Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 283, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 November 1912 — EXCUSE ME! [ARTICLE]

EXCUSE ME!

By Rupert Hughes

Novelized from the Comedy of the Same Name ILLUSTRATED From Photographs of tb* Play as Produced By Henry W. Savage

Copyright, UU, hjr H. K. Fly 00. 22 SYNOPSIS. Lieut. Harry 1 Mallory is ordered to the Philippines. H& and Marjorie Newton decide to elope, but wreck of taxicab prevents their seeing minister on the way to the train. Transcontinental train is takr Ing on passengers. Porter has a lively time with an Englishman and Ira Lathrop, a Yankee business man. The elopers 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. Jimmie 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 hazing. Marjorie is distracted. Ira Lathrop, woman-hating bachelor, discovers an old sweetheart, Annie Gattle, a fellow passenger. Mallory vainly hunts for a preacher among the passengers. Mrs. Wellington hears Little Jimfnie's voice. Later» she meets Mrs. Whitcomb. Mallory reports to Marjorie his failure to find a preacher. They decide to pretend a quarrel and Mallory finds a vacant berth. Mrs. Jimmie discovers Wellington on the train. Mallory again makes an unsuccessful hunt for a preacher. Dr. Temple poses as a physician. Mrs. Temple Is induced by Mrs, Wellington to smoke a cigar. Sight of preacher on a station platform raises Mallory's hopes, but he takes another train. Missing hand baggage compels the couple to borrow from passengers. Jimmie gets a cinder in his eye and Mrs. Jimmie gives first aid. Coolness is then resumed. Still no clergyman. More borrowing. Dr. Temple puzzled by behavior of different couples. Marjorie’s jealousy aroused by Mallory’s baseball jargon. Marjorie suggests wrecking the train in hoi>es that accident will produce a preacher Also tries to induce the conductor to hold the train so she can shop. Marjorie s dog Is missing. She pulls the cord, stopping the train. Conductor restores dog and lovers quarrel. Lathrop wires for a preacher to marry him and Miss Gattle. Mallory tells Lathrop of his predicament and arranges to borrow the preacher. ICltty Lewellyn, former sweetheart of Mallory's. appears and arouses Marjorie s jealousy. Preacher boards train. After marrying Lathrop and Miss Gattle the preacher escapes Mallory by leaping from moving train. CHAPTER XXXl.—Continued. N Mallory caught his hand as it turned the knob of the door and drew him back. Marjorie, equally caught his other elbow: “Please don’t go ” Mallory urged, "until you’ve married us.” The Reverend Charles stared at his captors in amazement: “But my dear man, the train's movj, ’ Marjorie clung ail the tighter and invited him to “Come on to the next ■top.” “But my dear lady,” Selby gasped, ‘it’s impossible.” “You’ve just got to,” Mallory lnsisted. “Release me, please.” “Never!” “How dare you!” the parson shrieked, and with a sudden wriggle writhed out of his coat, leaving it in Marjorie’s hands. He darted to the door and flung it open, with Mallory hot after him. The train was-kicking up a cloud of dust and getting its stride. The kidnapped clergyman paused a moment, aghast at the speed with which the ground was being paid out. Then he climbed the brass- rail and. with a hasty prayer, dropped overboard. Mallory lunged at him, and seized him by his reversed collar. But the collar alone remained in his clutch. The parson was almost lost in the dust he created as he struck, bounded and rolled till he came to a stop, with his stars and his prayers to thank for injuries to nothing worse than his dignity and other small clothes. Mallory returned to the observation room and flung the collar and bib to the floor in a fury of despair, howling: “He got away! He got away!” CHAPTER XXXtt. The Empty Berth. i The one thing Mallory was begin 7 ning to learn about Marjorie was that she would never Take the point o£ view he expected, and never proceed along the lines of his logic. She had grown furious at him for what he cotild not help. She had told him tfaatsbe would marry him out es spite. She had commanded him to pursue and apprehend the flying parson. He failed and returned crestfallen and wondering what new form her rage would take. And, lo and behold, when she saw him so downcast and helpless, she rushed to him with caresses, cuddled his broad shoulders against . her breast, and smothered him. It was the sincerity of his dejection 3hd the complete helplessness he displayed that won her woman’s heart. ... 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 woded wear their best clothes on their best behavior; or in a starlit, moonlit, or gaslit twilight where ro.mance 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. This young couple was undergoing all the inconveniences and temper-ex-posures of marriage without its blessed compelflsations. They promised to be well acquainted before they were wed. If they still wanted each other After this ordeal, they were pretty well assured that (heir marriage would not be a failure. Mallory rejoiced to see that the hurricane of Marjorie’s jealousy had only whipped up the surface of her soul.—The great— were—still calm and unmoved, and her love for Aim was in and of the depths. Soon after leaving Ogden, the train entered upon the great bridge across the Great Salt Lake. The other passengers were staring at the enormous engineering masterpiece and the conductor was pointing out that, in order to save forty miles and the crossing of two mountain chains, the railroad had devoted four years of labor and millions of dollars to stretching a thirty-mile bridge across this inland ocean. But Marjorie and Mallory never noticed it. They were absorbed An exploring each other’s souls, and they had safely bridged the Great Salt Lake which the first big bitter jealousy across every matrimonial route. They were undisturbed in their voyage, for all the other passengers had their noses flattened against the window panes of the other cars —all except one couple, gazing each at each through time-wrinkled eyelids touched with the magic of a tardy honeymoon. For all that Anne and Ira knew, the Great Salt Lake was a moonswept lagoon, and the arid mountains of Nevada which the train went seal-. Ing, were the very hillsides of Arct cia. But the other passengers soon came trooping back into the. observation room. Ira had told them nothing of .Mallory’s confession; —In —the —first place, he was a man who had learned to keep a secret, and in the second place, he had forgotten that such persons as Mallory or his Marjorie existed. All the world was summed up in the fearsomely happy little spinster who had moved up into his section — the section which had begun its caleer draped in satin ribbons unwittingly prophetic. The communion of Mallory and Marjorie under the benison of reconciliation was invaded by the jokes of the other passengers, unconsciously ironic. Dr. Temple chaffed them amiably: “You two will have to take a back seat now. We’ve got a new bridal couple to amuse us.”' And Mrs. Temple welcomed them with: “You’re only old married folks, like us.” The Mallorys were used to the misunderstanding. But the misplaced witticisms gave them reassurance that their secret was safe yet a little while. At their dinner-table, however, and in the long evening that followed they were haunted by the fact that this was their last night on the train, and no minister to be expected. And now once more the Mallorys regained the star roles in the esteem ot the audience, for once more quarreled at good-night-kissing x time. Once more they required two sections, while Anne Gattle's berth was not even made up. It remained empty, like a deserted nest, for its occupant had flown south.

CHAPTER XXXIII. Fresh Trouble Daijy. The following morning the daylight creeping into section number one found Ira and Anne staring at each other. Ira was tousled and Anne was unkempt, but her blush still gave her cheek at least an Indian summer glow. a violent effort to reach the space between her shoulder blades, she was compelled to appeal to her new master to act as her new maid. “Oh, Mr. Lathrop,” she stammered —“lra,” she corrected, “.‘won’t you .please hook me up?” she pleaded: Ira beamed with a second child- 1 hood boyishness: “I’ll do my best, my little ootsum-tootsums, it’s the first time I ever tried it.” “Oh, I'm so glad,” Anne sighed, “it's the first time I ever was hooked up —by a gentleman.” He gurgled with joy hnd, forgetting the poverty of space, tried to reach her lips to kiss her. He almost broke her neck Tand bumped his head so hard that instead of saying, as he' intended, “My darling,” he said, “yh, hell!” —— “Ira!” she gasped. But he, with all the proprietorship he had assumed, answered cheerily: “You’ll have to get used to it, ducky darling. I cotild never learn not to swear.” He proved the fact again and again by the re-< marks he addressed to certain refractory hooks. He apologized, but she fdlt more like apologizing for herself. / “Oh, Ira,” she said, “I’m so ashamed to have you see me Ikie this—the first morning.” “Well, you haven’t got anything on me —I’m not shaved.” “You don’t have to tell me that,” she said, rubbing her smarting cheek. Then she bumped her head and gasped: “Oh —whaLydu said.” This made them feel so much at home that she attained the heights of frankness and honesty by reaching in her handbag for a knob of supplementary hair, which she. affixed dextrotosly to what was home-grown. Ira, instead of looking shocked, loved her for her hoDesty,. and grinned: 1 i ' .

