Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 252, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 October 1912 — EXCUSE ME! [ARTICLE]

EXCUSE ME!

By Rupert Hughes

Novelized from file Comedy of the Same Name ILLUSTRATED From Photographs of ths Ploy ■» Produced By Henry W. Savaie

OopyrlgUt, aau, bT H. K. JV o* , 8 SYNOPSIS. Lieut. Harry Mallory Is ordered to the Philippines. He and Marjorie Newton decide to elope, but wreck of taxicab prevents their seeing minister on the way to the train. Transcontinental train is taking on passengers. Porter has a lively time with an Englishman and Ira Lathrop, a Yankee business man. The alopers have an exciting time getting to' the train. "Little Jimmie” Wellington, bound for Reno to get a divorce, boards train in maudlin condition. Later Mrs. Jimriiie appears. She is also Bound for Reno with same object. Likewise Mrs. Sammy Whitcomb. Latter blames Mrs. Jimmie for her marital troubles. Classmates of Mallory decorate bridal berth. Rev. and Mrs. Temple start on a vacation. They decide to cut loose and Temple removes evidence of his calling. Marjorie decides to let Mallory proceed alone, but train- starts while they are lost in farewell. Passengers Join Mallory’s classmates in giving couple wedding haring. CHAPTER X—(Continued). He sank into the seat opposite Marjorie, who gave him one terrified glance, and burst into fresh sobs: “Oh—oh —boo-hoo —I’m so unhap — hap—py." Perhaps Mrs. Temple was a little miffed at the couple that had led her astray and opened her own honeymoon with a wanton fib. In any case, the best consolation she could offer Marjorie was a perfunctory pat, and a cynicism: “There, there, dear! You don’t know what real unhappiness Is yet. Wait till you’ve been married a while.” And then she noted a' startling lack of completeness In the bride’s hand. “Why—my dear! —where’s your wedding ring?’’ v With what he considered great presence of mind, Mallory explained: “It—it slipped off-J—l picked It up. I have it here.” And he took the little gold band from his waistcoat and tried to jam it on Marjorie’s right tntSLah. “Not on the thumb!” Mrs. Temple cried. “Dofi’t you know?” “You see, it’s my first marriage.” “You poor boy—this finger!" And Mrs. Temple, raising Marjorie’s limphand, selected the proper digit, and held It forward, while Mallory pressed the fatal circlet home. And then Mrs. Temple, having completed their installation as man and wife, utterly confounded their confusion by her final effort at comfort: “Well, my dears, I’ll go hack to my seat, and leave you alone with your dear husband.” v“My dear what?” Marjorie mumbled Inanely, and began, to sniffle again. Whereupon Mrs. Temple resigned her to Mallory, and consigned her to fate with a consoling platitude: “Cheer up, my dear, you’ll be all right in the morning.” Marjorie and Mallory’s eyes met In one wild clash £ and then both stared into the window, and did not notice that the shades were down. CHAPTER XI. • ”” { A Chance Encounter. While Mrs. Temple was confiding to her husband that the agitated couple in the next seat had just come from a wedding-factory, and Jiad got on while he was' lost In tobacco land, the people in the seat bn the other side of them were engaged in a little drama of their own. Ira Lathrop, known to all who knew him as a woman-hating-snapping-tur-tle, was so busily engaged trying to drag the farthest Invading rice grains out of the back of his neck, that he was late in realizing his whereabouts. When he raised his bead, he found that he had crowded into a seat with an uncomfortable looking woman, who crowded against the window with oldmaidenly timidity. He felt some apology to be necessary, and he snarled: "Disgusting things, these weddings!” After he heard this, it did pot sound entirely felicitous,_so he'grudgingly ventured: “Excuse me—you married?” -She denied the soft impeachment so heartily that he softened a little: “You’re a sensible woman. I, guess you and I are the only sensible people on ttys train.” “It—seems—*o,’’ Bhe giggled, it vKia the first time her splnstershtp had been taken as material for a compliment. Something la the girlish - giggle, and the strangely young smile that swept twenty years from her face and belled the silver lines in her hair, seemed to catch the old bachelor's attention. He stared at her so fiercely that she looked about for a way to escape. Then a curiously anxious, almost a hungry, look softened his leonine jowls into a boyish eagerness, and his growl became a sort of gruff purr: ••Say, you took something like an old sweetheart —er —friend —of mine. Were yon ever In Brattieboro, VtT" A Rush wanned her cheek, and a sense of home wanned her prim speech, as she confessed:

