Rupert Hughes

“ He seized the incredulous Snoozleums by the scruff of his neck, growling, "It's you for the baggage car ahead," and dashed out with his prey, just as Mallory, now getting new bearings on Marjorie's character, spoke across the rampart of his Napoleonically folded arms:
"Well, you're a nice one!—making violent love to a conductor before my very eyes. A minute more and I would have——"
She silenced him with a snap: "Don't you speak to me! I hate you! I hate all men. The more I know men the more I like——" this reminded her, and she asked anxiously: "Where is Snoozleums?" ”

“ A brave man can endure heartbreaks, loss of love, honor and place, but a neat man cannot abide the traces of time in his toilet. Lieutenant Mallory had seen rough service in camp and on long hikes, when he gloried in mud and disorder, and he was to see campaigns in the Philippines, when he should not take off his shoes or his uniform for three days at a time. But that was the field, and this car was a drawing room.
In this crisis in his affairs, Little Jimmie Wellington waddled into the men's room, floundering about with every lurch of the train, like a cannon loose in the hold of a ship. ”

“ And then the taxicab encountered a lamppost. They thought they had merely wrecked a motor car—and lo, they had wrecked a Paradise.
The railroad ceased to be a lover's lane and became a lingering torment; the ocean was a weltering Sahara, and the Philippines a Dry Tortugas of exile.
Mallory realized for the first time what heavy burdens he had taken on with his shoulder straps; what a dismal life of restrictions and hardships an officer's life is bound to be. It was hard to obey the soulless machinery of discipline, to be a brass-buttoned slave. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The bell began to hammer, the train to creak and writhe and click. The conductor pulled his cap down hard and started forward. Marjorie seized his sleeve: "Oh, I implore you, don't consign that poor sweet child to the horrid baggage car. If you have a human heart in your breast, hear my prayer."
The conductor surrendered unconditionally: "Oh, Lord, all right, all right. I'll lose my job, but if you'll keep quiet, I'll bring him to you." And he slunk out meekly, followed by the passengers, who were shaking their heads in wonderment at this most amazing feat of this most amazing bride. ”

“ 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." ”

“ The gaping passengers saw what was probably the largest pair of pyjamas in Chicago. They saw Little Jimmie, smothering back his giggles like a schoolboy, tiptoe from his berth, enter the next berth, brushing the porter aside, climb on the seat, and clutch the ribbon that pulled the stopper from the trap.
Down upon the unsuspecting elopers came this miraculous cloudburst of ironical rice, and with it came Little Jimmie Wellington, who lost what little balance he had, and catapulted into their midst like the offspring of an iceberg. ”

“ As a matter of romantic fact, each was on fire with love, and aching madly with regret. Each longed for strength to whirl round with outflung arms of reconciliation, and neither could be so brave. And so they parted, each harking back fiercely for one word 202 of recall from the other. But neither spoke, and Marjorie sat staring at nothing through raining eyes, while Mallory strode into the Men's Room as melancholy as Hamlet with Yorick's skull in his hands. ”

“ THE TRAIN BUTCHER Mallory was dragging out a miserable existence with a companion who was neither maid, wife, nor widow and to whom he was neither bachelor, husband, nor relict.
They were suffering brain-fag from their one topic of conversation, and heart-fag from rapture deferred. Marjorie had pretended to take a nap and Mallory had pretended that he would leave her for her own sake. Their contradictory chains were beginning to gall.
Mallory sat in the smoking room, and threw aside a half-finished cigar. Life was indeed nauseous when tobacco turned rank on his lips. ”

“ Cars are mere vehicles, but locomotives have souls. The express engines roll in or stalk out with grandeur and ease. They are like emperors. They seem to look with scorn at the suburban engines snorting and grunting and shaking the arched roof with their plebeian choo-choo as they puff from shop to cottage and back.
The trainmen take their cue from the behavior of their locomotives. The conductor of a transcontinental 17 nods to the conductor of a shuttle-train with less cordiality than to a brakeman of his own. The engineers of the limiteds look like senators in overalls. ”

“ 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!" ”

“ The girl, very consciously unconscious of the admiration, moved demurely along, with eyes downcast, but at such an angle that she could take in the sensation she was creating; she went along picking up stares as if they were bouquets.
Her demeanor was a remarkable compromise between outrageous flirtation and perfect respectability. But she was looking back so intently that when she moved into the observation room she walked right into the newspaper Mallory was holding out before him. ”

“ Ashton, who had traveled this way many times, had made himself fascinatingly horrifying the evening before and ruined several breakfasts that morning in the dining-car, by regaling the passengers with stories of pioneer ordeals, men and women massacred in burning wagons, or dragged away to fiendish cruelty and obscene torture, staked out supine on burning wastes with eyelids cut off, bound down within reach of rattlesnakes, subjected to every misery that human deviltry could devise. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Temple almost collapsed at this double shock: "Ci—cigars?"
"Yes; cigarettes are too strong for me; will you try one of my pets?"
Mrs. Temple was about to express her repugnance at the thought, but Mrs. Wellington thrust before her a portfolio in which nestled such dainty shapes of such a warm and winsome brown, that Mrs. Temple paused to stare, and, like Mother Eve, found the fruit of knowledge too interesting once seen to reject with scorn. She hung over the cigar case in hesitant excitement one moment too long. ”

