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.
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.
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, 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.
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.
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.
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.
But Marjorie and Mallory never noticed it. They were absorbed in
exploring each other's souls, and they had safely bridged the Great
Salt Lake which the first big bitter jealousy spreads across every
matrimonial route.
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.
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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