple chaffed them amiably: "You two will have to take a back -seat now. We've got a new bridal couple to amuse us." - -And Mrs. Temple welcomed them with: "You're only old married folks, -like us." - -The Mallorys were used to the misunderstanding. But the misplaced -witticisms gave them reassurance that their secret was safe yet a -little while. At their dinner-table, however, and in the long evening -that followed they were haunted by the fact that this was their last -night on the train, and no minister to be expected. - -And now once more the Mallorys regained the star rôles in the esteem -of the audience, for once more they quarreled at good-night-kissing -time. Once more they required two sections, while Anne Gattle's berth -was not even made up. It remained empty, like a deserted nest, for its -occupant had flown South. - - - - -CHAPTER XXXIII - -FRESH TROUBLE DAILY - - -The following morning the daylight creeping into section number one -found Ira and Anne staring at each other. Ira was tousled and Anne was -unkempt, but her blush still gave her cheek at least an Indian summer -glow. - -After a violent effort to reach the space between her shoulder blades, -she was compelled to appeal to her new master to act as her new maid. - -"Oh, Mr. Lathrop," she stammered--"Ira," she corrected, "won't you -please hook me up?" she pleaded. - -Ira beamed with a second childhood boyishness: "I'll do my best, my -little ootsum-tootsums, it's the first time I ever tried it." - -"Oh, I'm so glad," Anne sighed, "it's the first time I ever was hooked -up by a gentleman." - -He gurgled with joy and, forgetting the poverty of space, tried to -reach her lips to kiss her. He almost broke her neck and bumped his -head so hard that instead of saying, as he intended, "My darling," he -said, "Oh, hell!" - -"Ira!" she gasped. But he, with all the proprietorship he had assumed, -answered cheerily: "You'll have to get used to it, ducky darling. I -could never learn not to swear." He proved the fact again and again by -the remarks he addressed to certain refractory hooks. He apologized, -but she felt more like apologizing for herself. - -"Oh, Ira," she said, "I'm so ashamed to have you see me like this--the -first morning." - -"Well, you haven't got anything on me--I'm not shaved." - -"You don't have to tell me that," she said, rubbing her smarting -cheek. Then she bumped her head and gasped: "Oh--what you said." - -This made them feel so much at home that she attained the heights of -frankness and honesty by reaching in her handbag for a knob of -supplementary hair, which she affixed dextrously to what was -homegrown. Ira, instead of looking shocked, loved her for her honesty, -and grinned: - -"Now, that's where you have got something on me. Say, we're like a -couple of sardines trying to make love in a tin can." - -"It's cosy though," she said, and then vanished through the curtains -and shyly ran the gauntlet of amused glances and over-cordial "Good -mornings" till she hid her blushes behind the door of the women's room -and turned the key. If she had thought of it she would have said, "God -bless the man that invented doors--and the other angel that invented -locks." - -The passengers this morning were all a little brisker than usual. It -was the last day aboard for everybody and they showed a certain extra -animation, like the inmates of an ocean liner when land has been -sighted. - -Ashton was shaving when Ira swaggered into the men's room. Without -pausing to note whom he was addressing, Ashton sang out: - -"Good morning. Did you rest well?" - -"What!" Ira roared. - -"Oh, excuse me!" said Ashton, hastily, devoting himself to a gash his -safety razor had made in his cheek--even in that cheek of his. - -Ira scrubbed out the basin, filled it and tried to dive into it, -slapping the cold water in double handfuls over his glowing face and -puffing through it like a porpoise. - -Meanwhile the heavy-eyed Fosdick was slinking through the dining-car, -regarded with amazement by Dr. Temple and his wife, who were already -up and breakfasting. - -"What's the matter with the bridal couples on this train, anyway?" -said Dr. Temple. - -"I can't imagine," said his wife, "we old couples are the only normal -ones." - -"Some more coffee, please, mother," he said. - -"But your nerves," she protested. - -"It's my vacation," he insisted. - -Mrs. Temple stared at him and shook her head: "I wonder what mischief -you'll be up to to-day? You've already been smoking, gambling, -drinking--have you been swearing, yet?" - -"Not yet," the old clergyman smiled, "I've been saving that up for a -good occasion. Perhaps it will rise before the day's over." - -And his wife choked on her tea at the wonderful train-change that had -come over the best man in Ypsilanti. - -By this time Fosdick had reached the stateroom from which he had been -banished again at the Nevada state-line. He knocked cautiously. From -within came an anxious voice: "Who's there?" - -"Whom did you expect?" - -Mrs. Fosdick popped her head out like a Jill in the box. "Oh, it's -you, Arthur. Kiss me good morning." - -He glanced round stealthily and obeyed instructions: "I guess its -safe--my darling." - -"Did you sleep, dovie?" she yawned. - -"Not a wink. They took off the Portland car at Granger and I had to -sleep in one of the chairs in the observation room." - -Mrs. Fosdick shook her head at him in mournful sympathy, and asked: -"What state are we in now?" - -"A dreadful state--Nevada." - -"Just what are we in Nevada?" - -"I'm a bigamist, and you've never been married at all." - -"Oh, these awful divorce laws!" she moaned, then left the general for -the particular: "Won't you come in and hook me up?" - -Fosdick looked shocked: "I don't dare compromise you." - -"Will you take breakfast with me--in the dining-car?" she pleaded. - -"Do we dare?" - -"We might call it luncheon," she suggested. - -He seized the chance: "All right, I'll go ahead and order, and you -stroll in and I'll offer you the seat opposite me." - -"But can't you hook me up?" - -He was adamant: "Not till we get to California. Do you think I want to -compromise my own wife? Shh! Somebody's coming!" And he darted off to -the vestibule just as Mrs. Jimmie Wellington issued from number ten -with hair askew, eyes only half open, and waist only half shut at the -back. She made a quick spurt to the women's room, found it locked, -stamped her foot, swore under her breath, and leaned against the wall -of the car to wait. - -About the same time, the man who was still her husband according to -the law, rolled out of berth number two. There was an amazing clarity -to his vision. He lurched as he made his way to the men's room, but it -was plainly the train's swerve and not an inner lurch that twisted -the forthright of his progress. - -He squeezed into the men's room like a whole crowd at once, and sang -out, "Good morning, all!" with a wonderful heartiness. Then he paused -over a wash basin, rubbed his hands gleefully and proclaimed, like -another Chantecler advertising a new day: - -"Well--I'm sober again!" - -"Three cheers for you," said his rival in radiance, bridegroom -Lathrop. - -"How does it feel?" demanded Ashton, smiling so broadly that he -encountered the lather on his brush. - -While he sputtered Wellington was flipping water over his hot head and -incidentally over Ashton. - -"I feel," he chortled, "I feel like the first little robin redbreast -of the merry springtime. Tweet! Tweet!" - -When the excitement over his redemption had somewhat calmed, Ashton -reopened the old topic of conversation: - -"Well, I see they had another scrap last night." - -"They--who?" said Ira, through his flying toothbrush. - -"The Mallorys. Once more he occupied number three and she number -seven." - -"Well, well, I can't understand these modern marriages," said Little -Jimmie, with a side glance at Ira. Ira suddenly remembered the plight -of the Mallorys and was tempted to defend them, but he saw the young -lieutenant himself just entering the washroom. This was more than -Wellington saw, for he went on talking from behind a towel: - -"Well, if I were a bridegroom and had a bride like that, it would take -more than a quarrel to send me to another berth." - -The others made gestures which he could not see. His enlightenment -came when Mallory snapped the towel from his hands and glared into his -face with all the righteous wrath of a man hearing his domestic -affairs publicly discussed. - -"Were you alluding to me, Mr. Wellington?" he demanded, hotly. - -Little Jimmie almost perished with apoplexy: "You, you?" he mumbled. -"Why, of course not. You're not the only bridegroom on the train." - -Mallory tossed him the towel again: "You meant Mr. Lathrop then?" - -"Me! Not much!" roared the indignant Lathrop. - -Mallory returned to Wellington with a fiercer: "Whom, then?" - -He was in a dangerous mood, and Ashton came to the rescue: "Oh, don't -mind Wellington. He's not sober yet." - -This inspired suggestion came like a life-buoy to the hard-pressed -Wellington. He seized it and spoke thickly: "Don't mind me--I'm not -shober yet." - -"Well, it's a good thing you're not," was Mallory's final growl as he -began his own toilet. - -The porter's bell began to ring furiously, with a touch they had -already come to recognize as the Englishman's. The porter had learned -to recognize it, too, and he always took double the necessary time to -answer it. He was sauntering down the aisle at his most leisurely gait -when Wedgewood's rumpled mane shot out from the curtains like a lion's -from a jungle, and he bellowed: "Pawtah! Pawtah!" - -"Still on the train," said the porter. - -"You may give me my portmanteau." - -"Yassah." He dragged it from the upper berth, and set it inside -Wedgewood's berth without special care as to its destination. "Does -you desire anything else, sir?" - -"Yes, your absence," said Wedgewood. - -"The same to you and many of them," the porter muttered to himself, -and added to Marjorie, who was just starting down the aisle: "I'll -suttainly be interested in that man gittin' where he's goin' to git -to." Noting that she carried Snoozleums, he said: "We're comin' into a -station right soon." Without further discussion she handed him the -dog, and he hobbled away. - -When she reached the women's door, she found Mrs. Wellington waiting -with increasing exasperation: "Come, join the line at the box office," -she said. - -"Good morning. Who's in there?" said Marjorie, and Mrs. Wellington, -not noting that Mrs. Whitcomb had come out of her berth and fallen -into line, answered sharply: - -"I don't know. She's been there forever. I'm sure it's that cat of a -Mrs. Whitcomb." - -"Good morning, Mrs. Mallory," snapped Mrs. Whitcomb. - -Mrs. Wellington was rather proud that the random shot landed, but -Marjorie felt most uneasy between the two tigresses: "Good morning, -Mrs. Whitcomb," she said. There was a disagreeable silence, broken -finally by Mrs. Wellington's: "Oh, Mrs. Mallory, would you be angelic -enough to hook my gown?" - -"Of course I will," said Marjorie. - -"May I hook you?" said Mrs. Whitcomb. - -"You're awfully kind," said Marjorie, presenting her shoulders to Mrs. -Whitcomb, who asked with malicious sweetness: "Why didn't your husband -do this for you this morning?" - -"I--I don't