Babbit (48 page)

  "Still a widower, George?"

  "Yump. Cold again to-night."

  "What do you hear from the wife?"

  "She's feeling fine, but her sister is still pretty
sick."

  "Say, better come in and have dinner with us
to-night, George."

  "Oh - oh, thanks. Have to go out."

  Suddenly he could not endure Littlefield's recitals
of the more interesting statistics about totally uninteresting
problems. He scraped at the walk and grunted.

  Sam Doppelbrau appeared.

  "Evenin', Babbitt. Working hard?"

  "Yuh, lil exercise."

  "Cold enough for you to-night?"

  "Well, just about."

  "Still a widower?"

  "Uh-huh."

  "Say, Babbitt, while she's away - I know you don't
care much for booze-fights, but the Missus and I'd be awfully glad
if you could come in some night. Think you could stand a good
cocktail for once?"

  "Stand it? Young fella, I bet old Uncle George can
mix the best cocktail in these United States!"

  "Hurray! That's the way to talk! Look here: There's
some folks coming to the house to-night, Louetta Swanson and some
other live ones, and I'm going to open up a bottle of pre-war gin,
and maybe we'll dance a while. Why don't you drop in and jazz it up
a little, just for a change?"

  "Well - What time they coming?"

  He was at Sam Doppelbrau's at nine. It was the third
time he had entered the house. By ten he was calling Mr. Doppelbrau
"Sam, old hoss."

  At eleven they all drove out to the Old Farm Inn.
Babbitt sat in the back of Doppelbrau's car with Louetta Swanson.
Once he had timorously tried to make love to her. Now he did not
try; he merely made love; and Louetta dropped her head on his
shoulder, told him what a nagger Eddie was, and accepted Babbitt as
a decent and well-trained libertine.

  With the assistance of Tanis's Bunch, the
Doppelbraus, and other companions in forgetfulness, there was not
an evening for two weeks when he did not return home late and
shaky. With his other faculties blurred he yet had the motorist's
gift of being able to drive when he could scarce walk; of slowing
down at corners and allowing for approaching cars. He came wambling
into the house. If Verona and Kenneth Escott were about, he got
past them with a hasty greeting, horribly aware of their level
young glances, and hid himself up-stairs. He found when he came
into the warm house that he was hazier than he had believed. His
head whirled. He dared not lie down. He tried to soak out the
alcohol in a hot bath. For the moment his head was clearer but when
he moved about the bathroom his calculations of distance were
wrong, so that he dragged down the towels, and knocked over the
soap-dish with a clatter which, he feared, would betray him to the
children. Chilly in his dressing-gown he tried to read the evening
paper. He could follow every word; he seemed to take in the sense
of things; but a minute afterward he could not have told what he
had been reading. When he went to bed his brain flew in circles,
and he hastily sat up, struggling for self-control. At last he was
able to lie still, feeling only a little sick and dizzy - and
enormously ashamed. To hide his "condition" from his own children!
To have danced and shouted with people whom he despised! To have
said foolish things, sung idiotic songs, tried to kiss silly girls!
Incredulously he remembered that he had by his roaring familiarity
with them laid himself open to the patronizing of youths whom he
would have kicked out of his office; that by dancing too ardently
he had exposed himself to rebukes from the rattiest of withering
women. As it came relentlessly back to him he snarled, "I hate
myself! God how I hate myself!" But, he raged, "I'm through! No
more! Had enough, plenty!"

  He was even surer about it the morning after, when
he was trying to be grave and paternal with his daughters at
breakfast. At noontime he was less sure. He did not deny that he
had been a fool; he saw it almost as clearly as at midnight; but
anything, he struggled, was better than going back to a life of
barren heartiness. At four he wanted a drink. He kept a whisky
flask in his desk now, and after two minutes of battle he had his
drink. Three drinks later he began to see the Bunch as tender and
amusing friends, and by six he was with them . . . and the tale was
to be told all over.

  Each morning his head ached a little less. A bad
head for drinks had been his safeguard, but the safeguard was
crumbling. Presently he could be drunk at dawn, yet not feel
particularly wretched in his conscience - or in his stomach - when
he awoke at eight. No regret, no desire to escape the toil of
keeping up with the arduous merriment of the Bunch, was so great as
his feeling of social inferiority when he failed to keep up. To be
the "livest" of them was as much his ambition now as it had been to
excel at making money, at playing golf, at motor-driving, at
oratory, at climbing to the McKelvey set. But occasionally he
failed.

