Babbit (51 page)

  Tanis was quick and quiet:

  "Mr. Babbitt? Oh, George, this is Tanis. I haven't
seen you for weeks - days, anyway. You aren't sick, are you?"

  "No, just been terribly rushed. I, uh, I think
there'll be a big revival of building this year. Got to, uh, got to
work hard."

  "Of course, my man! I want you to. You know I'm
terribly ambitious for you; much more than I am for myself. I just
don't want you to forget poor Tanis. Will you call me up soon?"

  "Sure! Sure! You bet!"

  "Please do. I sha'n't call you again."

  He meditated, "Poor kid! . . . But gosh, she
oughtn't to 'phone me at the office.... She's a wonder - sympathy
'ambitious for me.' . . . But gosh, I won't be made and compelled
to call her up till I get ready. Darn these women, the way they
make demands! It'll be one long old time before I see her! . . .
But gosh, I'd like to see her to-night - sweet little thing.... Oh,
cut that, son! Now you've broken away, be wise!"

  She did not telephone again, nor he, but after five
more days she wrote to him:

  Have I offended you? You must know, dear, I didn't
mean to. I'm so lonely and I need somebody to cheer me up. Why
didn't you come to the nice party we had at Carrie's last evening I
remember she invited you. Can't you come around here to-morrow Thur
evening? I shall be alone and hope to see you.

  His reflections were numerous:

  "Doggone it, why can't she let me alone? Why can't
women ever learn a fellow hates to be bulldozed? And they always
take advantage of you by yelling how lonely they are.

  "Now that isn't nice of you, young fella. She's a
fine, square, straight girl, and she does get lonely. She writes a
swell hand. Nice-looking stationery. Plain. Refined. I guess I'll
have to go see her. Well, thank God, I got till to-morrow night
free of her, anyway.

  "She's nice but - Hang it, I won't be MADE to do
things! I'm not married to her. No, nor by golly going to be!

  "Oh, rats, I suppose I better go see her."

  II

  Thursday, the to-morrow of Tanis's note, was full of
emotional crises. At the Roughnecks' Table at the club, Verg Gunch
talked of the Good Citizens' League and (it seemed to Babbitt)
deliberately left him out of the invitations to join. Old Mat
Penniman, the general utility man at Babbitt's office, had
Troubles, and came in to groan about them: his oldest boy was "no
good," his wife was sick, and he had quarreled with his
brother-in-law. Conrad Lyte also had Troubles, and since Lyte was
one of his best clients, Babbitt had to listen to them. Mr. Lyte,
it appeared, was suffering from a peculiarly interesting neuralgia,
and the garage had overcharged him. When Babbitt came home,
everybody had Troubles: his wife was simultaneously thinking about
discharging the impudent new maid, and worried lest the maid leave;
and Tinka desired to denounce her teacher.

  "Oh, quit fussing!" Babbitt fussed. "You never hear
me whining about my Troubles, and yet if you had to run a
real-estate office - Why, to-day I found Miss Bannigan was two days
behind with her accounts, and I pinched my finger in my desk, and
Lyte was in and just as unreasonable as ever."

  He was so vexed that after dinner, when it was time
for a tactful escape to Tanis, he merely grumped to his wife, "Got
to go out. Be back by eleven, should think."

  "Oh! You're going out again?"

  "Again! What do you mean 'again'! Haven't hardly
been out of the house for a week!"

  "Are you - are you going to the Elks?"

  "Nope. Got to see some people."

  Though this time he heard his own voice and knew
that it was curt, though she was looking at him with wide-eyed
reproach, he stumped into the hall, jerked on his ulster and
furlined gloves, and went out to start the car.

  He was relieved to find Tanis cheerful,
unreproachful, and brilliant in a frock of brown net over gold
tissue. "You poor man, having to come out on a night like this!
It's terribly cold. Don't you think a small highball would be
nice?"

  "Now, by golly, there's a woman with savvy! I think
we could more or less stand a highball if it wasn't too long a one
- not over a foot tall!"

  He kissed her with careless heartiness, he forgot
the compulsion of her demands, he stretched in a large chair and
felt that he had beautifully come home. He was suddenly loquacious;
he told her what a noble and misunderstood man he was, and how
superior to Pete, Fulton Bemis, and the other men of their
acquaintance; and she, bending forward, chin in charming hand,
brightly agreed. But when he forced himself to ask, "Well, honey,
how's things with YOU," she took his duty-question seriously, and
he discovered that she too had Troubles:

  "Oh, all right but - I did get so angry with Carrie.
She told Minnie that I told her that Minnie was an awful tightwad,
and Minnie told me Carrie had told her, and of course I told her I
hadn't said anything of the kind, and then Carrie found Minnie had
told me, and she was simply furious because Minnie had told me, and
of course I was just boiling because Carrie had told her I'd told
her, and then we all met up at Fulton's - his wife is away - thank
heavens! - oh, there's the dandiest floor in his house to dance on
- and we were all of us simply furious at each other and - Oh, I do
hate that kind of a mix-up, don't you? I mean - it's so lacking in
refinement, but - And Mother wants to come and stay with me for a
whole month, and of course I do love her, I suppose I do, but
honestly, she'll cramp my style something dreadful - she never can
learn not to comment, and she always wants to know where I'm going
when I go out evenings, and if I lie to her she always spies around
and ferrets around and finds out where I've been, and then she
looks like Patience on a Monument till I could just scream. And oh,
I MUST tell you - You know I never talk about myself; I just hate
people who do, don't you? But - I feel so stupid to-night, and I
know I must be boring you with all this but - What would you do
about Mother?"

