Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 254, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 October 1912 — EXCUSE ME! [ARTICLE]

EXCUSE ME!

By Ruport Hughes

NweUsed from ILLUSTRATED rss-ffi

OopyrUht, MU, lylt Oa S BYNOPBIS. Lieut, Harry Mallory Is ordered to the Philippines. He and Marjorie Newton decide to elope, but wreck of taxlpab 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 Lathrap, a Yankee business man. The elopers have an exciting time getting ®to the Bain. "little Jimmie" Wellington, bound ftr Reno to get % dlvorpe, boards train in maudlin condition. Later Mrs. Jimmie •spears. She is also bound for Renowith 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 oonple wedding nasing. Marjorie Is distracted. Ira Lathrop, woman-hating bachelor, discovers an old sweetheart, Anne Gattle, a fellow passenger. Mallory vainly hunts for a preacher among the passengers. CHAPTER XIII. Hostilities Bet *»• During Mallory’s absence, Marjorie had met with a little adventure of her own. Ira Lathrop finished his reencounter with Anne Gattle shortly after Mallory set out stalking clergymen. In the mingled confusion of ending his one romantic flame still glowing on a vestal altar, and of shocking her with an escape of profanity, he hacked away from her presence, and sank into his own berth. He realised that he was not alone. Somebody was alongside. He turned to find the great tear-spent eyes of Marjorie staring at him. He rose with a recrudescence of blB womanhating wrath, and dashing up the sdsle, found the porter Just returning trod! the baggage car. He seized the black factotum and growled: "Say, porter, there’s a woman In nay berth.” The porter chuckled, incredulous: “Woman in ye’ berth!” “Yes—get her out." - “Yassah,” the porter nodded, and advanced on Marjorie with a gentle, * 'Sense me, missus—yo’ berth Is numba one.” “1 don’t care,” snapped Marjorie. “I won’t take It.” “But thiß un belongs to that gentleman.” “He’ can have mine—ours —Mr. Mallory’s,” cried Marjorie, pointing to the white-ribboned tent in the farther end of the car. Then she gripped the arms of the seat, as If defying eviction. The porter stared at her In helpless chagrin. Then he shuffled hack murmured: “I reckon you’d betta put her out.’’ Lathrop withered the coward with one contemptuous look, and strode down the aisle with a determined grimness. He took his ticket from his pocket as a clinching proof of his title, and thrust it out at Marjorie. She gave It one indifferent glance, and then her eyes and mouth puckered, as If she had munched a green persimmon, and a long low wall like a distant engine-whistle, stole from her lips. Ira Lathrop stared at her to blank wrath, doddered Irresolutely, and roared: “Agh, let her have It!” The porter smiled triumphantly, and said: “She says yon kin have her berth." He pointed at the bridal arbor. Lathrop almost exploded at the Idea. £ Now he felt a hand on bis shoulder, and turned to see Little Jimmie Wellington emerging from his berth with an enormous smile: "Bay, Pop, have you seen lovely riee-trap? Stick around till she flops.' % But Lathrop flung away to the franking room. Little Jimmie turned to the Jovial negro: “Porter, porter.” ’Tm right by yon." "What time d’you say we get to Reno?” “Mawnin’ of the fo’th day, sah.” "Well, call me Just before we roll In” And he rolled In. His last words down the aisle and met Mrs. Little Jimmie Wellington jayst returning from the Women s Rodin, where ahe b»d sought nepenthe in more than ona of her exquisite little cigars. The familiar voice, familiarly bibulous, •mote her ear with amazement. She beckoned the porter to her anxiously. “Porter! Porter! Do you kupw the name of the man who Just hurtled la?” "No’m.” said the porter. ’’l reckon he’s so broken up he ain’t got any name left." ‘lt eouldn’t be,” Mrs. Jimmie mused. “Things can be sometimes," said “Yen msy up my berth now,' ifrs. Wellington, forgetting that Anne Gattle was still there. Mrs. Wellington hastened to apologize, and beared her to stay, but the spinster mated to be Car away from the dls-