"I came from there originally • “So did t, n said Ira Lathrop, leaning closer, and beaming like a big sun: “I don’t suppose you remember Ira Lathrop?” - ~ ~ The old maid stared at the bachelor as If she were trying to .see the boy she had known, through the mask that time had modeled on his face. And then she was a girl again, and her voice chimed as she cried:. “Why, Ira!—Mr. Lathrop!—ls It you?" She gave him her hand—both her hands, and he smothered them in one big paw and laid the other on for extra warmth, a 3 he nodded his savage head and roared as gentle as a sucking dove: . “Well, well! Annie —Anne —Miss (iattie! WhaC-do you think of that?” Thsy gossiped across the chasm of of years’ about people and things, ana knew nothing of the excitement so close to them, saw nothing of Chicago slipping back into the distance, with Its many lights shooting across the windows like hurled torches.' Suddenly a twinge of ancient jealousy shot through the® man’s heart; recurring to old emotions. “So you're not married, Annie. Whatever became of that fellow who used to hang round you all the timer’ “Charlie Selby?” She blushed at the name, and thrilled at the luxury of meeting jealousy. “Oh, he entered the church. He’s a minister out In Ogden, Utah.” “I always knew he’d never amount to much,” was Lathrop’s epitaph on his old rival. Then he started with a new twinge: “You bound'for Ogden, too?” “Oh, no,” she smiled, enraptured at the new sensation of making a man anxious, and understanding all in a flash the motives that make coquettes. Then she told him her destination. “I’m on my way to China.” “China!” he exclaimed. “So’m I!” She stared at him with a new thought, and gushed: “Oh, Ira —are you a missionary, too?” “Missionary? Hell, no!” he roared. “Excuse me —I’m an importer—Anne, I—I—” But the sonorous swear reverberated In their ears like a smitten bell, afid he blushed for it, but could not recall It.

CHAPTER XII. The Needle in the Haystack. The almost-married couple sat long in mutual terror and a common paralysis of Ingenuity. Marjorie, for lack of anything better to do, was absentmindedly twisting Snoozleum’s ears, while he, that pocket abridgment of a dog, In a welL meaning effort to divert her from her evident grief, made a great pretense of ferocity, growling and threatening to bite her fingers off. The new ring attracted his special jealousy. He was growing discouraged at the 111-success of his Impersonation of a wolf, and dejected at being so crassly ignored, when he Suddenly became, in his turn, a center of Interest. Marjorie was awakened from her trance of inanition by the porter's voice. His plantation voice was ordinarily as thick and sweet aB his own New Orleans sorghum, but now it had a bitterness. that curdled the blood: “ 'Souse me, but how did you-all git that theah dog In this heah cah?” “Snoozleums Is always with me," said Marjorie briskly, as if that settled it, and turned for confirmation to the dog himself, “aren’t you, Snoozleums?” “Well," the porter drawled, trying to be gracious with his great power, “the rules don’t 'low no live 1 stock In the sleepin’ cars, ’ceptin’ humans.” Marjorie rewarded his condescension with a blunt: “Snoozleums is more human than you are.’’ “I p’sume he is,” the porter admitted, “but he can’t make up berths. Anyway, the rules says dogs, goes with the baggage.” » Marjorie swept rules aside with a defiant: “I don’t care. 1 won’t be separated from my Snoozleums.” She looked to Mallory for support, but he was too sorely troubled with greater anxieties to be capable of any action. The porter tried' persuasion: “You betta iemme take him, the conducta is wuss'n what I am. He th’owed a couple of dogs out the window tnp befo’ last.” “The brute!" “Oh, yassum, he is a regulah brute. He just loves to hear’m splosh when they light.” Noting the shiver that shook the girl, the porter offered a bit of consolation: “Better lemme have the pore little thing tip in the baggage cah. He’ll be in charge of a lovely baggage-smash-er." “Are you sure he’s a nice man?" '“Oh, yassum, he’s death on trunks, but he's a natural born angel , to dogs." “Well, if I must, I must,” she sobbed. “Poor little Snoozleums! Can be come back and see me tomorrow 7” Marjorie’s tears were splashing on the puzzled dog, who nestled close, with a foreboding of disaster. “I reckon p’haps you’d better visit him." “Poor dear little Snoozleums —good night, my little darling. Poor little child —it’s the first night he’s slept all by his ’ittle lonesome, and —” The porter was growing desperate. He clapped hia band* together Impatiently and urged: T think I bear that conducts cornin’." & The ruse succeeded. Marjorie fairly forced the dog on him. “Quick — hide him—hurry! ” she gasped, and sank on the seat completely crushed. “11l be so lonesome without Snoozfeuma.” , , -V Mallory felt called upon to remind

