Part 11 (2/2)

”Well, say! You couldn't tell it from the real thing! Believe me, Bud's some pickled b.u.m, 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 cus.h.i.+ons 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 a.s.sentingly. And if she did not quite attain her old bubbling spirits during the evening, at least she sent Joe back to San Francisco feeling very well satisfied with himself. He must have been satisfied with himself. He must have been satisfied with his wooing also, because he strolled into a jewelry store the next morning and priced several rings which he judged would be perfectly suitable for engagement rings. He might have gone so far as to buy one, if he had been sure of the size and of Marie's preference in stones. Since he lacked detailed information, he decided to wait, but he intimated plainly to the clerk that he would return in a few days.

It was just as well that he did decide to wait, for when he tried again to see Marie he failed altogether. Marie had left town. Her mother, with an acrid tone of resentment, declared that she did not know any more than the man in the moon where Marie had gone, but that she ”suspicioned” that some fool had told Marie where Bud was, and that Marie had gone traipsing after him. She had taken the baby along, which was another piece of foolishness which her mother would never have permitted had she been at home when Marie left.

Joe did not take the matter seriously, though he was disappointed at having made a fruitless trip to San Jose. He did not believe that Marie had done anything more than take a vacation from her mother's sharp-tongued rule, and for that he could not blame her, after having listened for fifteen minutes to the lady's monologue upon the subject of selfish, inconsiderate, ungrateful daughters. Remembering Marie's att.i.tude toward Bud, he did not believe that she had gone hunting him.

Yet Marie had done that very thing. True, she had spent a sleepless night fighting the impulse, and a hara.s.sed day trying to make up her mind whether to write first, or whether to go and trust to the element of surprise to help plead her cause with Bud; whether to take Lovin Child with her, or leave him with her mother.

She definitely decided to write Bud a short note and ask him if he remembered having had a wife and baby, once upon a time, and if he never wished that he had them still. She wrote the letter, crying a little over it along toward the last, as women will. But it sounded cold-blooded and condemnatory. She wrote another, letting a little of her real self into the lines. But that sounded sentimental and moving-pictury, and she knew how Bud hated cheap sentimentalism.

So she tore them both up and put them in the little heating stove, and lighted a match and set them burning, and watched them until they withered down to gray ash, and then broke up the ashes and scattered them amongst the cinders. Marie, you must know, had learned a good many things, one of which was the unwisdom of whetting the curiosity of a curious woman.

After that she proceeded to pack a suit case for herself and Lovin Child, seizing the opportunity while her mother was visiting a friend in Santa Clara. Once the packing was began, Marie worked with a feverish intensity of purpose and an eagerness that was amazing, considering her usual apathy toward everything in her life as she was living it.

Everything but Lovin Child. Him she loved and gloried in. He was like Bud--so much like him that Marie could not have loved him so much if she had managed to hate Bud as she tried sometimes to hate him. Lovin Child was a husky youngster, and he already had the promise of being as tall and straight-limbed and square-shouldered as his father. Deep in his eyes there lurked always a twinkle, as though he knew a joke that would make you laugh--if only he dared tell it; a quizzical, secretly amused little twinkle, as exactly like Bud's as it was possible for a two-year-old twinkle to be. To go with the twinkle, he had a quirky little smile. And to better the smile, he had the jolliest little chuckle that ever came through a pair of baby lips.

He came trotting up to the suit case which Marie had spread wide open on the bed, stood up on his tippy toes, and peered in. The quirky smile was twitching his lips, and the look he turned toward Marie's back was full of twinkle. He reached into the suit case, clutched a clean handkerchief and blew his nose with solemn precision; put the handkerchief back all crumpled, grabbed a silk stocking and drew it around his neck, and was straining to reach his little red Brownie cap when Marie turned and caught him up in her arms.

”No, no, Lovin Child! Baby mustn't. Marie is going to take her lovin'

baby boy to find--” She glanced hastily over her shoulder to make sure there was no one to hear, buried her face in the baby's fat neck and whispered the wonder, ”--to find hims daddy Bud! Does Lovin Man want to see hims daddy Bud? I bet he does want! I bet hims daddy Bud will be glad--Now you sit right still, and Marie will get him a cracker, an'

then he can watch Marie pack him little s.h.i.+rt, and hims little bunny suit, and hims wooh-wooh, and hims 'tockins--”

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