Babbitt
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.
He was not merely annoyed; he was frightened. “Why did she quit, then?”
he worried. “Did she have a hunch my business is going on the rocks? And
it was Sanders got the Street Traction deal. Rats--sinking ship!”
Gray fear loomed always by him now. He watched Fritz Weilinger, the
young salesman, and wondered if he too would leave. Daily he fancied
slights. He noted that he was not asked to speak at the annual Chamber
of Commerce dinner. When Orville Jones gave a large poker party and he
was not invited, he was certain that he had been snubbed. He was afraid
to go to lunch at the Athletic Club, and afraid not to go. He believed
that he was spied on; that when he left the table they whispered about
him. Everywhere he heard the rustling whispers: in the offices of
clients, in the bank when he made a deposit, in his own office, in his
own home. Interminably he wondered what They were saying of him. All day
long in imaginary conversations he caught them marveling, “Babbitt? Why,
say, he’s a regular anarchist! You got to admire the fellow for his
nerve, the way he turned liberal and, by golly, just absolutely runs his
life to suit himself, but say, he’s dangerous, that’s what he is, and
he’s got to be shown up.”
He was so twitchy that when he rounded a corner and chanced on two
acquaintances talking--whispering--his heart leaped, and he stalked by
like an embarrassed schoolboy. When he saw his neighbors Howard
Littlefield and Orville Jones together, he peered at them, went indoors
to escape their spying, and was miserably certain that they had been
whispering--plotting--whispering.
Through all his fear ran defiance. He felt stubborn. Sometimes he
decided that he had been a very devil of a fellow, as bold as Seneca
Doane; sometimes he planned to call on Doane and tell him what a
revolutionist he was, and never got beyond the planning. But just as
often, when he heard the soft whispers enveloping him he wailed, “Good
Lord, what have I done? Just played with the Bunch, and called down
Clarence Drum about being such a high-and-mighty sodger. Never catch
_me_ criticizing people and trying to make them accept _my_ ideas!”
He could not stand the strain. Before long he admitted that he would
like to flee back to the security of conformity, provided there was a
decent and creditable way to return. But, stubbornly, he would not be
forced back; he would not, he swore, “eat dirt.”
Only in spirited engagements with his wife did these turbulent fears
rise to the surface. She complained that he seemed nervous, that she
couldn’t understand why he did not want to “drop in at the
Littlefields’” for the evening. He tried, but he could not express to
her the nebulous facts of his rebellion and punishment. And, with Paul
and Tanis lost, he had no one to whom he could talk. “Good Lord, Tinka
is the only real friend I have, these days,” he sighed, and he clung to
the child, played floor-games with her all evening.
He considered going to see Paul in prison, but, though he had a pale
curt note from him every week, he thought of Paul as dead. It was Tanis
for whom he was longing.
“I thought I was so smart and independent, cutting Tanis out, and I need
her, Lord how I need her!” he raged. “Myra simply can’t understand. All
she sees in life is getting along by being just like other folks. But
Tanis, she’d tell me I was all right.”
Then he broke, and one evening, late, he did run to Tanis. He had not
dared to hope for it, but she was in, and alone. Only she wasn’t Tanis.
She was a courteous, brow-lifting, ice-armored woman who looked like
Tanis. She said, “Yes, George, what is it?” in even and uninterested
tones, and he crept away, whipped.
His first comfort was from Ted and Eunice Littlefield.
They danced in one evening when Ted was home from the university, and
Ted chuckled, “What’s this I hear from Euny, dad? She says her dad says
you raised Cain by boosting old Seneca Doane. Hot dog! Give ’em fits!
Stir ’em up! This old burg is asleep!” Eunice plumped down on Babbitt’s
lap, kissed him, nestled her bobbed hair against his chin, and crowed,
“I think you’re lots nicer than Howard. Why is it,” confidentially,
“that Howard is such an old grouch? The man has a good heart, and
honestly, he’s awfully bright, but he never will learn to step on the
gas, after all the training I’ve given him. Don’t you think we could do
something with him, dearest?”
“Why, Eunice, that isn’t a nice way to speak of your papa,” Babbitt
observed, in the best Floral Heights manner, but he was happy for the
first time in weeks. He pictured himself as the veteran liberal
strengthened by the loyalty of the young generation. They went out to
rifle the ice-box. Babbitt gloated, “If your mother caught us at this,
we’d certainly get our come-uppance!” and Eunice became maternal,
scrambled a terrifying number of eggs for them, kissed Babbitt on the
ear, and in the voice of a brooding abbess marveled, “It beats the devil
why feminists like me still go on nursing these men!”
Thus stimulated, Babbitt was reckless when he encountered Sheldon
Smeeth, educational director of the Y.M.C.A. and choir-leader of the
Chatham Road Church. With one of his damp hands Smeeth imprisoned
Babbitt’s thick paw while he chanted, “Brother Babbitt, we haven’t seen
you at church very often lately. I know you’re busy with a multitude of
details, but you mustn’t forget your dear friends at the old church
home.”
Babbitt shook off the affectionate clasp--Sheldy liked to hold hands for
a long time--and snarled, “Well, I guess you fellows can run the show
without me. Sorry, Smeeth; got to beat it. G’day.”
But afterward he winced, “If that white worm had the nerve to try to
drag me back to the Old Church Home, then the holy outfit must have been
doing a lot of talking about me, too.”
He heard them whispering--whispering--Dr. John Jennison Drew,
Cholmondeley Frink, even William Washington Eathorne. The independence
seeped out of him and he walked the streets alone, afraid of men’s
cynical eyes and the incessant hiss of whispering.
CHAPTER XXXIII
I
He tried to explain to his wife, as they prepared for bed, how
objectionable was Sheldon Smeeth, but all her answer was, “He has such a
beautiful voice--so spiritual. I don’t think you ought to speak of him
like that just because you can’t appreciate music!” He saw her then as a
stranger; he stared bleakly at this plump and fussy woman with the broad
bare arms, and wondered how she had ever come here.
In his chilly cot, turning from aching side to side, he pondered of
Tanis. “He’d been a fool to lose her. He had to have somebody he could
really talk to. He’d--oh, he’d _bust_ if he went on stewing about things
by himself. And Myra, useless to expect her to understand. Well, rats,
no use dodging the issue. Darn shame for two married people to drift
apart after all these years; darn rotten shame; but nothing could bring
them together now, as long as he refused to let Zenith bully him into
taking orders--and he was by golly not going to let anybody bully him
into anything, or wheedle him or coax him either!”
He woke at three, roused by a passing motor, and struggled out of bed
for a drink of water. As he passed through the bedroom he heard his wife
groan. His resentment was night-blurred; he was solicitous in inquiring,
“What’s the trouble, hon?”
“I’ve got--such a pain down here in my side--oh, it’s just--it tears at
me.”
“Bad indigestion? Shall I get you some bicarb?”
“Don’t think--that would help. I felt funny last evening and yesterday,
and then--oh!--it passed away and I got to sleep and-- That auto woke me
up.”
Her voice was laboring like a ship in a storm. He was alarmed.
“I better call the doctor.”
“No, no! It’ll go away. But maybe you might get me an ice-bag.”
He stalked to the bathroom for the ice-bag, down to the kitchen for ice.
He felt dramatic in this late-night expedition, but as he gouged the
chunk of ice with the dagger-like pick he was cool, steady, mature; and
the old friendliness was in his voice as he patted the ice-bag into
place on her groin, rumbling, “There, there, that’ll be better now.” He
retired to bed, but he did not sleep. He heard her groan again.
Instantly he was up, soothing her, “Still pretty bad, honey?”