 CHAPTER XXIX The Assurance of Tannis Judix Friendship fortified Babbitt's self-approval. At the athletic club he became experimental. Though Virgil Gunch was silent, the others at the rough next table came to accept Babbitt as having, for no visible reason, turned crank. They argued windily with him, and he was cocky and enjoyed the spectacle of his interesting martyrdom. He even praised Seneca Dome. Professor of Humphrey said that he was carrying a joke too far, but Babbitt argued, No, fact. I tell you he's got one of the keenest intellects in the country. Why, Lord Wycombe said that—who the hell is Lord Wycombe? What are you always lugging him in for? You've been touting him for the last six weeks, protested Orville Jones. George ordered him from Sears Robuck. You can get those English high-mucked mucks by mail for two bucks a piece. Suggested Sidney Finkelstein? But it's all right now. Lord Wycombe, he's one of the biggest intellects in English political life. As I was saying, of course I'm conservative myself, but I appreciate a guy like Sonny Dome, because Virgil Gunch interrupted harshly. I wonder if you are so conservative. I find I can manage to run my own business without any skunks and reds, like Dome in it, the grimness of Gunch's voice, the hardness of his jaw. Disconcerted Babbitt, but he recovered and went on, till they looked bored, then irritated, then as doubtful as Gunch. II He thought of Tannis always. With a stir he remembered her every aspect, his arms yearned for her. I've found her. I've dreamed of her all these years and now I've found her. He exalted. He met her at the movies in the morning he drove out to her flat, in the late afternoon, or on evenings when he was believed to be at the Elks. He knew her financial affairs and advised her about them. When she lamented her feminine ignorance and praised his masterfulness, and proved to know much more about bonds than he did, they had remembrances and laughed her over old times, what thick world, and he raged that she was as bossy as his wife, and far more whining when he was in a tentative, but that passed safely. Their high hour was a tramp on a ringing December afternoon, through snow-drifted meadows down to the icy Chaluce River. She was exotic in an astrotun cap and a short beaver coat. She slid on the ice and shouted, and he, panted after her, wrote stunned with laughter. Myra Babbitt never slid on the ice. He was afraid that they would be seen together, in Zena that is impossible, to lunch with a neighbor's wife, without the fact being known before nightfall in every house in your circle. But Tannis was beautifully discreet. However appealingly she might turn to him when they were alone, she was gravely detached when they were abroad, and he hoped that she would be taken for a client. Orville Jones once saw them emerging from a movie theater, and Babbitt bumbled, Uh, let me make you acquainted with Mrs. Jodique. Now here's a lady who knows the right broker to come to Orville. Mr. Jones, though he was a man, sensorious of morals and of laundry machinery, seemed satisfied. His predominant fear, not from any special fondness for her, but from the habit of propriety, was that his wife would learn of the affair. He was certain that she knew nothing specific about Tannis, but he was also certain that she suspected something indefinite. For years she had been bored by anything more affectionate than a farewell kiss. Yet she was hurt by any slacking in his irritable periodic interest, and now he had no interest, rather a revulsion. He was completely faithful to Tannis. He was distressed by the sight of his wife's slack plumpness, by her puffs and billows of flesh, by the tattered petticoat, which she was always meaning and always forgetting to throw away. But he was aware that she, so long attuned to him, caught all his repulsions. He elaborately, heavily, jocularly tried to check them. He couldn't. They had a tolerable Christmas, Kenneth Escott was there, admittedly engaged to Verona. Mrs. Babbit was cheerful and called Kenneth her new son. Babbit was worried about Ted, because he had ceased complaining of the State University and become suspiciously acquiescent. He wondered what the boy was planning and was too shy to ask. Himself Babbit slipped away on Christmas afternoon to take his present, a silver cigarette box, to Tannis. When he returned Mrs. Babbit asked much too innocently, Did you go hot for a little fresh air? Yes, just a little drive, he mumbled. After new years his wife proposed, I heard from my sister today, George, she isn't well. I think perhaps I ought to stay with her for a few weeks. Now Mrs. Babbit was not accustomed to leave home during the winter except on violently demanding occasions, and only the summer before she had been gone for weeks. Nor was Babbit one