remember," Marjorie stammered, and Mrs. Wellington tossed -over-shoulder an apothegm: "He's no husband till he's hook-broken." - -Just then Mrs. Fosdick came out of her stateroom. Seeing Mrs. -Whitcomb's waist agape, she went at it with a brief, "Good morning, -everybody. Permit me." - -Mrs. Wellington twisted her head to say "Good morning," and to ask, -"Are you hooked, Mrs. Fosdick?" - -"Not yet," pouted Mrs. Fosdick. - -"Turn round and back up," said Mrs. Wellington. After some -maneuvering, the women formed a complete circle, and fingers plied -hooks and eyes in a veritable Ladies' Mutual Aid Society. - -By now, Wedgewood was ready to appear in a bathrobe about as gaudy as -the royal standard of Great Britain. He stalked down the aisle, and -answered the male chorus's cheery "Good morning" with a ramlike "Baw." - -Ira Lathrop felt amiable even toward the foreigner, and he observed: -"Glorious morning this morning." - -"I dare say," growled Wedgewood. "I don't go in much for -mawnings--especially when I have no tub." - -Wellington felt called upon to squelch him: "You Englishmen never had -a real tub till we Americans sold 'em to you." - -"I dare say," said Wedgewood indifferently. "You sell 'em. We use 'em. -But, do you know, I've just thought out a ripping idea. I shall have -my cold bath this mawning after all." - -"What are you going to do?" growled Lathrop. "Crawl in the icewater -tank?" - -"Oh, dear, no. I shouldn't be let," and he produced from his pocket a -rubber hose. "I simply affix this little tube to one end of the -spigot and wave the sprinklah hyah over my--er--my person." - -Lathrop stared at him pityingly, and demanded: "What happens to the -water, then?" - -"What do I care?" said Wedgewood. - -"You durned fool, you'd flood the car." - -Wedgewood's high hopes withered. "I hadn't thought of that," he -sighed. "I suppose I must continue just as I am till I reach San -Francisco. The first thing I shall order to-night will be four cold -tubs and a lemon squash." - -While the men continued to make themselves presentable in a huddle, -the hook-and-eye society at the other end of the car finished with the -four waists and Mrs. Fosdick hurried away to keep her tryst in the -dining-car. The three remaining relapsed into dreary attitudes. Mrs. -Wellington shook the knob of the forbidding door, and turned to -complain: "What in heaven's name ails the creature in there. She must -have fallen out of the window." - -"It's outrageous," said Marjorie, "the way women violate women's -rights." - -Mrs. Whitcomb saw an opportunity to insert a stiletto. She observed to -Marjorie, with an innocent air: "Why, Mrs. Mallory, I've even known -women to lock themselves in there and smoke!" - -While Mrs. Wellington was rummaging her brain for a fitting retort, -the door opened, and out stepped Miss Gattle, as was. - -She blushed furiously at sight of the committee waiting to greet her, -but they repented their criticisms and tried to make up for them by -the excessive warmth with which they all exclaimed at once: "Good -morning, Mrs. Lathrop!" - -"Good morning, who?" said Anne, then blushed yet redder: "Oh, I can't -seem to get used to that name! I hope I haven't kept you waiting?" - -"Oh, not at all!" the women insisted, and Anne fled to number Six, -remembered that this was no longer her home, and moved on to number -One. Here the porter was just finishing his restoring tasks, and -laying aside with some diffidence two garments which Anne hastily -stuffed into her own valise. - -Meanwhile Marjorie was pushing Mrs. Wellington ahead: - -"You go in first, Mrs. Wellington." - -"You go first. I have no husband waiting for me," said Mrs. -Wellington. - -"Oh, I insist," said Marjorie. - -"I couldn't think of it," persisted Mrs. Wellington. "I won't allow -you." - -And then Mrs. Whitcomb pushed them both aside: "Pardon me, won't you? -I'm getting off at Reno." - -"So am I," gasped Mrs. Wellington, rushing forward, only to be faced -by the slam of the door and the click of the key. She whirled back to -demand of Marjorie: "Did you ever hear of such impudence?" - -"I never did." - -"I'll never be ready for Reno," Mrs. Wellington wailed, "and I haven't -had my breakfast." - -"You'd better order it in advance," said Marjorie. "It takes that chef -an hour to boil an egg three minutes." - -"I will, if I can ever get my face washed," sighed Mrs. Wellington. - -And now Mrs. Anne Lathrop, after much hesitation, called timidly: -"Porter--porter--please!" - -"Yes--miss--missus!" he amended. - -"Will you call my--" she gulped--"my husband?" - -"Yes, ma'am," the porter chuckled, and putting his grinning head in at -the men's door, he bowed to Ira and said: "Excuse me, but you are sent -for by the lady in number One." - -Ashton slapped him on the back and roared: "Oh, you married man!" - -"Well," said Ira, in self-defence, "I don't hear anybody sending for -you." Wedgewood grinned at Ashton. "I rather fancy he had you theah, -old top, eh, what?" - -Ira appeared at number One, and bending over his treasure-trove, spoke -in a voice that was pure saccharine: "Are you ready for breakfast, -dear?" - -"Yes, Ira." - -"Come along to the dining-car." - -"It's cosier here," she said. "Couldn't we have it served here?" - -"But it'll get all cold, and I'm hungry," pouted the old bachelor, to -whom breakfast was a sacred institution. - -"All right, Ira," said Anne, glad to be meek; "come along," and she -rose. - -Ira hesitated. "Still, if you'd rather, we'll eat here." He sat down. - -"Oh, not at all," said Anne; "we'll go where you want to go." - -"But I want to do what you want to do." - -"So do I--we'll go," said Anne. - -"We'll stay." - -"No, I insist on the dining-car." - -"Oh, all right, have your own way," said Ira, as if he were being -bullied, and liked it. Anne smiled at the contrariness of men, and Ira -smiled at the contrariness of women, and when they reached the -vestibule they kissed each other in mutual forgiveness. - -As Wedgewood stropped an old-fashioned razor, he said to Ashton, who -was putting up his safety equipment: "I say, old party, are those -safety razors safe? Can't you really cut yourself?" - -"Cut everything but hair," said Ashton, pointing to his wounded chin. - -Mallory put out his hand: "Would you be kind enough to lend me your -razor again this morning?" - -"Sure thing," said Ashton. "You'll find your blade in the box there." - -Mallory then negotiated the loan of one more fresh shirt from the -Englishman, and a clean collar from Ashton. He rejoiced that the end -of the day would bring him in touch with his own baggage. Four days of -foraging on the country was enough for this soldier. - -Also he felt, now that he and Marjorie had lived thus long, they could -survive somehow till evening brought them to San Francisco, where -there were hundreds of ministers. And then the conductor must ruin his -early morning optimism, though he made his appearance in the washroom -with genial good mornings for all. - -Mallory acknowledged the greeting, and asked offhandedly: "By the way, -how's she running?" - -The conductor answered even more offhandedly: "About two hours -late--and losin'." - -Mallory was transfixed with a new fear: "Good Lord, my transport sails -at sunrise." - -"Oh, we ought to make 'Frisco by midnight, anyway." - -"Midnight, and sail at daylight!" - -"Unless we lose a little more time." - -Mallory realized that every new day managed to create its own -anxieties. With the regularity of a milkman, each morning left a fresh -crisis on his doorstep. - - - - -CHAPTER XXXIV - -THE COMPLETE DIVORCER - - -The other passengers were growing nervous with their own troubles. The -next stop was Reno, and in spite of all the wit that is heaped upon -the town, it is a solemn place to those who must go there in -purgatorial penance for matrimonial error. - -Some honest souls regard such divorce-emporiums as dens of evil, where -the wicked make a mockery of the sacrament and assail the foundations -of society, by undermining the home. Other equally honest souls, -believing that marriage is a human institution whose mishaps and -mistakes should be rectified as far as possible, regard the divorce -courts as cities of refuge for ill-treated or ill-mated women and men -whose lives may be saved from utter ruination by the intervention of -high-minded judges. - -But, whichever view is right, the ordeal by divorce is terrifying -enough to the poor sinners or martyrs who must undergo it. - -Little Jimmie Wellington turned pale, and stammered, as he tried to -ask the conductor casually: - -"What kind of a place is that Reno?" - -The conductor, somewhat cynical from close association with the -divorce-mill and its grist, grinned: "That depends on what you're -leaving behind. Most folks seem to get enough of it in about six -months." - -Then he went his way, leaving Wellington red, agape and perplexed. The -trouble with Wellington was that he had brought along what he was -leaving behind. Or, as Ashton impudently observed: "You ought to enjoy -your residence there, Wellington, with your wife on hand." - -The only repartee that Wellington could think of was a rather -uninspired: "You go to ----." - -"So long as it isn't Reno," Ashton laughed, and walked away. - -Wedgewood laid a sympathetic hand on Little Jimmie's shoulder, and -said: - -"That Ashton is no end of a bounder, what?" - -Wellington wrote his epitaph in these words: - -"Well, the worst I can say of him is, he's the kind of man that -doesn't lift the plug out when he's through with the basin." - -He liked this so well that he wished he had thought of it in time to -crack it over Ashton's head. He decided to hand it to him anyway. He -forgot that the cardinal rule for repartee, is "Better never than -late." - -As he swung out of the men's room he was buttonholed by an individual -new to the little Trans-American colony. One of the camp-followers and -sutlers who prosper round the edges of all great enterprises had -waylaid him on the way to the battleground of marital freedom. - -The stranger had got on at an earlier stop and worked his way through -the train to the car named "Snowdrop." Wellington was his first victim -here. His pushing manner, the almost vulture-like rapacity of his -gleaming eyes, and the very vulturine contour of his profile, his -palmy gestures, his thick lisp, and everything about him gave -Wellington his immediate pedigree. - -It ill behooves Christendom to need reminding that the Jewish race has -adorned and still adorns humanity with some of its noblest specimens; -but this interloper was of the type that must have irritated Voltaire -into answering the platitude that the Jews are God's chosen people -with that other platitude, "Tastes differ." - -Little Jimmie Wellington, hot in pursuit of Ashton, found himself -checked in spite of himself; in spite of himself deposited somehow -into a seat, and in spite of himself confronted with a curvilinear -person, who said: - -"Excoose, pleass! but are you gettink off at R-r-reno?" - -"I am," Wellington answered, curtly, essaying to rise, only to be -delicately restored to his place with a gesture and a phrase: - -"Then you neet me." - -"Oh, I need you, do I? And who are you?" - -"Who ain't I? I am Baumann and Blumen. Our cart, pleass." - -Wellington found a pasteboard in his hand and read the legend: - - - Real Estate Agents. Baggage Transfer. - - Baumann & Blumen - - DIVORCE OUTFITTERS, - - 212 Alimony Avenue, Reno, Nev. - - Notary Public. Divorces Secured. - Justice of the Peace. Satisfaction Guaranteed. - - -Wellington looked from the crowded card to the zealous face. "Divorce -Outfitters, eh? I don't quite get you." - -"Vell, in the foist place----" - -"'The foist place,' eh? You're from New York." - -"Yes, oritchinally. How did you know it? By my feshionable clothink?" - -"Yes," laughed Wellington. "But you say I need you. How?" - -"Vell, you've got maybe some beggetch, some trunks--yes?" - -"Yes." - -"Vell, in the foist place, I am an expressman. I deliver 'em to your -address--yes? Vere iss it?" - -"I haven't got any yet." - -"Also I am addressman. Do you vant it a nice hotel?