Babbit (49 page)

  "Ye-es, I suppose - "

  "How about it? Going to join us in the Good
Citizens' League?"

  "I'll have to think it over, Verg."

  "All right, just as you say." Babbitt was relieved
to be let off so easily, but Gunch went on: "George, I don't know
what's come over you; none of us do; and we've talked a lot about
you. For a while we figured out you'd been upset by what happened
to poor Riesling, and we forgave you for any fool thing you said,
but that's old stuff now, George, and we can't make out what's got
into you. Personally, I've always defended you, but I must say it's
getting too much for me. All the boys at the Athletic Club and the
Boosters' are sore, the way you go on deliberately touting Doane
and his bunch of hell-hounds, and talking about being liberal -
which means being wishy-washy - and even saying this preacher guy
Ingram isn't a professional free-love artist. And then the way you
been carrying on personally! Joe Pumphrey says he saw you out the
other night with a gang of totties, all stewed to the gills, and
here to-day coming right into the Thornleigh with a - well, she may
be all right and a perfect lady, but she certainly did look like a
pretty gay skirt for a fellow with his wife out of town to be
taking to lunch. Didn't look well. What the devil has come over
you, George?"

  "Strikes me there's a lot of fellows that know more
about my personal business than I do myself!"

  "Now don't go getting sore at me because I come out
flatfooted like a friend and say what I think instead of tattling
behind your back, the way a whole lot of 'em do. I tell you George,
you got a position in the community, and the community expects you
to live up to it. And - Better think over joining the Good
Citizens' League. See you about it later."

  He was gone.

  That evening Babbitt dined alone. He saw all the
Clan of Good Fellows peering through the restaurant window, spying
on him. Fear sat beside him, and he told himself that to-night he
would not go to Tanis's flat; and he did not go . . . till
late.

  I

  
T
HE summer
before, Mrs. Babbitt's letters had crackled with desire to return
to Zenith. Now they said nothing of returning, but a wistful "I
suppose everything is going on all right without me" among her dry
chronicles of weather and sicknesses hinted to Babbitt that he
hadn't been very urgent about her coming. He worried it:

  "If she were here, and I went on raising cain like I
been doing, she'd have a fit. I got to get hold of myself. I got to
learn to play around and yet not make a fool of myself. I can do
it, too, if folks like Verg Gunch 'll let me alone, and Myra 'll
stay away. But - poor kid, she sounds lonely. Lord, I don't want to
hurt her!"

  Impulsively he wrote that they missed her, and her
next letter said happily that she was coming home.

  He persuaded himself that he was eager to see her.
He bought roses for the house, he ordered squab for dinner, he had
the car cleaned and polished. All the way home from the station
with her he was adequate in his accounts of Ted's success in
basket-ball at the university, but before they reached Floral
Heights there was nothing more to say, and already he felt the
force of her stolidity, wondered whether he could remain a good
husband and still sneak out of the house this evening for half an
hour with the Bunch. When he had housed the car he blundered
upstairs, into the familiar talcum-scented warmth of her presence,
blaring, "Help you unpack your bag?"

  "No, I can do it."

  Slowly she turned, holding up a small box, and
slowly she said, "I brought you a present, just a new cigar-case. I
don't know if you'd care to have it - "

  She was the lonely girl, the brown appealing Myra
Thompson, whom he had married, and he almost wept for pity as he
kissed her and besought, "Oh, honey, honey, CARE to have it? Of
course I do! I'm awful proud you brought it to me. And I needed a
new case badly."

  He wondered how he would get rid of the case he had
bought the week before.

  "And you really are glad to see me back?"

  "Why, you poor kiddy, what you been worrying
about?"

  "Well, you didn't seem to miss me very much."

  By the time he had finished his stint of lying they
were firmly bound again. By ten that evening it seemed improbable
that she had ever been away. There was but one difference: the
problem of remaining a respectable husband, a Floral Heights
husband, yet seeing Tanis and the Bunch with frequency. He had
promised to telephone to Tanis that evening, and now it was
melodramatically impossible. He prowled about the telephone,
impulsively thrusting out a hand to lift the receiver, but never
quite daring to risk it. Nor could he find a reason for slipping
down to the drug store on Smith Street, with its telephone-booth.
He was laden with responsibility till he threw it off with the
speculation: "Why the deuce should I fret so about not being able
to 'phone Tanis? She can get along without me. I don't owe her
anything. She's a fine girl, but I've given her just as much as she
has me. . . . Oh, damn these women and the way they get you all
tied up in complications!"

  II

  For a week he was attentive to his wife, took her to
the theater, to dinner at the Littlefields'; then the old weary
dodging and shifting began and at least two evenings a week he
spent with the Bunch. He still made pretense of going to the Elks
and to committee-meetings but less and less did he trouble to have
his excuses interesting, less and less did she affect to believe
them. He was certain that she knew he was associating with what
Floral Heights called "a sporty crowd," yet neither of them
acknowledged it. In matrimonial geography the distance between the
first mute recognition of a break and the admission thereof is as
great as the distance between the first naive faith and the first
doubting.

