“Only too happy, I can assure you,” said I. “What is it about?”
“I want you to be a witness—”
“An affair of honor? And with whom, if you please?”
“Miss Horatia Bluett.”
“You are going to fight Miss Bluett!” I exclaimed, with a laugh.
“Not yet. I am going to marry her.”
“Marry her?”
“Yes! a treasure of a woman, well acquainted with business matters, holding a splendid commission—”
“My compliments, Mr. Ephrinell! You can count on me—”
“And probably on M. Caterna?”
“He would like nothing better, and if there is a wedding breakfast he will sing at your dessert—”
“As much as he pleases,” replied the American. “And now for Miss Bluett’s witnesses.”
“Quite so.”
“Do you think Major Noltitz would consent?”
“A Russian is too gallant to refuse. I will ask him, if you like.”
“Thank you in advance. As to the second witness, I am rather in a difficulty. This Englishman, Sir Francis Trevellyan—”
“A shake of the head is all you will get from him.”
“Baron Weissschnitzerdörfer?”
“Ask that of a man who is doing a tour of the globe, and who would never get through a signature of a name of that length!”
“Then I can only think of Pan-Chao, unless we try Popof—”
“Either would do it with pleasure. But there is no hurry, Mr. Ephrinell, and when you get to Peking you will have no difficulty in finding a fourth witness.”
“What! to Peking? It is not at Peking that I hope to marry Miss Bluett!”
“Where, then? At Sou Tcheou or Lan Tcheou, while we stop a few hours?”
“Wait a bit, Monsieur Bombarnac! Can a Yankee wait?”
“Then it is to be—”
“Here.”
“In the train?”
“In the train.”
“Then it is for me to say, Wait a bit!”
“Not twenty-four hours.”
“But to be married you require—”
“An American minister, and we have the Reverend Nathaniel Morse.”
“He consents?”
“As if he would not! He would marry the whole train if it asked him!”
“Bravo, Mr. Ephrinell! A wedding in a train will be delightful.”
“We should never put off until tomorrow what we can do today.”
“Yes, I know, time is money.”
“No! Time is time, simply, and I do not care to lose a minute of it.”
Ephrinell clasped my hand, and as I had promised, I went to take the necessary steps regarding the witnesses necessary for the nuptial ceremonial.
It needs not be said that the commercials were of full age and free to dispose of themselves, to enter into marriage before a clergyman, as is done in America, and without any of the fastidious preliminaries required in France and other formalistic countries. Is this an advantage or otherwise? The Americans think it is for the best, and, as Cooper says, the best at home is the best everywhere.
I first asked Major Noltitz, who willingly agreed to be Miss Bluett’s witness.
“These Yankees are astonishing,” he said to me.
“Precisely because they are astonished at nothing, major.”
I made a similar proposition to Pan-Chao.
“Delighted, Monsieur Bombarnac,” he replied. “I will be the witness of this adorable and adored Miss Bluett! If a wedding between an Englishwoman and an American, with French, Russian and Chinese witnesses, does not offer every guarantee of happiness, where are we likely to meet with it?”
And now for Caterna.
The actor would have consented for any number of weddings.
“What a notion for a vaudeville or an operetta!” he exclaimed. “We have the Mariage au tambour, the Mariage aux olives, the Mariage aux lanternes—well, this will be the Mariage en railway, or the Marriage by Steam! Good titles, all those, Monsieur Claudius! Your Yankee can reckon on me! Witness old or young, noble father or first lover, marquis or peasant, as you like, I am equal to it—”
“Be natural, please,” said I. “It will have a good effect, considering the scenery.”
“Is Madame Caterna to come to the wedding?”
“Why not—as bridesmaid!”
In all that concerns the traditional functions we must have no difficulties on the Grand Transasiatic.
It is too late for the ceremony to take place today. Ephrinell understood that certain conventionalities must be complied with. The celebration could take place in the morning. The passengers could all be invited, and Faruskiar might be prevailed on to honor the affair with his presence.
During dinner we talked of nothing else. After congratulating the happy couple, who replied with true Anglo-Saxon grace, we all promised to sign the marriage contract.
“And we will do honor to your signatures,” said Ephrinell, in the tone of a tradesman accepting a bill.
The night came, and we retired, to dream of the marriage festivities of the morrow. I took my usual stroll into the car occupied by the Chinese soldiers, and found the treasure of the Son of Heaven faithfully guarded. Half the detachment were awake and half were asleep.
About one o’clock in the morning I visited Kinko, and handed him over my purchases at Nia. The young Romanian was in high spirits. He anticipated no further obstacles, he would reach port safely, after all.
“I am getting quite fat in this box,” he told me.
I told him about the Ephrinell-Bluett marriage, and how the union was to be celebrated next morning with great pomp.
“Ah!” said he, with a sigh. “They are not obliged to wait until they reach Peking!”
“Quite so, Kinko; but it seems to me that a marriage under such conditions is not likely to be lasting! But after all, that is the couple’s lookout.”
At three o’clock in the morning we stopped forty minutes at Tchertchen, almost at the foot of the ramifications of the Kuen Lun. None of us had seen this miserable, desolate country, treeless and verdureless, which the railway was now crossing on its road to the northeast.
Day came; our train ran the four hundred kilometres between Tchertchen and Tcharkalyk, while the sun caressed with its rays the immense plain, glittering in its saline efflorescences.
XIX
When I awoke I seemed to have had an unpleasant dream. A dream in no way like those we interpret by the Clef d’Or. No! Nothing could be clearer. The bandit chief Ki Tsang
