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.