tnthing atmosphere of divorce. She was dreaming Already with her eyes open, and she sank into number atxln a lotus-eater’s reverie. Mrs. Wellington gathered certain things together and took up her handbag, to return to the Women’s Room, Just as Mrs. Whitcomb came forth from the curtains of her own berth, where she had made certain preliminaries to disrobing, and put on a light, decidedly negligee negligee. The two women collided ih the aisle, whirled on one Another, as women do when they Jostle, recognized each other with wild stares of amazement. set their teeth, and made a simultaneous dash along the corridor, shoulder wrestling with shoulder. They the door marked “Women” at the same Inßtant, and as neither would have dreamed of offering the other a courtesy, they squeezed through together In a Kilkenny jumble. CHAPTER XIV. The Dormitory on Wheels. Of all the shocking institutions in human history, the sleeping car is the most shocking—or would be, If we were not so used to It. There can be no doubt that we are the most moral nation on earth, for we admit It ourselves. Perhaps we prove it, too, by the Arcadian prosperity of these twostory hotels on wheels, where miscellaneous travelers dwell In complete promiscuity, and sleep almost side by side, in apartments, or compartments, separated only by a plank ancPa curtain, and guarded only by one sleepy negro. After the fashion of the famous country whose inhabitants' earned a meager sustenance by taking in each other’s washing, so in Sleeping Carpathia we attain a meager respectability by everybody’s chaperoning everybody else. So topsy-turvied. Indeed, are our notions, once we are aboard a train, that the staterooms alone are regarded with suspicion; we question the motives of those who must have a room to themselves! —a room with a real door! that locks! I And, now, on this sleeping car, prettily named “Snowdrop,” scenes were enacting that would have thrown our great-grandmothers into fits —scenes which, if we found them in France, or Japan, we should view with alarm as almost Unmentionable evidence of the moral obliquity of those nations. But this was our own country —the part of It which admits that It is the best part —the moralest part, the staunch middle west. This was Illinois. Yet dozens of cars were beholding similar immodesties in chastest Illinois, and all over the map, thousands of people, In hundreds of cars, were permitting total strangers to view preparations which have always, hitherto, been reserved for the most intimate and legalized relations. The porter was deftly transforming the day-coach into a narrow lane entirely surrounded lyr draperies. Behind most of the portieres, fluttering In the lightest breeze, and perilously following the hasty passer-by, homely offices were being enacted. The population of this little town was going to bed.' The porter was putting them to sleep as if they were children in a nursery, and he a black mammy. The frail walls of little sanctums were bulging with the bodies of people disrobing in the aisle, with nothing between them and the beholder’s eye but a clinging Curtain that explained what it did not reveal. From apertures here and there disembodied feet were protruding and mysterious hands were removing shoes and other things. Women in risky attire were scooting to one end of the car, and men In shirt sleeves, or less, were hastening to the other. When Mallory returned to the “Snowdrop,” his ear was greeted by the thud of dropping shoes. He found Marjorie being rapidly Immured, like Poe’s prisoner, in a jail of closing walls. She was u unspeakably ill at ease, and by the irony of custom, the one person on whom she depended for protection. was the one person whose contiguity was most alarming—and all for lack of a brief trialogue, with a clergyman, as the tertlum quid. When Mallory’s careworn face appeared round the edge of the partition now erected between her and tUe abode of Dr. 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, whaj shall we do?” He answered dismally and Ineffectively: “We’ll have to go on pretending to be —Just friends. “But everybody thinks we’re married.” “That’s so!” he admitted, with the Imbecility of fatigued hope. They sat a while listening to the porter slipping sheets into place and thumping pillows into cases, a few doors down the street. He would be ready for them at any moment. Something most be done, but what? what? CHAPTER XV. A Premature Divorce. Suddenly Marjoril’a heart gave a leap of Joy. She was having another Idea. “I'll tell you, Harry. We’ll pretend to quarrel, and then—” "And then you can leave me In high dudgeon.” The ruse struck him as a trifle an- ] convincing. “Don’t yon think it looks j kind of Improbable on—on—such an j occasion?” I Marjorie blushed, and lowered her

eyes end her votes: “Can you largest anything better?” “No, but—” “Then, well have to quarrel, dart* tag.” He yielded., for lack of a hettdfr idea: “All right, beloved. How shall we begin?” On close approach, the idea did seem rather impossible to her. "How could I ever quarrel with you, my love?” she cooed. He gazed at her with a rush' ot lovely tenderneSß: "And how could 1 ever speak crossly to you?" “We never shall h&ve a harsh word, shall we?” she resolved/ "Never!” he seconded. So that resolution passed the house unanimously. They held hands in luxury a while, then she began again: “Still, we must pretend. You start it, love.” “No, you start it,” he pleaded. - “You ought to," she beamed. "You got me Into this mess.’’ The word slipped out Mallory started: “Mess! How is it my fault? Good Lord, are you going to begin chucking it up?” “Well, you must admit, darling," Marjorie urged, “that you’ve bungled everything pretty badly.” It was so undeniable that he could only groan: “And I suppose I’ll hear of this till my dying day, dearest.” Marjorie had a little temper all -her own. So she defended it; “If you are so afraid of my temper, love, perhaps you'd better call it all off before it's too late.” “I didn’t Bay anything about your temper, sweetheart,” Mallory insisted. “You did, too, honey. You said I’d chuck this up till your dying day. As If I had such a disposition! You can stay here.” She rose to her feet. He pressed her back with a decisive motion, and demanded: “Where are you going?” “Up in the baggage car with Snoozleums,” she sniffled. ‘‘He’s the only one that doesn’t find fault with me.” Mallory was stung to action by this orlslB: “Walt,” he said. He leaned out and motioned down the alley. “Porter! Walt a moment, darling. Porter!” The porter arrived with a half-fold-ed blanket In his hands, and his üßual "Yassah!” Beckoning him closer, Mallory mumbled In a low tone: “Is there an extra berth on this car?” The porter’s *eyes seemed to rebuke his ears. “Does you want this upper made up?” “No —of course not.” “Ex—excuse me, I thought—” “Don’t you dare to think!” Mallory thundered. "Isn’t there another lower berth r The porter breathed hard, and gave this bridal couple up as a riddle that followed no known rules. He went to find the sleeping car conductor, and returned with the .Information that the diagram showed nobody assigned to number three. “Then I'll take number three,” said Mallory, poking money at the porter. And still the porter could not understand. “Now, lemme onderstan’ you-all," he stammered. “Does you both move over to numba three, or does yo’—yo’ lady remain heah, wbile jest you preambulates?” “Just I preambulate, you black hound!” Mallory answered, in a threatening tone. The porter could understand that, at least, and he bristled away with a meek: “Yessah. Numba three Is yours, sah.” The troubled features of the baffled porter cleared up as by magic when he arrived at number three, for there he found his tyrant and tormentor, the English Invader. He remembered how indignantly Mr. Wedgewood had refused to show his ticket, how cocksure he was of his number, how he had leased the porter’s services as a sort of private nurse, and had paid no advance roy* alties. (TO BE CONTINUED.)