  He gave her facile masculine advice. She was to put
off her mother's stay. She was to tell Carrie to go to the deuce.
For these valuable revelations she thanked him, and they ambled
into the familiar gossip of the Bunch. Of what a sentimental fool
was Carrie. Of what a lazy brat was Pete. Of how nice Fulton Bemis
could be - "course lots of people think he's a regular old grouch
when they meet him because he doesn't give 'em the glad hand the
first crack out of the box, but when they get to know him, he's a
corker."

  But as they had gone conscientiously through each of
these analyses before, the conversation staggered. Babbitt tried to
be intellectual and deal with General Topics. He said some
thoroughly sound things about Disarmament, and broad-mindedness and
liberalism; but it seemed to him that General Topics interested
Tanis only when she could apply them to Pete, Carrie, or
themselves. He was distressingly conscious of their silence. He
tried to stir her into chattering again, but silence rose like a
gray presence and hovered between them.

  "I, uh - " he labored. "It strikes me - it strikes
me that unemployment is lessening."

  "Maybe Pete will get a decent job, then."

  Silence.

  Desperately he essayed, "What's the trouble, old
honey? You seem kind of quiet to-night."

  "Am I? Oh, I'm not. But - do you really care whether
I am or not?"

  "Care? Sure! Course I do!"

  "Do you really?" She swooped on him, sat on the arm
of his chair.

  He hated the emotional drain of having to appear
fond of her. He stroked her hand, smiled up at her dutifully, and
sank back.

  "George, I wonder if you really like me at all?"

  "Course I do, silly."

  "Do you really, precious? Do you care a bit?"

  "Why certainly! You don't suppose I'd be here if I
didn't!"

  "Now see here, young man, I won't have you speaking
to me in that huffy way!"

  "I didn't mean to sound huffy. I just - " In injured
and rather childish tones: "Gosh almighty, it makes me tired the
way everybody says I sound huffy when I just talk natural! Do they
expect me to sing it or something?"

  "Who do you mean by 'everybody'? How many other
ladies have you been consoling?"

  "Look here now, I won't have this hinting!"

  Humbly: "I know, dear. I was only teasing. I know it
didn't mean to talk huffy - it was just tired. Forgive bad Tanis.
But say you love me, say it!"

  "I love you.... Course I do."

  "Yes, you do!" cynically. "Oh, darling, I don't mean
to be rude but - I get so lonely. I feel so useless. Nobody needs
me, nothing I can do for anybody. And you know, dear, I'm so active
- I could be if there was something to do. And I am young, aren't
I! I'm not an old thing! I'm not old and stupid, am I?"

  He had to assure her. She stroked his hair, and he
had to look pleased under that touch, the more demanding in its
beguiling softness. He was impatient. He wanted to flee out to a
hard, sure, unemotional man-world. Through her delicate and
caressing fingers she may have caught something of his shrugging
distaste. She left him - he was for the moment buoyantly relieved -
she dragged a footstool to his feet and sat looking beseechingly up
at him. But as in many men the cringing of a dog, the flinching of
a frightened child, rouse not pity but a surprised and jerky
cruelty, so her humility only annoyed him. And he saw her now as
middle-aged, as beginning to be old. Even while he detested his own
thoughts, they rode him. She was old, he winced. Old! He noted how
the soft flesh was creasing into webby folds beneath her chin,
below her eyes, at the base of her wrists. A patch of her throat
had a minute roughness like the crumbs from a rubber eraser. Old!
She was younger in years than himself, yet it was sickening to have
her yearning up at him with rolling great eyes - as if, he
shuddered, his own aunt were making love to him.

  He fretted inwardly, "I'm through with this asinine
fooling around. I'm going to cut her out. She's a darn decent nice
woman, and I don't want to hurt her, but it'll hurt a lot less to
cut her right out, like a good clean surgical operation."

  He was on his feet. He was speaking urgently. By
every rule of self-esteem, he had to prove to her, and to himself,
that it was her fault.

  "I suppose maybe I'm kind of out of sorts to-night,
but honest, honey, when I stayed away for a while to catch up on
work and everything and figure out where I was at, you ought to
have been cannier and waited till I came back. Can't you see, dear,
when you MADE me come, I - being about an average bull-headed chump
- my tendency was to resist? Listen, dear, I'm going now - "

  "Not for a while, precious! No!"

  "Yep. Right now. And then sometime we'll see about
the future."

  "What do you mean, dear, 'about the future'? Have I
done something I oughtn't to? Oh, I'm so dreadfully sorry!"

  He resolutely put his hands behind him. "Not a
thing, God bless you, not a thing. You're as good as they make 'em.
But it's just - Good Lord, do you realize I've got things to do in
the world? I've got a business to attend to and, you might not
believe it, but I've got a wife and kids that I'm awful fond of!"
Then only during the murder he was committing was he able to feel
nobly virtuous. "I want us to be friends but, gosh, I can't go on
this way feeling I got to come up here every so often - "

  "Oh, darling, darling, and I've always told you, so
carefully, that you were absolutely free. I just wanted you to come
around when you were tired and wanted to talk to me, or when you
could enjoy our parties - "

  She was so reasonable, she was so gently right! It
took him an hour to make his escape, with nothing settled and
everything horribly settled. In a barren freedom of icy Northern
wind he sighed, "Thank God that's over! Poor Tanis, poor darling
decent Tanis! But it is over. Absolute! I'm free!"