Excuse Me! Part 4

"Oh, honey, I want you more than anything else on earth, but I'm a soldier, dearie, a mere lieutenant in the regular army, and I'm the slave of the Government. I've gone through West Point, and they won't let me resign respectably and if I did, we'd starve. They wouldn't accept my resignation, but they'd be willing to courtmartial me and dismiss me the service in disgrace. Then you wouldn't want to marry me--and I shouldn't have any way of supporting you if you did. I only know one trade, and that's soldiering."

"Don't call it a trade, beloved, it's the n.o.blest profession in all the world, and you're the n.o.blest soldier that ever was, and in a year or two you'll be the biggest general in the army."

He could not afford to shatter such a devout illusion or quench the light of faith in those beloved and loving eyes. He tacitly admitted his ability to be promoted commander-in-chief in a year or two. He allowed that glittering possibility to remain, used it as a basis for argument.

"Then, dearest, you must help me to do my duty."

She clasped his upper arm as if it were an altar and she an Iphigenia about to be sacrificed to save the army. And she murmured with utter heroism:

"I will! Do what you like with me!"

He squeezed her hand between his biceps and his ribs and accepted the offering in a look drenched with grat.i.tude. Then he said, matter-of-factly:

"We'll see how much time we have when we get to--whatever the name of that street is."

The car jolted and wailed on its way like an old drifting rocking chair. The motorman was in no hurry. The pa.s.sengers seemed to have no occasion for haste. Somebody got on or got off at almost every corner, and paused for conversation while the car waited patiently. But eventually the conductor put his head in and drawled:

"Hay! here's where you get off at."

They hastened to debark and found themselves in a narrow, gaudily-lighted region where they saw a lordly transfer-distributor, a profound scholar in Chicago streets. He informed them that the minister's street lay far back along the path they had come; they should have taken a car in the opposite direction, transferred at some remote center, descended at some unheard-of street, walked three blocks one way and four another, and there they would have been.

Mallory looked at his watch, and Marjorie's hopes dropped like a wrecked aeroplane, for he grimly asked how long it would take them to reach the railroad station.

"Well, you'd ought to make it in forty minutes," the transfer agent said--and added, cynically, "if the car makes schedule."

"Good Lord, the train starts in twenty minutes!"

"Well, I tell you--take this here green car to Wexford Avenoo--there's usually a taxicab or two standin' there."

"Thank you. Hop on, Marjorie."

Marjorie hopped on, and they sat down, Mallory with eyes and thoughts on nothing but the watch he kept in his hand.

During this tense journey the girl perfected her soul for graceful martyrdom.

"I'll go to the train with you, Harry, and then you can send me home in a taxicab."

Her nether lip trembled and her eyes were filmed, but they were brave, and her voice was so tender that it wooed his mind from his watch. He gazed at her, and found her so dear, so devoted and so pitifully exquisite, that he was almost overcome by an impulse to gather her into his arms there and then, indifferent to the immediate pa.s.sengers or to his far-off military superiors. An hour ago they were young lovers in all the lilt and thrill of elopement. She had clung to him in the gloaming of their taxicab, as it sped like a genie at their whim to the place where the minister would unite their hands and raise his own in blessing. Thence the new husband would have carried the new wife away, his very own, soul and body, duty and beauty. Then, ah, then in their minds the future was an unwaning honeymoon, the journey across the continent a stroll along a lover's lane, the Pacific ocean a garden lake, and the Philippines a chain of Fortunate Isles decreed especially for their Eden. And then the taxicab encountered a lamppost. They thought they had merely wrecked a motor car--and lo, they had wrecked a Paradise.

The railroad ceased to be a lover's lane and became a lingering torment; the ocean was a weltering Sahara, and the Philippines a Dry Tortugas of exile.

Mallory realized for the first time what heavy burdens he had taken on with his shoulder straps; what a dismal life of restrictions and hardships an officer's life is bound to be. It was hard to obey the soulless machinery of discipline, to be a bra.s.s-b.u.t.toned slave. He felt all the hot, quick resentment that turns a faithful soldier into a deserter. But it takes time to evolve a deserter, and Mallory had only twenty minutes. The handcuffs and leg-irons of discipline hobbled him. He was only a little cog in a great clock, and the other wheels were impinging on him and revolving in spite of himself.

