Babbitt
(“Why didn’t they go home! Why didn’t they go home!”) Though he was
impressed by the profundity of the statement, he was only
half-enthusiastic when Howard Littlefield lectured, “The United States
is the only nation in which the government is a Moral Ideal and not just
a social arrangement.” (“True--true--weren’t they _ever_ going home?”)
He was usually delighted to have an “inside view” of the momentous world
of motors but to-night he scarcely listened to Eddie Swanson’s
revelation: “If you want to go above the Javelin class, the Zeeco is a
mighty good buy. Couple weeks ago, and mind you, this was a fair,
square test, they took a Zeeco stock touring-car and they slid up the
Tonawanda hill on high, and fellow told me--” (“Zeeco--good boat
but-- Were they planning to stay all night?”)
They really were going, with a flutter of “We did have the best time!”
Most aggressively friendly of all was Babbitt, yet as he burbled he was
reflecting, “I got through it, but for a while there I didn’t hardly
think I’d last out.” He prepared to taste that most delicate pleasure of
the host: making fun of his guests in the relaxation of midnight. As the
door closed he yawned voluptuously, chest out, shoulders wriggling, and
turned cynically to his wife.
She was beaming. “Oh, it was nice, wasn’t it! I know they enjoyed every
minute of it. Don’t you think so?”
He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t mock. It would have been like sneering at
a happy child. He lied ponderously: “You bet! Best party this year, by a
long shot.”
“Wasn’t the dinner good! And honestly I thought the fried chicken was
delicious!”
“You bet! Fried to the Queen’s taste. Best fried chicken I’ve tasted for
a coon’s age.”
“Didn’t Matilda fry it beautifully! And don’t you think the soup was
simply delicious?”
“It certainly was! It was corking! Best soup I’ve tasted since Heck was
a pup!” But his voice was seeping away. They stood in the hall, under
the electric light in its square box-like shade of red glass bound with
nickel. She stared at him.
“Why, George, you don’t sound--you sound as if you hadn’t really enjoyed
it.”
“Sure I did! Course I did!”
“George! What is it?”
“Oh, I’m kind of tired, I guess. Been pounding pretty hard at the
office. Need to get away and rest up a little.”
“Well, we’re going to Maine in just a few weeks now, dear.”
“Yuh--” Then he was pouring it out nakedly, robbed of reticence. “Myra:
I think it’d be a good thing for me to get up there early.”
“But you have this man you have to meet in New York about business.”
“What man? Oh, sure. Him. Oh, that’s all off. But I want to hit Maine
early--get in a little fishing, catch me a big trout, by golly!” A
nervous, artificial laugh.
“Well, why don’t we do it? Verona and Matilda can run the house between
them, and you and I can go any time, if you think we can afford it.”
“But that’s-- I’ve been feeling so jumpy lately, I thought maybe it might
be a good thing if I kind of got off by myself and sweat it out of me.”
“George! Don’t you _want_ me to go along?” She was too wretchedly in
earnest to be tragic, or gloriously insulted, or anything save dumpy and
defenseless and flushed to the red steaminess of a boiled beet.
“Of course I do! I just meant--” Remembering that Paul Riesling had
predicted this, he was as desperate as she. “I mean, sometimes it’s a
good thing for an old grouch like me to go off and get it out of his
system.” He tried to sound paternal. “Then when you and the kids
arrive-- I figured maybe I might skip up to Maine just a few days ahead
of you-- I’d be ready for a real bat, see how I mean?” He coaxed her with
large booming sounds, with affable smiles, like a popular preacher
blessing an Easter congregation, like a humorous lecturer completing his
stint of eloquence, like all perpetrators of masculine wiles.
She stared at him, the joy of festival drained from her face. “Do I
bother you when we go on vacations? Don’t I add anything to your fun?”
He broke. Suddenly, dreadfully, he was hysterical, he was a yelping
baby. “Yes, yes, yes! Hell, yes! But can’t you understand I’m shot to
pieces? I’m all in! I got to take care of myself! I tell you, I got
to-- I’m sick of everything and everybody! I got to--”
It was she who was mature and protective now. “Why, of course! You shall
run off by yourself! Why don’t you get Paul to go along, and you boys
just fish and have a good time?” She patted his shoulder--reaching up to
it--while he shook with palsied helplessness, and in that moment was not
merely by habit fond of her but clung to her strength.
She cried cheerily, “Now up-stairs you go, and pop into bed. We’ll fix
it all up. I’ll see to the doors. Now skip!”
For many minutes, for many hours, for a bleak eternity, he lay awake,
shivering, reduced to primitive terror, comprehending that he had won
freedom, and wondering what he could do with anything so unknown and so
embarrassing as freedom.
CHAPTER X
I
No apartment-house in Zenith had more resolutely experimented in
condensation than the Revelstoke Arms, in which Paul and Zilla Riesling
had a flat. By sliding the beds into low closets the bedrooms were
converted into living-rooms. The kitchens were cupboards each containing
an electric range, a copper sink, a glass refrigerator, and, very
intermittently, a Balkan maid. Everything about the Arms was excessively
modern, and everything was compressed--except the garages.
The Babbitts were calling on the Rieslings at the Arms. It was a
speculative venture to call on the Rieslings; interesting and sometimes
disconcerting. Zilla was an active, strident, full-blown, high-bosomed
blonde. When she condescended to be good-humored she was nervously
amusing. Her comments on people were saltily satiric and penetrative of
accepted hypocrisies. “That’s so!” you said, and looked sheepish. She
danced wildly, and called on the world to be merry, but in the midst of
it she would turn indignant. She was always becoming indignant. Life was
a plot against her, and she exposed it furiously.
