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.