And now Mrs. Anne Lathrop, after much hesitation, called timidly: "Porter--porter--please!"
"Yes--miss--missus!" he amended.
"Will you call my--" she gulped--"my husband?"
"Yes, ma"am," the porter chuckled, and putting his grinning head in at the men"s door, he bowed to Ira and said: "Excuse me, but you are sent for by the lady in number One."
Ashton slapped him on the back and roared: "Oh, you married man!"
"Well," said Ira, in self-defence, "I don"t hear anybody sending for you." Wedgewood grinned at Ashton. "I rather fancy he had you theah, old top, eh, what?"
Ira appeared at number One, and bending over his treasure-trove, spoke in a voice that was pure saccharine: "Are you ready for breakfast, dear?"
"Yes, Ira."
"Come along to the dining-car."
"It"s cosier here," she said. "Couldn"t we have it served here?"
"But it"ll get all cold, and I"m hungry," pouted the old bachelor, to whom breakfast was a sacred inst.i.tution.
"All right, Ira," said Anne, glad to be meek; "come along," and she rose.
Ira hesitated. "Still, if you"d rather, we"ll eat here." He sat down.
"Oh, not at all," said Anne; "we"ll go where you want to go."
"But I want to do what you want to do."
"So do I--we"ll go," said Anne.
"We"ll stay."
"No, I insist on the dining-car."
"Oh, all right, have your own way," said Ira, as if he were being bullied, and liked it. Anne smiled at the contrariness of men, and Ira smiled at the contrariness of women, and when they reached the vestibule they kissed each other in mutual forgiveness.
As Wedgewood stropped an old-fashioned razor, he said to Ashton, who was putting up his safety equipment: "I say, old party, are those safety razors safe? Can"t you really cut yourself?"
"Cut everything but hair," said Ashton, pointing to his wounded chin.
Mallory put out his hand: "Would you be kind enough to lend me your razor again this morning?"
"Sure thing," said Ashton. "You"ll find your blade in the box there."
Mallory then negotiated the loan of one more fresh shirt from the Englishman, and a clean collar from Ashton. He rejoiced that the end of the day would bring him in touch with his own baggage. Four days of foraging on the country was enough for this soldier.
Also he felt, now that he and Marjorie had lived thus long, they could survive somehow till evening brought them to San Francisco, where there were hundreds of ministers. And then the conductor must ruin his early morning optimism, though he made his appearance in the washroom with genial good mornings for all.
Mallory acknowledged the greeting, and asked offhandedly: "By the way, how"s she running?"
The conductor answered even more offhandedly: "About two hours late--and losin"."
Mallory was transfixed with a new fear: "Good Lord, my transport sails at sunrise."
"Oh, we ought to make "Fris...o...b.. midnight, anyway."
"Midnight, and sail at daylight!"
"Unless we lose a little more time."
Mallory realized that every new day managed to create its own anxieties. With the regularity of a milkman, each morning left a fresh crisis on his doorstep.
CHAPTER x.x.xIV
THE COMPLETE DIVORCER
The other pa.s.sengers were growing nervous with their own troubles. The next stop was Reno, and in spite of all the wit that is heaped upon the town, it is a solemn place to those who must go there in purgatorial penance for matrimonial error.
Some honest souls regard such divorce-emporiums as dens of evil, where the wicked make a mockery of the sacrament and a.s.sail the foundations of society, by undermining the home. Other equally honest souls, believing that marriage is a human inst.i.tution whose mishaps and mistakes should be rectified as far as possible, regard the divorce courts as cities of refuge for ill-treated or ill-mated women and men whose lives may be saved from utter ruination by the intervention of high-minded judges.
But, whichever view is right, the ordeal by divorce is terrifying enough to the poor sinners or martyrs who must undergo it.
Little Jimmie Wellington turned pale, and stammered, as he tried to ask the conductor casually:
"What kind of a place is that Reno?"
The conductor, somewhat cynical from close a.s.sociation with the divorce-mill and its grist, grinned: "That depends on what you"re leaving behind. Most folks seem to get enough of it in about six months."
Then he went his way, leaving Wellington red, agape and perplexed. The trouble with Wellington was that he had brought along what he was leaving behind. Or, as Ashton impudently observed: "You ought to enjoy your residence there, Wellington, with your wife on hand."
The only repartee that Wellington could think of was a rather uninspired: "You go to ----."
"So long as it isn"t Reno," Ashton laughed, and walked away.
Wedgewood laid a sympathetic hand on Little Jimmie"s shoulder, and said:
"That Ashton is no end of a bounder, what?"
Wellington wrote his epitaph in these words:
"Well, the worst I can say of him is, he"s the kind of man that doesn"t lift the plug out when he"s through with the basin."
He liked this so well that he wished he had thought of it in time to crack it over Ashton"s head. He decided to hand it to him anyway. He forgot that the cardinal rule for repartee, is "Better never than late."