of the detachable husbands who take separations casually. He liked to have her there. She looked after his clothes, she knew how his steak ought to be cooked, and her clucking made him feel secure. But he could not drum up even a dutiful, Oh, she doesn't really need you, does she? When he tried to look regretful. While he felt that his wife was watching him, he was filled with exultant visions of Tannis. Do you think I better go? She said sharply. You got to decide, honey, I can't. She turned away sighing and his forehead was damp. Till she went four days later she was curiously still. He, cumbersly affectionate, her train left at noon. As he saw it grow small beyond the train shed, he longed to hurry to Tannis. No, by God, I won't do that, he vowed. I won't go nearer for a week. But he was at her flat at four, three. He, who had once controlled or seemed to control his life in a progress unimpassioned but diligent and sane, was for that fortnight born on a current of desire and very bad whisky, and all the complications of new acquaintances. Those furious new intubates who demanded so much more attention than old friends. Each morning he gloomily recognized his idiocies of the evening before, with his head throbbing, his tongue and lips stinging from cigarettes, he incredulously counted the number of drinks he had taken and groaned, quit. He had ceased saying, I will quit. For however resolute he might be at dawn he could not for a single evening check his drift. He had met Tannis' friends he had with the ardent taste of the midnight people who drink and dance and rattle and are ever afraid to be silent, been adopted, as a member of her group, which they called the Bunch. He first met them after a day when he had worked particularly hard and when he hoped to be quiet with Tannis and slowly sip her admiration. From down the hall he could hear shrieks and a grind of a phonograph. As Tannis opened the door he saw fantastic figures dancing in a haze of cigarette smoke. The tables and chairs were against the wall. Oh, isn't this dandy, she grabbed at him. Harry Nork had the loveliest idea. She decided it was time for a party, and she's phoned a bunch and told him to gather round. George, this is Kerry. Kerry was in the less desirable aspects of both, at once matronly and Spencer's reach. She was perhaps forty or her hair was an unconvincing ash blonde, and if her chest was flat her hips were ponderous. She greeted Babbitt with a giggling, Welcome to our little midst. Tannis says you're a great sport. He was apparently expected to dance to be boys and gay with Kerry, and he did his unforgiving best. He told her about the room bumping into other couples, into the radiator, into chair legs cunningly ambushed. As he danced he surveyed the rest of the bunch, a thin young woman who looked capable, conceded and sarcastic, another woman who he could never quite remember, three overdressed and slightly effeminate young men, Soda fountain clerks, or at least born for that profession. A man of his own age, immovable, self-satisfied, resentful of Babbitt's presence. When he had finished his dutiful dance, Tannis took him aside and begged, Dear, wouldn't you like to do something for me? I'm all out of booze and the bunch wants to celebrate. Can you just skip down to Healy Hansen's and get some? Sure, he said, trying not to sound sullen. I'll tell you, I'll get many Sontag to drive down with you. Tannis was pointing to the thin, sarcastic young woman. Miss Sontag greeted him with a stringent. How do you do, Mr. Babbitt? Tannis tells me you're a very prominent man. I'm honoured to be allowed to drive with you. Of course, I'm not accustomed to associating with society people like you, so I don't know how to act in such exalted circles. Thus Miss Sontag talked all the way down to Healy Hansen's. To her jibes he wanted to reply, Oh, go to the devil! But he never quite nerved himself to do that. Reasonable comment. He was resenting the existence of the whole bunch. He had heard Tannis speak of Darling Carey and Miss Sontag. She's so clever you'll adore her. But they had never been real to him. He had pictured Tannis as living in a rose-tinted vacuum, waiting for him, free of all the complications of a floral heights. When they returned, he had to endure the patronage of the young soda clerks. They were as damply friendly as Miss Sontag, was dryly hostile. They called him Old Georgie, and shot it. Oh, now sport chigolig! Boys in belted coats, pimply boys as young as Ted, and as flabby as chorus men, but powerful to dance and to mind the photograph and smoke cigarettes and patronize Tannis. He tried to be one of them, he cried. Good work, Pete! But his voice creaked. Tannis apparently enjoyed the companionship of the dancing darlings. She bridled to their bland flirtation and casually