"And who"s Mattie? Some former sweetheart of yours?"
"My dear," laughed Mallory.
But Marjorie was up and away, with apt temper: "So Mattie was in the box, was she? What is it to you, where she sits? You dare to read about her and rave over her perfect form, while you neglect your wife--or your--oh, what am I, anyway?"
Mallory stared at her in amazement. He was beginning to learn what ignorant heathen women are concerning so many of the G.o.ds and demi-G.o.ds of mankind. Then, with a tenderness he might not always show, he threw the paper down and took her in his arms: "You poor child. Mattie is a man--a pitcher--and you"re the only woman I ever loved--and you are liable to be my wife any minute."
The explanation was sufficient, and she crawled into the shelter of his arm with little noises that served for apology, forgiveness and reconciliation. Then he made the mistake of mentioning the sickening topic of deferred hope:
"A minister"s sure to get on at the next stop--or the next."
Marjorie"s nerves were frayed by too much enduring, and it took only a word to set them jangling: "If you say minister to me again, I"ll scream." Then she tried to control herself with a polite: "Where is the next stop?"
"Ogden."
"Where"s that? On the map?"
"Well, it"s in Utah."
"Utah!" she groaned. "They marry by wholesale there, and we can"t even get a sample."
CHAPTER XXV
THE TRAIN WRECKER
The train-butcher, entering the Observation Room, found only a loving couple. He took in at a glance their desire for solitude. A large part of his business was the forcing of wares on people who did not want them.
His voice and his method suggested the mosquito. Seeing Mallory and Marjorie mutually absorbed in reading each other"s eyes, and evidently in need of nothing on earth less than something else to read, the train-butcher decided that his best plan of attack was to make himself a nuisance. It is a plan successfully adopted by organ-grinders, street pianists and other blackmailers under the guise of art, who have nothing so welcome to sell as their absence.
Mallory and Marjorie heard the train-boy"s hum, but they tried to ignore it.
"Papers, gents and ladies? Yes? No? Paris fashions, lady?"
He shoved a large periodical between their very noses, but Marjorie threw it on the floor, with a bitter glance at her own borrowed plumage:
"Don"t show me any Paris fashions!" Then she gave the boy his conge by resuming her chat with Mallory: "How long do we stop at Ogden?"
The train-boy went right on auctioning his papers and magazines, and poking them into the laps of his prey. And they went right on talking to one another and pushing his papers and magazines to the floor.
"I think I"d better get off at Ogden, and take the next train back.
That"s just what I"ll do. Nothing, thank you!" this last to the train-boy.
"But you can"t leave me like this," Mallory urged excitedly, with a side glance of "No, no!" to the train-boy.
"I can, and I must, and I will," Marjorie insisted. "I"ll go pack my things now."
"But, Marjorie, listen to me."
"Will you let me alone!" This to the gadfly, but to Mallory a dejected wail: "I--I just remembered. I haven"t anything to pack."
"And you"ll have to give back that waist to Mrs. Temple. You can"t get off at Ogden without a waist."
"I"ll go anyway. I want to get home."
"Marjorie, if you talk that way--I"ll throw you off the train!"
She gasped. He explained: "I wasn"t talking to you; I was trying to stop this phonograph." Then he rose, and laid violent hands on the annoyer, shoved him to the corridor, seized his bundle of papers from his arm, and hurled them at his head. They fell in a shower about the train-butcher, who could only feel a certain respect for the one man who had ever treated him as he knew he deserved. He bent to pick up his scattered merchandise, and when he had gathered his stock together, put his head in, and sang out a sincere:
"Excuse me."
But Mallory did not hear him, he was excitedly trying to calm the excited girl, who, having eloped with him, was preparing now to elope back without him.
"Darling, you can"t desert me now," he pleaded, "and leave me to go on alone?"
"Well, why don"t you do something?" she retorted, in equal desperation. "If I were a man, and I had the girl I loved on a train, I"d get her married if I had to wreck the----" she caught her breath, paused a second in intense thought, and then, with sudden radiance, cried: "Harry, dear!"
"Yes, love!"
"I have an idea--an inspiration!"
"Yes, pet," rather dubiously from him, but with absolute exultation from her: "Let"s wreck the train!"
"I don"t follow you, sweetheart."
"Don"t you see?" she began excitedly. "When there are train wrecks a lot of people get killed, and things. A minister always turns up to administer the last something or other--well----"
"Well?"
"Well, stupid, don"t you see? We wreck a train, a minister comes, we nab him, he marries us, and--there we are! Everything"s lovely!"
He gave her one of those looks with which a man usually greets what a woman calls an inspiration. He did not honor her invention with a.n.a.lysis. He simply put forward an objection to it, and, man-like, chose the most hateful of all objections:
"It"s a lovely idea, but the wreck would delay us for hours and hours, and I"d miss my transport----"
"Harry Mallory, if you mention that odious transport to me again, I know I"ll have hydrophobia. I"m going home."
"But, darling," he pleaded, "you can"t desert me now, and leave me to go on alone?" She had her answer glib:
"If you really loved me, you"d----"
"Oh, I know," he cut in. "You"ve said that before. But I"d be court-martialled. I"d lose my career."
"What"s a career to a man who truly loves?"
"It"s just as much as it is to anybody else--and more."