--or a fine -house?--or an apartment?--or maybe a boarding-house?--yes? How long do -you make a residence?" - -"Six months." - -"No longer?" - -"Not a minute." - -"Take a fine house, den. I got some beauties just wacated." - -"For a year?--no thanks." - -"All the leases in Reno run for six months only." - -"Well, I'd like to look around a little first." - -"Good. Don't forget us. You come out here for six months. You vant -maybe a good quick divorce--yes?" - -"The quickest I can get." - -"Do you vant it confidential? or very nice and noisy?" - -"What's that?" - -"Ve are press agents and also suppress agents. Some likes 'em one way, -some likes 'em anudder. Vich do you vant it?" - -"Quick and quiet." - -"Painless divorce is our specialty. If you pay me an advence deposit -now, I file your claim de minute de train stops and your own vife -don't know you're divorced." - -"I'll think it over," said Wellington, rising with resolution. - -"Don't forget us. Baumann and Blumen. Satisfaction guaranteed or your -wife refunded. Avoid substitoots." And then, seeing that he could not -extract any cash from Little Jimmie, Mr. Baumann descended upon -Mallory, who was just finishing his shave. Laying his hand on -Mallory's arm, he began: - -"Excoose, pleass. Can I fit you out vit a nice divorce?" - -"Divorce?--me!--that's good," laughed Mallory at the vision of it. -Then a sudden idea struck him. It took no great genius to see that Mr. -Baumann was not a clergyman, but there were other marriers to be had. -"You don't perform marriages, do you?" he asked. - -Mr. Baumann drew himself up: "Who says I don't? Ain't I a justice of -the peaces?" - -Mallory put out his hand in welcome: then a new anxiety chilled him. -He had a license for Chicago, but Chicago was far away: "Do I need a -license in Nevada?" - -"Why shouldn't you?" said Mr. Baumann. "Don't all sorts of things got -to have a license in Nevada, saloons, husbands, dogs----" - -"How could I get one?" Mallory asked as he went on dressing. - -"Ain't I got a few vit me? Do you vant to get a nice re-marriage -license?" - -"Re-marriage?--huh!" he looked round and, seeing that no one else was -near: "I haven't taken the first step yet." - -Mr. Baumann layed his hands in one another: "A betchelor? Ah, I see -you vant to marry a nice divorcee lady in R-r-reno?" - -"She isn't in Reno and she has never been married, either." - -This simple statement seemed to astound Mr. Baumann: - -"A betcheller marry a maiden!--in Reno!--oi, oi, oi! It hasn't been -done yet, but it might be." - -Mallory looked him over and a twinge of distaste disturbed him: "You -furnish the license, but--er--ah--is there any chance of a -clergyman--a Christian clergyman--being at the station?" - -"Vy do you vant it a cloigyman? Can't I do it just as good? Or a nice -fat alderman I can get you?" - -Mallory pondered: "I don't think she'd like anything but a clergyman." - -"Vell," Baumann confessed, "a lady is liable to be particular about -her foist marriage. Anyvay I sell you de license." - -"All right." - -Mr. Baumann whipped out a portfolio full of documents, and as he -searched them, philosophized: "A man ought alvays to carry a good -marriage license. It might be he should need it in a hurry." He took -a large iron seal from his side-pocket and stamped the paper and then, -with fountain pen poised, pleaded: "Vat is the names, pleass?" - -"Not so loud!" Mallory whispered. - -Baumann put his finger to his nose, wisely: "I see, it is a -confidential marriage. Sit down once." - -When he had asked Mallory the necessary questions and taken his fee, -he passed over the document by which the sovereign state of Nevada -graciously permitted two souls to be made more or less one in the eyes -of the law. - -"Here you are," said Mr. Baumann. "Vit dat you can get married anyvere -in Nevada." - -Mallory realized that Nevada would be a thing of the past in a few -hours more and he asked: - -"It's no good in California?" - -"Himmel, no. In California you bot' gotta go and be examined." - -"Examined!" Mallory gasped, in dire alarm. - -"Vit questions, poissonally," Mr. Baumann hastened to explain. - -"Oh!" - -"In Nevada," Baumann insinuated, still hopeful, "I could marry you -myself--now, right here." - -"Could you marry us in this smoking room?" - -"In a cattle car, if you vant it." - -"It's not a bad idea," said Mallory. "I'll let you know." - -Seeing Marjorie coming down the aisle, he hastened to her, and hugged -her good-morning with a new confidence. - -Dr. and Mrs. Temple, who had returned to their berth, witnessed this -greeting with amazement. After the quarrel of the night before surely -some explanation should have been overheard, but the puzzling Mallorys -flew to each other's arms without a moment's delay. The mystery was -exciting the passengers to such a point that they were vowing to ask a -few questions point blank. Nobody had quite dared to approach either -of them, but frank curiosity was preferable to nervous prostration, -and the secret could not be kept much longer. Fellow-passengers have -some rights. Not even a stranger can be permitted to outrage their -curiosity with impunity forever. - -Seeing them together, Mrs. Temple watched the embrace with her daily -renewal of joy that the last night's quarrel had not proved fatal. She -nudged her husband: - -"See, they're making up again." - -Dr. Temple was moved to a violent outburst for him: "Well, that's the -darnedest bridal couple--I only said darn, my dear." - -He was still more startled when Mr. Baumann, cruising along the aisle, -bent over to murmur: "Can I fix you a nice divorce?" - -Dr. Temple rose in such an attitude of horror as he assumed in the -pulpit when denouncing the greatest curse of society, and Mr. Baumann -retired. As he passed Mallory he cast an appreciative glance at -Marjorie and, tapping Mallory's shoulder, whispered: "No vonder you -want a marriage license. I'll be in the next car, should you neet me." -Then he went on his route. - -Marjorie stared after him in wonder and asked: "What did that person -mean by what he said?" - -"It's all right, Marjorie," Mallory explained, in the highest cheer: -"We can get married right away." - -Marjorie declined to get her hopes up again: "You're always saying -that." - -"But here's the license--see?" - -"What good is that?" she said, "there's no preacher on board." - -"But that man is a justice of the peace and he'll marry us." - -Marjorie stared at him incredulously: "That creature!--before all -these passengers?" - -"Not at all," Mallory explained. "We'll go into the smoking room." - -Marjorie leaped to her feet, aghast: "Elope two thousand miles to be -married in a smoking room by a Yiddish drummer! Harry Mallory, you're -crazy." - -Put just that way, the proposition did not look so alluring as at -first. He sank back with a sigh: "I guess I am. I resign." - -He was as weary of being "foiled again" as the villain of a cheap -melodrama. The two lovers sat in a twilight of deep melancholy, till -Marjorie's mind dug up a new source of alarm: - -"Harry, I've just thought of something terrible." - -"Let's have it," he sighed, drearily. - -"We reach San Francisco at midnight and you sail at daybreak. What -becomes of me?" - -Mallory had no answer to this problem, except a grim: "I'll not desert -you." - -"But we'll have no time to get married." - -"Then," he declared with iron resolve, "then I'll resign from the -Army." - -Marjorie stared at him with awe. He was so wonderful, so heroic. "But -what will the country do without you?" - -"It will have to get along the best it can," he answered with -finality. "Do you think I'd give you up?" - -But this was too much to ask. In the presence of a ruined career and a -hero-less army, Marjorie felt that her own scruples were too petty to -count. She could be heroic, too. - -"No!" she said, in a deep, low tone, "No, we'll get married in the -smoking room. Go call your drummer!" - -This opened the clouds and let in the sun again with such a radiant -blaze that Mallory hesitated no longer. "Fine!" he cried, and leaped -to his feet, only to be detained again by Marjorie's clutch: - -"But first, what about that bracelet?" - -"She's got it," Mallory groaned, slumping from the heights again. - -"Do you mean to say she's still wearing it?" - -"How was I to get it?" - -"Couldn't you have slipped into her car last night and stolen it?" - -"Good Lord, I shouldn't think you'd want me to go--why, Marjorie--I'd -be arrested!" - -But Marjorie set her jaw hard: "Well, you get that bracelet, or you -don't get me." And then her smouldering jealousy and grief took a less -hateful tone: "Oh, Harry!" she wailed, "I'm so lonely and so helpless -and so far from home." - -"But I'm here," he urged. - -"You're farther away than anybody," she whimpered, huddling close to -him. - -"Poor little thing," he murmured, soothing her with voice and kiss and -caress. - -"Put your arm round me," she cooed, like a mourning dove, "I don't -care if everybody is looking. Oh, I'm so lonely." - -"I'm just as lonely as you are," he pleaded, trying to creep into the -company of her misery. - -"Please marry me soon," she implored, "won't you, please?" - -"I'd marry you this minute if you'd say the word," he whispered. - -"I'd say it if you only had that bracelet," she sobbed, like a tired -child. "I should think you would understand my feelings. That awful -person is wearing your bracelet and I have only your ring, and her -bracelet is ten times as big as my r-i-ing, boo-hoo-hoo-oo!" - -"I'll get that bracelet if I have to chop her arm off," Mallory vowed. - -The sobs stopped short, as Marjorie looked up to ask: "Have you got -your sword with you?" - -"It's in my trunk," he said, "but I'll manage." - -"Now you're speaking like a soldier," Marjorie exclaimed, "my brave, -noble, beautiful, fearless husband. I'll tell you! That creature will -pass through this car on her way to breakfast. You grab her and take -the bracelet away from her." - -"I grab her, eh?" he stammered, his heroism wavering a trifle. - -"Yes, just grab her." - -"Suppose she hasn't the bracelet on?" he mused. - -"Grab her anyway," Marjorie answered, fiercely. "Besides, I've no -doubt it's wished on." He said nothing. "You did wish it on, didn't -you?" - -"No, no--never--of course not--" he protested "If you'll only be calm. -I'll get it if I have to throttle her." - -Like a young Lady Macbeth, Marjorie gave him her utter approval in any -atrocity, and they sat in ambush for