Babbitt
head-waiter refused to understand who George F. Babbitt was. They sat
steaming before a vast mixed grill, and made conversation about
baseball. When he tried to hold Ida’s hand she said with bright
friendliness, “Careful! That fresh waiter is rubbering.” But they came
out into a treacherous summer night, the air lazy and a little moon
above transfigured maples.
“Let’s drive some other place, where we can get a drink and dance!” he
demanded.
“Sure, some other night. But I promised Ma I’d be home early to-night.”
“Rats! It’s too nice to go home.”
“I’d just love to, but Ma would give me fits.”
He was trembling. She was everything that was young and exquisite. He
put his arm about her. She snuggled against his shoulder, unafraid, and
he was triumphant. Then she ran down the steps of the Inn, singing,
“Come on, Georgie, we’ll have a nice drive and get cool.”
It was a night of lovers. All along the highway into Zenith, under the
low and gentle moon, motors were parked and dim figures were clasped in
revery. He held out hungry hands to Ida, and when she patted them he was
grateful. There was no sense of struggle and transition; he kissed her
and simply she responded to his kiss, they two behind the stolid back of
the chauffeur.
Her hat fell off, and she broke from his embrace to reach for it.
“Oh, let it be!” he implored.
“Huh? My hat? Not a chance!”
He waited till she had pinned it on, then his arm sank about her. She
drew away from it, and said with maternal soothing, “Now, don’t be a
silly boy! Mustn’t make Ittle Mama scold! Just sit back, dearie, and see
what a swell night it is. If you’re a good boy, maybe I’ll kiss you when
we say nighty-night. Now give me a cigarette.”
He was solicitous about lighting her cigarette and inquiring as to her
comfort. Then he sat as far from her as possible. He was cold with
failure. No one could have told Babbitt that he was a fool with more
vigor, precision, and intelligence than he himself displayed. He
reflected that from the standpoint of the Rev. Dr. John Jennison Drew he
was a wicked man, and from the standpoint of Miss Ida Putiak, an old
bore who had to be endured as the penalty attached to eating a large
dinner.
“Dearie, you aren’t going to go and get peevish, are you?”
She spoke pertly. He wanted to spank her. He brooded, “I don’t have to
take anything off this gutter-pup! Darn immigrant! Well, let’s get it
over as quick as we can, and sneak home and kick ourselves for the rest
of the night.”
He snorted, “Huh? Me peevish? Why, you baby, why should I be peevish?
Now, listen, Ida; listen to Uncle George. I want to put you wise about
this scrapping with your head-barber all the time. I’ve had a lot of
experience with employees, and let me tell you it doesn’t pay to
antagonize--”
At the drab wooden house in which she lived he said good-night briefly
and amiably, but as the taxicab drove off he was praying “Oh, my God!”
CHAPTER XXV
I
He awoke to stretch cheerfully as he listened to the sparrows, then to
remember that everything was wrong; that he was determined to go astray,
and not in the least enjoying the process. Why, he wondered, should he
be in rebellion? What was it all about? “Why not be sensible; stop all
this idiotic running around, and enjoy himself with his family, his
business, the fellows at the club?” What was he getting out of
rebellion? Misery and shame--the shame of being treated as an offensive
small boy by a ragamuffin like Ida Putiak! And yet-- Always he came back
to “And yet.” Whatever the misery, he could not regain contentment with
a world which, once doubted, became absurd.
Only, he assured himself, he was “through with this chasing after
girls.”
By noontime he was not so sure even of that. If in Miss McGoun, Louetta
Swanson, and Ida he had failed to find the lady kind and lovely, it did
not prove that she did not exist. He was hunted by the ancient thought
that somewhere must exist the not impossible she who would understand
him, value him, and make him happy.
II
Mrs. Babbitt returned in August.
On her previous absences he had missed her reassuring buzz and of her
arrival he had made a fête. Now, though he dared not hurt her by letting
a hint of it appear in his letters, he was sorry that she was coming
before he had found himself, and he was embarrassed by the need of
meeting her and looking joyful.
He loitered down to the station; he studied the summer-resort posters,
lest he have to speak to acquaintances and expose his uneasiness. But he
was well trained. When the train clanked in he was out on the cement
platform, peering into the chair-cars, and as he saw her in the line of
passengers moving toward the vestibule he waved his hat. At the door he
embraced her, and announced, “Well, well, well, well, by golly, you look
fine, you look fine.” Then he was aware of Tinka. Here was something,
this child with her absurd little nose and lively eyes, that loved him,
believed him great, and as he clasped her, lifted and held her till she
squealed, he was for the moment come back to his old steady self.
Tinka sat beside him in the car, with one hand on the steering-wheel,
pretending to help him drive, and he shouted back to his wife, “I’ll bet
the kid will be the best chuffer in the family! She holds the wheel like
an old professional!”
All the while he was dreading the moment when he would be alone with his
wife and she would patiently expect him to be ardent.
III
There was about the house an unofficial theory that he was to take his
vacation alone, to spend a week or ten days in Catawba, but he was
nagged by the memory that a year ago he had been with Paul in Maine. He
saw himself returning; finding peace there, and the presence of Paul, in
a life primitive and heroic. Like a shock came the thought that he
actually could go. Only, he couldn’t, really; he couldn’t leave his
business, and “Myra would think it sort of funny, his going way off
there alone. Course he’d decided to do whatever he darned pleased, from
now on, but still--to go way off to Maine!”
