CHAPTER XXXII
THE EMPTY BERTH
The one thing Mallory was beginning to learn about Marjorie was thatshe would never take the point of view he expected, and never proceedalong the lines of his logic.
She had grown furious at him for what he could not help. She had toldhim that she would marry him out of spite. She had commanded him topursue and apprehend the flying parson. He failed and returnedcrestfallen and wondering what new form her rage would take.
And, lo and behold, when she saw him so downcast and helpless, sherushed to him with caresses, cuddled his broad shoulders against herbreast, and smothered him. It was the sincerity of his dejection andthe complete helplessness he displayed that won her woman's heart.
Mallory gazed at her with almost more wonderment than delight. Thiswas another flashlight on her character. Most courtships are conductedunder a rose-light in which wooer and wooed wear their best clothes ortheir best behavior; or in a starlit, moonlit, or gaslit twilightwhere romance softens angles and wraps everything in velvet shadow.Then the two get married and begin to live together in the cold, graydaylight of realism, with undignified necessities and harrowingsituations at every step, and disillusion begins its deadly work.
This young couple was undergoing all the inconveniences andtemper-exposures of marriage without its blessed compensations. Theypromised to be well acquainted before they were wed. If they stillwanted each other after this ordeal, they were pretty well assuredthat their marriage would not be a failure.
Mallory rejoiced to see that the hurricane of Marjorie's jealousy hadonly whipped up the surface of her soul. The great depths were stillcalm and unmoved, and her love for him was in and of the depths.
Soon after leaving Ogden, the train entered upon the great bridgeacross the Great Salt Lake. The other passengers were staring at theenormous engineering masterpiece and the conductor was pointing outthat, in order to save forty miles and the crossing of two mountainchains, the railroad had devoted four years of labor and millions ofdollars to stretching a thirty-mile bridge across this inland ocean.
But Marjorie and Mallory never noticed it. They were absorbed inexploring each other's souls, and they had safely bridged the GreatSalt Lake which the first big bitter jealousy spreads across everymatrimonial route.
They were undisturbed in their voyage, for all the other passengershad their noses flattened against the window panes of the othercars--all except one couple, gazing each at each through time-wrinkledeyelids touched with the magic of a tardy honeymoon.
For all that Anne and Ira knew, the Great Salt Lake was a moon-sweptlagoon, and the arid mountains of Nevada which the train went scaling,were the very hillsides of Arcadia.
But the other passengers soon came trooping back into the observationroom. Ira had told them nothing of Mallory's confession. In the firstplace, he was a man who had learned to keep a secret, and in thesecond place, he had forgotten that such persons as Mallory or hisMarjorie existed. All the world was summed up in the fearsomely happylittle spinster who had moved up into his section--the section whichhad begun its career draped in satin ribbons unwittingly prophetic.
The communion of Mallory and Marjorie under the benison ofreconciliation was invaded by the jokes of the other passengers,unconsciously ironic.
Dr. Temple chaffed them amiably: "You two will have to take a backseat 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 misplacedwitticisms gave them reassurance that their secret was safe yet alittle while. At their dinner-table, however, and in the long eveningthat followed they were haunted by the fact that this was their lastnight on the train, and no minister to be expected.
And now once more the Mallorys regained the star roles in the esteemof the audience, for once more they quarreled at good-night-kissingtime. Once more they required two sections, while Anne Gattle's berthwas not even made up. It remained empty, like a deserted nest, for itsoccupant had flown South.