Babbitt
mountains, picnicking in a pine grove high above a valley. Her frailness
touched him; he was angry at Eddie Swanson for the incessant family
bickering. All at once he identified Louetta with the fairy girl. He was
startled by the conviction that they had always had a romantic
attraction for each other.
“I suppose you’re leading a simply terrible life, now you’re a widower,”
she said.
“You bet! I’m a bad little fellow and proud of it. Some evening you slip
Eddie some dope in his coffee and sneak across the road and I’ll show
you how to mix a cocktail,” he roared.
“Well, now, I might do it! You never can tell!”
“Well, whenever you’re ready, you just hang a towel out of the attic
window and I’ll jump for the gin!”
Every one giggled at this naughtiness. In a pleased way Eddie Swanson
stated that he would have a physician analyze his coffee daily. The
others were diverted to a discussion of the more agreeable recent
murders, but Babbitt drew Louetta back to personal things:
“That’s the prettiest dress I ever saw in my life.”
“Do you honestly like it?”
“Like it? Why, say, I’m going to have Kenneth Escott put a piece in the
paper saying that the swellest dressed woman in the U. S. is Mrs. E.
Louetta Swanson.”
“Now, you stop teasing me!” But she beamed. “Let’s dance a little.
George, you’ve got to dance with me.”
Even as he protested, “Oh, you know what a rotten dancer I am!” he was
lumbering to his feet.
“I’ll teach you. I can teach anybody.”
Her eyes were moist, her voice was jagged with excitement. He was
convinced that he had won her. He clasped her, conscious of her smooth
warmth, and solemnly he circled in a heavy version of the one-step. He
bumped into only one or two people. “Gosh, I’m not doing so bad;
hittin’ ’em up like a regular stage dancer!” he gloated; and she
answered busily, “Yes--yes-- I told you I could teach anybody--_don’t
take such long steps_!”
For a moment he was robbed of confidence; with fearful concentration he
sought to keep time to the music. But he was enveloped again by her
enchantment. “She’s got to like me; I’ll make her!” he vowed. He tried
to kiss the lock beside her ear. She mechanically moved her head to
avoid it, and mechanically she murmured, “Don’t!”
For a moment he hated her, but after the moment he was as urgent as
ever. He danced with Mrs. Orville Jones, but he watched Louetta swooping
down the length of the room with her husband. “Careful! You’re getting
foolish!” he cautioned himself, the while he hopped and bent his solid
knees in dalliance with Mrs. Jones, and to that worthy lady rumbled,
“Gee, it’s hot!” Without reason, he thought of Paul in that shadowy
place where men never dance. “I’m crazy to-night; better go home,” he
worried, but he left Mrs. Jones and dashed to Louetta’s lovely side,
demanding, “The next is mine.”
“Oh, I’m so hot; I’m not going to dance this one.”
“Then,” boldly, “come out and sit on the porch and get all nice and
cool.”
“Well--”
In the tender darkness, with the clamor in the house behind them, he
resolutely took her hand. She squeezed his once, then relaxed.
“Louetta! I think you’re the nicest thing I know!”
“Well, I think you’re very nice.”
“Do you? You got to like me! I’m so lonely!”
“Oh, you’ll be all right when your wife comes home.”
“No, I’m always lonely.”
She clasped her hands under her chin, so that he dared not touch her. He
sighed:
“When I feel punk and--” He was about to bring in the tragedy of Paul,
but that was too sacred even for the diplomacy of love. “--when I get
tired out at the office and everything, I like to look across the street
and think of you. Do you know I dreamed of you, one time!”
“Was it a nice dream?”
“Lovely!”
“Oh, well, they say dreams go by opposites! Now I must run in.”
She was on her feet.
“Oh, don’t go in yet! Please, Louetta!”
“Yes, I must. Have to look out for my guests.”
“Let ’em look out for ’emselves!”
“I couldn’t do that.” She carelessly tapped his shoulder and slipped
away.
But after two minutes of shamed and childish longing to sneak home he
was snorting, “Certainly I wasn’t trying to get chummy with her! Knew
there was nothing doing, all the time!” and he ambled in to dance with
Mrs. Orville Jones, and to avoid Louetta, virtuously and conspicuously.
CHAPTER XXIV
I
His visit to Paul was as unreal as his night of fog and questioning.
Unseeing he went through prison corridors stinking of carbolic acid to a
room lined with pale yellow settees pierced in rosettes, like the
shoe-store benches he had known as a boy. The guard led in Paul. Above
his uniform of linty gray, Paul’s face was pale and without expression.
He moved timorously in response to the guard’s commands; he meekly
pushed Babbitt’s gifts of tobacco and magazines across the table to the
guard for examination. He had nothing to say but “Oh, I’m getting used
to it” and “I’m working in the tailor shop; the stuff hurts my fingers.”
Babbitt knew that in this place of death Paul was already dead. And as
he pondered on the train home something in his own self seemed to have
died: a loyal and vigorous faith in the goodness of the world, a fear of
public disfavor, a pride in success. He was glad that his wife was away.
He admitted it without justifying it. He did not care.
II
Her card read “Mrs. Daniel Judique.” Babbitt knew of her as the widow of
a wholesale paper-dealer. She must have been forty or forty-two but he
thought her younger when he saw her in the office, that afternoon. She
had come to inquire about renting an apartment, and he took her away
from the unskilled girl accountant. He was nervously attracted by her
smartness. She was a slender woman, in a black Swiss frock dotted with
white, a cool-looking graceful frock. A broad black hat shaded her
face. Her eyes were lustrous, her soft chin of an agreeable plumpness,
and her cheeks an even rose. Babbitt wondered afterward if she was made
up, but no man living knew less of such arts.