  As he began to drift away he also began to see her
as a human being, to like and dislike her instead of accepting her
as a comparatively movable part of the furniture, and he
compassionated that husband-and-wife relation which, in twenty-five
years of married life, had become a separate and real entity. He
recalled their high lights the summer vacation in Virginia meadows
under the blue wall of the mountains; their motor tour through
Ohio, and the exploration of Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Columbus;
the birth of Verona; their building of this new house, planned to
comfort them through a happy old age - chokingly they had said that
it might be the last home either of them would ever have. Yet his
most softening remembrance of these dear moments did not keep him
from barking at dinner, "Yep, going out f' few hours. Don't sit up
for me."

  He did not dare now to come home drunk, and though
he rejoiced in his return to high morality and spoke with gravity
to Pete and Fulton Bemis about their drinking, he prickled at
Myra's unexpressed criticisms and sulkily meditated that a "fellow
couldn't ever learn to handle himself if he was always bossed by a
lot of women."

  He no longer wondered if Tanis wasn't a bit worn and
sentimental. In contrast to the complacent Myra he saw her as swift
and air-borne and radiant, a fire-spirit tenderly stooping to the
hearth, and however pitifully he brooded on his wife, he longed to
be with Tanis.

  Then Mrs. Babbitt tore the decent cloak from her
unhappiness and the astounded male discovered that she was having a
small determined rebellion of her own.

  III

  They were beside the fireless fire-place, in the
evening.

  "Georgie," she said, "you haven't given me the list
of your household expenses while I was away."

  "No, I - Haven't made it out yet." Very affably:
"Gosh, we must try to keep down expenses this year."

  "That's so. I don't know where all the money goes
to. I try to economize, but it just seems to evaporate."

  "I suppose I oughtn't to spend so much on cigars.
Don't know but what I'll cut down my smoking, maybe cut it out
entirely. I was thinking of a good way to do it, the other day:
start on these cubeb cigarettes, and they'd kind of disgust me with
smoking."

  "Oh, I do wish you would! It isn't that I care, but
honestly, George, it is so bad for you to smoke so much. Don't you
think you could reduce the amount? And George - I notice now, when
you come home from these lodges and all, that sometimes you smell
of whisky. Dearie, you know I don't worry so much about the moral
side of it, but you have a weak stomach and you can't stand all
this drinking."

  "Weak stomach, hell! I guess I can carry my booze
about as well as most folks!"

  "Well, I do think you ought to be careful. Don't you
see, dear, I don't want you to get sick."

  "Sick rats! I'm not a baby! I guess I ain't going to
get sick just because maybe once a week I shoot a highball! That's
the trouble with women. They always exaggerate so."

  "George, I don't think you ought to talk that way
when I'm just speaking for your own good."

  "I know, but gosh all fishhooks, that's the trouble
with women! They're always criticizing and commenting and bringing
things up, and then they say it's 'for your own good'!"

  "Why, George, that's not a nice way to talk, to
answer me so short."

  "Well, I didn't mean to answer short, but gosh,
talking as if I was a kindergarten brat, not able to tote one
highball without calling for the St. Mary's ambulance! A fine idea
you must have of me!"

  "Oh, it isn't that; it's just - I don't want to see
you get sick and - My, I didn't know it was so late! Don't forget
to give me those household accounts for the time while I was
away."

  "Oh, thunder, what's the use of taking the trouble
to make 'em out now? Let's just skip 'em for that period."

  "Why, George Babbitt, in all the years we've been
married we've never failed to keep a complete account of every
penny we've spent!"

  "No. Maybe that's the trouble with us."

  "What in the world do you mean?"

  "Oh, I don't mean anything, only - Sometimes I get
so darn sick and tired of all this routine and the accounting at
the office and expenses at home and fussing and stewing and
fretting and wearing myself out worrying over a lot of junk that
doesn't really mean a doggone thing, and being so careful and -
Good Lord, what do you think I'm made for? I could have been a darn
good orator, and here I fuss and fret and worry - "

  "Don't you suppose I ever get tired of fussing? I
get so bored with ordering three meals a day, three hundred and
sixty-five days a year, and ruining my eyes over that horrid
sewing-machine, and looking after your clothes and Rone's and Ted's
and Tinka's and everybody's, and the laundry, and darning socks,
and going down to the Piggly Wiggly to market, and bringing my
basket home to save money on the cash-and-carry and -
EVERYTHING!"

  "Well, gosh," with a certain astonishment, "I
suppose maybe you do! But talk about - Here I have to be in the
office every single day, while you can go out all afternoon and see
folks and visit with the neighbors and do any blinkin' thing you
want to!"

  "Yes, and a fine lot of good that does me! Just
talking over the same old things with the same old crowd, while you
have all sorts of interesting people coming in to see you at the
office."

  "Interesting! Cranky old dames that want to know why
I haven't rented their dear precious homes for about seven times
their value, and bunch of old crabs panning the everlasting
daylights out of me because they don't receive every cent of their
rentals by three G.M. on the second of the month! Sure!
Interesting! Just as interesting as the small pox!"

  "Now, George, I will not have you shouting at me
that way!"

  "Well, it gets my goat the way women figure out that
a man doesn't do a darn thing but sit on his chair and have
lovey-dovey conferences with a lot of classy dames and give 'em the
glad eye!"