their victim to pass into view. - -They had not had their breakfast, but they forgot it. A dusky waiter -went by chanting his "Lass call for breakfuss in Rining Rar." He -chanted it thrice in their ears, but they never heard. Marjorie was -gloating over the discomfiture of the odious creature who had dared to -precede her in the acquaintance of her husband-to-be. The -husband-to-be was miserably wishing that he had to face a tribe of -bolo-brandishing Moros, instead of this trivial girl whom he had -looked upon when her cheeks were red. - - - - -CHAPTER XXXV - -MR. AND MRS. LITTLE JIMMIE - - -Mrs. Sammy Whitcomb had longed for the sweet privilege of squaring -matters with Mrs. Jimmie Wellington. Sneers and back-biting, shrugs -and shudders of contempt were poor compensation for the ever-vivid -fact that Mrs. Wellington had proved attractive to her Sammy while -Mrs. Wellington's Jimmie never looked at Mrs. Whitcomb. Or if he did, -his eyes had been so blurred that he had seen two of her--and avoided -both. - -Yesterday she had overheard Jimmie vow sobriety. To-day his shining -morning face showed that he had kept his word. She could hardly wait -to begin the flirtation which, she trusted, would render Mrs. -Wellington helplessly furious for six long Reno months. - -The Divorce Drummer interposed and held Jimmie prisoner for a time, -but as soon as Mr. Baumann released him, Mrs. Whitcomb apprehended -him. With a smile that beckoned and with eyes that went out like -far-cast fishhooks, she drew Leviathan into her net. - -She reeled him in and he plounced in the seat opposite. What she took -for bashfulness was reluctance. To add the last charm to her success, -Mrs. Wellington arrived to see it. Mrs. Whitcomb saw the lonely Ashton -rise and offer her the seat facing him. Mrs. Wellington took it and -sat down with the back of her head so close to the back of Mr. -Wellington's head that the feather in her hat tickled his neck. - -Jimmie Wellington had seen his wife pass by. To his sober eyes she was -a fine sight as she moved up the aisle. In his alcohol-emancipated -mind the keen sense of wrong endured that had driven him forth to Reno -began to lose its edge. His own soul appealed from Jimmie drunk to -Jimmie sober. The appellate judge began to reverse the lower court's -decision, point by point. - -He felt a sudden recrudescence of jealousy as he heard Ashton's voice -unctuously, flirtatiously offering his wife hospitality. He wanted to -trounce Ashton. But what right had he to defend from gallantry the -woman he was about to forswear before the world? Jimmie's soul was in -turmoil, and Mrs. Whitcomb's pretty face and alluring smile only -annoyed him. - -She had made several gracious speeches before he quite comprehended -any of them. Then he realized that she was saying: "I'm so glad you're -going to stop at Reno, Mr. Wellington." - -"Thank you. So am I," he mumbled, trying to look interested and -wishing that his wife's plume would not tickle his neck. - -Mrs. Whitcomb went on, leaning closer: "We two poor mistreated -wretches must try to console one another, musn't we?" - -"Yes,--yes,--we must," Wellington nodded, with a sickly cheer. - -Mrs. Whitcomb leaned a little closer. "Do you know that I feel almost -related to you, Mr. Wellington?" - -"Related?" he echoed, "you?--to me? How?" - -"My husband knew your wife so well." - -Somehow a wave of jealous rage surged over him, and he growled: "Your -husband is a scoundrel." - -Mrs. Whitcomb's smile turned to vinegar: "Oh, I can't permit you to -slander the poor boy behind his back. It was all your wife's fault." - -Wellington amazed himself by his own bravery when he heard himself -volleying back: "And I can't permit you to slander my wife behind her -back. It was all your husband's fault." - -Mrs. Jimmie overheard this behind her back, and it strangely thrilled -her. She ignored Ashton's existence and listened for Mrs. Whitcomb's -next retort. It consisted of a simple, icy drawl: "I think I'll go to -breakfast." - -She seemed to pick up Ashton with her eyes as she glided by, for, -finding himself unnoticed, he rose with a careless: "I think I'll go -to breakfast," and followed Mrs. Whitcomb. The Wellingtons sat -_dos-à-dos_ for some exciting seconds, and then on a sudden impulse, -Mrs. Jimmie rose, knelt in the seat and spoke across the back of it: - -"It was very nice of you to defend me, Jimmie--er--James." - -Wellington almost dislocated several joints in rising quickly and -whirling round at the cordiality of her tone. But his smile vanished -at her last word. He protested, feebly: "James sounds so like a--a -butler. Can't you call me Little Jimmie again?" - -Mrs. Wellington smiled indulgently: "Well, since it's the last time. -Good-bye, Little Jimmie." And she put out her hand. He seized it -hungrily and clung to it: "Good-bye?--aren't you getting off at Reno?" - -"Yes, but----" - -"So am I--Lucretia." - -"But we can't afford to be seen together." - -Still holding her hand, he temporized: "We've got to stay married for -six months at least--while we establish a residence. Couldn't -we--er--couldn't we establish a residence--er--together?" - -Mrs. Wellington's eyes grew a little sad, as she answered: "It would -be too lonesome waiting for you to roll home." - -Jimmie stared at her. He felt the regret in her voice and took strange -courage from it. He hauled from his pocket his huge flask, and said -quickly: "Well, if you're jealous of this, I'll promise to cork it up -forever." - -She shook her head skeptically: "You couldn't." - -"Just to prove it," he said, "I'll chuck it out of the window." He -flung up the sash and made ready to hurl his enemy into the flying -landscape. - -"Bravo!" cried Mrs. Wellington. - -But even as his hand was about to let go, he tightened his clutch -again, and pondered: "It seems a shame to waste it." - -"I thought so," said Mrs. Jimmie, drooping perceptibly. Her husband -began to feel that, after all, she cared what became of him. - -"I'll tell you," he said, "I'll give it to old Doc Temple. He takes -his straight." - -"Fine!" - -He turned towards the seat where the clergyman and his wife were -sitting, oblivious of the drama of reconciliation playing so close at -hand. Little Jimmie paused, caressed the flask, and kissed it. -"Good-bye, old playmate!" Then, tossing his head with bravado, he -reached out and touched the clergyman's shoulder. Dr. Temple turned -and rose with a questioning look. Wellington put the flask in his hand -and chuckled: "Merry Christmas!" - -"But, my good man----" the preacher objected, finding in his hand a -donation about as welcome and as wieldy as a strange baby. Wellington -winked: "It may come in handy for--your patients." - -And now, struck with a sudden idea, Mrs. Wellington spoke: "Oh, Mrs. -Temple." - -"Yes, my dear," said the little old lady, rising. Mrs. Wellington -placed in her hand a small portfolio and laughed: "Happy New Year!" - -Mrs. Temple stared at her gift and gasped: "Great heavens! Your -cigars!" - -"They'll be such a consolation," Mrs. Wellington explained, "while the -Doctor is out with his patients." - -Dr. Temple and Mrs. Temple looked at each other in dismay, then at the -flask and the cigars, then at the Wellingtons, then they stammered: -"Thank you so much," and sank back, stupefied. - -Wellington stared at his wife: "Lucretia, are you sincere?" - -"Jimmie, I promise you I'll never smoke another cigar." - -"My love!" he cried, and seized her hand. "You know I always said you -were a queen among women, Lucretia." - -She beamed back at him: "And you always were the prince of good -fellows, Jimmie." Then she almost blushed as she murmured, almost -shyly: "May I pour your coffee for you again this morning?" - -"For life," he whispered, and they moved up the aisle, arm in arm, -bumping from seat to seat and not knowing it. - -When Mrs. Whitcomb, seated in the dining-car, saw Mrs. Little Jimmie -pour Mr. Little Jimmie's coffee, she choked on hers. She vowed that -she would not permit those odious Wellingtons to make fools of her and -her Sammy. She resolved to telegraph Sammy that she had changed her -mind about divorcing him, and order him to take the first train West -and meet her half-way on her journey home. - - - - -CHAPTER XXXVI - -A DUEL FOR A BRACELET - - -All this while Marjorie and Mallory had sat watching, as kingfishers -shadow a pool, the door wherethrough the girl with the bracelet must -pass on her way to breakfast. - -"She's taking forever with her toilet," sniffed Marjorie. "Probably -trying to make a special impression on you." - -"She's wasting her time," said Mallory. "But what if she brings her -mother along? No, I guess her mother is too fat to get there and -back." - -"If her mother comes," Marjorie decided, "I'll hold her while you take -the bracelet away from the--the--from that creature. Quick, here she -comes now! Be brave!" - -Mallory wore an aspect of arrant cowardice: "Er--ah--I--I----" - -"You just grab her!" Marjorie explained. Then they relapsed into -attitudes of impatient attention. Kathleen floated in and, seeing -Mallory, she greeted him with radiant warmth: "Good morning!" and -then, catching sight of Marjorie, gave her a "Good morning!" coated -with ice. She flounced past and Mallory sat inert, till Marjorie gave -him a ferocious pinch, whereupon he leaped to his feet: - -"Oh, Miss--er--Miss Kathleen." Kathleen whirled round with a most -hospitable smile. "May I have a word with you?" - -"Of course you can, you dear boy." Marjorie winced at this and writhed -at what followed: "Shan't we take breakfast together?" - -Mallory stuttered: "I--I--no, thank you--I've had breakfast." - -Kathleen froze up again as she snapped: "With -that--train-acquaintance, I suppose." - -"Oh, no," Mallory amended, "I mean I haven't had breakfast." - -But Kathleen scowled with a jealousy of her own: "You seem to be -getting along famously for mere train-acquaintances." - -"Oh, that's all we are, and hardly that," Mallory hastened to say with -too much truth. "Sit down here a moment, won't you?" - -"No, no, I haven't time," she said, and sat down. "Mamma will be -waiting for me. You haven't been in to see her yet?" - -"No. You see----" - -"She cried all night." - -"For me?" - -"No, for papa. He's such a good traveler--and he had such a good -start. She really kept the whole car awake." - -"Too bad," Mallory condoled, perfunctorily, then with sudden -eagerness, and a trial at indifference: "I see you have that bracelet -still." - -"Of course, you dear fellow. I wouldn't be parted from it for worlds." - -Marjorie gnashed her teeth, but Kathleen could not hear that. She -gushed on: "And now we have met again! It looks like Fate, doesn't -it?" - -"It certainly does," Mallory assented, bitterly; then again, with -zest: "Let me see that old bracelet, will you?" - -He tried to lay hold of it, but Kathleen giggled coyly: "It's just an -excuse to hold my hand." She swung her arm over the back of the seat -coquettishly, and Marjorie made a desperate lunge at it, but missed, -since Kathleen, finding that Mallory did not pursue the fugitive hand, -brought it back at once and yielded it up: - -"There--be careful, someone might look." - -Mallory took her by the wrist in a gingerly manner, and said, "So -that's the bracelet? Take it off, won't you?" - -"Never!