To withhold for his own start in life only one ten-dollar bill from
fifteen hundred dollars was spectacular enough to soothe even so bruised
an ego as Bud Moore carried into the judge's office. There is an
anger which carries a person to the extreme of self-sacrifice, in the
subconscious hope of exciting pity for one so hardly used. Bud was
boiling with such an anger, and it demanded that he should all but give
Marie the shirt off his back, since she had demanded so much--and for so
slight a cause.
Bud could not see for the life of him why Marie should have quit for
that little ruction. It was not their first quarrel, nor their worst;
certainly he had not expected it to be their last. Why, he asked the
high heavens, had she told him to bring home a roll of cotton, if she
was going to leave him? Why had she turned her back on that little home,
that had seemed to mean as much to her as it had to him?
Being kin to primitive man, Bud could only bellow rage when he should
have analyzed calmly the situation. He should have seen that Marie too
had cabin fever, induced by changing too suddenly from carefree girlhood
to the ills and irks of wifehood and motherhood. He should have known
that she had been for two months wholly dedicated to the small physical
wants of their baby, and that if his nerves were fraying with watching
that incessant servitude, her own must be close to the snapping point;
had snapped, when dusk did not bring him home repentant.
But he did not know, and so he blamed Marie bitterly for the wreck of
their home, and he flung down all his worldly goods before her, and
marched off feeling self-consciously proud of his martyrdom. It soothed
him paradoxically to tell himself that he was "cleaned"; that Marie had
ruined him absolutely, and that he was just ten dollars and a decent
suit or two of clothes better off than a tramp. He was tempted to go
back and send the ten dollars after the rest of the fifteen hundred, but
good sense prevailed. He would have to borrow money for his next meal,
if he did that, and Bud was touchy about such things.
He kept the ten dollars therefore, and went down to the garage where he
felt most at home, and stood there with his hands in his pockets and the
corners of his mouth tipped downward--normally they had a way of tipping
upward, as though he was secretly amused at something--and his eyes
sullen, though they carried tiny lines at the corners to show how they
used to twinkle. He took the ten-dollar bank note from his pocket,
straightened out the wrinkles and looked at it disdainfully. As plainly
as though he spoke, his face told what he was thinking about it: that
this was what a woman had brought him to! He crumpled it up and made a
gesture as though he would throw it into the street, and a man behind
him laughed abruptly. Bud scowled and turned toward him a belligerent
glance, and the man stopped laughing as suddenly as he had begun.