“Of course I hadn’t any money so I went to jail, but in a day or two she went to the judge and cried and told him I was all right when I wasn’t drunk and she got me out. I never thought that judge done right to lecture me the way he did. I don’t think that strikin’ your wife is as bad as strikin’ your child, and still ‘most everybody does that. Most women can defend themselves but a little child can’t do anything. Still, of course, I don’t defend strikin’ your wife, only one word kind of brings on another and it sounds different in the newspaper from what it really is.
“Well, after I got home from the jail we talked it over together and made up our minds we’d better part. Things had gone so bad with us that we thought it wa’n’t worth while to try any more and mebbe we’d both be better off alone. She was real sensible about it and was goin’ to keep the boy. I promised to give ‘em half my wages and was to see him whenever I wanted to.
“When we got our minds made up we went to see about a lawyer. She’d been goin’ over to the Settlement a good deal for advice and they’d been good to us but they didn’t like me; they blamed me for ever’thing that happened, and of course them settlement ladies wa’n’t none of ‘em married and they couldn’t understand how a feller would drink or fight with his wife. They didn’t know what allowance a woman has to make for a man, same as a man does for a woman—only a different kind. When she told ‘em what we were goin’ to do they all said, ‘No, you mustn’t do that. You must make the best of it and stay together’; they said that even if I promised to give her half my money I never would do it, but would go off and she’d never see me again. If they knew anything about what I thought of the boy they wouldn’t have said it. Then they said it would be a disgrace and that it would disgrace the child. I wish now we’d done it anyway. It would have been better for the child than it is now. Then she went to see the priest. We were both born Catholics, although we hadn’t paid much attention to it. That was the reason we went to St. Joe to get married. The priest told her that she mustn’t get a divorce, that divorces wa’n’t allowed except on scriptural grounds. Of course we couldn’t get it on them grounds. There never was nothin’ wrong with her—I’ll always say that—and as for me I don’t think she ever suspected anything of that kind. Even if I had wanted to I never had any money, and besides I’ve had to work too hard all my life for anything like that. Then when I went to the lawyer he said it would cost fifty dollars, but I hadn’t any fifty dollars. So we made up our minds to try it again. I don’t see, though, why they charge fifty dollars. If a divorce is right a man ought not to have it just because he’s got fifty dollars when a poor man can’t get it at all.
“It was a little better for a while. We both had a scare and then when we talked of quittin’ I s’pose we thought more of each other. Anyhow we’d lived together so long that we’d kind of got in the habit of it. But still it didn’t last long; I don’t believe ‘twas right for us to stay together after all that had happened and the way we felt and had lived up to that time. If we’d only separated then—but we didn’t, and it’s no use talkin’ about it now.
“It was just about this time that Jimmy Carroll was killed and she didn’t want me to work in the yards after that. She was ‘most as ‘fraid as I was so we made up our minds that I’d quit. It was then that I went to peddlin’; but wait a minute before I tell that, let’s go and speak to the guard.”
The two men got up and went to the iron door and looked out through the bars at the shining electric lights in the corridors. The guard sat near the door talking with the prisoner in the next cell. He looked up and put two cigars through the grates.
“Is there anything I can do for you, Jackson?”
“No, I guess not. Nothin’ more has come from him, has there?”
“No, but it’s early yet.”
“Well, I guess it’s no use.”