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Excuse Me! (Dramatic Reading)

128 <h3 class="p6">CHAPTER XVIII IN THE COMPOSITE CAR</h3> It was the gentle stranger's turn to miss his guess. He bent over the chair into which Mallory had flopped, and said in a tense, low tone: "You look like a t'oroughbred sport. I'm trying to make up a game of stud poker. Will you join me?" Mallory shook his heavy head in refusal, and with dull eyes watched the man, whose profession he no longer misunderstood, saunter up to the blissful Doctor from Ypsilanti, and murmur again: "Will you join me?" "Join you in what, sir?" said Dr. Temple, with alert courtesy. "A little game." "I don't mind," the doctor smiled, rising with amiable readiness. "The checkers are in the next room." "Quit your kiddin'," the stranger coughed. "How about a little freeze-out?" "Freeze-out?" said Dr. Temple. "It sounds interesting. Is it something like authors?" The newcomer shot a quick glance at this man, whose innocent air he suspected. But he merely drawled: "Well, you play it with cards." 129 "Would you mind teaching me the rules?" said the old sport from Ypsilanti. The gambler was growing suspicious of this too, too childlike innocence. He whined: "Say, what's your little game, eh?" but decided to risk the venture. He sat down at a table, and Dr. Temple, bringing along his glass, drew up a chair. The gambler took a pack of cards from his pocket, and shuffled them with a snap that startled Dr. Temple and a dexterity that delighted him. "Go on, it's beautiful to see," he exclaimed. The gambler set the pack down with the one word "Cut!" but since the old man made no effort to comply, the gambler did not insist. He took up the pack again and ran off five cards to each place with a grace that staggered the doctor. Mallory was about to intervene for the protection of the guileless physician when the conductor chanced to saunter in. The gambler, seeing him, snatched Dr. Temple's cards from his hand and slipped the pack into his pocket. "What's the matter now?" Dr. Temple asked, but the newcomer huskily answered: "Wait a minute. Wait a minute." The conductor took in the scene at a glance and, stalking up to the table, spoke with the grimness of a sea-captain: "Say, I've got my eye on you. Don't start nothin'." 130 The stranger stared at him wonderingly and demanded: "Why, what you drivin' at?" "You know all right," the conductor growled, and then turned on the befuddled old clergyman, "and you, too." "Me, too?" the preacher gasped. "Yes, you, too," the conductor repeated, shaking an accusing forefinger under his nose. "Your actions have been suspicious from the beginning. We've all been watching you." Dr. Temple was so agitated that he nearly let fall his secret. "Why, do you realize that I'm a——" "Ah, don't start that," sneered the conductor, "I can spot a gambler as far as I can see one. You and your side partner here want to look out, that's all, or I'll drop you at the next tank." Then he walked out, his very shoulder blades uttering threats. Dr. Temple stared after him, but the gambler stared at Dr. Temple with a mingling of accusation and of homage. "So you're one of us," he said, and seizing the old man's limp hand, shook it heartily: "I got to slip it to you. Your make-up is great. You nearly had me for a come-on. Great!" And then he sauntered out, leaving the clergyman's head swimming. Dr. Temple turned to Mallory for explanations, but Mallory only waved him away. He was not quite convinced himself. He 131 was convinced only that whatever else anybody might be, nobody apparently desired to be a clergyman in these degenerate days. The conductor returned and threw into Dr. Temple the glare of two basilisk eyes. The old man put out a beseeching hand and began: "My good man, you do me a grave injustice." The conductor snapped back: "You say a word to me and I'll do you worse than that. And if I spot you with a pack of cards in your hand again, I'll tie you to the cow-ketcher." Then he marched off again. The doctor fell back into a chair, trying to figure it out. Then Ashton and Fosdick and little Jimmie Wellington and Wedgewood strolled in and, dropping into chairs, ordered drinks. Before the doctor could ask anybody to explain, Ashton was launched on a story. His mind was a suitcase full of anecdotes, mostly of the smoking-room order. Wherever three or four men are gathered together, they rapidly organize a clearing-house