Cabin Fever

Domestic wrecks may be a subject taboo in polite conversation, but Joe

De Barr was not excessively polite, and he had, moreover, a very likely

hope that Marie would yet choose to regard him with more favor than she

had shown in the past. He did not chance to see her at once, but as soon

as his work would permit he made it a point to meet her. He went about

it with beautiful directness. He made bold to call her up on "long

distance" from San Francisco, told her that he would be in San Jose that

night, and invited her to a show.

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.