She was affable to-night. She merely hinted that Orville Jones wore a
toupé, that Mrs. T. Cholmondeley Frink’s singing resembled a Ford going
into high, and that the Hon. Otis Deeble, mayor of Zenith and candidate
for Congress, was a flatulent fool (which was quite true). The Babbitts
and Rieslings sat doubtfully on stone-hard brocade chairs in the small
living-room of the flat, with its mantel unprovided with a fireplace,
and its strip of heavy gilt fabric upon a glaring new player-piano, till
Mrs. Riesling shrieked, “Come on! Let’s put some pep in it! Get out
your fiddle, Paul, and I’ll try to make Georgie dance decently.”
The Babbitts were in earnest. They were plotting for the escape to
Maine. But when Mrs. Babbitt hinted with plump smilingness, “Does Paul
get as tired after the winter’s work as Georgie does?” then Zilla
remembered an injury; and when Zilla Riesling remembered an injury the
world stopped till something had been done about it.
“Does he get tired? No, he doesn’t get tired, he just goes crazy, that’s
all! You think Paul is so reasonable, oh, yes, and he loves to make out
he’s a little lamb, but he’s stubborn as a mule. Oh, if you had to live
with him--! You’d find out how sweet he is! He just pretends to be meek
so he can have his own way. And me, I get the credit for being a
terrible old crank, but if I didn’t blow up once in a while and get
something started, we’d die of dry-rot. He never wants to go any place
and-- Why, last evening, just because the car was out of order--and that
was his fault, too, because he ought to have taken it to the
service-station and had the battery looked at--and he didn’t want to go
down to the movies on the trolley. But we went, and then there was one
of those impudent conductors, and Paul wouldn’t do a thing.
“I was standing on the platform waiting for the people to let me into
the car, and this beast, this conductor, hollered at me, ‘Come on, you,
move up!’ Why, I’ve never had anybody speak to me that way in all my
life! I was so astonished I just turned to him and said-- I thought there
must be some mistake, and so I said to him, perfectly pleasant, ‘Were
you speaking to me?’ and he went on and bellowed at me, ‘Yes, I was!
You’re keeping the whole car from starting!’ he said, and then I saw he
was one of these dirty ill-bred hogs that kindness is wasted on, and so
I stopped and looked right at him, and I said, ‘I--beg--your--pardon, I
am not doing anything of the kind,’ I said, ‘it’s the people ahead of
me, who won’t move up,’ I said, ‘and furthermore, let me tell you,
young man, that you’re a low-down, foul-mouthed, impertinent skunk,’ I
said, ‘and you’re no gentleman! I certainly intend to report you, and
we’ll see,’ I said, ‘whether a lady is to be insulted by any drunken bum
that chooses to put on a ragged uniform, and I’d thank you,’ I said, ‘to
keep your filthy abuse to yourself.’ And then I waited for Paul to show
he was half a man and come to my defense, and he just stood there and
pretended he hadn’t heard a word, and so I said to him, ‘Well,’ I
said--”
“Oh, cut it, cut it, Zill!” Paul groaned. “We all know I’m a
mollycoddle, and you’re a tender bud, and let’s let it go at that.”
“Let it go?” Zilla’s face was wrinkled like the Medusa, her voice was a
dagger of corroded brass. She was full of the joy of righteousness and
bad temper. She was a crusader and, like every crusader, she exulted in
the opportunity to be vicious in the name of virtue. “Let it go? If
people knew how many things I’ve let go--”
“Oh, quit being such a bully.”
“Yes, a fine figure you’d cut if I didn’t bully you! You’d lie abed till
noon and play your idiotic fiddle till midnight! You’re born lazy, and
you’re born shiftless, and you’re born cowardly, Paul Riesling--”
“Oh, now, don’t say that, Zilla; you don’t mean a word of it!” protested
Mrs. Babbitt.
“I will say that, and I mean every single last word of it!”
“Oh, now, Zilla, the idea!” Mrs. Babbitt was maternal and fussy. She was
no older than Zilla, but she seemed so--at first. She was placid and
puffy and mature, where Zilla, at forty-five, was so bleached and
tight-corseted that you knew only that she was older than she looked.
“The idea of talking to poor Paul like that!”
“Poor Paul is right! We’d both be poor, we’d be in the poorhouse, if I
didn’t jazz him up!”
“Why, now, Zilla, Georgie and I were just saying how hard Paul’s been
working all year, and we were thinking it would be lovely if the Boys
could run off by themselves. I’ve been coaxing George to go up to Maine
ahead of the rest of us, and get the tired out of his system before we
come, and I think it would be lovely if Paul could manage to get away
and join him.”
At this exposure of his plot to escape, Paul was startled out of
impassivity. He rubbed his fingers. His hands twitched.
Zilla bayed, “Yes! You’re lucky! You can let George go, and not have to
watch him. Fat old Georgie! Never peeps at another woman! Hasn’t got the
spunk!”
“The hell I haven’t!” Babbitt was fervently defending his priceless
immorality when Paul interrupted him--and Paul looked dangerous. He rose
quickly; he said gently to Zilla:
“I suppose you imply I have a lot of sweethearts.”
“Yes, I do!”
“Well, then, my dear, since you ask for it-- There hasn’t been a time in
the last ten years when I haven’t found some nice little girl to comfort
me, and as long as you continue your amiability I shall probably
continue to deceive you. It isn’t hard. You’re so stupid.”
Zilla gibbered; she howled; words could not be distinguished in her
slaver of abuse.
Then the bland George F. Babbitt was transformed. If Paul was dangerous,
if Zilla was a snake-locked fury, if the neat emotions suitable to the