--it's wished on," Kathleen protested, sentimentally. "Don't -you remember that evening in the moonlight?" - -Mallory caught Marjorie's accusing eye and lost his head. He made a -ferocious effort to snatch the bracelet off. When this onset failed, -he had recourse to entreaty: "Just slip it off." Kathleen shook her -head tantalizingly. Mallory urged more strenuously: "Please let me see -it." - -Kathleen shook her head with sophistication: "You'd never give it -back. You'd pass it along to that--train-acquaintance." - -"How can you think such a thing?" Mallory demurred, and once more made -his appeal: "Please please, slip it off." - -"What on earth makes you so anxious?" Kathleen demanded, with sudden -suspicion. Mallory was stumped, till an inspiration came to him: "I'd -like to--to get you a nicer one. That one isn't good enough for you." - -Here was an argument that Kathleen could appreciate. "Oh, how sweet of -you, Harry," she gurgled, and had the bracelet down to her knuckles, -when a sudden instinct checked her: "When you bring the other, you can -have this." - -She pushed the circlet back, and Mallory's hopes sank at the gesture. -He grew frantic at being eternally frustrated in his plans. He caught -Kathleen's arm and, while his words pleaded, his hands tugged: -"Please--please let me take it--for the measure--you know!" - -Kathleen read the determination in his fierce eyes, and she struggled -furiously: "Why, Richard--Chauncey!--er--Billy! I'm amazed at you! Let -go or I'll scream!" - - [Illustration: "WHY, RICHARD--CHAUNCEY!--ER--BILLY! I'M AMAZED AT YOU! - LET GO, OR I'LL SCREAM!"] - -She rose and, twisting her arm from his grasp, confronted him with -bewildered anger. Mallory cast toward Marjorie a look of surrender and -despair. Marjorie laid her hand on her throat and in pantomime -suggested that Mallory should throttle Kathleen, as he had promised. - -But Mallory was incapable of further violence; and when Kathleen, with -all her coquetry, bent down and murmured: "You are a very naughty boy, -but come to breakfast and we'll talk it over," he was so addled that -he answered: "Thanks, but I never eat breakfast." - - - - -CHAPTER XXXVII - -DOWN BRAKES! - - -Just as Kathleen flung her head in baffled vexation, and Mallory -started to slink back to Marjorie, with another defeat, there came an -abrupt shock as if that gigantic child to whom our railroad trains are -toys, had reached down and laid violent hold on the Trans-American in -full career. - -Its smooth, swift flight became suddenly such a spasm of jars, shivers -and thuds that Mallory cried: - -"We're off the track." - -He was sent flopping down the aisle like a bolster hurled through the -car. He brought up with a sickening slam across the seat into which -Marjorie had been jounced back with a breath-taking slam. And then -Kathleen came flying backwards and landed in a heap on both of them. - -Several of the other passengers were just returning from breakfast and -they were shot and scattered all over the car as if a great chain of -human beads had burst. - -Women screamed, men yelled, and then while they were still struggling -against the seats and one another, the train came to a halt. - -"Thank God, we stopped in time!" Mallory gasped, as he tried to -disengage himself and Marjorie from Kathleen. - -The passengers began to regain their courage with their equilibrium. -Little Jimmie Wellington had flown the whole length of the car, -clinging to his wife as if she were Francesca da Rimini, and he Paolo, -flitting through Inferno. The flight ended at the stateroom door with -such a thump that Mrs. Fosdick was sure a detective had come for her -at last, and with a battering ram. - -But when Jimmie got back breath enough to talk, he remembered the -train-stopping excitement of the day before and called out: - -"Has Mrs. Mallory lost that pup again?" - -Everybody laughed uproariously at this. People will laugh at anything -or nothing when they have been frightened almost to death and suddenly -relieved of anxiety. - -Everybody was cracking a joke at Marjorie's expense. Everybody felt a -good-natured grudge against her for being such a mystery. The car was -ringing with hilarity, when the porter came stumbling in and paused at -the door, with eyes all white, hands waving frantically, and lips -flapping like flannel, in a vain effort to speak. - -The passengers stopped laughing at Marjorie, to laugh at the porter. -Ashton sang out: - -"What's the matter with you, Porter? Are you trying to crow?" - -Everybody roared at this, till the porter finally managed to -articulate: - -"T-t-t-train rob-rob-robbers!" - -Silence shut down as if the whole crowd had been smitten with -paralysis. From somewhere outside and ahead came a pop-popping as of -firecrackers. Everybody thought, "Revolvers!" The reports were mingled -with barbaric yells that turned the marrow in every bone to snow. - -These regions are full of historic terror. All along the Nevada route -the conductor, the brakemen and old travelers had pointed out scene -after scene where the Indians had slaked the thirst of the arid land -with white man's blood. Ashton, who had traveled this way many times, -had made himself fascinatingly horrifying the evening before and -ruined several breakfasts that morning in the dining-car, by regaling -the passengers with stories of pioneer ordeals, men and women -massacred in burning wagons, or dragged away to fiendish cruelty and -obscene torture, staked out supine on burning wastes with eyelids cut -off, bound down within reach of rattlesnakes, subjected to every -misery that human deviltry could devise. - -Ashton had brought his fellow passengers to a state of ecstatic -excitability, and, like many a recounter of burglar stories at night, -had tuned his own nerves to high tension. - -The violent stopping of the train, the heart-shaking yells and shots -outside, found the passengers already apt to respond without delay to -the appeals of fright. After the first hush of dread, came the -reaction to panic. - -Each passenger showed his own panic in his own way. Ashton whirled -round and round, like a horse with the blind staggers, then bolted -down the aisle, knocking aside men and women. He climbed on a seat, -pulled down an upper berth, and, scrambling into it, tried to shut it -on himself. Mrs. Whitcomb was so frightened that she assailed Ashton -with fury and seizing his feet, dragged him back into the aisle, and -beat him with her fists, demanding that he protect her and save her -for Sammy's sake. - -Mrs. Fosdick, rushing out of her stateroom and not finding her -luscious-eyed husband, laid hold of Jimmie Wellington and ordered him -to go to the rescue of her spouse. Mrs. Wellington tore her hands -loose, crying: "Let him go, madam. He has a wife of his own to -defend." - -Jimmie was trying to pour out dying messages, and only sputtering, -forgetting that he had put his watch in his mouth to hide it, though -its chain was still attached to his waistcoat. - -Anne Gattle, who had read much about Chinese atrocities to -missionaries, gave herself up to death, yet rejoiced greatly that she -had provided a timely man to lean on and should not have to enter -Paradise a spinster, providing she could manage to convert Ira in the -next few seconds, before it was everlastingly too late. She was -begging her first heathen to join her in a gospel hymn. But Ira was -roaring curses like a pirate captain in a hurricane, and swearing that -the villains should not rob him of his bride. - -Mrs. Temple wrung her twitching hands and tried to drag her husband to -his knees, crying: - -"Oh, Walter, Walter, won't you please say a prayer?--a good strong -prayer?" - -But the preacher was so confused that he answered: "What's the use of -prayer in an emergency like this?" - -"Walter!" she shrieked. - -"I'm on my va-vacation, you know," he stammered. - -Marjorie was trying at the same time to compel Mallory to crawl under -a seat and to find a place to hide Snoozleums, whom she was warning -not to say a word. Snoozleums, understanding only that his mistress -was in some distress, refused to stay in his basket and kept offering -his services and his attentions. - -Suddenly Marjorie realized that Kathleen was trying to faint in -Mallory's arms, and forgot everything else in a determined effort to -prevent her. - -After the first blood-sweat of abject fright had begun to cool, the -passengers came to realize that the invaders were not after lives, but -loot. Then came a panic of miserly effort to conceal treasure. - -Kathleen, finding herself banished from Mallory's protection, ran to -Mrs. Whitcomb, who had given Ashton up as a hopeless task. - -"What shall we do, oh, what, oh what shall we do, dear Mrs. -Wellington?" she cried. - -"Don't you dare call me Mrs. Wellington!" Mrs. Whitcomb screamed; then -she began to flutter. "But we'd better hide what we can. I hope the -rah-rah-robbers are ge-gentlemen-men." - -She pushed a diamond locket containing a small portrait of Sammy into -her back hair, leaving part of the chain dangling. Then she tried to -stuff a large handbag into her stocking. - -Mrs. Fosdick found her husband at last, for he made a wild dash to her -side, embraced her, called her his wife and defied all the powers of -Nevada to tear them apart. He had a brilliant idea. In order to save -his fat wallet from capture, he tossed it through an open window. It -fell at the feet of one of the robbers as he ran along the side of the -car, shooting at such heads as were put out of windows. He picked it -up and dropped it into the feed-bag he had swung at his side. Then -running on, he clambered over the brass rail of the observation -platform and entered the rear of the train, as his confederate, -driving the conductor ahead of him, forged his way aft from the front, -while a third masquerader aligned the engineer, the fireman, the -brakeman and the baggagemen. - - - - -CHAPTER XXXVIII - -HANDS UP! - - -All this time Lieutenant Mallory had been thinking as hard as an -officer in an ambuscade. His harrowing experiences and incessant -defeats of the past days had unnerved him and shattered his -self-confidence. He was not afraid, but intensely disgusted. He sat -absent-mindedly patting Marjorie on the back and repeating: - -"Don't worry, honey, they're not going to hurt anybody. They don't -want anything but our money. Don't worry, I won't let 'em hurt you." - -But he could not shake off a sense of nausea. He felt himself a -representative of the military prowess of the country, and here he was -as helpless as a man on parole. - -The fact that Mallory was a soldier occurred to a number of the -passengers simultaneously. They had been trained by early studies in -those beautiful works of fiction, the school histories of the United -States, and by many Fourths of July, to believe that the American -soldier is an invincible being, who has never been defeated and never -known fear. - -They surged up to Mallory in a wave of hope. Dr. Temple, being -nearest, spoke first. Having learned by experience that his own -prayers were not always answered as he wished, had an impulse to try -some weapon he had never used. - -"Young man," he pleaded across the back of a seat, "will you kindly -lend me a gun?" - -Mallory