Babbit (52 page)

  I

  
H
IS wife was up
when he came in. "Did you have a good time?" she sniffed.

  "I did not. I had a rotten time! Anything else I got
to explain?"

  "George, how can you speak like - Oh, I don't know
what's come over you!"

  "Good Lord, there's nothing come over me! Why do you
look for trouble all the time?" He was warning himself, "Careful!
Stop being so disagreeable. Course she feels it, being left alone
here all evening." But he forgot his warning as she went on:

  "Why do you go out and see all sorts of strange
people? I suppose you'll say you've been to another
committee-meeting this evening!"

  "Nope. I've been calling on a woman. We sat by the
fire and kidded each other and had a whale of a good time, if you
want to know!"

  "Well - From the way you say it, I suppose it's my
fault you went there! I probably sent you!"

  "You did!"

  "Well, upon my word - "

  "You hate 'strange people' as you call 'em. If you
had your way, I'd be as much of an old stick-in-the-mud as Howard
Littlefield. You never want to have anybody with any git to 'em at
the house; you want a bunch of old stiffs that sit around and gas
about the weather. You're doing your level best to make me old.
Well, let me tell you, I'm not going to have - "

  Overwhelmed she bent to his unprecedented tirade,
and in answer she mourned:

  "Oh, dearest, I don't think that's true. I don't
mean to make you old, I know. Perhaps you're partly right. Perhaps
I am slow about getting acquainted with new people. But when you
think of all the dear good times we have, and the supper-parties
and the movies and all - "

  With true masculine wiles he not only convinced
himself that she had injured him but, by the loudness of his voice
and the brutality of his attack, he convinced her also, and
presently he had her apologizing for his having spent the evening
with Tanis. He went up to bed well pleased, not only the master but
the martyr of the household. For a distasteful moment after he had
lain down he wondered if he had been altogether just. "Ought to be
ashamed, bullying her. Maybe there is her side to things. Maybe she
hasn't had such a bloomin' hectic time herself. But I don't care!
Good for her to get waked up a little. And I'm going to keep free.
Of her and Tanis and the fellows at the club and everybody. I'm
going to run my own life!"

  II

  In this mood he was particularly objectionable at
the Boosters' Club lunch next day. They were addressed by a
congressman who had just returned from an exhaustive three-months
study of the finances, ethnology, political systems, linguistic
divisions, mineral resources, and agriculture of Germany, France,
Great Britain, Italy, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Jugoslavia, and
Bulgaria. He told them all about those subjects, together with
three funny stories about European misconceptions of America and
some spirited words on the necessity of keeping ignorant foreigners
out of America.

  "Say, that was a mighty informative talk. Real
he-stuff," said Sidney Finkelstein.

  But the disaffected Babbitt grumbled, "Four-flusher!
Bunch of hot air! And what's the matter with the immigrants? Gosh,
they aren't all ignorant, and I got a hunch we're all descended
from immigrants ourselves."

  "Oh, you make me tired!" said Mr. Finkelstein.

  Babbitt was aware that Dr. A. I. Dilling was sternly
listening from across the table. Dr. Dilling was one of the most
important men in the Boosters'. He was not a physician but a
surgeon, a more romantic and sounding occupation. He was an intense
large man with a boiling of black hair and a thick black mustache.
The newspapers often chronicled his operations; he was professor of
surgery in the State University; he went to dinner at the very best
houses on Royal Ridge; and he was said to be worth several hundred
thousand dollars. It was dismaying to Babbitt to have such a person
glower at him. He hastily praised the congressman's wit, to Sidney
Finkelstein, but for Dr. Dilling's benefit.

  III

  That afternoon three men shouldered into Babbitt's
office with the air of a Vigilante committee in frontier days. They
were large, resolute, big-jawed men, and they were all high lords
in the land of Zenith - Dr. Dilling the surgeon, Charles McKelvey
the contractor, and, most dismaying of all, the white-bearded
Colonel Rutherford Snow, owner of the Advocate-Times. In their
whelming presence Babbitt felt small and insignificant.

  "Well, well, great pleasure, have chairs, what c'n I
do for you?" he babbled.