kissed them at the end of each dance. Babbit hated her for the moment. He saw her as middle-aged. He studied the wrinkles and the softness of her throat, the slack flesh beneath her chin. The taut muscles of her youth were loose and drooping. Between dances she sat in the largest chair, waving her cigarette, summoning her callow admirers to come and talk to her. She thinks she's a little bloomin' queen, growl, babbit. She chanted to Miss Santang. Isn't my little studio sweet? Studio rats, it's a plain old maid and chow-dog flat. Oh, God, I wish I was home. I wonder if I can't make a getaway now. His vision glue blurred, however, as he plied himself to Healy Hanson's raw but vigorous whiskey. He blended with the bunch. He began to rejoice that Cary Nork and Pete, the most nearly intelligent of the nimble youth, seemed to like him, and it was enormously important to win over the surly older man who proved to be a railway clerk named Fulton Bemis. The conversation of the bunch was exclamatory, high-colored, full of references to people whom Babbit did not know. Apparently they thought very comfortably of themselves. They were the bunch, wise and beautiful and amusing. They were Bohemians and Urbanites, accustomed to all the luxuries of Xena, dance halls, movie theaters, and roadhouses, and in a cynical superiority to people who were slow, or tight-watt. They cackled. Oh, Pete, did I tell you what that dumb of a cashier said when I came in late yesterday? Oh, it was perfectly priceless. Oh, but wasn't TD's dude say he was simply ossified? What did Gladys say to him? Think of the nerve of Bob Bicksford trying to get us to come to his house. Say the nerve of him. Can you beat it for nerve? Some nerve I call it. Did you notice how Daughty was dancing? Gee, wasn't she the limit? Babbit was to be heard sonorously agreeing with the once-hated Miss Mimmy Sontang, that persons who let a knight go by without dancing to jabs, they make, for crabs, pikers, and poor fish. And he roared, You bet! When Mrs. Carrie Nort gurgled, Don't you love to sit on the floor? It's so bohemian. He began to think extremely well of the bunch, when he mentioned his friend, Sir Gerald Dork, Lord Whitcomb, William Washington Earthorn, and Chum Frank, he was proud of their condescending interest. He got so thoroughly in the chocolate spirit that it didn't much mind seeing Tannis drooping against the shoulder of the youngest and milkiest of the young men, and he himself desired to hold Carrie Nort's pulpy hand and dropped it, only because Tannis looked angry. When he went home at two he was fully a member of the bunch, and all the week thereafter he was bound by the exceedingly strained conventions, the exceedingly wearing demands of their life, of pleasure and freedom. He had to go to their parties. He was involved in the agitation when everybody telephoned to everybody else, that she hadn't meant what she'd said when she'd said that. And anyway, why was Pete going around saying she'd said it? Never was a family more insistent on learning one another's movements. Then were the bunch, all of them volubly new, or indignantly desired to know, where all the others had been every minute of the week. Babbitt found himself explaining to Carrie or Fulton Beemus just what he had been doing that he should not have joined them till ten o'clock, and apologizing for having gone to dinner with a business acquaintance. Every member of the bunch was expected to telephone to every other member at least once a week. Why haven't called me up, Babbitt was asked. Accusely, not only by Tannis and Carrie, but presently by new, ancient friends, Jenny and Captoni and Toots, if, for a moment, he had seen Tannis as withering and sentimental, he lost that impression at Carrie Norck's dance. Mrs. Norck had a huge house and a small husband. To her party came all of the bunch, perhaps thirty-five of them, when they were completely mobilized. Babbitt, under the name of Old Georgie, was now a pioneer of the bunch, since each month it changed half its membership, and he who could recall the prehistoric days of a fortnight ago, before Mrs. Absalom, the food demonstrator, had gone to Nain and Annapolis and Mack had got sore at many, was a veritable leader and able to contend to new peats and minis and gladdices. At Carrie's, Tannis did not have to work at being hostess. She was dignified and sure a clear, fine figure in the black chiffon fraught. He had always loved, and in the wider spaces of the ugly house, Babbitt was able to sit quietly with her. He repented of his first revulsion, mooned at her feet, and happily drove her home. Next day he bought a violent yellow tie to make himself young for her. He knew a little sadly that he could not make himself beautiful. He beheld himself as heavy, hinting of fatness. But he danced, he