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The Married Man
by
“‘But your room,’ I gasped; ‘what’s the matter with your room?’
“‘I’ve been turned out of my room,’ he said. ‘I’m allowed to sleep here, to-night; and I don’t know how it will be to-morrow night–can’t tell.’
“‘Well, I’ll bunk in with you, here.’
“‘No,’ he rejoined, heartlessly; ‘on the whole, I don’t want you. Get out and walk the street, or try someone else.’
“‘Then lend me some money. I’ll go to a hotel.’
“‘If I had any money, do you think I should be sleeping here, to-night?’
“‘I suppose not,’ I sighed. ‘Well, I think I’ll go. You won’t help me?’
“‘Not this night,’ he said, grimly. ‘Get out! But I don’t want you to gabble about where you found me sleeping.’
“I left him, deeply grieved by his meanness, which I ascribed to an old jealousy of the years gone by, when he had been attentive to the unmarried Mrs. Milner, and had found me in his way. I had not thought he would have cherished this spite through the years, but, resolved never to ask a favor again, I left him, and went out into the street. Finally, unable to think of another resource, I sought the nearest square, and put in a cold and miserable night on a bench, with vagrants, beggars, and outcasts for company.
“At daylight, I rose and wandered slowly back toward the studio building, to await the down-coming of my charge.
“At the door I met a disheveled, weary, and bleary-eyed wreck, who eyed me sourly, and broke forth.
“‘You’re a nice sort of duffer, you are,’ he said. ‘You knew I was drunk. You knew I didn’t know what key I gave you. Why didn’t you make sure? I couldn’t get into my boarding-house. I walked the street all night.’
“‘You did!’ I responded. ‘You walked the street all night, did you? Oh, I’m so glad! I’m so glad, Bunker! You walked the street, did you? Well, I slept in the square–thanks to your condition, you unholy inebriate!’
“‘Where’s my key?’ he demanded, angrily, ‘my boarding-house key? I want to get in before breakfast-time.’
“‘Up in my studio,’ I answered, fully as tartly. ‘Go up there and trade keys; and don’t bring any more of your friends around to me.’
“I went to a restaurant, spent my twenty-five cents for breakfast, and then climbed to the studio. The door was unlocked, but the bird had flown.
“I spent a miserable day, doing no work at all, but worrying greatly over the fate of Mrs. Milner.
“But, at nightfall, having replenished my pockets from the bank, as I was about to leave the building, to take the train for home, I met her, bag and baggage in a cab at the door.
“Did you ever get a thorough scolding from an angry woman, or, as in this case, from a good-natured woman pretending to be angry? But, alas! I did not know that she was pretending, and I suffered horribly–on the ride to the station and on the train. I was an unfaithful, treacherous scoundrel, leaving a trusting and loving wife alone for a whole week, and giving the use of ‘my office’–in which there was a couch and an ice-box and a gas-stove and a bath-tub and a clothes-closet (for hiding purposes)–to a shameless person with a black-and-blue eye, who had stared at her most insolently when she had come to the door.
“‘I mean to tell your wife,’ Mrs. Milner said, before we had reached the Grand Central Station; and she repeated the threat a dozen times, before we arrived at my house. Then, on the walk home, I, who had maintained a moody silence all the way, plucked up heart, in the effort to compose myself for the meeting with my wife, and asked her how she had managed herself.
“‘I,’ she answered, with feminine scorn, ‘I was turned away from three hotels, before I finally understood your generous metropolitan hotel rules, which doom traveling women to the police-stations for lodging. I should have walked the streets, if I had not met a friend who generously took me home with her.’