CHAPTER IV
A TRAGEDY OF ERRORS
While these matters were transpiring, the sister express was rushing west. On the west-bound train “Captain” Fallow chanced to be in command, and “Captain” Fallow was peeved. Sundry irritating delays had marred his run from Pittsburg. His firemen had been hefting coal into the engine’s cavernous maw in a Titanic effort to mend the time-losses. The locomotive had been roaring along with a streaming wake of black smoke lying level from its stack. At Mercerville only twenty minutes were left standing in the way of a perfect score, and at Mercerville the conductor had received orders to stop at an ungodly and forlorn tank-town in the midst of emptiness, known by the opprobrious name of Jaffa Junction!
“Captain” Fallow was fully prepared to be irascible with the Jaffa Junction party. Accordingly, when he discovered Mr. Lewis Copewell in the last seat of the last coach he eyed him without enthusiasm.
“I believe, Captain,” commented Mr. Copewell pleasantly, “you have instructions to drop me at Jaffa Junction?”
The “Captain’s” glance became flinty.
“So you are that Jaffa Junction party?” The manner of saying it indicated that the designation carried black opprobrium. Mr. Copewell nodded complacently. “Captain” Fallow’s stern visage became more granite-like.
“My train is twenty minutes late now,” he accused, “and that jay town is one of them places where a lot of lame old ladies tries to board the train every time you stop there. It takes a Jaffa Junction prominent citizen five minutes to climb into a coach!” Mr. Copewell politely attempted to simulate an interest in the characteristics of Jaffa Junction’s prominent citizens. “Indeed?” he said.
“Captain” Fallow went on curtly. “I ask you as a favor to hop off quick when we get there. I’ll have the rear vestibule open and you can fly out as soon as you feel the train slowing down. Your place will be our only stop this side of Perryville, see? If you can jump down without our coming to a dead stop, it will save time.”
Mr. Copewell smiled. “My dear Captain,” he reassured, “I hold various championships for getting off trains. To-night I mean to break all my past records. I’m in a hurry myself.”
“Captain” Fallow’s face softened. “Remember,” he emphasized, “first stop is your destination.”
In view of the fact that he was on his way to meet the one lady of his heart and to foil Fate and Family, Mr. Copewell might have been presumed to be wide awake. In point of actuality, the reverse was true.
Last night, anxiety and indignation had murdered sleep. To-day, action and preparation had assaulted his vitality. Now, with success at his elbow, a delightful languor stole upon him. Gradually his rosy dreams became rosier, more somnolent! His head fell on his chest. Behold, the bridegroom fell snoring!
Some time later the conductor passed through the train and, arriving at the front vestibule of the front coach, made a discovery.
There, crouching very modestly in the shaded corner next to the rear end of the baggage-car, was a somewhat undersized youth with straight, black hair and an expression of innocence which somehow did not seem to sit naturally on his rat-like countenance.
The conductor eyed him accusingly. “Where’s your ticket?” he inquired without preamble.
The youth smiled with a disarming candor.
“Honest, pal,” he confided, “you kin search me! I was just goin’ through me clothes fer it when you come out. I was just sayin’ ter meself, ‘Son,’ says I, ‘where in —— is dat ducket?’”
“Ducket, eh!” repeated “Captain” Fallow. There was a pitiless, inquisitorial note in his voice, which the young man construed as ominous.
The young man bit his lip in annoyance. It was borne in upon him that he had made a most unfortunate choice of words. In police glossaries the term “ducket” is defined as thief and hobo vernacular for a railroad-ticket.
“You come up front with me,” suggested the conductor, pushing the youth ahead of him. In the baggage-coach ahead Mr. “Rat” Connors, for it was none other than he, was treated to a very creditable amateur production of the Third Degree. But Mr. Connors had made his one mistake and they wrung from him no further self-incrimination. He was unaccustomed to the ways of travel, he said, because he had to stay at home and work very hard to support a widowed mother and several small brothers and sisters. He had lost his ticket. He had no more money. He was sorry, extremely sorry—but what could he do?
He could get off, the conductor assured him, and to emphasize the suggestion he reached for the cord and signalled to the engineer. Mr. Connors stood supinely near the open door of the baggage-coach while the baggage-man and a brakeman ranged themselves at his back to assist him in alighting.
The train slowed down with a jarring wrench which startled Mr. Copewell out of a halcyon dream into a disturbed sense of being almost too late. Wildly seizing his hat and grip, he made a lunge through the open vestibule door. It was a highly creditable lunge. It carried him from a flat-footed nap out into the darkness in something like two seconds and a quarter.
He was not yet really awake. He acted subconsciously and in obedience to a sense of imperative haste. When he landed, blinking, on the side of the track and saw about him, instead of village lights, only inky silhouettes of the forest primeval, he felt that he had made a mistake. Already the tail-lights were receding. Mr. Copewell rubbed his eyes and inquired of his subjective self whether he were still dreaming. His subjective self said “No.” Thereupon Mr. Copewell sprinted after the tail-lights. Mr. Copewell was going some, but the shriek of the whistle drowned his shouting, and the rear-end lanterns were whisked like runaway comets from before his outstretched hands. He stumbled on a projecting tie—and the train was gone!
The wedding-guest who beat his breast because his journey to the ceremony was interrupted had no valid cause of complaint as compared with this would-be bridgeroom who stood bereft on the cinders.
He dropped limply to the ground and covered his face with his hands. About him stretched the unbroken gloom of singular blackness. Nowhere was the glimmer of a light. Nowhere, it seemed, was a human habitation. Somewhere a girl was rushing on an express train toward a broken tryst! No one would meet her save a woman-hating best man! What could he do? For a time he did nothing but sit stunned in the darkness, a hundred yards from his abandoned baggage.
It was in just such desperate exigencies as this that chagrined warriors of antiquity were wont to fall upon their swords. Unhappily he had no sword upon which to fall. In the midst of crisis and defeat he sat and strove to evolve out of chaos some bright plan by which he, stranded in juxtaposition to the murmuring pines and the hemlocks, might, in the space of a few minutes, transport himself across an unknown distance and be married at Jaffa Junction.
It has been commented that at the average wedding the bridgeroom has a minor and insignificant rôle. Mr. Copewell had discovered a sure method, in the parlance of theatrical folk, of fattening the part. The male contracting party has only to stay away.
Suddenly he was aroused out of his apathy by the realization that he was not the only living being in that section of rural America. The discovery brought both surprise and comfort. There had drifted to his ears a plaintive singing voice, evidently not far away. The voice was a tenor and it floated through the thick night with the insistent melancholy of a lone minstrel who sings in adversity. Mr. Copewell could quite plainly distinguish the words of the ballad. They were these:
“Jay Gould’s daughter afore she died,
Done signed a paper, so de bums can’t ride.”
There was a silence, then the voice swelled and grew more melancholy, as though the singer were invoking verse and notes for the voicing of his own piteous plight:
“Or if they do ride, they must ride the rods,
And trust their souls in the hands of Gawd!”
The voice dwelt lingeringly on the final chord, then broke off in a deep-drawn sigh.
Suddenly it flashed on Mr. Copewell that there was need of quick action. For a while the minutes could hardly be too full of action.