dressed, he chatted, to be as young as she was, as young as she seemed to be. Four. As all converts, whether to a religion, love, or gardening, find as by magic that, though hitherto these hobbies have not seemed to exist, now the whole world is filled with their fury. So once he was converted to dissipation, Babbitt discovered agreeable opportunities for it everywhere. He had a new view of his sporting neighbor, Sam Doppelü. Doppelü's were respectable people, industrious people, prosperous people. Whose ideal of happiness was an eternal cabaret. Their life was dominated by suburban bacanola, of alcohol, nicotine, gasoline, and kisses. They, in their set, were capably all the week, and all week look forward to Saturday night when they would, as he expressed it, throw a party. And the thrown party grew noisier and noisier up to Sunday dawn, and usually included an extremely rapid motor expedition to nowhere in particular. One evening when Tannis was at the theater, Babbitt found himself being lively with the Doppelbrows, pledging friendship with men whom he had for years privately denounced to Mrs. Babbitt as a rotten bunch of tin horns that I wouldn't go out with, rotten if they were the last people on earth. That evening he had sulkily come home and poked about the front of the house, chipping off the walk the ice clots, like fossil footprints, made by the steps of Passard By during the recent snow. Howard Littlefield came up snuffling. Throw a little more, George. Yep. Cold again to-night. What do you hear from the wife? He's feeling fine, but her sister's still pretty sick. Hey, better come in and have dinner with us tonight, George. Oh, thanks. Have to go out. Suddenly he could not endure Littlefield's recitals of the more interesting statistics about totally uninteresting problems. He scraped at the walk and grunted. Sam Doppelgill peered. Evening, Babbitt, working hard. Yep, little exercise. Cold enough for you to-night? Well, just about. Still a widower? Uh-huh. Say, Babbitt, while she's away I know you don't care much for booze fights, but the Misses and I'd be awfully glad if you would come in some night. Think you could stand a good cocktail for once? Stand it, young fellow. I bet old Uncle George can mix the best cocktail in these United States. Hooray! That's the way to talk. Look here. There's some folks coming to the house tonight. Loretta Swanson and some other live ones. And I'm going to open up a bottle of pre-war gin and maybe we'll dance a while. Why don't you drop in? Jazz it up a little. Just for a change. Well, what time they coming? He was at the Sam Doppelgills at nine. It was the third time he had entered the house. By ten he was calling Mr. Doppelgill. Sam, ol' hos. At eleven they all drove out to the ol' farm in. Babbitt sat in the back of Doppelgill's car with Loretta Swanson. Once he had timorously tried to make love to her. Now he did not try he merely made love. And Loretta dropped her head on his shoulder, told him what a nagger Eddie was, and accepted Babbitt as a decent and well-trained libertine. With the assistance of Tannis's bunch, the Doppelgills and other companions and forgetfulness, there was not an evening for two weeks when he did not return home late and shaky. With his other faculties blurred, he yet had the motorist gift of being able to drive when he could scarce walk, of slowing down at corners and allowing for approaching cars. He came wobbling into the house if Verona and Kenneth Escott were about. He got past them with a hasty greeting, horribly aware of their level young glances, and hid himself upstairs. He found when he came into the warm house that he was hazier than he had believed. His head whirled. He dared not lie down. He tried to soak out the alcohol in the hot bath. For the moment his head was clear, but when he moved about the bathroom his calculations of distance were wrong, so that he dragged down the towels and knocked over the soap dish with a clatter, which he feared would betray him to the children. Chilly and his dressing down he tried to read the evening paper. He could follow every word he seemed to take in the sense of things, but a minute afterward he could not have told what he had been reading. When he went to bed his brain flew in circles and he hastily sat up, struggling for self-control. At last he was able to lie still feeling only a little sick and dizzy, and enormously ashamed. To hide his condition, from his own children, to have danced and shouted with people whom he despised, to have said foolish things, sung idiotic songs, tried to kiss silly girls. Incredibly he remembered that he had by his roaring familiarity with them laid himself open to the patronizing of youth whom he would have kicked out of his office. That by dancing too ardently he had exposed himself to