answered sullenly: "Mine is in my trunk on the train ahead, -damn it. If I had it I'd have a lot of fun." - -Mrs. Whitcomb had an inspiration. She ran to her berth, and came back -with a tiny silver-plated revolver. - -"I'll lend you this. Sammy gave it to me to protect myself in Nevada!" - -Mallory smiled at the .22-calibre toy, broke it open, and displayed an -empty cylinder. - -"Where are the pills that go with it?" he said. - -"Oh, Sammy wouldn't let me have any bullets. He was afraid I'd hurt -myself." - -Mallory returned it, with a bow. "It would make an excellent -nut-cracker." - -"Aren't you going to use it?" Mrs. Whitcomb gasped. - -"It's empty," Mallory explained. - -"But the robbers don't know that! Couldn't you just overawe them with -it?" - -"Not with that," said Mallory, "unless they died laughing." - -Mrs. Wellington pushed forward: "Then what the devil are you going to -do when they come?" - -Mallory answered meekly: "If they request it, I shall hold up my -hands." - -"And you won't resist?" Kathleen gasped. - -"Not a resist." - -"And he calls himself a soldier!" she sneered. - -Mallory writhed, but all he said was: "A soldier doesn't have to be a -jackass. I know just enough about guns not to monkey with the wrong -end of 'em." - -"Coward!" she flung at him. He turned white, but Marjorie red, and -made a leap at her, crying: "He's the bravest man in the world. You -say a word, and I'll scratch your eyes out." - -This reheartened Mallory a little, and he laughed nervously, as he -restrained her. Kathleen retreated out of danger, with a parting shot: -"Our engagement is off." - -"Thanks," Mallory said, and put out his hand: "Will you return the -bracelet?" - -"I never return such things," said Kathleen. - -The scene was so painful and such an anachronism that Dr. Temple tried -to renew a more pressing subject: "It's your opinion then that we'd -best surrender?" - -"Of course--since we can't run." - -Wedgewood broke in impatiently: "Well, I consider it a dastardly -outrage. I'll not submit to it. I'm a subject of His Majesty the----" - -"You're a subject of His Majesty the Man Behind the Gun," said -Mallory. - -"I shall protest, none the less," Wedgewood insisted. - -Mallory grinned a little. "Have you any last message to send home to -your mother?" - -Wedgewood was a trifle chilled at this. "D-don't talk of such things," -he said. - -And by this time the train-robbers had hastily worked their way -through the other passengers, and reached the frantic inhabitants of -the sleeper, "Snowdrop." - -"Hands up! Higher!! Hands up!" - -With a true sense of the dramatic, the robbers sent ahead of them the -most hair-raising yells. They arrived simultaneously at each end of -the aisle, and with a few short sharp commands, straightened the -disorderly rabble into a beautiful line, with all palms aloft and all -eyes wide and wild. - -One robber drove ahead of him the conductor and the other drove in Mr. -Manning, whom he had found trying to crawl between the shelves of the -linen-closet. - -The marauders were apparently cattlemen, from their general get-up. -Their hats were pulled low, and just beneath their eyes they had drawn -big black silk handkerchiefs, tied behind the ears and hanging to the -breast. - -Over their shoulders they had slung the feed-bags of their horses, to -serve as receptacles for their swag. Their shirts were chalky with -alkali dust. Their legs were encased in heavy chaparejos, and they -carried each a pair of well-used Colt's revolvers that looked as big -as artillery. - -When the passengers had shoved and jostled into line, one of the men -jabbed the conductor in the back with the muzzle of his gun, and -snarled: "Now speak your little piece, like I learned it to you." - -The conductor, like an awkward schoolboy, grinned sheepishly, and -spoke, his hands in the air the while: - -"Ladies and Gents, these here parties in the black tidies says they -want everybody to hold his or her hands as high as possible till you -git permission to lower 'em; they advise you not to resist, because -they hate the sight of blood, but prefer it to argument." - -The impatient robbers, themselves the prey of fearful anxieties, broke -in, barking like a pair of coyotes in a jumble of commands: "Now, line -up with your backs that way, and no back talk. These guns shoot awful -easy. And remember, as each party is finished with, they are to turn -round and keep their hands up, on penalty of gittin' 'em shot off. -Line up! Hands up! Give over there!" - -Mrs. Jimmie Wellington took her time about moving into position, and -her deliberation brought a howl of wrath from the robber: "Get into -that line, you!" - -Mrs. Wellington whirled on him: "How dare you, you brute?" And she -turned up her nose at the gun. - -The anxious conductor intervened: "Better obey, madame; he's an ugly -lad." - -"I don't mind being robbed," said Mrs. Jimmie, "but I won't endure -rudeness." - -The robber shook his head in despair, and he tried to wither her with -sarcasm: "Pardong, mamselly, would you be so kind and condescendin' as -to step into that there car before I blow your husband's gol-blame -head off." - -This brought her to terms. She hastened to her place, but put out a -restraining hand on Jimmie, who needed no restraint. "Certainly, to -save my dear husband. Don't strike him, Jimmie!" - -Then each man stuck one revolver into its convenient holster, and, -covering the passengers with the other, proceeded to frisk away -valuables with a speed and agility that would have looked prettier if -those impatient-looking muzzles had not pointed here, there and -everywhere with such venomous threats. - -And so they worked from each end of the car toward the middle. Their -hands ran swiftly over bodies with a loathsome familiarity that could -only be resented, not revenged. Their hands dived into pockets, and -up sleeves, and into women's hair, everywhere that a jewel or a bill -might be secreted. And always a rough growl or a swing of the revolver -silenced any protest. - -Their heinous fingers had hardly begun to ply, when the solemn -stillness was broken by a chuckle and low hoot of laughter, a darkey's -unctuous laughter. At such a place it was more shocking than at a -funeral. - -"What ails you?" was the nearest robber's demand. - -The porter tried to wipe his streaming eyes without lowering his -hands, as he chuckled on: "I--I--just thought of sumpum funny." - -"Funny!" was the universal groan. - -"I was just thinking," the porter snickered, "what mighty poor -pickings you-all are goin' to git out of me. Whilst if you had 'a' -waited till I got to 'Frisco, I'd jest nachelly been oozin' money." - -The robber relieved him of a few dimes and quarters and ordered him to -turn round, but the black face whirled back as he heard from the other -end of the car Wedgewood's indignant complaint: "I say, this is an -outrage!" - -"Ah, close your trap and turn round, or I'll----" - -The porter's smile died away. "Good Lawd," he sighed, "they're goin' -to skin that British lion! And I just wore myself out on him." - -The far-reaching effect of the whole procedure was just beginning to -dawn on the porter. This little run on the bank meant a period of -financial stringency for him. He watched the hurrying hands a moment -or two, then his wrath rose to terrible proportions: - -"Look here, man," he shouted at the robber, "ain't you-all goin' to -leave these here passengers nothin' a tall?" - -"Not on purpose, nigger." - -"No small change, or nothin'?" - -"Nary a red." - -"Then, passengers," the porter proclaimed, while the robber watched -him in amazement; "then, passengers, I want to give you-all fair -warnin' heah and now: No tips, no whisk-broom!" - -Perhaps because their hearts were already overflowing with distress, -the passengers endured this appalling threat without comment, and when -there was a commotion at the other end of the line, all eyes rolled -that way. - -Mr. Baumann was making an effort to take his leave, with great -politeness. - -"Excoose, pleass. I vant to get by, pleass!" - -"Get by!" the other robber gasped. "Why, you----" - -"But I'm not a passenger," Mr. Baumann urged, with a confidential -smile, "I've been going through the train myself." - -"Much obliged! Hand over!" And a rude hand rummaged his pockets. It -was a heart-rending sight. - -"Oi oi!" he wailed, "don't you allow no courtesies to the profession?" -And when the inexorable thief continued to pluck his money, his watch, -his scarf-pin, he grew wroth indeed. "Stop, stop, I refuse to pay. -I'll go into benkruptcy foist." But still the larceny continued; -fingers even lifted three cigars from his pockets, two for himself and -a good one for a customer. This loss was grievous, but his wildest -protest was: "Oh, here, my frient, you don't vant my business carts." - -"Keep 'em!" growled the thief, and then, glancing up, he saw on the -tender inwards of Mr. Baumann's upheld palms two huge glisteners, -which their owner had turned that way in a misguided effort to conceal -the stones. The robber reached up for them. - -"Take 'em. You're velcome!" said Mr. Baumann, with rare presence of -mind. "Those Nevada nearlies looks almost like real." - -"Keep 'em," said the robber, as he passed on, and Mr. Baumann almost -swooned with joy, for, as he whispered to Wedgewood a moment later: -"They're really real!" - -Now the eye-chain rolled the other way, for Little Jimmie Wellington -was puffing with rage. The other robber, having massaged him -thoroughly, but without success, for his pocketbook, noticed that -Jimmie's left heel was protruding from his left shoe, and made Jimmie -perform the almost incredible feat of standing on one foot, while he -unshod him and took out the hidden wealth. - -"There goes our honeymoon, Lucretia," he moaned. But she whispered -proudly: "Never mind, I have my rings to pawn." - -"Oh, you have, have you? Well, I'll be your little uncle," the -kneeling robber laughed, as he overheard, and he continued his -outrageous search till he found them, knotted in a handkerchief, under -her hat. - -She protested: "You wouldn't leave me in Reno without a diamond, would -you?" - -"I wouldn't, eh?" he grunted. "Do you think I'm in this business for -my health?" - -And he snatched off two earrings she had forgotten to remove. -Fortunately, they were affixed to her lobes with fasteners. - -Mrs. Jimmie was thoroughbred enough not to wince. She simply -commented: "You brutes are almost as bad as the Customs officers at -New York." - -And now another touch of light relieved the gloom. Kathleen was next -in line, and she had been forcing her lips into their most attractive -smile, and keeping her eyes winsomely mellow, for the robber's -benefit. Marjorie could not see the smile; she could only see that -Kathleen was next. She whispered to Mallory: - -"They'll get the bracelet! They'll get the bracelet!" - -And Mallory could have danced with glee. But Kathleen leaned -coquettishly toward the masked stranger, and threw all her art into -her tone as she murmured: - -"I'm sure you're too brave to take my things. I've always admired men -with the courage of Claude Duval." - -The robber was taken a trifle aback, but he growled: "I don't know the -party you speak of--but cough up!" - -"Listen to her," Marjorie whispered in