CHAPTER IX

ALL ABOARD!

The starting of the train surprised the ironical decorators in the last stages of their work. Their smiles died out in a sudden shame, as it came over them that the joke had recoiled on their own heads. They had done their best to carry out the time-honored rite of making a newly married couple as miserable as possible--and the newly married couple had failed to do its share.

The two lieutenants glared at each other in mutual contempt. They had studied much at West Point about ambushes, and how to avoid them. Could Mallory have escaped the pit they had digged for him? They looked at their handiwork in disgust. The cosy-corner effect of white ribbons and orange flowers, gracefully masking the concealed rice-trap, had seemed the wittiest thing ever devised. Now it looked the silliest.

The other passengers were equally downcast. Meanwhile the two lovers in the corridor were kissing good-byes as if they were hoping to store up honey enough to sustain their hearts for a three years' fast. And the porter was studying them with perplexity.

He was used, however, to waking people out of dreamland, and he began to fear that if he were discovered spying on the lovers, he might suffer. So he coughed discreetly three or four times.

Since the increasing racket of the train made no effect on the two hearts beating as one, the small matter of a cough was as nothing.

Finally the porter was compelled to reach forward and tap Mallory's arm, and stutter:

"'Scuse me, but co-could I git b-by?"

The embrace was untied, and the lovers stared at him with a dazed, where-am-I? look. Marjorie was the first to realize what awakened them. She felt called upon to say something, so she said, as carelessly as if she had not just emerged from a young gentleman's arms:

"Oh, porter, how long before the train starts?"

"Train's done started, Missy."

This simple statement struck the wool from her eyes and the cotton from her ears, and she was wide enough awake when she cried: "Oh, stop it--stop it!"

"That's mo'n I can do, Missy," the porter expostulated.

"Then I'll jump off," Marjorie vowed, making a dash for the door.

But the porter filled the narrow path, and waved her back.

"Vestibule's done locked up--train's going lickety-split." Feeling that he had safely checkmated any rashness, the porter squeezed past the dumbfounded pair, and went to change his blue blouse for the white coat of his chambermaidenly duties. Mallory's first wondering thought was a rapturous feeling that circumstances had forced his dream into a reality. He thrilled with triumph: "You've got to go with me now."

"Yes--I've got to go," Marjorie assented meekly; then, sublimely, "It's fate. Kismet!"

They clutched each other again in a fiercely blissful hug. Marjorie came back to earth with a bump: "Are you really sure there's a minister on board?"

"Pretty sure," said Mallory, sobering a trifle.

"But you said you were sure?"

"Well, when you say you're sure, that means you're not quite sure."

It was not an entirely satisfactory justification, and Marjorie began to quake with alarm: "Suppose there shouldn't be?"

"Oh, then," Mallory answered carelessly, "there's bound to be one to-morrow."

Marjorie realized at once the enormous abyss between then and the morrow, and she gasped: "Tomorrow! And no chaperon! Oh, I'll jump out of the window."

Mallory could prevent that, but when she pleaded, "What shall we do?" he had no solution to offer. Again it was she who received the first inspiration.

"I have it," she beamed.

"Yes, Marjorie?" he assented, dubiously.

"We'll pretend not to be married at all."

He seized the rescuing ladder: "That's it! Not married--just friends."

"Till we can get married----"

"Yes, and then we can stop being friends."

"My love--my friend!" They embraced in a most unfriendly manner.

An impatient yelp from the neglected dog-basket awoke them.

"Oh, Lord, we've brought Snoozleums."

"Of course we have." She took the dog from the prison, tucked him under her arm, and tried to compose her bridal face into a merely friendly countenance before they entered the car. But she must pause for one more kiss, one more of those bittersweet good-byes. And Mallory was nothing loath.

Hudson and Shaw were still glumly perplexed, when the porter returned in his white jacket.

"I bet they missed the train; all this work for nothing," Hudson grumbled. But Shaw, seeing the porter, caught a gleam of hope, and asked anxiously:

"Say, porter, have you seen anything anywhere that looks like a freshly married pair?"

"Well," and the porter rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand as he chuckled, "well, they's a mighty lovin' couple out theah in the corridor."

"That's them--they--it!"

Instantly everything was alive and in action. It was as if a bugle had shrilled in a dejected camp.

"Get ready!" Shaw commanded. "Here's rice for everybody."

"Everybody take an old shoe," said Hudson. "You can't miss in this narrow car."

"There's a kazoo for everyone, too," said Shaw, as the outstretched hands were equipped with wedding ammunition. "Do you know the 'Wedding March'?"

"I ought to by this time," said Mrs. Whitcomb.