of off-color stories. The doctor listened in spite of himself, and in spite of himself he was amused, for stories that would be stupid if they were decent, take on a certain verve and thrill from their very forbiddenness. The dear old clergyman felt that it would be priggish to take flight, but he could not make the corners of his mouth behave. Strange twitchings 132 of the lips and little steamy escapes of giggle-jets disturbed him. And when Ashton, who was a practiced raconteur, finished a drolatic adventure with the epilogue, "And the next morning they were at Niagara Falls," the old doctor was helpless with laughter. Some superior force, a devil no doubt, fairly shook him with glee. "Oh, that's bully," he shrieked, "I haven't heard a story like that for ages." "Why, where have you been, Dr. Temple?" asked Ashton, who could not imagine where a man could have concealed himself from such stories. But he laughed loudest of all when the doctor answered: "You see, I live in Ypsilanti. They don't tell me stories like that." "They—who?" said Fosdick. "Why, my pa—my patients," the doctor explained, and laughed so hard that he forgot to feel guilty, laughed so hard that his wife in the next room heard him and giggled to Mrs. Whitcomb: "Listen to dear Walter. He hasn't laughed like that since he was a—a medical student." Then she buried her face guiltily in a book. "Wasn't it good?" Dr. Temple demanded, wiping his streaming eyes and nudging the solemn-faced Englishman, who understood his own nation's humor, but had not yet learned the Yankee quirks. Wedgewood made a hollow effort at laughter and answered: "Extremely—very droll, but what I 133 don't quite get was—why the porter said——" The others drowned him in a roar of laughter, but Ashton was angry. "Why, you blamed fool, that's where the joke came in. Don't you see, the bridegroom said to the bride——" then he lowered his voice and diagrammed the story on his fingers. Mrs. Temple was still shaking with sympathetic laughter, never dreaming what her husband was laughing at. She turned to Mrs. Whitcomb, but Mrs. Whitcomb was still glaring at Mrs. Wellington, who was still writing with flying fingers and underscoring every other word. "Some people seem to think they own the train," Mrs. Whitcomb raged. "That creature has been at the writing desk an hour. The worst of it is, I'm sure she's writing to my husband." Mrs. Temple looked shocked, but another peal of laughter came through the partition between the male and female sections of the car, and she beamed again. Then Mrs. Wellington finished her letter, glanced it over, addressed an envelope, sealed and stamped it with a deliberation that maddened Mrs. Whitcomb. When at last she rose, Mrs. Whitcomb was in the seat almost before Mrs. Wellington was out of it. Mrs. Wellington paused at another wave of laughter from the men's room. She commented petulantly: "What good times men have. They've formed 134 a club in there already. We women can only sit around and hate each other." "Why, I don't hate anybody, do you?" Mrs. Temple exclaimed, looking up from the novel she had found on the book shelves. Mrs. Wellington dropped into the next chair: "On a long railroad journey I hate everybody. Don't you hate long journeys?" "It's the first I ever took," Mrs. Temple apologized, radiantly, "And I'm having the—what my oldest boy would call the time of my life. And dear Walter—such goings on for him! A few minutes ago I strolled by the door and I saw him playing cards with a stranger, and smoking and drinking, too, all at once." "Boys will be boys," said Mrs. Wellington. "But for Dr. Temple of all people——" "Why shouldn't a doctor? It's a shame the way men have everything. Think of it, a special smoking room. And women have no place to take a puff except on the sly." Mrs. Temple stared at her in awe: "The woman in this book smokes!—perfumed things!" "All women smoke nowadays," said Mrs. Wellington, carelessly. "Don't you?" The politest thing Mrs. Temple could think of in answer was: "Not yet." "Really!" said Mrs. Wellington, "Don't you like tobacco?" 