  He found that Pete and the other young men
considered the Bunch too austerely polite and the Carrie who merely
kissed behind doors too embarrassingly monogamic. As Babbitt
sneaked from Floral Heights down to the Bunch, so the young
gallants sneaked from the proprieties of the Bunch off to "times"
with bouncing young women whom they picked up in department stores
and at hotel coatrooms. Once Babbitt tried to accompany them. There
was a motor car, a bottle of whisky, and for him a grubby shrieking
cash-girl from Parcher and Stein's. He sat beside her and worried.
He was apparently expected to "jolly her along," but when she sang
out, "Hey, leggo, quit crushing me cootie-garage," he did not quite
know how to go on. They sat in the back room of a saloon, and
Babbitt had a headache, was confused by their new slang looked at
them benevolently, wanted to go home, and had a drink - a good many
drinks.

  Two evenings after, Fulton Bemis, the surly older
man of the Bunch, took Babbitt aside and grunted, "Look here, it's
none of my business, and God knows I always lap up my share of the
hootch, but don't you think you better watch yourself? You're one
of these enthusiastic chumps that always overdo things. D' you
realize you're throwing in the booze as fast as you can, and you
eat one cigarette right after another? Better cut it out for a
while."

  Babbitt tearfully said that good old Fult was a
prince, and yes, he certainly would cut it out, and thereafter he
lighted a cigarette and took a drink and had a terrific quarrel
with Tanis when she caught him being affectionate with Carrie
Nork.

  Next morning he hated himself that he should have
sunk into a position where a fifteenth-rater like Fulton Bemis
could rebuke him. He perceived that, since he was making love to
every woman possible, Tanis was no longer his one pure star, and he
wondered whether she had ever been anything more to him than A
Woman. And if Bemis had spoken to him, were other people talking
about him? He suspiciously watched the men at the Athletic Club
that noon. It seemed to him that they were uneasy. They had been
talking about him then? He was angry. He became belligerent. He not
only defended Seneca Doane but even made fun of the Y. M. C. A,
Vergil Gunch was rather brief in his answers.

  Afterward Babbitt was not angry. He was afraid. He
did not go to the next lunch of the Boosters' Club but hid in a
cheap restaurant, and, while he munched a ham-and-egg sandwich and
sipped coffee from a cup on the arm of his chair, he worried.

  Four days later, when the Bunch were having one of
their best parties, Babbitt drove them to the skating-rink which
had been laid out on the Chaloosa River. After a thaw the streets
had frozen in smooth ice. Down those wide endless streets the wind
rattled between the rows of wooden houses, and the whole Bellevue
district seemed a frontier town. Even with skid chains on all four
wheels, Babbitt was afraid of sliding, and when he came to the long
slide of a hill he crawled down, both brakes on. Slewing round a
corner came a less cautious car. It skidded, it almost raked them
with its rear fenders. In relief at their escape the Bunch - Tanis,
Minnie Sonntag, Pete, Fulton Bemis - shouted "Oh, baby," and waved
their hands to the agitated other driver. Then Babbitt saw
Professor Pumphrey laboriously crawling up hill, afoot, Staring
owlishly at the revelers. He was sure that Pumphrey recognized him
and saw Tanis kiss him as she crowed, "You're such a good
driver!"

  At lunch next day he probed Pumphrey with "Out last
night with my brother and some friends of his. Gosh, what driving!
Slippery 's glass. Thought I saw you hiking up the Bellevue Avenue
Hill."

  "No, I wasn't - I didn't see you," said Pumphrey,
hastily, rather guiltily.

  Perhaps two days afterward Babbitt took Tanis to
lunch at the Hotel Thornleigh. She who had seemed well content to
wait for him at her flat had begun to hint with melancholy smiles
that he must think but little of her if he never introduced her to
his friends, if he was unwilling to be seen with her except at the
movies. He thought of taking her to the "ladies' annex" of the
Athletic Club, but that was too dangerous. He would have to
introduce her and, oh, people might misunderstand and - He
compromised on the Thornleigh.