Right into the tangle of preparation, old Ira Lathrop stalked, on his way back to his seat to get more cigars.

"Have some rice for the bridal couple?" said Ashton, offering him of his own double-handful.

But Lathrop brushed him aside with a romance-hater's growl.

"Watch out for your head, then," cried Hudson, and Lathrop ducked just too late to escape a neck-filling, hair-filling shower. An old shoe took him a clip abaft the ear, and the old woman-hater dropped raging into the same berth where the spinster, Anne Gattle, was trying to dodge the same downpour.

Still there was enough of the shrapnel left to overwhelm the two young "friends," who marched into the aisle, trying to look indifferent and prepared for nothing on earth less than for a wedding charivari.

Mallory should have done better than to entrust his plans to fellows like Hudson and Shaw, whom he had known at West Point for diabolically joyous hazers and practical jokers. Even as he sputtered rice and winced from the impact of flying footgear, he was cursing himself as a double-dyed idiot for asking such men to engage his berth for him. He had a sudden instinct that they had doubtless bedecked his trunk and Marjorie's with white satin furbelows and ludicrous labels. But he could not shelter himself from the white sleet and the black thumps. He could hardly shelter Marjorie, who cowered behind him and shrieked even louder than the romping tormentors.

When the assailants had exhausted the rice and shoes, they charged down the aisle for the privilege of kissing the bride. Mallory was dragged and bunted and shunted here and there, and he had to fight his way back to Marjorie with might and main. He was tugging and striking like a demon, and yelling, "Stop it! stop it!"

Hudson took his punishment with uproarious good nature, laughing:

"Oh, shut up, or we'll kiss you!"

But Shaw was scrubbing his wry lips with a seasick wail of:

"Wow! I think I kissed the dog."

There was, of necessity, some pause for breath, and the combatants draped themselves limply about the seats. Mallory glared at the twin Benedict Arnolds and demanded:

"Are you two thugs going to San Francisco with us?"

"Don't worry," smiled Hudson, "we're only going as far as Kedzie Avenue, just to start the honeymoon properly."

If either of the elopers had been calmer, the solution of the problem would have been simple. Marjorie could get off at this suburban station and drive home from there. But their wits were like pied type, and they were further jumbled, when Shaw broke in with a sudden: "Come, see the little dovecote we fixed for you."

Before they knew it, they were both haled along the aisle to the white satin atrocity. "Love in a bungalow," said Hudson. "Sit down--make yourselves perfectly at home."

"No--never--oh, oh, oh!" cried Marjorie, darting away and throwing herself into the first empty seat--Ira Lathrop's berth. Mallory followed to console her with caresses and murmurs of, "There, there, don't cry, dearie!"

Hudson and Shaw followed close with mawkish mockery: "Don't cry, dearie."

And now Mrs. Temple intervened. She had enjoyed the initiation ceremony as well as anyone. But when the little bride began to cry, she remembered the pitiful terror and shy shame she had undergone as a girl-wife, and she hastened to Marjorie's side, brushing the men away like gnats.

"You poor thing," she comforted. "Come, my child, lean on me, and have a good cry."

Hudson grinned, and put out his own arms: "She can lean on me, if she'd rather."

Mrs. Temple glanced up with indignant rebuke: "Her mother is far away, and she wants a mother's breast to weep on. Here's mine, my dear."

The impudent Shaw tapped his own military chest: "She can use mine."

Infuriated at this bride-baiting, Mallory rose and confronted the two imps with clenched fists: "You're a pretty pair of friends, you are!"

The imperturbable Shaw put out a pair of tickets as his only defence: "Here are your tickets, old boy."

And Hudson roared jovially: "We tried to get you a stateroom, but it was gone."

"And here are your baggage checks," laughed Shaw, forcing into his fists a few pasteboards. "We got your trunks on the train ahead, all right. Don't mention it--you're entirely welcome."

It was the porter that brought the first relief from the ordeal.

"If you gemmen is gettin' off at Kedzie Avenue, you'd better step smart. We're slowin' up now."

Marjorie was sobbing too audibly to hear, and Mallory swearing too inaudibly to heed the opportunity Kedzie Avenue offered. And Hudson was yelling: "Well, good-bye, old boy and old girl. Sorry we can't go all the way." He had the effrontery to try to kiss the bride good-bye, and Shaw was equally bold, but Mallory's fury enabled him to beat them off. He elbowed and shouldered them down the aisle, and sent after them one of his own shoes. But it just missed Shaw's flying coattails.

Mallory stood glaring after the departing traitors. He was glad that they at least were gone, till he realized with a sickening slump in his vitals, that they had not taken with them his awful dilemma. And now the train was once more clickety-clicking into the night and the West.