135 "I never tried it." "It's time you did. I smoke cigars myself." Mrs. Temple almost collapsed at this double shock: "Ci—cigars?" "Yes; cigarettes are too strong for me; will you try one of my pets?" Mrs. Temple was about to express her repugnance at the thought, but Mrs. Wellington thrust before her a portfolio in which nestled such dainty shapes of such a warm and winsome brown, that Mrs. Temple paused to stare, and, like Mother Eve, found the fruit of knowledge too interesting once seen to reject with scorn. She hung over the cigar case in hesitant excitement one moment too long. Then she said in a trembling voice: "I—I should like to try once—just to see what it's like. But there's no place." Mrs. Wellington felt that she had already made a proselyte to her own beloved vice, and she rushed her victim to the precipice: "There's the observation platform, my dear. Come on out." Mrs. Temple was shivering with dismay at the dreadful deed: "What would they say in Ypsilanti?" "What do you care? Be a sport. Your husband smokes. If it's right for him, why not for you?" Mrs. Temple set her teeth and crossed the Rubicon with a resolute "I will!" Mrs. Wellington led the timid neophyte along 136 the wavering floor of the car and flung back the door of the observation car. She found Ira Lathrop holding Anne Gattle's hand and evidently explaining something of great importance, for their heads were close together. They rose and with abashed faces and confused mumblings of half swallowed explanations, left the platform to Mrs. Wellington and her new pupil. Shortly afterward Little Jimmie Wellington grew restive and set out for a brief constitutional and a breath of air. He carried a siphon to which he had become greatly attached, and made heavy going of the observation room, but reached the door in fairly good order. He swung it open and brought in with it the pale and wavering ghost of Mrs. Temple, who had been leaning against it for much-needed support. Wellington was stupefied to observe smoke pouring round Mrs. Temple's form, and he resolved to perform a great life-saving feat. He decided that the poor little woman was on fire and he poised the siphon like a fire extinguisher, with the noble intention of putting her out. He pressed the handle, and a stream of vichy shot from the nozzle. Fortunately, his aim was so very wobbly that none of the extinguisher touched Mrs. Temple. Wellington was about to play the siphon at her again when he saw her take from her lips a toy cigar and emit a stream of cough-shaken smoke. 137 The poor little experimentalist was too wretched to notice even so large a menace as Wellington. She threw the cigar away and gasped: "I think I've had enough." From the platform came a voice very well known to Little Jimmie. It said: "You'll like the second one better." Mrs. Temple shuddered at the thought, but Wellington drew himself up majestically and called out: "Like second one better, eh? I suppozhe it's the same way with husbandsh." Then he stalked back to the smoking room, feeling that he had annihilated his wife, but knowing from experience that she always had a come-back. He knew it would be good, but he was afraid to hear it. He rolled into the smoking room, and sprawling across Doctor Temple's shoulders, dragged him from the midst of a highly improper story with alarming news. "Doc., your wife looks kind o' seedy. Better go to her at once." Dr. Temple leaped to his feet and ran to his wife's aid. He found her a dismal, ashen sight. "Sally! What on earth ails you?" "Been smok-oking," she hiccoughed. The world seemed to be crashing round Dr. Temple's head. He could only gurgle, "Sally!" Mrs. Temple drew herself up with weak defiance: 138 "Well, I saw you playing cards and drinking." In the presence of such innocent deviltry he could only smile: "Aren't we having an exciting vacation? But to think of you smoking!—and a cigar!" She tossed her head in pride. "And it didn't make me sick—much." She clutched a chair. He tried to support her. He could not help pondering: "What would they say in Yp-hip-silanti?" "Who cares?" she laughed. "I—I wish the old train wouldn't rock so." "I—I've smoked too much, too," said Dr. Temple with perfect truth, but Mrs. Temple, remembering that long glass she had seen, narrowed her eyes at him: "Are you sure it was the smoke?" "Sally!" he cried, in abject horror at her implied suspicion. Then she turned a pale green. "Oh, I feel such a qualm." "In your conscience, Sally?" "No, not in my conscience. I think I'll go back to my berth and lie down." "Let me help you, Mother." And Darby and Joan hurried along the corridor, crowding it as they were crowding their vacation with belated experience. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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