Excuse Me!
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CHAPTER XIV
THE DORMITORY ON WHEELS
Of all the shocking institutions in human history, the sleeping car isthe most shocking--or would be, if we were not so used to it. Therecan be no doubt that we are the most moral nation on earth, for weadmit it ourselves. Perhaps we prove it, too, by the Arcadianprosperity of these two-story hotels on wheels, where miscellaneoustravelers dwell in complete promiscuity, and sleep almost side byside, in apartments, or compartments, separated only by a plank and acurtain, and guarded only by one sleepy negro.
After the fashion of the famous country whose inhabitants earned ameagre sustenance by taking in each other's washing, so in SleepingCarpathia we attain a meagre respectability by everybody's chaperoningeverybody else.
So topsy-turvied, indeed, are our notions, once we are aboard a train,that the staterooms alone are regarded with suspicion; we question themotives of those who must have a room to themselves!--a room with areal door! that locks!!
And, now, on this sleeping car, prettily named "Snowdrop," scenes wereenacting that would have thrown our great-grandmothers intofits--scenes which, if we found them in France, or Japan, we shouldview with alarm as almost unmentionable evidence of the moralobliquity of those nations.
But this was our own country--the part of it which admits that it isthe best part--the moralest part, the staunch Middle West. This wasIllinois. Yet dozens of cars were beholding similar immodesties inchastest Illinois, and all over the map, thousands of people, inhundreds of cars, were permitting total strangers to view preparationswhich have always, hitherto, been reserved for the most intimate andlegalized relations.
The porter was deftly transforming the day-coach into a narrow laneentirely surrounded by portieres. Behind most of the portieres,fluttering in the lightest breeze, and perilously following the hastypasser-by, homely offices were being enacted. The population of thislittle town was going to bed. The porter was putting them to sleep asif they were children in a nursery, and he a black mammy.
The frail walls of little sanctums were bulging with the bodies ofpeople disrobing in the aisle, with nothing between them and thebeholder's eye but a clinging curtain that explained what it did notreveal. From apertures here and there disembodied feet were protrudingand mysterious hands were removing shoes and other things.
Women in risky attire were scooting to one end of the car, and men inshirt sleeves, or less, were hastening to the other.
When Mallory returned to the "Snowdrop," his ear was greeted by thethud of dropping shoes. He found Marjorie being rapidly immured, likePoe's prisoner, in a jail of closing walls.
She was unspeakably ill at ease, and by the irony of custom, the oneperson on whom she depended for protection was the one person whosecontiguity was most alarming--and all for lack of a brief trialogue,with a clergyman, as the _tertium quid_.
When Mallory's careworn face appeared round the edge of the partitionnow erected between her and the abode of Doctor and Mrs. Temple,Marjorie shivered anew, and asked with all anxiety:
"Did you find a minister?"
Perhaps the Recording Angel overlooked Mallory's answer: "Not a damn'minister."
When he dropped at Marjorie's side, she edged away from him, pleading:"Oh, what shall we do?"
He answered dismally and ineffectively: "We'll have to go onpretending to be--just friends."
"But everybody thinks we're married."
"That's so!" he admitted, with the imbecility of fatigued hope. Theysat a while listening to the porter slipping sheets into place andthumping pillows into cases, a few doors down the street. He would beready for them at any moment. Something must be done, but what? what?