“ They focussed the attention on themselves again, however, with a ferocious: "Here, hands up!" But they did not see Mr. and Mrs. Fosdick steal a kiss behind their upraised arms, for the robber to whose lot Mallory fell was gloating over his well-filled wallet. Mallory saw it go with fortitude, but noting a piece of legal paper, he said: "Say, old man, you don't want that marriage license, do you?"
The robber handled it as if it were hot—as if he had burned his fingers on some such document once before, and he stuffed it back in Mallory's pocket. "I should say not. Keep it. Turn round." ”

“ She advanced on the innocent conductor, as the lady from Sorek must have sidled up to Samson, coquetting with one arch hand and snipping the shears with the other.
The stupefied Mallory saw Marjorie in a startling imitation of herself at her sweetest; only now it was brazen mimicry, yet how like! She went forward as the shyest young thing in the world, pursed her lips into an ecstatic simper, and began on the unsuspecting official:
"Isn't the country perfectly——"
"Yes, but I'm getting used to it," the conductor growled, without looking up. ”

“ 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 analysis. 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." ”

“ Lathrop—"the zhealousy of a cobra, the flirtatiousness of a humming bird." Mr. Lathrop was glaring round like a man-eating tiger, but Wellington talked on. "She drinks, swears, and smokes cigars, otherwise she's fine—a queen among women."
Neither this amazing vision of womankind, nor this beautiful example of longing for confession and sympathy awakened a response in the Englishman's frozen bosom. His only action was another violent effort to disengage his cramped knees from the knees of his tormentor; his only comment a vain and weakening cry for help, "Pawtah! Pawtah!" ”

“ Dr. Temple was moved to a violent outburst for him: "Well, that's the darnedest bridal couple—I only said darn, my dear."
He was still more startled when Mr. Baumann, cruising along the aisle, bent over to murmur: "Can I fix you a nice divorce?"
Dr. Temple rose in such an attitude of horror as 261 he assumed in the pulpit when denouncing the greatest curse of society, and Mr. Baumann retired. As he passed Mallory he cast an appreciative glance at Marjorie and, tapping Mallory's shoulder, whispered: "No vonder you want a marriage license. I'll be in the next car, should you neet me." ”

“ He seemed a trifle afraid himself and his gaze was askance as he urged: "But the train will start soon, Edith—and then we shall be safe."
Mrs. Fosdick had a genius for inventing unpleasant 70 possibilities. "But what if your former wife or my former husband should have a detective on board?"
"A detective?—poof!" He snapped his fingers in bravado. "You are with your husband, aren't you?"
"In Illinois, yes," she admitted, very dolefully. "But when we come to Iowa, I'm a bigamist, and when we come to Nebraska, you're a bigamist, and when we come to Wyoming, we're not married at all." ”

“ Just as Kathleen flung her head in baffled vexation, and Mallory started to slink back to Marjorie, with another defeat, there came an abrupt shock as if that gigantic child to whom our railroad trains are toys, had reached down and laid violent hold on the Trans-American in full career. ”

“ Mallory, your husband is the bravest man on earth."
"Oh, I know he is," Marjorie beamed, and added with a spasm of conscience: "but he isn't my husband!"
Mrs. Temple gasped in horror, but Marjorie dragged her close, and poured out the whole story, while the other passengers recovered their properties with as much joy as if they were all new gifts found on a bush.
Meanwhile, under Mallory's guidance, the porter fastened the outlaws together back to back with the straps of their own feed-bags. The porter was rejoicing that his harvest of tips was not blighted after all. ”

“ He bent over the chair into which Mallory had flopped, and said in a tense, low tone: "You look like a t'oroughbred sport. I'm trying to make up a game of stud poker. Will you join me?"
Mallory shook his heavy head in refusal, and with dull eyes watched the man, whose profession he no longer misunderstood, saunter up to the blissful Doctor from Ypsilanti, and murmur again:
"Will you join me?"
"Join you in what, sir?" said Dr. Temple, with alert courtesy.
"A little game."
"I don't mind," the doctor smiled, rising with amiable readiness. "The checkers are in the next room." ”

“ Mallory gazed at her with almost more wonderment than delight. This was another flashlight on her character. Most courtships are conducted under a rose-light in which wooer and wooed wear their best clothes or their best behavior; or in a starlit, 234 moonlit, or gaslit twilight where romance softens angles and wraps everything in velvet shadow. Then the two get married and begin to live together in the cold, gray daylight of realism, with undignified necessities and harrowing situations at every step, and disillusion begins its deadly work. ”

“ American children breathe in this desperado romance with their earliest traditions, and Dr. Temple felt all his boyhood zest surge back with a boy's tremendous rapture in a deed of derring-do. And now nothing could check his swagger, as he said to Mallory:
"What shall we do with these dam-ned sinners?"
He felt like apologizing for the clerical relapse into a pulpitism, but Mallory answered briskly: "We'd better take them into the smoking room. They scare the ladies. But first, will the conductor take those bags and distribute the contents to their rightful owners?" ”