Babbitt
“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!”
CHAPTER XXXII
I
His 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. Billing 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,