  They neither sat nor offered observations on the
weather.

  "Babbitt," said Colonel Snow, "we've come from the
Good Citizens' League. We've decided we want you to join. Vergil
Gunch says you don't care to, but I think we can show you a new
light. The League is going to combine with the Chamber of Commerce
in a campaign for the Open Shop, so it's time for you to put your
name down."

  In his embarrassment Babbitt could not recall his
reasons for not wishing to join the League, if indeed he had ever
definitely known them, but he was passionately certain that he did
not wish to join, and at the thought of their forcing him he felt a
stirring of anger against even these princes of commerce.

  "Sorry, Colonel, have to think it over a little," he
mumbled.

  McKelvey snarled, "That means you're not going to
join, George?"

  Something black and unfamiliar and ferocious spoke
from Babbitt: "Now, you look here, Charley! I'm damned if I'm going
to be bullied into joining anything, not even by you plutes!"

  "We're not bullying anybody," Dr. Dilling began, but
Colonel Snow thrust him aside with, "Certainly we are! We don't
mind a little bullying, if it's necessary. Babbitt, the G.C.L. has
been talking about you a good deal. You're supposed to be a
sensible, clean, responsible man; you always have been; but here
lately, for God knows what reason, I hear from all sorts of sources
that you're running around with a loose crowd, and what's a whole
lot worse, you've actually been advocating and supporting some of
the most dangerous elements in town, like this fellow Doane."

  "Colonel, that strikes me as my private
business."

  "Possibly, but we want to have an understanding.
You've stood in, you and your father-in-law, with some of the most
substantial and forward-looking interests in town, like my friends
of the Street Traction Company, and my papers have given you a lot
of boosts. Well, you can't expect the decent citizens to go on
aiding you if you intend to side with precisely the people who are
trying to undermine us."

  Babbitt was frightened, but he had an agonized
instinct that if he yielded in this he would yield in everything.
He protested:

  "You're exaggerating, Colonel. I believe in being
broad-minded and liberal, but, of course, I'm just as much agin the
cranks and blatherskites and labor unions and so on as you are. But
fact is, I belong to so many organizations now that I can't do 'em
justice, and I want to think it over before I decide about coming
into the G.C.L."

  Colonel Snow condescended, "Oh, no, I'm not
exaggerating! Why the doctor here heard you cussing out and
defaming one of the finest types of Republican congressmen, just
this noon! And you have entirely the wrong idea about 'thinking
over joining.' We're not begging you to join the G.C.L. - we're
permitting you to join. I'm not sure, my boy, but what if you put
it off it'll be too late. I'm not sure we'll want you then. Better
think quick - better think quick!"

  The three Vigilantes, formidable in their
righteousness, stared at him in a taut silence. Babbitt waited
through. He thought nothing at all, he merely waited, while in his
echoing head buzzed, "I don't want to join - I don't want to join -
I don't want to."

  "All right. Sorry for you!" said Colonel Snow, and
the three men abruptly turned their beefy backs.

  IV

  As Babbitt went out to his car that evening he saw
Vergil Gunch coming down the block. He raised his hand in
salutation, but Gunch ignored it and crossed the street. He was
certain that Gunch had seen him. He drove home in sharp
discomfort.

  His wife attacked at once: "Georgie dear, Muriel
Frink was in this afternoon, and she says that Chum says the
committee of this Good Citizens' League especially asked you to
join and you wouldn't. Don't you think it would be better? You know
all the nicest people belong, and the League stands for - "

  "I know what the League stands for! It stands for
the suppression of free speech and free thought and everything
else! I don't propose to be bullied and rushed into joining
anything, and it isn't a question of whether it's a good league or
a bad league or what the hell kind of a league it is; it's just a
question of my refusing to be told I got to - "

  "But dear, if you don't join, people might criticize
you."

  "Let 'em criticize!"

  "But I mean NICE people!"

  "Rats, I - Matter of fact, this whole League is just
a fad. It's like all these other organizations that start off with
such a rush and let on they're going to change the whole works, and
pretty soon they peter out and everybody forgets all about
'em!"