She sat revolving her violet parasol. Her voice was appealing without
being coy. “I wonder if you can help me?”
“Be delighted.”
“I’ve looked everywhere and-- I want a little flat, just a bedroom, or
perhaps two, and sitting-room and kitchenette and bath, but I want one
that really has some charm to it, not these dingy places or these new
ones with terrible gaudy chandeliers. And I can’t pay so dreadfully
much. My name’s Tanis Judique.”
“I think maybe I’ve got just the thing for you. Would you like to chase
around and look at it now?”
“Yes. I have a couple of hours.”
In the new Cavendish Apartments, Babbitt had a flat which he had been
holding for Sidney Finkelstein, but at the thought of driving beside
this agreeable woman he threw over his friend Finkelstein, and with a
note of gallantry he proclaimed, “I’ll let you see what I can do!”
He dusted the seat of the car for her, and twice he risked death in
showing off his driving.
“You do know how to handle a car!” she said.
He liked her voice. There was, he thought, music in it and a hint of
culture, not a bouncing giggle like Louetta Swanson’s.
He boasted, “You know, there’s a lot of these fellows that are so scared
and drive so slow that they get in everybody’s way. The safest driver is
a fellow that knows how to handle his machine and yet isn’t scared to
speed up when it’s necessary, don’t you think so?”
“Oh, yes!”
“I bet you drive like a wiz.”
“Oh, no-- I mean--not really. Of course, we had a car-- I mean, before my
husband passed on--and I used to make believe drive it, but I don’t
think any woman ever learns to drive like a man.”
“Well, now, there’s some mighty good woman drivers.”
“Oh, of course, these women that try to imitate men, and play golf and
everything, and ruin their complexions and spoil their hands!”
“That’s so. I never did like these mannish females.”
“I mean--of course, I admire them, dreadfully, and I feel so weak and
useless beside them.”
“Oh, rats now! I bet you play the piano like a wiz.”
“Oh, no-- I mean--not really.”
“Well, I’ll bet you do!” He glanced at her smooth hands, her diamond and
ruby rings. She caught the glance, snuggled her hands together with a
kittenish curving of slim white fingers which delighted him, and
yearned:
“I do love to play-- I mean-- I like to drum on the piano, but I haven’t
had any real training. Mr. Judique used to say I would’ve been a good
pianist if I’d had any training, but then, I guess he was just
flattering me.”
“I’ll bet he wasn’t! I’ll bet you’ve got temperament.”
“Oh-- Do you like music, Mr. Babbitt?”
“You bet I do! Only I don’t know ’s I care so much for all this
classical stuff.”
“Oh, I do! I just love Chopin and all those.”
“Do you, honest? Well, of course, I go to lots of these highbrow
concerts, but I do like a good jazz orchestra, right up on its toes,
with the fellow that plays the bass fiddle spinning it around and
beating it up with the bow.”
“Oh, I know. I do love good dance music. I love to dance, don’t you, Mr.
Babbitt?”
“Sure, you bet. Not that I’m very darn good at it, though.”
“Oh, I’m sure you are. You ought to let me teach you. I can teach
anybody to dance.”
“Would you give me a lesson some time?”
“Indeed I would.”
“Better be careful, or I’ll be taking you up on that proposition. I’ll
be coming up to your flat and making you give me that lesson.”
“Ye-es.” She was not offended, but she was non-committal. He warned
himself, “Have some sense now, you chump! Don’t go making a fool of
yourself again!” and with loftiness he discoursed:
“I wish I could dance like some of these young fellows, but I’ll tell
you: I feel it’s a man’s place to take a full, you might say, a creative
share in the world’s work and mold conditions and have something to show
for his life, don’t you think so?”
“Oh, I do!”
“And so I have to sacrifice some of the things I might like to tackle,
though I do, by golly, play about as good a game of golf as the next
fellow!”
“Oh, I’m sure you do.... Are you married?”
“Uh--yes.... And, uh, of course official duties-- I’m the vice-president
of the Boosters’ Club, and I’m running one of the committees of the
State Association of Real Estate Boards, and that means a lot of work
and responsibility--and practically no gratitude for it.”
“Oh, I know! Public men never do get proper credit.”
They looked at each other with a high degree of mutual respect, and at
the Cavendish Apartments he helped her out in a courtly manner, waved
his hand at the house as though he were presenting it to her, and
ponderously ordered the elevator boy to “hustle and get the keys.” She
stood close to him in the elevator, and he was stirred but cautious.
It was a pretty flat, of white woodwork and soft blue walls. Mrs.
Judique gushed with pleasure as she agreed to take it, and as they
walked down the hall to the elevator she touched his sleeve, caroling,
“Oh, I’m so glad I went to you! It’s such a privilege to meet a man who
really Understands. Oh! The flats _some_ people have showed me!”
He had a sharp instinctive belief that he could put his arm around her,
but he rebuked himself and with excessive politeness he saw her to the
car, drove her home. All the way back to his office he raged:
“Glad I had some sense for once.... Curse it, I wish I’d tried. She’s a
darling! A corker! A reg’lar charmer! Lovely eyes and darling lips and
that trim waist--never get sloppy, like some women.... No, no, no! She’s
a real cultured lady. One of the brightest little women I’ve met these
many moons. Understands about Public Topics and-- But, darn it, why
didn’t I try?... Tanis!”
III
He was harassed and puzzled by it, but he found that he was turning