rebukes from the radius of withering women. As it came relentlessly back to him he snarled, I hate myself, God how I hate myself. But he raged, I'm through, no more. Enough, plenty. He was even sure about it the morning after when he was trying to be grave and paternal with his daughters at breakfast. At noontime he was less sure. He did not deny that he had been a fool. He saw it almost as clearly as at midnight but anything he struggled was better than going back to a life of barren heartiness. At four he wanted to drink. He kept a whiskey flask in his desk now and after two minutes of battle he had his drink. Three drinks later he began to see the bunch as tender and amusing friends. And by six he was with them. And the tale was to be told all over. Each morning his head ached a little less. A bad head of her drinks had been his safeguard but the safeguard was crumbling. Presently he could be drunk at dawn yet not feel particularly wretched in his conscious or in his stomach when he awoke at eight. No regret, no desire to escape the toil of keeping up with the idulous merriment of the bunch was so great as this feeling of social inferiority when he failed to keep up. To be the loveliest of them was as much his ambition now as it had been to excel at making money at playing golf, at motor driving, at oratory, at climbing, to the McKevley set. But occasionally he failed. He found that Pete and the other young men considered the bunch too austerely polite and the carry who merely kissed behind doors too embarrassingly monogamic. As babbit sneaked from the floral heights down to the bunch, so the young galants sneaked from the properties of the bunch off to times with bouncing young women whom they picked up in department stores and at hotel coat rooms. Once babbit tried to accompany them. There was a motor car, a bottle of whiskey, and for him a grubby shrieking cash girl from Parcher and Steins. He sat beside her and worried. He was apparently expected to jolly her along. But when she sang out, hey, lingo, quick crushing me, cootie garage. He did not quite know how to go on. They sat in the back room of a saloon and babbit had a headache. He was confused by their new slang. Looked at them benevolently, wanted to go home, and had a drink. Good many drinks. Two evenings after, Fulton Bemis, the surly older man of the bunch, took babbit aside and grunted, look here, it's none of my business and God knows I always lap up my share of the hooch. But don't you think you better watch yourself. You're one of the enthusiastic chumps that always overdo things. Do you realize you're throwing in the booze as fast as you can, and you eat one cigarette right after the other. Better cut it out for a while. Babbit terribly said that good ol' Fult was a prince, and yes, he certainly would cut it out, and thereafter he lighted a cigarette and took a drink and had a horrific quarrel with Tannis when she caught him being affectionate with Carrie Norck. Next morning he hated himself that he should have sunk into a position where a fifteen-threater like Fulton Bemis could rebuke him. He perceived that, since he was making love to every woman possible, Tannis was no longer his one pure star, and he wondered whether she had ever been anything more to him than a woman, and if Bemis had spoken to him, were other people talking about him? He suspiciously watched the men at the athletic club at noon. It seemed to him they were uneasy. They had been talking about him, then? He was angry. He became belligerent. He not only defended Seneca Done, but even made fun of the YMCA. Virgil Gunch was rather brief in his answers. Afterward Babbit was not angry. He was afraid. He did not go to the next lunch of the Boosters Club but hid in a cheap restaurant, and while he munched a ham and egg sandwiched in sip coffee from a cup on the arm of his chair, he worried. Four days later, when the bunch were having one of their best parties, Babbit drove them to the skating rink which had been laid out on the Chalissa River. After a thaw the streets had frozen in smooth ice. Down those wide endless streets the wind rattled between the rows of wooden houses, and the whole Bellevue district seemed a frontier town. Even with skid change on all four wheels Babbit was afraid of sliding, and when he came to the long slide of a hill, he crawled down, both brakes on. Slowing around a corner came a less cautious car. It skidded. It almost raked them with its rear fenders. In relief at their escape the bunch Tannis, Mini, Sontag, Pete, Fulton, shouted, Oh, baby! and waved their hands to the agitated other driver. Then Babbit saw Professor Pumphrey, laboriously crawling up hill afoot, staring oulishly at the rivulers. He was sure that Pumphrey recognized him and saw Tannis kiss him, as she crowed, You're such a good driver! At lunch the next day he probed Pumphrey with, Out last night with my brother and some friends of his, garsh what driving slippery glass thought I saw you hiking up the Bellevue Avenue hill. No, I wasn't. I didn't see you, said Pumphrey hastily, rather guiltily. Perhaps two days afterward Babbit took Tannis to lunch at the hotel Thornley. She, who had seemed well content to wait for him at her flat, had begun to hint with Melancholy's smile that he must think but little of her, if he never introduced her to his friends. If he was unwilling to be seen with her except at the movies, he thought of taking her to the ladies' annex of the athletic club. But that was too dangerous, he would have to introduce her and, oh, people might misunderstand and he compromised on the Thornley. She was unusually smart, all in black, small, black, triconed hat, short, black, caracal coat, loose and swinging an austere, high-neck black velvet frock, at a time when most street costumes were like evening gowns. Perhaps she was too smart. Everyone in the golden oak restaurant of the Thornle was staring at her as Babbit followed her to a table. He and easily hoped that the head waiter would give them a discreet place behind a pillar. But they were stationed on the center aisle. Tannis seemed not to notice her admirers. She smiled at Babbit with a lavish, oh, isn't this nice? What a peppy looking orchestra. Babbit had difficulty in being lavish in return. For two tables away he saw Virgil Gunch. All through the meal Gunch watched them, while Babbit watched himself being watched and leguberously tried to keep from spoiling Tannis' gaiety. I feel like a spree to-day, she rippled. I love the Thornley, don't you? It's so live and yet so refined. He made talk about the Thornley, the service, the food, the people he recognized in a restaurant. All but Virgil Gunch. There did not seem to be anything else to talk of. He smiled conscientiously at her, fluttering jest. He agreed with her that, when he saw Tannis was so hard to get along with in young Pete, such a silly, lazy kid. Really, just no good at all. But he himself had nothing to say. He considered telling her his worries about Gunch, but, gosh, it was too much work to go into the whole thing and explain about Virge and everything. He was relieved when he put Tannis on a trolley. He was cheerful in the familiar simplicities of his office. At four o'clock Virgil Gunch called on him. Babbit was agitated, but Gunch began in a friendly way. How's the boy? Say, some of us are getting up a scheme. We'd kind of like to have you come in on fun, Virgil. You know, during the war we had the undesirable element, the reds, and walking delegates and just the plain common grouches, dead to rights. And so did we for quite a while after the war. But folks forgot about the danger, and that gives these cranks a chance to begin working underground again. Especially a lot of these parlor socialists. Well, it's up to the folks that do a little sound thinking to make a conscious effort to keep bucking these fellows. Some guy back east has organized a society called the Good Citizens League. For just that purpose, of course, the Chamber of Commerce and the American Legion, and so do a fine work in keeping the decent people in the saddle. But they're devoted to so many other causes that they can't attend to this one problem properly. But the Good Citizens League, the GCL, they stick right to it. Oh, the GCL has to have some other optimal purposes. For instance, here in Zenith, I think it ought to support the Park Extension Project and the City Planning Committee. And then, too, it should have a social aspect, being made up of the best people, have dances and so on, especially as one of the best ways it can put the cabajon cranks is to apply this social boycott business to folks big enough so you can't reach them otherwise. Then, if that don't work, the GCL can finally send a little delegation around to inform folks that get to flip, that they got to conform to decent standards and quit shooting off their mouths, so free. Don't it sound like the organization could do great work? We've already got some of the strongest men in town. And, of course, we want you in. How about it? Babbitt was uncomfortable. He felt a compulsion back to all the standards. He had so vague you yet so desperately been fleeing. You fumbled. Ah, I suppose you'd especially light on fellows like Seneca Done and try to make them... You bet your sweet life we would. Look here, old Georgie. I have never for one moment believed you met it when you've defended Done and the Strikers and so on at the club. I knew you were simply kidding those poor galutes like Sid Finkelstein. At least I certainly hope you were kidding. Oh, well, sure, of course you might say. Babbitt was conscious of how feebly he sounded. Conscious of Gunch's mature and relentless eye. Gosh, you know where I stand. I'm no labor agitator. I'm a businessman, first, last, and all the time, but, but honest, I don't think Done means so badly, and you've got to remember he's an old friend of mine. George, when it comes right down to a struggle between decency and the security of our homes on the one hand, and red ruin and those lazy dogs plotting for free beer on the other, you've got to give up even old friendships. He that is not with me is against me. I suppose. How about it? Going to join us in the Good Citizens League? I'll have to think it over, Verge. All right, just as you say. Babbitt was relieved to be let off so easy, but Gunch went on. George, I don't know what's come over you, none of us do. And we've talked a lot about you. For a while we figured out you'd been upset by what happened to poor Riesling. And we forgive you for any fool thing you said, but it's old stuff now, George. We can't make out what's got into you, personally. I've always defended you, but I must say it's getting too much for me. All the boys at the athletic club and the boosters are sore. The way you go on deliberately touting Done and his bunch fell hounds. And talking about being liberal, which means being wishy-washy, and even saying this preacher guy Ingram isn't a professional free-love artist. And then the way you've been carrying on, personally? Joe Pumphrey says he saw you out the other night with a gang of Totties, all stewed to the gills. And here today, coming right into Thornlow with a, well, she may be all right and a perfect lady, but she certainly did look like a pretty gay skirt for a fellow with his wife out of town to be taken to lunch. Didn't look well. The devils come over you, George. Strikes me that a lot of fellow that know more about my personal business than I do myself. Now don't go getting sore at me because I came out flat footed like a friend and say what I think instead of tattling behind your back the way a whole lot of them do. Tell you, George, you've got a position in the community, and a community expects you to live up to it. And better think over joining the Good Citizens League. See about it later. He was gone. That evening Babbot dined alone. He saw all the clan of good fellows peering through the restaurant windows, spying on him. Fear sat beside him. And he told himself that to-night he would not go to Tennis's flat. And he did not go. Till late. 1. The summer before Mrs. Babbot's letters had cracked with desire to return to Zenith. Now they said nothing of returning but, uh, wistful, I suppose everything is going to be all right without me. Among her dry chronicles of weather and sickness hinted to Babbot that he hadn't been very urgent about her coming. He worried it. If she were here and I went on raising Kane like I've been doing, he'd have a fit. I gotta get hold of myself. I got to learn to play around and yet not make a fool of myself. I can do it too, folks like Verge Gunch. Let me alone and Meryl stay away, but poor kid she sound lonely. Lord, I don't want to hurt her. Impulsively he wrote that they missed her. And her next letter said happily that she was coming home. He persuaded himself that he was eager to see her. He bought roses for the house he ordered squab for dinner. He had the car cleaned and polished, all the way home from the station with her he was adequate in his accounts of Ted's success in basketball at the university. But before they reached floral heights, there was nothing more to say. And already he felt the force of her stullity. Wondered whether he could remain a good husband and still sneak out of the house this evening for half an hour with the bunch. When he had housed the car he blundered upstairs into the familiar talcum scented warmth of her presence blurring. Help me on back, your bag. Oh, I can do it. Slowly she turned holding up a small box and slowly she said, I brought you a present, just a new cigar case. I didn't know if you'd care to have it. She was the lonely girl, the brown appealing Myra Thompson whom he had married and he almost wept for pity as he kissed her and his thought. Oh, honey, care to have it. Of course I do. I'm awful proud you brought it to me. And I needed a new case badly. He wondered how he would get rid of the case he had bought the week before. And you really aren't glad to see me back? Why, you poor kitty, what have you been worrying about? Well, you didn't seem to miss me very much. By the time he had finished his stint of lying they were firmly bound again. By ten that evening it seemed improbable that she had ever been away. There was but one difference, the problem of remaining as respectable husband, a floral heights husband, yet seeing Tannis in the bunch with frequency. He had