  She was unusually smart, all in black: small black
tricorne hat, short black caracul coat, loose and swinging, and
austere high-necked black velvet frock at a time when most street
costumes were like evening gowns. Perhaps she was too smart. Every
one in the gold and oak restaurant of the Thornleigh was staring at
her as Babbitt followed her to a table. He uneasily hoped that the
head-waiter would give them a discreet place behind a pillar, but
they were stationed on the center aisle. Tanis seemed not to notice
her admirers; she smiled at Babbitt with a lavish "Oh, isn't this
nice! What a peppy-looking orchestra!" Babbitt had difficulty in
being lavish in return, for two tables away he saw Vergil Gunch.
All through the meal Gunch watched them, while Babbitt watched
himself being watched and lugubriously tried to keep from spoiling
Tanis's gaiety. "I felt like a spree to-day," she rippled. "I love
the Thornleigh, don't you? It's so live and yet so - so
refined."

  He made talk about the Thornleigh, the service, the
food, the people he recognized in the restaurant, all but Vergil
Gunch. There did not seem to be anything else to talk of. He smiled
conscientiously at her fluttering jests; he agreed with her that
Minnie Sonntag was "so hard to get along with," and young Pete
"such a silly lazy kid, really just no good at all." But he himself
had nothing to say. He considered telling her his worries about
Gunch, but - "oh, gosh, it was too much work to go into the whole
thing and explain about Verg and everything."

  He was relieved when he put Tanis on a trolley; he
was cheerful in the familiar simplicities of his office.

  At four o'clock Vergil Gunch called on him.

  Babbitt was agitated, but Gunch began in a friendly
way:

  "How's the boy? Say, some of us are getting up a
scheme we'd kind of like to have you come in on."

  "Fine, Verg. Shoot."

  "You know during the war we had the Undesirable
Element, the Reds and walking delegates and just the plain common
grouches, dead to rights, and so did we for quite a while after the
war, but folks forget about the danger and that gives these cranks
a chance to begin working underground again, especially a lot of
these parlor socialists. Well, it's up to the folks that do a
little sound thinking to make a conscious effort to keep bucking
these fellows. Some guy back East has organized a society called
the Good Citizens' League for just that purpose. Of course the
Chamber of Commerce and the American Legion and so on do a fine
work in keeping the decent people in the saddle, but they're
devoted to so many other causes that they can't attend to this one
problem properly. But the Good Citizens' League, the G. C. L., they
stick right to it. Oh, the G. C. L. has to have some other
ostensible purposes - frinstance here in Zenith I think it ought to
support the park-extension project and the City Planning Committee
- and then, too, it should have a social aspect, being made up of
the best people - have dances and so on, especially as one of the
best ways it can put the kibosh on cranks is to apply this social
boycott business to folks big enough so you can't reach 'em
otherwise. Then if that don't work, the G. C. L. can finally send a
little delegation around to inform folks that get too flip that
they got to conform to decent standards and quit shooting off their
mouths so free. Don't it sound like the organization could do a
great work? We've already got some of the strongest men in town,
and of course we want you in. How about it?"

  Babbitt was uncomfortable. He felt a compulsion back
to all the standards he had so vaguely yet so desperately been
fleeing. He fumbled:

  "I suppose you'd especially light on fellows like
Seneca Doane and try to make 'em - "

  "You bet your sweet life we would! Look here, old
Georgie: I've never for one moment believed you meant it when
you've defended Doane, and the strikers and so on, at the Club. I
knew you were simply kidding those poor galoots like Sid
Finkelstein.... At least I certainly hope you were kidding!"

  "Oh, well - sure - Course you might say - " Babbitt
was conscious of how feeble he sounded, conscious of Gunch's mature
and relentless eye. "Gosh, you know where I stand! I'm no labor
agitator! I'm a business man, first, last, and all the time! But -
but honestly, I don't think Doane means so badly, and you got to
remember he's an old friend of mine."

  "George, when it comes right down to a struggle
between decency and the security of our homes on the one hand, and
red ruin and those lazy dogs plotting for free beer on the other,
you got to give up even old friendships. 'He that is not with me is
against me.'"