<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_233" id="Page_233">233</SPAN></span></p>
<h3 class="p6">CHAPTER XXXII<br/> THE EMPTY BERTH</h3>
<p class="p2">The one thing Mallory was beginning to learn
about Marjorie was that she would never take the
point of view he expected, and never proceed along
the lines of his logic.</p>
<p>She had grown furious at him for what he could
not help. She had told him that she would marry
him out of 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.</p>
<p>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
and the complete helplessness he displayed that won
her woman's heart.</p>
<p>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 wooed wear their
best clothes or their best behavior; or in a starlit,
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_234" id="Page_234">234</SPAN></span>
moonlit, or gaslit twilight where romance 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.</p>
<p>This young couple was undergoing all the inconveniences
and temper-exposures of marriage without
its blessed compensations. 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 their marriage would not be a
failure.</p>
<p>Mallory rejoiced to see that the hurricane of
Marjorie's jealousy had only whipped up the surface
of her soul. The great depths were still calm
and unmoved, and her love for him was in and of
the depths.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>But Marjorie and Mallory never noticed it. They
were absorbed in exploring each other's souls, and
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_235" id="Page_235">235</SPAN></span>
they had safely bridged the Great Salt Lake which
the first big bitter jealousy spreads across every matrimonial
route.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>For all that Anne and Ira knew, the Great Salt
Lake was a moon-swept lagoon, and the arid mountains
of Nevada which the train went scaling, were
the very hillsides of Arcadia.</p>
<p>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 career draped in satin
ribbons unwittingly prophetic.</p>
<p>The communion of Mallory and Marjorie under
the benison of reconciliation was invaded by the
jokes of the other passengers, unconsciously ironic.</p>
<p>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."
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_236" id="Page_236">236</SPAN></span></p>
<p>And Mrs. Temple welcomed them with: "You're
only old married folks, like us."</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>And now once more the Mallorys regained the
star rôles in the esteem of the audience, for once
more they quarreled at good-night-kissing 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.
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