“Now, that's where you have go* something on me. Say, we’re like a couple of sardines trying to make love lit a tin can.” -‘lt's cosy though,” she said, x and then vanished through the curtains and shyly ran the gauntlet of amused glances and over-cordial ’’Good mornings” till she hid her blushes behind the door of the women’s room and turned the key. If she had thought of it she would have said, “God bless the man that invented doors —and the other angel that invented locks.” The passengers this morning were all a little brisker than usual, it was the last day aboard for everybody and they showed a certain extra animation, like the Inmates of an ocean liner when land has been signed. Ashton was shaving when Ira swaggered into the men’s room. Without pausing to note whom he was addressing, Ashton sang out: “Good morniqg. Did you rest well'/* “What?” Ira roared. “Oh. excuse me!” said Ashton, hastily, devoting himself to a gash his razor had made in his cheek —even in that cheek of his. scrubbed out the basin, tilled It and tried to dive into it, slapping the cold water in double handfuls over his glowing face and puffing through it like a porpoise. Meanwhile the heavy-eyed Fosdick was slinking through the dining-car, regarded with amazement by Dr. Temple and his wife, who were already up and breakfasting. “What’s the matter with the bridal couples on this train, anyway?” said Dr. Temple. “I can’t imagine*” said his wife, “we old couples are the only normal ones.’’ “Some more coffee, please, mother,” he said. . “But your nerves,” she protested. “It's 1 my vacation,” he insisted. * Mrs Temple stared at him and shook her head: “I wonder what mischief you’ll be up to today? You've already been smoking, gambling, drinking—have you been swearing, yet?” “Not yet,” the old cregyman smiled, ‘‘l’ve been saving that up for a good occasion. Perhaps it will rise before the day’s over.” And his wife choked on her tea at the wonderful train-change that had come over the best man in Ypsilantl. By this time Fosdick had reached the stateroom from which he had been banishe<L again at. the Nevada state-line. He knocked cautiously. From within came an anxious voice: “Who’s there?” “W’hom did you expect?” Mrs. Fosdick popped her head ,out like a Jill in the box. “Oh, It’s you, Arthur. Kiss me good morning.” He glanced round stealthily and obeyed instructions: “I guess-i it’s safe —my darling.” “Did you sleep, dovie?” she yawned. “‘.‘Not a wink. They took oft the Portland car at Granger and I had to sleep in one of the chairs in the observation room.” Mrs. Fosdick shook her head at him in r n "u rnf » | sympathy, and asked: “What state are we in now?” “A dreadful state —Nevada.” “Just what are we in Nevada?” “I’m a bigamist, and you’ve never been married at all.” ' “Oh, these awful divorce laws!” she moaped, then left the general for the particular: “Wont you come in and hook me up?” Fosdick looked shocked: “I don’t dare compromise you.” “Will you take breakfast with mein the dining-car?” she pleaded. “Do we dare?” “We might call it luncheon,” she suggested. He seized the chance: “All right, I’ll go ahead and order, and you stroll lu and I’ll offer you the seat opposite me.” “But can’t you hook me up?” He was adamant: “Not till we get to California. Do you think I want to compromise my own wife? Shh! Somebody’s coming!” And he darted off to the vestibule just as Mrs. Jimmie Wellington issued from number ten with hair askew, eyes only half open, and waist only half shut at the back. She made a quick spurt to she women’s room, found it locked, stamped her foot, swore under her breath, and leaned against the wall of the car to wait. (TO BE CONTINUED.)