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.