CHAPTER IV
A MOUSE AND A MOUNTAIN
All the while the foiled elopers were eloping, the San Franciscosleeper was filling up. It had been the receptacle of assorted lots ofhumanity tumbling into it from all directions, with all sorts ofsouls, bodies, and destinations.
The porter received each with that expert eye of his. His car was hislaboratory. A railroad journey is a sort of test-tube of character;strange elements meet under strange conditions and make strangecombinations. The porter could never foresee the ingredients of anytrip, nor their actions and reactions.
He had no sooner established Mr. Wedgewood of London and Mr. IraLathrop of Chicago, in comparative repose, than his car was invaded bya woman who flung herself into the first seat. She was flushed withrunning, and breathing hard, but she managed one gasp of relief:
"Thank goodness, I made it in time."
The mere sound of a woman's voice in the seat back of him was enoughto disperse Ira Lathrop. With not so much as a glance backward to seewhat manner of woman it might be, he jammed his contract into hispocket, seized his newspapers and retreated to the farthest end of thecar, jouncing down into berth number one, like a sullen snappingturtle.
Miss Anne Gattle's modest and homely valise had been brought aboard bya leisurely station usher, who set it down and waited with a speakingpalm outstretched. She had her tickets in her hand, but transferredthem to her teeth while she searched for money in a handbag oldfashioned enough to be called a reticule.
The usher closed his fist on the pittance she dropped into it anddeparted without comment. The porter advanced on her with a demand for"Tickets, please."
She began to ransack her reticule with flurried haste, taking out ofit a small purse, opening that, closing it, putting it back, taking itout, searching the reticule through, turning out a handkerchief, a fewhairpins, a few trunk keys, a baggage check, a bottle of salts, a cardor two and numerous other maidenly articles, restoring them to place,looking in the purse again, restoring that, closing the reticule,setting it down, shaking out a book she carried, opening her oldvalise, going through certain white things blushingly, closing itagain, shaking her skirts, and shaking her head in bewilderment.
She was about to open the reticule again, when the porter exclaimed:
"I see it! Don't look no mo'. I see it!"
When she cast up her eyes in despair, her hatbrim had been elevatedenough to disclose the whereabouts of the tickets. With a murmuredapology, he removed them from her teeth and held them under the light.After a time he said:
"As neah as I can make out from the--the undigested po'tion of thisticket, yo' numba is six."
"That's it--six!"
"That's right up this way."
"Let me sit here till I get my breath," she pleaded, "I ran so hard tocatch the train."
"Well, you caught it good and strong."
"I'm so glad. How soon do we start?"
"In about half a houah."
"Really? Well, better half an hour too soon than half a minute toolate." She said it with such a copy-book primness that the porter sether down as a school-teacher. It was not a bad guess. She was amissionary. With a pupil-like shyness he volunteered:
"Yo' berth is all ready whenever you wishes to go to baid." He caughther swift blush and amended it to--"to retiah."
"Retire?--before all the car?" said Miss Anne Gattle, with primtimidity. "No, thank you! I intend to sit up till everybody else hasretired."
The porter retired. Miss Gattle took out a bit of more or less usefulfancy stitching and set to work like another Dorcas. Her needle hadnot dived in and emerged many times before she was holding it up as aweapon of defense against a sudden human mountain that threatened tocrush her.
A vague round face, huge and red as a rising moon, dawned before hereyes and from it came an uncertain voice:
"Esscuzhe me, mad'm, no 'fensh intended."
The words and the breath that carried them gave the startled spinsteran instant proof that her vis-a-vis did not share her Prohibitionprinciples or practices. She regarded the elephant with mouseliketerror, and the elephant regarded the mouse with elephantine fright,then he removed himself from her landscape as quickly as he could andlurched along the aisle, calling out merrily to the porter:
"Chauffeur! chauffeur! don't go so fasht 'round these corners."
He collided with a small train-boy singing his nasal lay, but it wasthe behemoth and not the train-boy that collapsed into a seat,sprawling as helplessly as a mammoth oyster on a table-cloth.
The porter rushed to his aid and hoisted him to his feet with anuneasy sense of impending trouble. He felt as if someone had left amonstrous baby on his doorstep, but all he said was:
"Tickets, please."
There ensued a long search, fat, flabby hands flopping and fumblingfrom pocket to pocket. Once more the porter was the discoverer.
