Excuse Me!

by Rupert Hughes

  CHAPTER XXI

  MATRIMONY TO AND FRO

  And the next morning they were in Wyoming--well toward the center ofthat State. They had left behind the tame levels and the truly ruraltowns and they were among foothills and mountains, passing cities ofwildly picturesque repute, like Cheyenne, and Laramie, Bowie, andMedicine Bow, and Bitter Creek, whose very names imply literature andwar whoops, cow-boy yelps, barking revolvers, another redskin bitingthe dust, cattle stampedes, town-paintings, humorous lynchings andbronchos in epileptic frenzy.

  But the talk of this train was concerned with none of these wonders,which the novelists and the magazinist have perhaps a trifleoverpublished. The talk of this train was concerned with the eighthwonder of the world, a semi-detached bridal couple.

  Mrs. Whitcomb was eager enough to voice the sentiment of the wholepopulace, when she looked up from her novel in the observation roomand, nudging Mrs. Temple, drawled: "By the way, my dear, has thatbridal couple made up its second night's quarrel yet?"

  "The Mallorys?" Mrs. Temple flushed as she answered, mercifully. "Oh,yes, they were very friendly again this morning."

  Mrs. Whitcomb's countenance was cynical: "My dear, I've been marriedtwice and I ought to know something about honeymoons, but thishoneyless honeymoon----" she cast up her eyes and her hands indespair.

  The women were so concerned about Mr. and "Mrs." Mallory, that theyhardly noticed the uncomfortable plight of the Wellingtons, or thecurious behavior of the lady from the stateroom who seemed to beafraid of something and never spoke to anybody. The strange behaviorof Anne Gattle and Ira Lathrop even escaped much comment, though theywere forever being stumbled on when anybody went out to theobservation platform. When they were dislodged from there, they satplaying checkers and talking very little, but making eyes at oneanother and sighing like furnaces.

  They had evidently concocted some secret of their own, for Ira,looking at his watch, murmured sentimentally to Anne: "Only a fewhours more, Annie."

  And Anne turned geranium-color and dropped a handful of checkers. "Idon't know how I can face it."

  Ira growled like a lovesick lion: "Aw, what do you care?"

  "But I was never married before, Ira," Anne protested, "and on atrain, too."

  "Why, all the bridal couples take to the railroads."

  "I should think it would be the last place they'd go," said Anne--asensible woman, Anne! "Look at the Mallories--how miserable they are."

  "I thought they were happy," said Ira, whose great virtue it was topay little heed to what was none of his business.

  "Oh, Ira," cried Anne, "I hope we shan't begin to quarrel as soon aswe are married."

  "As if anybody could quarrel with you, Anne," he said.

  "Do you think I'll be so monotonous as that?" she retorted.

  Her spunk delighted him beyond words. He whispered: "Anne, you're sogol-darned sweet if I don't get a chance to kiss you, I'll bust."

  "Why, Ira--we're on the train."

  "Da--darn the train! Who ever heard of a fellow proposing and gettingengaged to a girl and not even kissing her."

  "But our engagement is so short."

  "Well, I'm not going to marry you till I get a kiss."

  Perhaps innocent old Anne really believed this blood-curdling threat.It brought her instantly to terms, though she blushed: "Buteverybody's always looking."

  "Come out on the observation platform."

  "Oh, Ira, again?"

  "I dare you."

  "I take you--but" seeing that Mrs. Whitcomb was trying to overhear,she whispered: "let's pretend it's the scenery."

  So Ira rose, pushed the checkers aside, and said in an unusuallypositive tone: "Ah, Miss Gattle, won't you have a look at thelandscape?"

  "Oh, thank you, Mr. Lathrop," said Anne, "I just love scenery."

  They wandered forth like the Sleeping Beauty and her princelyawakener, and never dreamed what gigglings and nudgings and wisehead-noddings went on back of them. Mrs. Wellington laughed loudest ofall at the lovers whose heads had grown gray while their hearts werestill so green.

  It was shortly after this that the Wellingtons themselves came intoprominence in the train life.

  As the train approached Green River, and its copper-basined stream,the engineer began to set the air-brakes for the stop. JimmieWellington, boozily half-awake in the smoking room, wanted to knowwhat the name of the station was. Everybody is always eager to obligea drunken man, so Ashton and Fosdick tried to get a window open tolook out.

  The first one they labored at, they could not budge after abiceps-breaking tug. The second flew up with such ease that they wentover backward. Ashton put his head out and announced that theapproaching depot was labelled "Green River." Wellington burbled:"What a beautiful name for a shtation."

  Ashton announced that there was something beautifuller still on theplatform--"Oh, a peach!--a nectarine! and she's getting on thistrain."

  Even Doctor Temple declared that she was a dear little thing, wasn'tshe?

  Wellington pushed him aside, saying: "Stand back, Doc., and let mesee; I have a keen sense of beau'ful."

  "Be careful," cried the doctor, "he'll fall out of the window."

