CHAPTER XXXII

THE EMPTY BERTH

The one thing Mallory was beginning to learn about Marjorie was that she would never take the point of view he expected, and never proceed along the lines of his logic.

She had grown furious at him for what he could not help. She had told him that she would marry him out of spite. She had commanded him to pursue and apprehend the flying parson. He failed and returned crestfallen and wondering what new form her rage would take.

And, lo and behold, when she saw him so downcast and helpless, she rushed to him with caresses, cuddled his broad shoulders against her breast, and smothered him. It was the sincerity of his dejection and the complete helplessness he displayed that won her woman's heart.

Mallory gazed at her with almost more wonderment than delight. This was another flashlight on her character. Most courtships are conducted under a rose-light in which wooer and wooed wear their best clothes or their best behavior; or in a starlit, moonlit, or gaslit twilight where romance softens angles and wraps everything in velvet shadow. Then the two get married and begin to live together in the cold, gray daylight of realism, with undignified necessities and harrowing situations at every step, and disillusion begins its deadly work.

This young couple was undergoing all the inconveniences and temper-exposures of marriage without its blessed compensations. They promised to be well acquainted before they were wed. If they still wanted each other after this ordeal, they were pretty well assured that their marriage would not be a failure.

Mallory rejoiced to see that the hurricane of Marjorie's jealousy had only whipped up the surface of her soul. The great depths were still calm and unmoved, and her love for him was in and of the depths.

Soon after leaving Ogden, the train entered upon the great bridge across the Great Salt Lake. The other passengers were staring at the enormous engineering masterpiece and the conductor was pointing out that, in order to save forty miles and the crossing of two mountain chains, the railroad had devoted four years of labor and millions of dollars to stretching a thirty-mile bridge across this inland ocean.

But Marjorie and Mallory never noticed it. They were absorbed in exploring each other's souls, and they had safely bridged the Great Salt Lake which the first big bitter jealousy spreads across every matrimonial route.

They were undisturbed in their voyage, for all the other passengers had their noses flattened against the window panes of the other cars--all except one couple, gazing each at each through time-wrinkled eyelids touched with the magic of a tardy honeymoon.

For all that Anne and Ira knew, the Great Salt Lake was a moon-swept lagoon, and the arid mountains of Nevada which the train went scaling, were the very hillsides of Arcadia.

But the other passengers soon came trooping back into the observation room. Ira had told them nothing of Mallory's confession. In the first place, he was a man who had learned to keep a secret, and in the second place, he had forgotten that such persons as Mallory or his Marjorie existed. All the world was summed up in the fearsomely happy little spinster who had moved up into his section--the section which had begun its career draped in satin ribbons unwittingly prophetic.

The communion of Mallory and Marjorie under the benison of reconciliation was invaded by the jokes of the other passengers, unconsciously ironic.

Dr. Temple chaffed them amiably: "You two will have to take a back seat now. We've got a new bridal couple to amuse us."

And Mrs. Temple welcomed them with: "You're only old married folks, like us."

The Mallorys were used to the misunderstanding. But the misplaced witticisms gave them reassurance that their secret was safe yet a little while. At their dinner-table, however, and in the long evening that followed they were haunted by the fact that this was their last night on the train, and no minister to be expected.

And now once more the Mallorys regained the star rôles in the esteem of the audience, for once more they quarreled at good-night-kissing time. Once more they required two sections, while Anne Gattle's berth was not even made up. It remained empty, like a deserted nest, for its occupant had flown South.