  "But if it's THE fad now, don't you think you -
"

  "No, I don't! Oh, Myra, please quit nagging me about
it. I'm sick of hearing about the confounded G.C.L. I almost wish
I'd joined it when Verg first came around, and got it over. And
maybe I'd 've come in to-day if the committee hadn't tried to
bullyrag me, but, by God, as long as I'm a free-born independent
American cit - "

  "Now, George, you're talking exactly like the German
furnace-man."

  "Oh, I am, am I! Then, I won't talk at all!"

  He longed, that evening, to see Tanis Judique, to be
strengthened by her sympathy. When all the family were up-stairs he
got as far as telephoning to her apartment-house, but he was
agitated about it and when the janitor answered he blurted, "Nev'
mind - I'll call later," and hung up the receiver.

  V

  If Babbitt had not been certain about Vergil Gunch's
avoiding him, there could be little doubt about William Washington
Eathorne, next morning. When Babbitt was driving down to the office
he overtook Eathorne's car, with the great banker sitting in anemic
solemnity behind his chauffeur. Babbitt waved and cried, "Mornin'!"
Eathorne looked at him deliberately, hesitated, and gave him a nod
more contemptuous than a direct cut.

  Babbitt's partner and father-in-law came in at
ten:

  "George, what's this I hear about some song and
dance you gave Colonel Snow about not wanting to join the G.C.L.?
What the dickens you trying to do? Wreck the firm? You don't
suppose these Big Guns will stand your bucking them and springing
all this 'liberal' poppycock you been getting off lately, do
you?"

  "Oh, rats, Henry T., you been reading bum fiction.
There ain't any such a thing as these plots to keep folks from
being liberal. This is a free country. A man can do anything he
wants to."

  "Course th' ain't any plots. Who said they was? Only
if folks get an idea you're scatter-brained and unstable, you don't
suppose they'll want to do business with you, do you? One little
rumor about your being a crank would do more to ruin this business
than all the plots and stuff that these fool story-writers could
think up in a month of Sundays."

  That afternoon, when the old reliable Conrad Lyte,
the merry miser, Conrad Lyte, appeared, and Babbitt suggested his
buying a parcel of land in the new residential section of
Dorchester, Lyte said hastily, too hastily, "No, no, don't want to
go into anything new just now."

  A week later Babbitt learned, through Henry
Thompson, that the officials of the Street Traction Company were
planning another real-estate coup, and that Sanders, Torrey and
Wing, not the Babbitt-Thompson Company, were to handle it for them.
"I figure that Jake Offutt is kind of leery about the way folks are
talking about you. Of course Jake is a rock-ribbed old die-hard,
and he probably advised the Traction fellows to get some other
broker. George, you got to do something!" trembled Thompson.

  And, in a rush, Babbitt agreed. All nonsense the way
people misjudged him, but still - He determined to join the Good
Citizens' League the next time he was asked, and in furious
resignation he waited. He wasn't asked. They ignored him. He did
not have the courage to go to the League and beg in, and he took
refuge in a shaky boast that he had "gotten away with bucking the
whole city. Nobody could dictate to him how he was going to think
and act!"

  He was jarred as by nothing else when the paragon of
stenographers, Miss McGoun, suddenly left him, though her reasons
were excellent - she needed a rest, her sister was sick, she might
not do any more work for six months. He was uncomfortable with her
successor, Miss Havstad. What Miss Havstad's given name was, no one
in the office ever knew. It seemed improbable that she had a given
name, a lover, a powder-puff, or a digestion. She was so
impersonal, this slight, pale, industrious Swede, that it was
vulgar to think of her as going to an ordinary home to eat hash.
She was a perfectly oiled and enameled machine, and she ought, each
evening, to have been dusted off and shut in her desk beside her
too-slim, too-frail pencil points. She took dictation swiftly, her
typing was perfect, but Babbitt became jumpy when he tried to work
with her. She made him feel puffy, and at his best-beloved daily
jokes she looked gently inquiring. He longed for Miss McGoun's
return, and thought of writing to her.

  Then he heard that Miss McGoun had, a week after
leaving him, gone over to his dangerous competitors, Sanders,
Torrey and Wing.