horror; "she's flirting with -the train-robber." - -"What won't some women flirt with!" Mallory exclaimed. - -The robber studied Kathleen a little more attentively, as he whipped -off her necklace and her rings. She looked good to him, and so -willing, that he muttered: "Say, lady, if you'll give me a kiss, I'll -give you that diamond ring you got on." - -"All right!" laughed Kathleen, with triumphant compliance. - -"My God!" Mallory groaned, "what won't some women do for a diamond!" - -The robber bent close, and was just raising his mask to collect his -ransom, when his confederate glanced his way, and knowing his -susceptible nature, foresaw his intention, and shouted: "Stop it, -Jake. You 'tend strictly to business, or I'll blow your nose off." - -"Oh, all right," grumbled the reluctant gallant, as he drew the ring -from her finger. "Sorry, miss, but I can't make the trade," and he -added with an unwonted gentleness: "You can turn round now." - -Kathleen was glad to hide the blushes of defeat, but Marjorie was -still more bitterly disappointed. She whispered to Mallory: "He didn't -get the bracelet, after all." - - - - -CHAPTER XXXIX - -WOLVES IN THE FOLD - - -Mallory's heart sank to its usual depth, but Marjorie had another of -her inspirations. She startled everybody by suddenly beckoning and -calling: "Excuse me, Mr. Robber. Come here, please." - -The curious gallant edged her way, keeping a sharp watch along the -line: "What d'you want?" - -Marjorie leaned nearer, and spoke in a low tone with an amiable smile: -"That lady who wanted to kiss you has a bracelet up her sleeve." - -The robber stared across his mask, and wondered, but laughed, and -grunted: "Much obliged." Then he went back, and tapped Kathleen on the -shoulder. When she turned round, in the hope that he had reconsidered -his refusal to make the trade, he infuriated her by growling: "Excuse, -me, miss, I overlooked a bet." - -He ran his hand along her arm, and found her bracelet, and -accomplished what Mallory had failed in, its removal. - -"Don't, don't," cried Kathleen, "it's wished on." - -"I wish it off," the villain laughed, and it joined the growing heap -in the feed-bag. - -Kathleen, doubly enraged, broke out viciously: "You're a common, -sneaking----" - -"Ah, turn round!" the man roared, and she obeyed in silence. - -Then he explored Mrs. Whitcomb, but with such small reward that he -said: "Say, you'd oughter have a pocketbook somewheres. Where's it -at?" - -Mrs. Whitcomb brushed furiously: "None of your business, you low -brute." - -"Perdooce, madame," the scoundrel snorted, "perdooce the purse, or -I'll hunt for it myself." - -Mrs. Whitcomb turned away, and after some management of her skirts, -slapped her handbag into the eager palm with a wrathful: "You're no -gentleman, sir!" - -"If I was, I'd be in Wall Street," he laughed. "Now you can turn -round." And when she turned, he saw a bit of chain depending from her -back hair. He tugged, and brought away the locket, and with laying the -tress on her shoulder, and proceeded to sound Ashton for hidden -wealth. - -And now Mrs. Temple began to sob, as she parted with an old-fashioned -brooch and two old-fashioned rings that had been her little vanities -for the quarter of a century and more. The old clergyman could have -wept with her at the vandalism. He turned on the wretch with a -heartsick appeal: - -"Can't you spare those? Didn't you ever have a mother?" - -The robber started, his fierce eyes softened, his voice choked, and he -gulped hard as he drew the back of his hand across his eyes. - -"Aw, hell," he whimpered, "that ain't fair. If you're goin' to remind -me of me poor old mo-mo-mother----" - -But the one called Jake--the Claude Duval who had been prevented from -a display of human sentiment, did not intend to be cheated. He -thundered: "Stop it, Bill. You 'tend strictly to business, or I'll -blow your mush-bowl off. You know your Maw died before you was born." - -This reminder sobered the weeping thief at once, and he went back to -work ruthlessly. "Oh, all right, Jake. Sorry, ma'am, but business is -business." And he dumped Mrs. Temple's trinkets into the satchel. It -was too much for the little old lady's little old husband. He fairly -shrieked: - -"Young man, you're a damned scoundrel, and the best argument I ever -saw for hell-fire!" - -Mrs. Temple's grief changed to horror at such a bolt from the blue: -"Walter!" she gasped, "such language!" - -But her husband answered in self-defence: "Even a minister has a right -to swear once in his lifetime." - -Mallory almost dropped in his tracks, and Marjorie keeled over on him, -as he gasped: "Good Lord, Doctor Temple, you are a--a minister?" - -"Yes, my boy," the old man confessed, glad that the robbers had -relieved him of his guilty secret along with the rest of his private -properties. Mallory looked at the collapsing Marjorie, and groaned: -"And he was in the next berth all this time!" - -The unmasking of the old fraud made a second sensation. Mrs. Fosdick -called from far down the aisle: "Dr. Temple, you're not a detective?" - -Mrs. Temple shouted back furiously: "How dare you?" - -But Mrs. Fosdick was crying to her luscious-eyed mate: "Oh, Arthur, -he's not a detective. Embrace me!" - -And they embraced, while the robbers looked on aghast at the sudden -oblivion they had fallen into. They focussed the attention on -themselves again, however, with a ferocious: "Here, hands up!" But -they did not see Mr. and Mrs. Fosdick steal a kiss behind their -upraised arms, for the robber to whose lot Mallory fell was gloating -over his well-filled wallet. Mallory saw it go with fortitude, but -noting a piece of legal paper, he said: "Say, old man, you don't want -that marriage license, do you?" - -The robber handled it as if it were hot--as if he had burned his -fingers on some such document once before, and he stuffed it back in -Mallory's pocket. "I should say not. Keep it. Turn round." - -Meanwhile the other felon turned up another beautiful pile of bills in -Dr. Temple's pocket. "Not so worse for a parson," he grinned. "You -must be one of them Fifth Avenue sky-shaffures." - -And now Mrs. Temple's gentle eyes and voice filled with tears again: -"Oh, don't take that. That's the money for his vacation--after thirty -long years. Please don't take that." - -Her appeals seemed always to find the tender spot of this robber's -heart, for he hesitated, and called out: "Shall we overlook the -parson's wad, podner?" - -"Take it, and shut up, you mollycoddle!" was the answer he got, and -the vacation funds joined the old gewgaws. - -And now everybody had been robbed but Marjorie. She happened to be at -the center of the line, and both men reached her at the same time: "I -seen her first," the first one shouted. - -"You did not," the other roared. - -"I tell you I did." - -"I tell you I did." They glared threateningly at each other, and their -revolvers seemed to meet, like two game cocks, beak to beak. - -The porter voiced the general hope, when he sighed: "Oh, Lawd, if -they'd only shoot each other." - -This brought the rivals to their evil senses, and they swept the line -with those terrifying muzzles and that heart-stopping yelp: "Hands -up!" - -Bill said: "You take the east side of her, and I'll take the west." - -"All right." - -And they began to snatch away her side-combs, the little gold chain at -her throat, the jewelled pin that Mallory had given her as the first -token of his love. - -The young soldier had foreseen this. He had foreseen the wild rage that -would unseat his reason when he saw the dirty hands of thieves laid -rudely on the sacred body of his beloved. But his soldier-schooling -had drilled him to govern his impulses, to play the coward when there -was no hope of successful battle, and to strike only when the moment -was ripe with perfect opportunity. - -He had kept telling himself that when the finger of one of these men -touched so much as Marjorie's hem, he would be forced to fling himself -on the profane miscreant. And he kept telling himself that the moment -he did this, the other man would calmly blow a hole through him, and -drop him at Marjorie's feet, while the other passengers shrank away in -terror. - -He told himself that, while it might be a fine impulse to leap to her -defence, it was a fool impulse to leap off a precipice and leave -Marjorie alone among strangers, with a dead man and a scandal, as the -only rewards for his impulse. He vowed that he would hold himself in -check, and let the robbers take everything, leaving him only the name -of coward, provided they left him also the power to defend Marjorie -better at another time. - -And now that he saw the clumsy-handed thugs rifling his sweetheart's -jewelry, he felt all that he had foreseen, and his head fought almost -in vain against the white fire of his heart. Between them he trembled -like a leaf, and the sweat globed on his forehead. - -The worst of it was the shivering terror of Marjorie, and the pitiful -eyes she turned on him. But he clenched his teeth and waited, thinking -fiercely, watching, like a hovering eagle, a chance to swoop. - -But the robbers kept glancing this way and that, and one motion would -mean death. They themselves were so overwrought with their own ordeal -and its immediate conclusion, that they would have killed anybody. -Mallory shifted his foot cautiously, and instantly a gun was jabbed -into his stomach, with a snarl: "Don't you move!" - -"Who's moving?" Mallory answered, with a poor imitation of a careless -laugh. - -And now the man called Bill had reached Marjorie's right hand. He -chortled: "Golly, look at the shiners." - -But Jake, who had chosen Marjorie's left hand, roared: - -"Say, you cheated. All I get is this measly plain gold band." - -"Oh, don't take that!" Marjorie gasped, clenching her hand. - -Mallory's heart ached at the thought of this final sacrilege. He had -the license, and the minister at last--and now the fiends were going -to carry off the wedding ring. He controlled himself with a desperate -effort, and stooped to plead: "Say, old man, don't take that. That's -not fair." - -"Shut up, both of you," Jake growled, and jabbed him again with the -gun. - -He gave the ring a jerk, but Marjorie, in the very face of the weapon, -would not let go. She struggled and tugged, weeping and imploring: -"Oh, don't, don't take that! It's my wedding ring." - -"Agh, what do I care!" the ruffian snarled, and wrenched her finger so -viciously that she gave a little cry of pain. - -That broke Mallory's heart. With a wild, bellowing, "Damn you!" he -hurled himself at the man, with only his bare hands for weapons. - - - - -CHAPTER XL - -A HERO IN SPITE OF HIMSELF - - -Passion sent Mallory into the unequal fight with two armed and -desperate outlaws. But reason had planned the way. He had been -studying the robber all the time, as if the villain were a war-map, -studying his gestures, his way of turning, and how he held the -revolver. He had noted that the man, as he frisked the passengers, did -not keep his finger on the trigger, but on the guard. - -Marjorie's little battle threw the desperado off his balance a trifle; -as he recovered, Mallory struck him, and swept him on over against the -back of a seat. At the same instant, Mallory's right hand went like -lightning to