"I see it. Don't look no mo'. Here it is--up in yo' hatband." Helifted it out and chuckled. "Had it right next his brains and couldn'trememba!" He took up the appropriately huge luggage of the bibulouswanderer and led him to the other end of the aisle.
"Numba two is yours, sah. Right heah--all nice and cosy, and alreadymade up."
The big man looked through the curtains into the cabined confinement,and groaned:
"That! Haven't you got a man's size berth?"
"Sorry, sah. That's as big a bunk as they is on the train."
"Have I got to be locked up in that pigeon-hole for--for how many daysis it to Reno?"
"Reno?" The porter greeted that meaningful name with a smile. "We'redoo in Reno the--the--the mawnin' of the fo'th day, sah. Yassah." Heput the baggage down and started away, but the sad fat man seized hishand, with great emotion:
"Don't leave me all alone in there, porter, for I'm a broken-heartedman."
"Is that so? Too bad, sah."
"Were you ever a broken-hearted man, porter?"
"Always, sah."
"Did you ever put your trust in a false-hearted woman?"
"Often, sah."
"Was she ever true to you, porter?"
"Never, sah."
"Porter, we are partners in mis-sis-ery."
And he wrung the rough, black hand with a solemnity that embarrassedthe porter almost as much as it would have embarrassed the passengerhimself if he could have understood what he was doing. The porterdisengaged himself with a patient but hasty:
"I'm afraid you'll have to 'scuse me. I got to he'p the otherpassengers on bode."
"Don't let me keep you from your duty. Duty is the--the----" But hecould not remember what duty was, and he would have dropped off tosleep, if he had not been startled by a familiar voice which theporter had luckily escaped.
"Pawtah! Pawtah! Can't you raise this light--or rather can't you lowerit? Pawtah! This light is so infernally dim I can't read."
To the Englishman's intense amazement his call brought to him not theporter, but a rising moon with the profound query:
"Whass a li'l thing like dim light, when the light of your life hasgone out?"
"I beg your pardon?"
Without further invitation, the mammoth descended on the Englishman'sterritory.
"I'm a broken-hearted man, Mr.--Mr.--I didn't get your name."
"Er--ah--I dare say."
"Thanks, I will sit down." He lifted a great carry-all and airilytossed it into the aisle, set the Gladstone on the lap of theinfuriated Englishman, and squeezed into the seat opposite, making asad mix-up of knees.
"My name's Wellington. Ever hear of li'l Jimmie Wellington? That'sme."
"Any relation to the Duke?"
"Nagh!"
He no longer interested Mr. Wedgewood. But Mr. Wellington was notaware that he was being snubbed. He went right on getting acquainted:
"Are you married, Mr.--Mr.----?"
"No!"
"My heartfelt congrashlations. Hang on to your luck, my boy. Don't letany female take it away from you." He slapped the Englishman on theelbo
w amiably, and his prisoner was too stifled with wrath to emitmore than one feeble "Pawtah!"
Mr. Wellington mused on aloud: "Oh, if I had only remained shingle.But she was so beautiful and she swore to love, honor and obey. Mrs.Wellington is a queen among women, mind you, and I have nothing to sayagainst her except that she has the temper of a tarantula." Heitalicized the word with a light fillip of his left hand along theback of the seat. He did not notice that he filliped the angry head ofMr. Ira Lathrop in the next seat. He went on with his portrait of hiswife. "She has the 'stravaganza of a sultana"--another fillip for Mr.Lathrop--"the zhealousy of a cobra, the flirtatiousness of a hummingbird." Mr. Lathrop was glaring round like a man-eating tiger, butWellington 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 exampleof longing for confession and sympathy awakened a response in theEnglishman's frozen bosom. His only action was another violent effortto disengage his cramped knees from the knees of his tormentor; hisonly comment a vain and weakening cry for help, "Pawtah! Pawtah!"
Wellington's bleary, teary eyes were lighted with triumph. "Finally Isaw I couldn't stand it any longer so I bought a tic-hic-et to Reno. I'stablish a residensh in six monfths--get a divorce--no shcandal. Evenm'own wife won't know anything about it."
