At nine o'clock Bud went home. He was feeling very well satisfied with
himself for some reason which he did not try to analyze, but which
was undoubtedly his sense of having saved Bill from throwing away six
hundred dollars on a bum car; and the weight in his coat pocket of a
box of chocolates that he had bought for Marie. Poor girl, it was kinda
tough on her, all right, being tied to the house now with the kid. Next
spring when he started his run to Big Basin again, he would get a little
camp in there by the Inn, and take her along with him when the travel
wasn't too heavy. She could stay at either end of the run, just as she
took a notion. Wouldn't hurt the kid a bit--he'd be bigger then, and the
outdoors would make him grow like a pig. Thinking of these things, Bud
walked briskly, whistling as he neared the little green house, so that
Marie would know who it was, and would not be afraid when he stepped up
on the front porch.
He stopped whistling rather abruptly when he reached the house, for it
was dark. He tried the door and found it locked. The key was not in the
letter box where they always kept it for the convenience of the first
one who returned, so Bud went around to the back and climbed through the
pantry window. He fell over a chair, bumped into the table, and damned
a few things. The electric light was hung in the center of the room by
a cord that kept him groping and clutching in the dark before he finally
touched the elusive bulb with his fingers and switched on the light.
The table was set for a meal--but whether it was dinner or supper Bud
could not determine. He went into the little sleeping room and turned on
the light there, looked around the empty room, grunted, and tiptoed into
the bedroom. (In the last month he had learned to enter on his toes,
lest he waken the baby.) He might have saved himself the bother, for the
baby was not there in its new gocart. The gocart was not there, Marie
was not there--one after another these facts impressed themselves upon
Bud's mind, even before he found the letter propped against the clock
in the orthodox manner of announcing unexpected departures. Bud read the
letter, crumpled it in his fist, and threw it toward the little heating
stove. “If that's the way yuh feel about it, I'll tell the world you can
go and be darned!” he snorted, and tried to let that end the matter so
far as he was concerned. But he could not shake off the sense of having
been badly used. He did not stop to consider that while he was working
off his anger, that day, Marie had been rocking back and forth, crying
and magnifying the quarrel as she dwelt upon it, and putting a new and
sinister meaning into Bud's ill-considered utterances. By the time Bud
was thinking only of the bargain car's hidden faults, Marie had reached
the white heat of resentment that demanded vigorous action. Marie was
packing a suitcase and meditating upon the scorching letter she meant to
write.
Judging from the effect which the letter had upon Bud, it must have
been a masterpiece of its kind. He threw the box of chocolates into the
wood-box, crawled out of the window by which he had entered, and went
down town to a hotel. If the house wasn't good enough for Marie, let her
go. He could go just as fast and as far as she could. And if she thought
he was going to hot-foot it over to her mother's and whine around and
beg her to come home, she had another think coming.
He wouldn't go near the darn place again, except to get his clothes.
He'd bust up the joint, by thunder. He'd sell off the furniture and turn
the house over to the agent again, and Marie could whistle for a home.
She had been darn glad to get into that house, he remembered, and away
from that old cat of a mother. Let her stay there now till she was darn
good and sick of it. He'd just keep her guessing for awhile; a week or
so would do her good. Well, he wouldn't sell the furniture--he'd just
move it into another house, and give her a darn good scare. He'd get a
better one, that had a porcelain bathtub instead of a zinc one, and a
better porch, where the kid could be out in the sun. Yes, sir, he'd just
do that little thing, and lay low and see what Marie did about that.
Keep her guessing--that was the play to make.
Unfortunately for his domestic happiness, Bud failed to take into
account two very important factors in the quarrel. The first and most
important one was Marie's mother, who, having been a widow for fifteen
years and therefore having acquired a habit of managing affairs that
even remotely concerned her, assumed that Marie's affairs must be
managed also. The other factor was Marie's craving to be coaxed back to
smiles by the man who drove her to tears. Marie wanted Bud to come and
say he was sorry, and had been a brute and so forth. She wanted to hear
him tell how empty the house had seemed when he returned and found her
gone. She wanted him to be good and scared with that letter. She stayed
awake until after midnight, listening for his anxious footsteps; after
midnight she stayed awake to cry over the inhuman way he was treating
her, and to wish she was dead, and so forth; also because the baby
woke and wanted his bottle, and she was teaching him to sleep all night
without it, and because the baby had a temper just like his father.
His father's temper would have yielded a point or two, the next day, had
it been given the least encouragement. For instance, he might have gone
over to see Marie before he moved the furniture out of the house, had
he not discovered an express wagon standing in front of the door when
he went home about noon to see if Marie had come back. Before he had
recovered to the point of profane speech, the express man appeared,
coming out of the house, bent nearly double under the weight of Marie's
trunk. Behind him in the doorway Bud got a glimpse of Marie's mother.
That settled it. Bud turned around and hurried to the nearest drayage
company, and ordered a domestic wrecking crew to the scene; in other
words, a packer and two draymen and a dray. He'd show 'em. Marie and her
mother couldn't put anything over on him--he'd stand over that furniture
with a sheriff first.
He went back and found Marie's mother still there, packing dishes and
doilies and the like. They had a terrible row, and all the nearest
neighbors inclined ears to doors ajar--getting an earful, as Bud
contemptuously put it. He finally led Marie's mother to the front door
and set her firmly outside. Told her that Marie had come to him with
no more than the clothes she had, and that his money had bought every
teaspoon and every towel and every stick of furniture in the darned
place, and he'd be everlastingly thus-and-so if they were going to
strong-arm the stuff off him now. If Marie was too good to live with
him, why, his stuff was too good for her to have.
Oh, yes, the neighbors certainly got an earful, as the town gossips
proved when the divorce suit seeped into the papers. Bud refused to
answer the proceedings, and was therefore ordered to pay twice as much
alimony as he could afford to pay; more, in fact, than all his domestic
expense had amounted to in the fourteen months that he had been married.
Also Marie was awarded the custody of the child and, because Marie's
mother had represented Bud to be a violent man who was a menace to her
daughter's safety--and proved it by the neighbors who had seen and heard
so much--Bud was served with a legal paper that wordily enjoined him
from annoying Marie with his presence.
That unnecessary insult snapped the last thread of Bud's regret for what
had happened. He sold the furniture and the automobile, took the money
to the judge that had tried the case, told the judge a few wholesome
truths, and laid the pile of money on the desk.
“That cleans me out, Judge,” he said stolidly. “I wasn't such a bad
husband, at that. I got sore--but I'll bet you get sore yourself and
tell your wife what-for, now and then. I didn't get a square deal, but
that's all right. I'm giving a better deal than I got. Now you can keep
that money and pay it out to Marie as she needs it, for herself and the
kid. But for the Lord's sake, Judge, don't let that wildcat of a mother
of hers get her fingers into the pile! She framed this deal, thinking
she'd get a haul outa me this way. I'm asking you to block that little
game. I've held out ten dollars, to eat on till I strike something. I'm
clean; they've licked the platter and broke the dish. So don't never ask
me to dig up any more, because I won't--not for you nor no other darn
man. Get that.”
This, you must know, was not in the courtroom, so Bud was not fined for
contempt. The judge was a married man himself, and he may have had a
sympathetic understanding of Bud's position. At any rate he listened
unofficially, and helped Bud out with the legal part of it, so that Bud
walked out of the judge's office financially free, even though he had
a suspicion that his freedom would not bear the test of prosperity,
and that Marie's mother would let him alone only so long as he and
prosperity were strangers.