CHAPTER XVI

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.

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.