He went, after lengthy meditations.
With his wife, since it was inconceivable to explain that he was going
to seek Paul’s spirit in the wilderness, he frugally employed the lie
prepared over a year ago and scarcely used at all. He said that he had
to see a man in New York on business. He could not have explained even
to himself why he drew from the bank several hundred dollars more than
he needed, nor why he kissed Tinka so tenderly, and cried, “God bless
you, baby!” From the train he waved to her till she was but a scarlet
spot beside the brown bulkier presence of Mrs. Babbitt, at the end of a
steel and cement aisle ending in vast barred gates. With melancholy he
looked back at the last suburb of Zenith.
All the way north he pictured the Maine guides: simple and strong and
daring, jolly as they played stud-poker in their unceiled shack, wise in
woodcraft as they tramped the forest and shot the rapids. He
particularly remembered Joe Paradise, half Yankee, half Indian. If he
could but take up a backwoods claim with a man like Joe, work hard with
his hands, be free and noisy in a flannel shirt, and never come back to
this dull decency!
Or, like a trapper in a Northern Canada movie, plunge through the
forest, make camp in the Rockies, a grim and wordless caveman! Why not?
He _could_ do it! There’d be enough money at home for the family to live
on till Verona was married and Ted self-supporting. Old Henry T. would
look out for them. Honestly! Why _not_? Really _live_--
He longed for it, admitted that he longed for it, then almost believed
that he was going to do it. Whenever common sense snorted, “Nonsense!
Folks don’t run away from decent families and partners; just simply
don’t do it, that’s all!” then Babbitt answered pleadingly, “Well, it
wouldn’t take any more nerve than for Paul to go to jail and-- Lord, how
I’d like to do it! Moccasins--six-gun--frontier town--gamblers--sleep
under the stars--be a regular man, with he-men like Joe
Paradise--gosh!”
So he came to Maine, again stood on the wharf before the camp-hotel,
again spat heroically into the delicate and shivering water, while the
pines rustled, the mountains glowed, and a trout leaped and fell in a
sliding circle. He hurried to the guides’ shack as to his real home, his
real friends, long missed. They would be glad to see him. They would
stand up and shout, “Why, here’s Mr. Babbitt! He ain’t one of these
ordinary sports! He’s a real guy!”
In their boarded and rather littered cabin the guides sat about the
greasy table playing stud-poker with greasy cards: half a dozen wrinkled
men in old trousers and easy old felt hats. They glanced up and nodded.
Joe Paradise, the swart aging man with the big mustache, grunted, “How
do. Back again?”
Silence, except for the clatter of chips.
Babbitt stood beside them, very lonely. He hinted, after a period of
highly concentrated playing, “Guess I might take a hand, Joe.”
“Sure. Sit in. How many chips you want? Let’s see; you were here with
your wife, last year, wa’n’t you?” said Joe Paradise.
That was all of Babbitt’s welcome to the old home.
He played for half an hour before he spoke again. His head was reeking
with the smoke of pipes and cheap cigars, and he was weary of pairs and
four-flushes, resentful of the way in which they ignored him. He flung
at Joe:
“Working now?”
“Nope.”
“Like to guide me for a few days?”
“Well, jus’ soon. I ain’t engaged till next week.”
Only thus did Joe recognize the friendship Babbitt was offering him.
Babbitt paid up his losses and left the shack rather childishly. Joe
raised his head from the coils of smoke like a seal rising from surf,
grunted, “I’ll come ’round t’morrow,” and dived down to his three aces.
Neither in his voiceless cabin, fragrant with planks of new-cut pine,
nor along the lake, nor in the sunset clouds which presently eddied
behind the lavender-misted mountains, could Babbitt find the spirit of
Paul as a reassuring presence. He was so lonely that after supper he
stopped to talk with an ancient old lady, a gasping and steadily
discoursing old lady, by the stove in the hotel-office. He told her of
Ted’s presumable future triumphs in the State University and of Tinka’s
remarkable vocabulary till he was homesick for the home he had left
forever.
Through the darkness, through that Northern pine-walled silence, he
blundered down to the lake-front and found a canoe. There were no
paddles in it but with a board, sitting awkwardly amidships and poking
at the water rather than paddling, he made his way far out on the lake.
The lights of the hotel and the cottages became yellow dots, a cluster
of glow-worms at the base of Sachem Mountain. Larger and ever more
imperturbable was the mountain in the star-filtered darkness, and the
lake a limitless pavement of black marble. He was dwarfed and dumb and a
little awed, but that insignificance freed him from the pomposities of
being Mr. George F. Babbitt of Zenith; saddened and freed his heart. Now
he was conscious of the presence of Paul, fancied him (rescued from
prison, from Zilla and the brisk exactitudes of the tar-roofing
business) playing his violin at the end of the canoe. He vowed, “I will
go on! I’ll never go back! Now that Paul’s out of it, I don’t want to
see any of those damn people again! I was a fool to get sore because Joe
Paradise didn’t jump up and hug me. He’s one of these woodsmen; too wise
to go yelping and talking your arm off like a cityman. But get him back
in the mountains, out on the trail--! That’s real living!”
IV
Joe reported at Babbitt’s cabin at nine the next morning. Babbitt
greeted him as a fellow caveman: