Marjorie fairly forced the dog on himMARJORIE FAIRLY FORCED THE DOG ON HIM....
MARJORIE FAIRLY FORCED THE DOG ON HIM....
The porter thought he wanted the dog back, andquickened 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 asif 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 tohim, 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.
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'sRoom, 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.
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 havethrown 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 ofthe 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 thetertium 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?
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 downthe 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 theLondon Timesabout 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, forhe 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!"
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.
DOWN UPON THE UNSUSPECTING ELOPERS CAME THIS MIRACULOUS CLOUDBURST OF IRONICAL RICE....
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, managedto 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 rumpledpate 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 greatwide 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.
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 conversationfor 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, theworld 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 thecomposite 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.
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. Hewas 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 twitchingsof 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 Idon'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 tomyhusband."
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 formeda 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 alongthe 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.
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.
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 takea 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 knowhis 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.