The Englishman was almost attracted by this astounding picture of thedivorce laws in America. It sounded so barbarically quaint that heleaned forward to hear more, but Mr. Wellington's hand, like amischievous runaway, had wandered back into the shaggy locks atop ofMr. Lathrop. His right hand did not let his left know what it wasdoing, but proceeded quite independently to grip as much of Lathrop'shair as it would hold.
Then as Mr. Wellington shook with joy at the prospect of "Dear oldReno!" he began unconsciously to draw Ira Lathrop's head after hishair across the seat. The pain of it shot the tears into Lathrop'seyes, and as he writhed and twisted he was too full of profanity toget any one word out.
When he managed to wrench his skull free, he was ready to murder histormentor. But as soon as he confronted the doddering and blinkingtoper, he was helpless. Drunken men have always been treated withgreat tenderness in America, and when Wellington, seeing Lathrop'swhite hair, exclaimed with rapture: "Why, hello, Pop! here's Pop!" themost that Lathrop could do was to tear loose those fat, groping hands,slap them like a school teacher, and push the man away.
But that one shove upset Mr. Wellington and sent him toppling downupon the pit of the Englishman's stomach.
For Wedgewood, it was suddenly as if all the air had been removed fromthe world. He gulped like a fish drowning for lack of water. He was along while getting breath enough for words, but his first words werewild demands that Mr. Wellington remove himself forthwith.
Wellington accepted the banishment with the sorrowful eyes of a dyingdeer, and tottered away wagging his fat head and wailing:
"I'm a broken-hearted man, and nobody gives a ----." At this point hecaromed over into Ira Lathrop's berth and was welcomed with a savageroar:
"What the devil's the matter with you?"
"I'm a broken-hearted man, that's all."
"Oh, is that all," Lathrop snapped, vanishing behind his newspaper.The desperately melancholy seeker for a word of human kindness blearedat the blurred newspaper wall a while, then waded into a new attemptat acquaintance. Laying his hand on Lathrop's knee, he stammered:"Esscuzhe me, Mr.--Mr.----"
From behind the newspaper came a stingy answer: "Lathrop's my name--ifyou want to know."
"Pleased to meet you, Mr. Lothrop."
"Lathrop!"
"Lathrop! My name's Wellington. Li'l Jimmie Wellington. Ever hear ofme?"
He waited with the genial smile of a famous man; the smile froze atLathrop's curt, "Don't think so."
He tried again: "Ever hear of well-known Chicago belle, Mrs. JimmieWellington?"
"Yes, I've heard of her!" There was an ominous grin in the tone.
Wellington waved his hand with modest pride. "Well, I'm Jimmie."
"Serves you right."
This jolt was so discourteous that Wellington decided to protest:"Mister Latham!"
"Lathrop!"
The name came out with a whip-snap. He tried to echo it, "La-_throp_!""I don't like that Throp. That's a kind of a seasick name, isn't it?"Finding the newspaper still intervening between him and his prey, hecalmly tore it down the middle and pushed through it like a mooncoming through a cloud. "But a man can't change his name by marrying,can he? That's the worst of it. A woman can. Think of a heartlesscobra di capello in woman's form wearing my fair name--and wearing itout. Mr. La-_throp_, did you ever put your trust in a false-heartedwoman?"
"Never put my trust in anybody."
"Didn't you ever love a woman?"
"No!"
"Well, then, didn't you ever marry a woman?"
"Not one. I've had the measles and the mumps, but I've never hadmatrimony."
"Oh, lucky man," beamed Wellington. "Hang on to your luck."
"I intend to," said Lathrop, "I was born single and I like it."
"Oh, how I envy you! You see, Mrs. Wellington--she's a queen amongwomen, mind you--a queen among women, but she has the 'stravagance ofa----"
Lathrop had endured all he could endure, even from a privilegedcharacter like little Jimmy Wellington. He rose to take refuge in thesmoking-room. But the very vigor of this departure only served to helpWellington to his feet, for he seized Lathrop's coat and hung on,through the door, down the little corridor, always explaining:
"Mrs. Wellington is a queen among women, mind you, but I can't standher temper any longer."
He had hardly squeezed into the smoking-room when the porter and anusher almost invisible under the baggage they carried brought in a newpassenger. Her first question was:
"Oh, porter, did a box of flowers, or candy, or anything, come forme?"
"What name would they be in, miss?"
"Mrs. Wellington--Mrs. James Wellington."