A TRAGEDY OF ERRORS
While these matters were transpiring, the sister express was rushing
west. On the west-bound train “Captain” Fallow chanced to be in
command, and “Captain” Fallow was peeved. Sundry irritating delays had
marred his run from Pittsburg. His firemen had been hefting coal into
the engine’s cavernous maw in a Titanic effort to mend the
time-losses. The locomotive had been roaring along with a streaming
wake of black smoke lying level from its stack. At Mercerville only
twenty minutes were left standing in the way of a perfect score, and
at Mercerville the conductor had received orders to stop at an ungodly
and forlorn tank-town in the midst of emptiness, known by the
opprobrious name of Jaffa Junction!
“Captain” Fallow was fully prepared to be irascible with the Jaffa
Junction party. Accordingly, when he discovered Mr. Lewis Copewell in
the last seat of the last coach he eyed him without enthusiasm.
“I believe, Captain,” commented Mr. Copewell pleasantly, “you have
instructions to drop me at Jaffa Junction?”
The “Captain’s” glance became flinty.
“So you are that Jaffa Junction party?” The manner of saying it
indicated that the designation carried black opprobrium. Mr. Copewell
nodded complacently. “Captain” Fallow’s stern visage became more
granite-like.
“My train is twenty minutes late now,” he accused, “and that jay town
is one of them places where a lot of lame old ladies tries to board
the train every time you stop there. It takes a Jaffa Junction
prominent citizen five minutes to climb into a coach!” Mr. Copewell
politely attempted to simulate an interest in the characteristics of
Jaffa Junction’s prominent citizens. “Indeed?” he said.
“Captain” Fallow went on curtly. “I ask you as a favor to hop off
quick when we get there. I’ll have the rear vestibule open and you can
fly out as soon as you feel the train slowing down. Your place will be
our only stop this side of Perryville, see? If you can jump down
without our coming to a dead stop, it will save time.”
Mr. Copewell smiled. “My dear Captain,” he reassured, “I hold various
championships for getting off trains. To-night I mean to break all my
past records. I’m in a hurry myself.”
“Captain” Fallow’s face softened. “Remember,” he emphasized, “first
stop is your destination.”
In view of the fact that he was on his way to meet the one lady of his
heart and to foil Fate and Family, Mr. Copewell might have been
presumed to be wide awake. In point of actuality, the reverse was
true.
Last night, anxiety and indignation had murdered sleep. To-day, action
and preparation had assaulted his vitality. Now, with success at his
elbow, a delightful languor stole upon him. Gradually his rosy dreams
became rosier, more somnolent! His head fell on his chest. Behold, the
bridegroom fell snoring!
* * * * *
Some time later the conductor passed through the train and, arriving
at the front vestibule of the front coach, made a discovery.
There, crouching very modestly in the shaded corner next to the rear
end of the baggage-car, was a somewhat undersized youth with straight,
black hair and an expression of innocence which somehow did not seem
to sit naturally on his rat-like countenance.
The conductor eyed him accusingly. “Where’s your ticket?” he inquired
without preamble.
The youth smiled with a disarming candor.
“Honest, pal,” he confided, “you kin search me! I was just goin’
through me clothes fer it when you come out. I was just sayin’ ter
meself, ‘Son,’ says I, ‘where in —— _is_ dat ducket?’”
“Ducket, eh!” repeated “Captain” Fallow. There was a pitiless,
inquisitorial note in his voice, which the young man construed as
ominous.
The young man bit his lip in annoyance. It was borne in upon him that
he had made a most unfortunate choice of words. In police glossaries
the term “ducket” is defined as thief and hobo vernacular for a
railroad-ticket.
“You come up front with me,” suggested the conductor, pushing the
youth ahead of him. In the baggage-coach ahead Mr. “Rat” Connors, for
it was none other than he, was treated to a very creditable amateur
production of the Third Degree. But Mr. Connors had made his one
mistake and they wrung from him no further self-incrimination. He was
unaccustomed to the ways of travel, he said, because he had to stay at
home and work very hard to support a widowed mother and several small
brothers and sisters. He had lost his ticket. He had no more money. He
was sorry, extremely sorry—but what could he do?
He could get off, the conductor assured him, and to emphasize the
suggestion he reached for the cord and signalled to the engineer. Mr.
Connors stood supinely near the open door of the baggage-coach while
the baggage-man and a brakeman ranged themselves at his back to assist
him in alighting.
The train slowed down with a jarring wrench which startled Mr.
Copewell out of a halcyon dream into a disturbed sense of being almost
too late. Wildly seizing his hat and grip, he made a lunge through the
open vestibule door. It was a highly creditable lunge. It carried him
from a flat-footed nap out into the darkness in something like two
seconds and a quarter.
He was not yet really awake. He acted subconsciously and in obedience
to a sense of imperative haste. When he landed, blinking, on the side
of the track and saw about him, instead of village lights, only inky
silhouettes of the forest primeval, he felt that he had made a
mistake. Already the tail-lights were receding. Mr. Copewell rubbed
his eyes and inquired of his subjective self whether he were still
dreaming. His subjective self said “No.” Thereupon Mr. Copewell
sprinted after the tail-lights. Mr. Copewell was going some, but the
shriek of the whistle drowned his shouting, and the rear-end lanterns
were whisked like runaway comets from before his outstretched hands.
He stumbled on a projecting tie—and the train was gone!
* * * * *
The wedding-guest who beat his breast because his journey to the
ceremony was interrupted had no valid cause of complaint as compared
with this would-be bridgeroom who stood bereft on the cinders.
He dropped limply to the ground and covered his face with his hands.
About him stretched the unbroken gloom of singular blackness. Nowhere
was the glimmer of a light. Nowhere, it seemed, was a human
habitation. Somewhere a girl was rushing on an express train toward a
broken tryst! No one would meet her save a woman-hating best man! What
could he do? For a time he did nothing but sit stunned in the
darkness, a hundred yards from his abandoned baggage.
It was in just such desperate exigencies as this that chagrined
warriors of antiquity were wont to fall upon their swords. Unhappily
he had no sword upon which to fall. In the midst of crisis and defeat
he sat and strove to evolve out of chaos some bright plan by which he,
stranded in juxtaposition to the murmuring pines and the hemlocks,
might, in the space of a few minutes, transport himself across an
unknown distance and be married at Jaffa Junction.
It has been commented that at the average wedding the bridgeroom has a
minor and insignificant rôle. Mr. Copewell had discovered a sure
method, in the parlance of theatrical folk, of fattening the part. The
male contracting party has only to stay away.
Suddenly he was aroused out of his apathy by the realization that he
was not the only living being in that section of rural America. The
discovery brought both surprise and comfort. There had drifted to his
ears a plaintive singing voice, evidently not far away. The voice was
a tenor and it floated through the thick night with the insistent
melancholy of a lone minstrel who sings in adversity. Mr. Copewell
could quite plainly distinguish the words of the ballad. They were
these:
“Jay Gould’s daughter afore she died,
Done signed a paper, so de bums can’t ride.”
There was a silence, then the voice swelled and grew more melancholy,
as though the singer were invoking verse and notes for the voicing of
his own piteous plight:
“Or if they do ride, they must ride the rods,
And trust their souls in the hands of Gawd!”
The voice dwelt lingeringly on the final chord, then broke off in a
deep-drawn sigh.
Suddenly it flashed on Mr. Copewell that there was need of quick
action. For a while the minutes could hardly be too full of action.