her of his presenoe. "I—l'm here, Marjorie.” She looked at him Just once —at him, the source of all her troubles —buried her head In her arms, and resufned her grief. Mallory stared at her helplessly, then rose and bent over to whisper: / "I’m going to look through the train.” “Dh, don’t leave me,” she pleaded, clinging to him with a dependence that restored his respect. “I mfist find a clergyman,” he whispered. “I’ll be back the minute I find one, and I’ll bring him with me.’’ The porter thought he wanted the dog back, and quickened his pace till he reached the corridor, where Mallory overtook him and asked, in an effort at casual indifference. If he had seen anything of a clergyman on board, « “Ain’t seen nothin’ that even looks like one.” said the porter. Then he hastened ahead to the baggage car with the squirming Snoozleums, while Mallory fallowed slowly, going from seat to seat and car to car, subjecting all the males to an inspection that rendered some ol them indignant, others of them uneasy. If dear old Doctor Temple could only have known what Mallory was hunting, he would have snatched off the mask, and thrown aside the secular scarlet tie at all costs. But poor Mallory, unable to recognize a clergyman so dyed-in-the-wool as Doctor Temple, sitting in the very next seat —how could he be expected to pick out another in the long and crowded train? All clergymen look alike when they are in conventiqn assembled, but sprinkled through a crowd they are not so easily distinguished. In the sleeping car bound for Portland, Mallory picked one man as a clergyman. He had a lean, ascetio face, solemn eyes, and he was talking to his seat-mate in an oratorical manner. Mallory bent down and tapped the man’s shoulder. The effect was surprising. The man jumped as if he were stabbed, and turned a pale, frightened face on Mallory, who murmured: “Excuse me, do you happen to be a clergyman?” _ A look of relief stole over the man's features, followed closely by a scowl .of,wounded vanity: “No. damn you, I don’t happen to be a parson. I have chosen to be—' well, if you had watched the billboards In Chicago during our run, you would not need to ask who I am!” Mallory mumbled an apology hurried on, just overhearing his victim’s sigh: “Such is fame!” He saw two or three other clerical persons in that car, hut feared to touch their shoulders. One man in the last seat held him specially, and he hid In the tuen of the corridor, in the hope of eavesdropping some clue. This man was bent and scholastic of appearance, and wore heavy spectacles and a heavy beard, which Mallory took for a guaranty that he was not another actor. And he was reading what appeared to be printer’s proofs. Mallory felt certain that they, were a volume of sermons. He lingered timorously In the environs for some time before the man spoke at all to the dreary-looking woman at his side. Then the stranger spoke. And this is what he said and read: “I fancy this will make the bigots sit up and take notice, mother: ’lf there ever was a person named Moses, it is certain, from the writings ascribed to him, that he disbelieved the Egyptian theory of a life after death, and combated it as a heathenish superstition. The Judaic idea of a future existence was undoubtedly acquired from the Assyrians, during the captivity.’ ’’ He doubtless read much more, but Mallory fled to the next car. There he found a man In a frock coat talking solemnly to another of equal solemnity. The seat next them was unoccupied, and Mallory dropped into it, perking his ears backward for news. “Was you ever in Moline?" one voice asked. “Was I?” the other muttered. “Wasn’t I run out of there by one of my audiences. I was givin' hypnotic demonstrations, and 1 -bad a run-in with one of my ’horses,’ and he done me dirt. Right in the midst of one of his cataleptic trances, he got down from the chairs where I had stretched him out and hollered: ‘He’s a bum faker, gents, and owes me two weeks’ pay.’ Thank Gawd, there was a back door openin’ on a dark alley leadin’ to the switch yard. I caught a caboose just aB a freight train was pullin'out.” Mallory could hardly get strength to rise and continue his search. Oh his way forward he met the conductor, crossing a vestibule between cars. A happy thought occurred to Mallory. He said: “Excuse me, but have yon any preachers on board?" “None so far.” “Are you sure?" “Positive.” "How can yqj^tell?” “Well, if a grown man offers me a half-fare ticket, I guess that’s a pretty good sign, ain’t it?” Mallory guessed that it was, and turned back, hopeless and helpless. (TO BE CONTINUED.)