In the close-packed seats where they were jostled and stared at, the soldier could not even attempt to explain to his fascinated bride the war of motives in his breast. He could not voice the pa.s.sionate rebellion her beauty had whipped up in his soul. Perhaps if Romeo and Juliet had been forced to say farewell on a Chicago street car instead of a Veronese balcony, their language would have lacked savor, too.

Perhaps young Mr. Montague and young Miss Capulet, instead of wailing, "No, that is not the lark whose notes do beat the vaulty heaven so high above our heads," would have done no better than Mr. Mallory and Miss Newton. In any case, the best these two could squeeze out was:

"It's just too bad, honey."

"But I guess it can't be helped, dear."

"It's a mean old world, isn't it?"

"Awful!"

And then they must pile out into the street again so lost in woe that they did not know how they were trampled or elbowed. Marjorie's despair was so complete that it paralyzed instinct. She forgot Snoozleums! A thoughtful pa.s.senger ran out and tossed the basket into Mallory's arms even as the car moved off.

Fortune relented a moment and they found a taxicab waiting where they had expected to find it. Once more they were cosy in the flying twilight, but their grief was their only baggage, and the clasp of their hands talked all the talk there was.

Anxiety within anxiety tormented them and they feared another wreck.

But as they swooped down upon the station, a kind-faced tower clock beamed the rea.s.surance that they had three minutes to spare.

The taxicab drew up and halted, but they did not get out. They were kissing good-byes, fervidly and numerously, while a grinning station-porter winked at the winking chauffeur.

Marjorie simply could not have done with farewells.

"I'll go to the gate with you," she said.

He told the chauffeur to wait and take the young lady home. The lieutenant looked so honest and the girl so sad that the chauffeur simply touched his cap, though it was not his custom to allow strange fares to vanish into crowded stations, leaving behind nothing more negotiable than instructions to wait.

CHAPTER IV

A MOUSE AND A MOUNTAIN

All the while the foiled elopers were eloping, the San Francisco sleeper was filling up. It had been the receptacle of a.s.sorted lots of humanity tumbling into it from all directions, with all sorts of souls, bodies, and destinations.

The porter received each with that expert eye of his. His car was his laboratory. A railroad journey is a sort of test-tube of character; strange elements meet under strange conditions and make strange combinations. The porter could never foresee the ingredients of any trip, nor their actions and reactions.

He had no sooner established Mr. Wedgewood of London and Mr. Ira Lathrop of Chicago, in comparative repose, than his car was invaded by a woman who flung herself into the first seat. She was flushed with running, and breathing hard, but she managed one gasp of relief:

"Thank goodness, I made it in time."

The mere sound of a woman's voice in the seat back of him was enough to disperse Ira Lathrop. With not so much as a glance backward to see what manner of woman it might be, he jammed his contract into his pocket, seized his newspapers and retreated to the farthest end of the car, jouncing down into berth number one, like a sullen snapping turtle.

Miss Anne Gattle's modest and homely valise had been brought aboard by a leisurely station usher, who set it down and waited with a speaking palm outstretched. She had her tickets in her hand, but transferred them to her teeth while she searched for money in a handbag old fashioned enough to be called a reticule.

The usher closed his fist on the pittance she dropped into it and departed without comment. The porter advanced on her with a demand for "Tickets, please."

She began to ransack her reticule with flurried haste, taking out of it a small purse, opening that, closing it, putting it back, taking it out, searching the reticule through, turning out a handkerchief, a few hairpins, a few trunk keys, a baggage check, a bottle of salts, a card or two and numerous other maidenly articles, restoring them to place, looking in the purse again, restoring that, closing the reticule, setting it down, shaking out a book she carried, opening her old valise, going through certain white things blushingly, closing it again, shaking her skirts, and shaking her head in bewilderment.

She was about to open the reticule again, when the porter exclaimed:

"I see it! Don't look no mo'. I see it!"

When she cast up her eyes in despair, her hatbrim had been elevated enough to disclose the whereabouts of the tickets. With a murmured apology, he removed them from her teeth and held them under the light.