Cabin Fever by B. M. Bower (best ebook reader .TXT) 📗

Marie accepted without enthusiasm—and her listlessness was not lost over forty miles of telephone wire. Enough of it seeped to Joe's ears to make him twist his mustache quite furiously when he came out of the telephone booth. If she was still stuck on that fellow Bud, and couldn't see anybody else, it was high time she was told a few things about him. It was queer how a nice girl like Marie would hang on to some cheap guy like Bud Moore. Regular fellows didn't stand any show—unless they played what cards happened to fall their way. Joe, warned by her indifference, set himself very seriously to the problem of playing his cards to the best advantage.

He went into a flower store—disdaining the banked loveliness upon the corners—and bought Marie a dozen great, heavy-headed chrysanthemums, whose color he could not name to save his life, so called them pink and let it go at that. They were not pink, and they were not sweet—Joe held the bunch well away from his protesting olfactory nerves which were not educated to tantalizing odors—but they were more expensive than roses, and he knew that women raved over them. He expected Marie to rave over them, whether she liked them or not.

Fortified by these, groomed and perfumed and as prosperous looking as a tobacco salesman with a generous expense account may be, he went to San Jose on an early evening train that carried a parlor car in which Joe made himself comfortable. He fooled even the sophisticated porter into thinking him a millionaire, wherefore he arrived in a glow of self-esteem, which bred much optimism.

Marie was impressed—at least with his assurance and the chrysanthemums, over which she was sufficiently enthusiastic to satisfy even Joe. Since he had driven to the house in a hired automobile, he presently had the added satisfaction of handing Marie into the tonneau as though she were a queen entering the royal chariot, and of ordering the driver to take them out around the golf links, since it was still very early. Then, settling back with what purported to be a sigh of bliss, he regarded Marie sitting small and still and listless beside him. The glow of the chrysanthemums had already faded. Marie, with all the girlish prettiness she had ever possessed, and with an added charm that was very elusive and hard to analyze, seemed to have lost all of her old animation.

Joe tried the weather, and the small gossip of the film world, and a judiciously expurgated sketch of his life since he had last seen her. Marie answered him whenever his monologue required answer, but she was unresponsive, uninterested—bored. Joe twisted his mustache, eyed her aslant and took the plunge.

“I guess joy-ridin' kinda calls up old times, ay?” he began insidiously. “Maybe I shouldn't have brought you out for a ride; maybe it brings back painful memories, as the song goes.”

“Oh, no,” said Marie spiritlessly. “I don't see why it should.”

“No? Well, that's good to hear you say so, girlie. I was kinda afraid maybe trouble had hit you hard. A sensitive, big-hearted little person like you. But if you've put it all outa your mind, why, that's where you're dead right. Personally, I was glad to see you saw where you'd made a mistake, and backed up. That takes grit and brains. Of course, we all make mistakes—you wasn't to blame—innocent little kid like you—”

“Yes,” said Marie, “I guess I made a mistake, all right.”

“Sure! But you seen it and backed up. And a good thing you did. Look what he'd of brought you to by now, if you'd stuck!”

Marie tilted back her head and looked up at the tall row of eucalyptus trees feathered against the stars. “What?” she asked uninterestedly.

“Well—I don't want to knock, especially a fellow that's on the toboggan already. But I know a little girl that's aw-fully lucky, and I'm honest enough to say so.”

“Why?” asked Marie obligingly. “Why—in particular?”

“Why in particular?” Joe leaned toward her. “Say, you must of heard how Bud's going to the dogs. If you haven't, I don't want—”

“No, I hadn't heard,” said Marie, looking up at the Big Dipper so that her profile, dainty and girlish still, was revealed like a cameo to Joe. “Is he? I love to watch the stars, don't you?”

“I love to watch a star,” Joe breathed softly. “So you hadn't heard how Bud's turned out to be a regular souse? Honest, didn't you know it?”

“No, I didn't know it,” said Marie boredly. “Has he?”

“Well, say! You couldn't tell it from the real thing! Believe me, Bud's some pickled bum, these days. I run across him up in the mountains, a month or so ago. Honest, I was knocked plumb silly—much as I knew about Bud that you never knew, I never thought he'd turn out quite so—” Joe paused, with a perfect imitation of distaste for his subject. “Say, this is great, out here,” he murmured, tucking the robe around her with that tender protectiveness which stops just short of being proprietary. “Honest, Marie, do you like it?”

“Why, sure, I like it, Joe.” Marie smiled at him in the star-light. “It's great, don't you think? I don't get out very often, any more. I'm working, you know—and evenings and Sundays baby takes up all my time.”

“You working? Say, that's a darned shame! Don't Bud send you any money?”

“He left some,” said Marie frankly. “But I'm keeping that for baby, when he grows up and needs it. He don't send any.”

“Well, say! As long as he's in the State, you can make him dig up. For the kid's support, anyway. Why don't you get after him?”

Marie looked down over the golf links, as the car swung around the long curve at the head of the slope. “I don't know where he is,” she said tonelessly. “Where did you see him, Joe?”

Joe's hesitation lasted but long enough for him to give his mustache end a twist. Marie certainly seemed to be well “over it.” There could be no harm in telling.

“Well, when I saw him he was at Alpine; that's a little burg up in the edge of the mountains, on the W. P. He didn't look none too prosperous, at that. But he had money—he was playing poker and that kind of thing. And he was drunk as a boiled owl, and getting drunker just as fast as he knew how. Seemed to be kind of a stranger there; at least he didn't throw in with the bunch like a native would. But that was more than a month ago, Marie. He might not be there now. I could write up and find out for you.”

Marie settled back against the cushions as though she had already dismissed the subject from her mind.

“Oh, don't bother about it, Joe. I don't suppose he's got any money, anyway. Let's forget him.”

“You said it, Marie. Stacked up to me like a guy that's got just enough dough for a good big souse. He ain't hard to forget—is he, girlie?”

Marie laughed assentingly. And if she did not quite attain her old bubbling spirits during the evening, at least