the trigger guard, and gripped the fingers in a vise of -steel, while he drove the man's elbow back against his side. Mallory's -left hand meanwhile flung around his enemy's neck, and gave him a -spinning fall that sent his left hand out for balance. It fell across -the back of the seat, and Mallory pinioned it with elbow and knee -before it could escape. - -All in the same crowded moment, his left knuckles jolted the man's -chin in air, and so bewildered him that his muscles relaxed enough -for Mallory's right fingers to squirm their way to the trigger, and -aim the gun at the other robber, and finally to get entire control of -it. - -The thing had happened in such a flash that the second outlaw could -hardly believe his eyes. The shriek of the astounded passengers, and -the grunt of Mallory's prisoner, as he crashed backward, woke him to -the need for action. He caught his other gun from its holster, and -made ready for a double volley, but there was nothing to aim at. -Mallory was crouched in the seat, and almost perfectly covered by a -human shield. - -Still, from force of habit and foolhardy pluck, Bill aimed at -Mallory's right eyebrow, just abaft Jake's right ear, and shouted his -old motto: - -"Hands up! you!" - -"Hands up yourself!" answered Mallory, and his victim, shuddering at -the fierce look in his comrade's eyes, gasped: "For God's sake, don't -shoot, Bill!" - -Even then the fellow stood his ground, and debated the issue, till -Mallory threw such ringing determination into one last: "Hands up, or -by God, I'll fire!" that he caved in, lifted his fingers from the -triggers, turned the guns up, and slowly raised both hands above his -head. - -A profound "Ah!" of relief soughed through the car, and Mallory, still -keeping his eye on Bill, got down cautiously from the seat. The -moment he released Jake's left hand, it darted to the holster where -his second gun was waiting. But before he could clutch the butt of it, -Mallory jabbed the muzzle of his own revolver in the man's back, and -growled: "Put 'em up!" And the robber's left hand joined the right in -air, while Mallory's left hand lifted the revolver, and took -possession of it. - -Mallory stood for a moment, breathing hard and a little incredulous at -his own swift, sweet triumph. Then he made an effort to speak as if -this sort of thing were quite common with him, as if he overpowered a -pair of outlaws every morning before breakfast, but his voice cracked -as he said, in a drawing-room tone: - -"Dr. Temple, would you mind relieving that man of those guns?" - -Dr. Temple was so set up by this distinction that he answered: "Not by -a----" - -"Walter!" Mrs. Temple checked him, before he could utter the beautiful -word, and Dr. Temple looked at her almost reproachfully, as he sighed: -"Golly, I should like to swear just once more." - -Then he reached up and disarmed the man who had taken his wallet and -his wife's keepsakes. But the doctor was not half so happy over the -recovery of his property as over the unbelievable luxury of finding -himself taking two revolvers away from a masked train-robber. - -American children breathe in this desperado romance with their -earliest traditions, and Dr. Temple felt all his boyhood zest surge -back with a boy's tremendous rapture in a deed of derring-do. And now -nothing could check his swagger, as he said to Mallory: - -"What shall we do with these dam-ned sinners?" - -He felt like apologizing for the clerical relapse into a pulpitism, -but Mallory answered briskly: "We'd better take them into the smoking -room. They scare the ladies. But first, will the conductor take those -bags and distribute the contents to their rightful owners?" - -The conductor was proud to act as lieutenant to this Lieutenant, and -he quickly relieved the robbers of their loot-kits. - -Mallory smiled. "Don't give anybody my things," and then he jabbed his -robber with one of the revolvers, and commanded: "Forward, march!" - -The little triumphal procession moved off, with Bill in the lead, -followed by Dr. Temple, looking like a whole field battery, followed -by Jake, followed by Mallory, followed by the porter and as many of -the other passengers as could crowd into the smoking room. - -The rest went after those opulent feed-bags. - - - - -CHAPTER XLI - -CLICKETY-CLICKETY-CLICKETY - - -Marjorie, as the supposed wife of the rescuing angel, was permitted -first search, and the first thing she hunted for was a certain gold -bracelet that was none of hers. She found it and seized it with a -prayer of thanks, and concealed it among her own things. - -Mrs. Temple gave her a guilty start, by speaking across a barrier: - -"Mrs. Mallory, your husband is the bravest man on earth." - -"Oh, I know he is," Marjorie beamed, and added with a spasm of -conscience: "but he isn't my husband!" - -Mrs. Temple gasped in horror, but Marjorie dragged her close, and -poured out the whole story, while the other passengers recovered their -properties with as much joy as if they were all new gifts found on a -bush. - -Meanwhile, under Mallory's guidance, the porter fastened the outlaws -together back to back with the straps of their own feed-bags. The -porter was rejoicing that his harvest of tips was not blighted after -all. - -Mallory completed his bliss, by giving him Dr. Temple's brace of guns, -and establishing him as jailer, with a warning: "Now, porter, don't -take your eye off 'em." - -"Lordy, I won't bat an eyelid." - -"If either of these lads coughs, put a hole through both of 'em." - -The porter chuckled: "My fingers is just a-itchin' fer them lovin' -triggers." - -And now Mr. Baumann, having scrambled back his possessions, hastened -into the smoking room, and regarded the two hangdog culprits with -magnificent generosity; he forgave them their treatment. In fact, he -went so far as to say: "You gents vill be gettin' off at Reno, yes? -You'll be needing a good firm of lawyers. Don't forget us. Baumann" -(he put a card in Bill's hat) "and Blumen" (he put a card in Jake's -hat). "Avoid substitoots." - -Mallory pocketed two of the captured revolvers, lest a need might -arise suddenly again. As he hurried down the aisle, he was received -with cheers. The passengers gave him an ovation, but he only smiled -timidly, and made haste to Marjorie's side. - -She regarded him with such idolatry that he almost regretted his deed. -But this mood soon passed in her excitement, and in a moment she was -surreptitiously showing him the bracelet. He became an accessory after -the fact, and shared her guilt, for when she groaned with a sudden -droop: "She'll get it back!" he grimly answered, "Oh, no she won't!" -hoisted the window, and flung the bracelet into a little pool by the -side of the track, with a farewell: "Good-bye, trouble!" - -As he drew his head in, a side glance showed him that up near the -engine a third train-robber held the miserably weary train crew in -line. - -He found the conductor just about to pull the bell-rope, to proceed. -The conductor had forgotten all about the rest of the staff. Mallory -took him aside, and told him the situation, then turned to Marjorie, -said: "Excuse me a minute," and hurried forward. The conductor -followed Mallory through the train into the baggage coach. - -The first news the third outlaw had of the counter-revolution -occurring in the sleeping car was a mysterious bullet that flicked the -dust near his heel, and a sonorous shout of "Hands up!" As he whirled -in amaze, he saw two revolvers aimed point blank at him from behind a -trunk. He hoisted his guns without parley, and the train crew trussed -him up in short order. - -Mallory ran back to Marjorie, and the conductor followed more slowly, -reassuring the passengers in the other cars, and making certain that -the train was ready to move on its way. - -Mallory went straight to Dr. Temple, with a burning demand: - -"You dear old fraud, will you marry me?" - -Dr. Temple laughed and nodded. Marjorie and Mrs. Temple had been -telling him the story of the prolonged elopement, and he was eager to -atone for his own deception, by putting an end to their misery. - -"Just wait one moment," he said, and as a final proof of affection, he -unbuttoned his collar and put it on backwards. Mrs. Temple brought out -the discarded bib, and he donned it meekly. The transformation -explained many a mystery the old man had enmeshed himself in. - -Even as he made ready for the ceremony, the conductor appeared, looked -him over, grinned, and reached for the bell-cord, with a cheerful: -"All aboard!" - -Mallory had a sort of superstitious dread, not entirely unfounded on -experience, that if the train got under way again, it would run into -some new obstacle to his marriage. He turned to the conductor: - -"Say, old man, just hold the train till after my wedding, won't you?" - -It was not much to ask in return for his services, but the conductor -was tired of being second in command. He growled: - -"Not a minute. We're 'way behind time." - -"You might wait till I'm married," Mallory pleaded. - -"Not on your life!" the conductor answered, and he pulled the -bell-rope twice; in the distance, the whistle answered twice. - -Mallory's temper flared again. He cried: "This train doesn't go -another step till I'm married!" He reached up and pulled the bell-rope -once; in the distance the whistle sounded once. - -This was high treason, and the conductor advanced on him -threateningly, as he seized the cord once more. "You touch that rope -again, and I'll----" - -"Oh, no, you won't," said Mallory, as he whisked a revolver from his -right pocket and jammed it into the conductor's watch-pocket. The -conductor came to attention. - -Then Mallory, standing with his right hand on military duty, put out -his left hand, and gave the word: "Now, parson." - -He smiled still more as he heard Kathleen's voice wailing: "But I -can't find my bracelet. Where's my bracelet?" - -"Silence! Silence!" Dr. Temple commanded, and then: "Join hands, my -children." - -Marjorie shifted Snoozleums to her left arm, put her right hand into -Mallory's, and Dr. Temple, standing between them, began to drone the -ritual. Everybody said they made a right pretty picture. - -When the old clergyman had done his work, the young husband-at-last -graciously rescinded military law, recalled the artillery from the -conductor's very midst, and remembering Manila, smiled: - -"You may fire when ready, conductor." - -The conductor's rage had cooled, and he slapped the bridegroom on the -back with one hand, as he pulled the cord with the other. The train -began to creak and tug and shift. The ding-dong of the bell floated -murmurously back as from a lofty steeple, and the clickety-click, -click-clickety-click quickened and softened into a pleasant gossip, as -the speed grew, and the way was so smooth for the wheels that they -seemed to be spinning on rails of velvet. - - -THE END - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Excuse Me!, by Rupert Hughes - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EXCUSE ME! *** - -***** This file should be named 40607-8.txt or 40607-8.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/4/0/6/0/40607/ - -Produced by Melissa McDaniel and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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