by B. M. Bower
CHAPTER TWO. TWO MAKE A QUARREL
At nine o'clock Bud went home. He was feeling very well satisfied withhimself for some reason which he did not try to analyze, but whichwas undoubtedly his sense of having saved Bill from throwing away sixhundred dollars on a bum car; and the weight in his coat pocket of abox of chocolates that he had bought for Marie. Poor girl, it was kindatough on her, all right, being tied to the house now with the kid. Nextspring when he started his run to Big Basin again, he would get a littlecamp in there by the Inn, and take her along with him when the travelwasn't too heavy. She could stay at either end of the run, just as shetook a notion. Wouldn't hurt the kid a bit--he'd be bigger then, and theoutdoors would make him grow like a pig. Thinking of these things, Budwalked briskly, whistling as he neared the little green house, so thatMarie would know who it was, and would not be afraid when he stepped upon the front porch.
He stopped whistling rather abruptly when he reached the house, for itwas dark. He tried the door and found it locked. The key was not in theletter box where they always kept it for the convenience of the firstone who returned, so Bud went around to the back and climbed through thepantry window. He fell over a chair, bumped into the table, and damneda few things. The electric light was hung in the center of the room bya cord that kept him groping and clutching in the dark before he finallytouched 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 Budcould not determine. He went into the little sleeping room and turned onthe light there, looked around the empty room, grunted, and tiptoed intothe 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 thebaby was not there in its new gocart. The gocart was not there, Mariewas not there--one after another these facts impressed themselves uponBud's mind, even before he found the letter propped against the clockin the orthodox manner of announcing unexpected departures. Bud read theletter, crumpled it in his fist, and threw it toward the little heatingstove. "If that's the way yuh feel about it, I'll tell the world you cango and be darned!" he snorted, and tried to let that end the matter sofar as he was concerned. But he could not shake off the sense of havingbeen badly used. He did not stop to consider that while he was workingoff his anger, that day, Marie had been rocking back and forth, cryingand magnifying the quarrel as she dwelt upon it, and putting a new andsinister meaning into Bud's ill-considered utterances. By the time Budwas thinking only of the bargain car's hidden faults, Marie had reachedthe white heat of resentment that demanded vigorous action. Marie waspacking a suitcase and meditating upon the scorching letter she meant towrite.
Judging from the effect which the letter had upon Bud, it must havebeen a masterpiece of its kind. He threw the box of chocolates into thewood-box, crawled out of the window by which he had entered, and wentdown town to a hotel. If the house wasn't good enough for Marie, let hergo. He could go just as fast and as far as she could. And if she thoughthe was going to hot-foot it over to her mother's and whine around andbeg 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 turnthe 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 awayfrom that old cat of a mother. Let her stay there now till she was darngood and sick of it. He'd just keep her guessing for awhile; a week orso would do her good. Well, he wouldn't sell the furniture--he'd justmove it into another house, and give her a darn good scare. He'd get abetter one, that had a porcelain bathtub instead of a zinc one, and abetter porch, where the kid could be out in the sun. Yes, sir, he'd justdo 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 intoaccount two very important factors in the quarrel. The first and mostimportant one was Marie's mother, who, having been a widow for fifteenyears and therefore having acquired a habit of managing affairs thateven remotely concerned her, assumed that Marie's affairs must bemanaged also. The other factor was Marie's craving to be coaxed back tosmiles by the man who drove her to tears. Marie wanted Bud to come andsay he was sorry, and had been a brute and so forth. She wanted to hearhim tell how empty the house had seemed when he returned and found hergone. She wanted him to be good and scared with that letter. She stayedawake until after midnight, listening for his anxious footsteps; aftermidnight she stayed awake to cry over the inhuman way he was treatingher, and to wish she was dead, and so forth; also because the babywoke and wanted his bottle, and she was teaching him to sleep all nightwithout 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, hadit been given the least encouragement. For instance, he might have goneover to see Marie before he moved the furniture out of the house, hadhe not discovered an express wagon standing in front of the door whenhe went home about noon to see if Marie had come back. Before he hadrecovered to the point of profane speech, the express man appeared,coming out of the house, bent nearly double under the weight of Marie'strunk. Behind him in the doorway Bud got a glimpse of Marie's mother.
That settled it. Bud turned around and hurried to the nearest drayagecompany, and ordered a domestic wrecking crew to the scene; in otherwords, a packer and two draymen and a dray. He'd show 'em. Marie and hermother couldn't put anything over on him--he'd stand over that furniturewith a sheriff first.
He went back and found Marie's mother still there, packing dishes anddoilies and the like. They had a terrible row, and all the nearestneighbors inclined ears to doors ajar--getting an earful, as Budcontemptuously put it. He finally led Marie's mother to the front doorand set her firmly outside. Told her that Marie had come to him withno more than the clothes she had, and that his money had bought everyteaspoon and every towel and every stick of furniture in the darnedplace, and he'd be everlastingly thus-and-so if they were going tostrong-arm the stuff off him now. If Marie was too good to live withhim, why, his stuff was too good for her to have.
Oh, yes, the neighbors certainly got an earful, as the town gossipsproved when the divorce suit seeped into the papers. Bud refused toanswer the proceedings, and was therefore ordered to pay twice as muchalimony as he could afford to pay; more, in fact, than all his domesticexpense had amounted to in the fourteen months that he had been married.Also Marie was awarded the custody of the child and, because Marie'smother had represented Bud to be a violent man who was a menace to herdaughter's safety--and proved it by the neighbors who had seen and heardso much--Bud was served with a legal paper that wordily enjoined himfrom annoying Marie with his presence.
That unnecessary insult snapped the last thread of Bud's regret for whathad happened. He sold the furniture and the automobile, took the moneyto the judge that had tried the case, told the judge a few wholesometruths, and laid the pile of money on the desk.
"That cleans me out, Judge," he said stolidly. "I wasn't such a badhusband, at that. I got sore--but I'll bet you get sore yourself andtell your wife what-for, now and then. I didn't get a square deal, butthat's all right. I'm giving a better deal than I got. Now you can keepthat money and pay it out to Marie as she needs it, for herself and thekid. But for the Lord's sake, Judge, don't let that wildcat of a motherof hers get her fingers into the pile! She framed this deal, thinkingshe'd get a haul outa me this way. I'm asking you to block that littlegame. I've held out ten dollars, to eat on till I strike something. I'mclean; they've licked the platter and broke the dish. So don't never askme to dig up any more, because I won't--not for you nor no other darnman. Get that."
This, you must know, was not in the courtroom, so Bud was not fined forcontempt. The judge was a married man himself, and he may have had asympathetic understanding of Bud's position. At any rate he listenedunofficially, and helped Bud out with the
legal part of it, so that Budwalked out of the judge's office financially free, even though he hada 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 andprosperity were strangers.