  "Not out of that window," Ashton sagely observed, seeing the bulk ofWellington. As the train started off again, Little Jimmie distributedalcoholic smiles to the Green Riverers on the platform and called out:

  "Goo'bye, ever'body. You're all abslootly--ow! ow!" He clapped hishand to his eye and crawled back into the car, groaning with pain.

  "What's the matter," said Wedgewood. "Got something in your eye?"

  "No, you blamed fool. I'm trying to look through my thumb."

  "Poor fellow!" sympathized Doctor Temple, "it's a cinder!"

  "A cinder! It's at leasht a ton of coal."

  "I say, old boy, let me have a peek," said Wedgewood, screwing in hismonocle and peering into the depths of Wellington's eye. "I can't seea bally thing."

  "Of course not, with that blinder on," growled the miserable wretch,weeping in spite of himself and rubbing his smarting orb.

  "Don't rub that eye," Ashton counselled, "rub the other eye."

  "It's my eye; I'll rub it if I want to. Get me a doctor, somebody. I'mdying."

  "Here's Doctor Temple," said Ashton, "right on the job." Wellingtonturned to the old clergyman with pathetic trust, and the deceiverwrithed in his disguise. The best he could think of was: "Willsomebody lend me a lead pencil?"

  "What for?" said Wellington, uneasily.

  "I am going to roll your upper lid up on it," said the Doctor.

  "Oh, no, you're not," said the patient. "You can roll your own lids!"

  Then the conductor, still another conductor, wandered on the scene andasked as if it were not a world-important matter: "What's thematter--pick up a cinder?"

  "Yes. Perhaps you can get it out," the alleged doctor appealed.

  The conductor nodded: "The best way is this--take hold of thewinkers."

  "The what?" mumbled Wellington.

  "Grab the winkers of your upper eyelid in your right hand----"

  "I've got 'em."

  "Now grab the winkers of your lower eyelid in your left hand. Nowraise the right hand, push the under lid under the overlid and haulthe overlid over the underlid; when you have the overlid well over theunder----"

  Wellington waved him away: "Say, what do you think I'm trying to do?stuff a mattress? Get out of my way. I want my wife--lead me to mywife."

  "An excellent idea," said Dr. Temple, who had been praying for areconciliation.

  He guided Wellington with difficulty to the observation room and,finding Mrs. Wellington at the desk as usual, he began: "Oh, Mrs.Wellington, may I introduce you to your husband?"

  Mrs. Wellington rose haughtily, caught a sight of her sufferingconsort and ran to him with a cry of "Jimmie!"

  "Lucretia!"

  "What's happened--are you killed?"

  "I'm far from well. But don't worry. My life insurance is paid up."
/>   "Oh, my poor little darling," Mrs. Jimmie fluttered, "What on earthails you?" She turned to the doctor. "Is he going to die?"

  "I think not," said the doctor. "It's only a bad case ofcinder-in-the-eyetis."

  Thus reassured, Mrs. Wellington went into the patient's eye with herhandkerchief. "Is that the eye?" she asked.

  "No!" he howled, "the other one."

  She went into that and came out with the cinder.

  "There! It's just a tiny speck."

  Wellington regarded the mote with amazement. "Is that all? It felt asif I had Pike's Peak in my eye." Then he waxed tender. "Oh, Lucretia,how can I ever----"

  But she drew away with a disdainful: "Give me back my hand, please."

  "Now, Lucretia," he protested, "don't you think you're carrying thispretty far?"

  "Only as far as Reno," she answered grimly, which stung him to retort:"You'd better take the beam out of your own eye, now that you've takenthe cinder out of mine," but she, noting that they were the center ofinterest, observed: "All the passengers are enjoying this, my dear.You'd better go back to the cafe."

  Wellington regarded her with a revulsion to wrath. He thundered ather: "I will go back, but allow me to inform you, my dear madam, thatI'll not drink another drop--just to surprise you."

  Mrs. Wellington shrugged her shoulders at this ancient threat andJimmie stumbled back to his lair, whither the men followed him.Feeling sympathy in the atmosphere, Little Jimmie felt impelled topour out his grief:

  "Jellmen, I'm a brok'n-heartless man. Mrs. Well'n'ton is a queen amongwomen, but she has temper of tarant----"

  Wedgewood broke in: "I say, old boy, you've carried this ballast forthree days now, wherever did you get it?"

  Wellington drew himself up proudly for a moment before he slumped backinto himself. "Well, you see, when I announced to a few friends that Iwas about to leave Mrs. Well'n'ton forever and that I was going outto--to--you know."

  "Reno. We know. Well?"

  "Well, a crowd of my friends got up a farewell sort of divorcebreakfast--and some of 'em felt so very sad about my divorce that theydrank a little too much, and the rest of my friends felt so very gladabout my divorce, that they drank a little too much. And, of course, Ihad to join both parties."

  "And that breakfast," said Ashton, "lasted till the train started,eh?"

  Wellington glowered back triumphantly. "Lasted till the train started?Jellmen, that breakfast is going yet!"