promised to telephone to Tannis that evening and now it was mellow, dramatically impossible. He prowled about to telephone impulsively thrusting out a hand to lift the receiver but never quite daring to risk it. Nor could he find a reason for slipping down to the drugstore on Smith Street with its telephone booth. He was laden with responsibility till he threw it off with the speculation. Why should that douche should I fret so about being able to phone Tannis? She can get along without me. I don't owe her anything. She's a fine girl. But I've given her just as much as she has me. Oh, damn these women in a way they get all tied up in complications. Two. For a week he was attentive to his wife, took her to the theater, to dinner at the little fields. Then the old weary dodging and shifting began and at least two evenings a week he spent with the bunch. He still made pretense of going to the alks and to committee meetings, but less and less did he trouble to have his excuses in thrusting, less and less did she affect to believe him. He was certain that she knew he was associating with what floral heights called a sporty crowd. Yet neither of them acknowledged it. In matrimonial geography the distance between the first mute recognition of a break and the admission thereof is as great as the distance between the first naive faith and the first doubting. As he began to drift away he also began to see her as a human being. To like and dislike her instead of accepting her as a comparatively movable part of the furniture. And he compassionate that husband and wife relation which in twenty-five years of married life had become a separate and real entity. He recalled their highlights, the summer vacation in Virginia meadows under the blue wall of the mountains, their motor tour through Ohio and the exploration of Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Columbus. The birth of Verona, their building of this new house, planned to comfort them through a happy old age. Chokingly they had said that it might be the last home either of them would ever have. Yet his most softening remembrance of Thoe's dear moments did not keeping from parking at dinner. Yep, going out a few hours, don't sit up for me. He did not dare now to come home drunk. And though he rejoiced in his return to high morality and spoke with gravity to Pete in Fulton Bemis, about their drinking he prickled at Myra's unexpressed criticisms and sulkily meditated that a fellow couldn't ever learn to handle himself if he was always bossed by a lot of women. He no longer wondered if Tannis wasn't a bit worn and sentimental. In contrast to the complacent Myra he saw her as swift and airborne and radiant, a fire spirit tenderly stooping to the hearth. And however pitifully he brooded on his wife. He longed to be with Tannis. Then Mrs. Babbitt tore the decent cloak from her unhappiness and the astounded meal, discovered that she was having a small, determined rebellion of Earl III. They were beside the fireless fireplace in the evening. Georgie, she said, you haven't given me the list of your household expenses while I was away. No, I haven't. I've made it out yet. Very affably. Garsh, we must try to keep down expenses this year. That's all. I don't know where all the money goes. I tried to economize, but it just seems to evaporate. Uh, I suppose I ought to spend so much on cigars. Don't know, but what I'll cut down on smoking, maybe cut it out entirely. I was thinking of a good way to do it the other day. Start on these shrewd cigarettes, and they'd kind of disgust me with smoking. Oh, I do wish you would. It isn't that I care, but honestly, George, it is so bad for you to smoke so much. Don't you think you could reduce the amount? And, George, I notice now when you come home from these lodging and all, and sometimes you smell of whiskey. Dury, you know I don't worry so much about the moral side of it. But you have a weak stomach, and you can't stand all this drinking. Weak stomach? Hell, I guess I can carry my booze about as well as most folks. Well, I do think you ought to be careful. Don't you see, dear? I don't want you to get sick. Sick rats? I'm not a baby. I guess I ain't going to get sick just because maybe once a week I shoot a highball. That's a trouble with women. They always exaggerate so. George, I don't think you ought to talk that way, when I'm just speaking for your own good. I owe cash off fish hooks. That's a trouble with women. They're always criticizing and commenting and bringing things up. And then they say it's for your own good. Why, George, that's not a nice way to talk to answer me so short. Well, I didn't mean to answer short, but guys, talking as if I was a kindergarten brat not able to tote one highball without calling for the St. Mary's Ambulance? Fine idea, you must have a me. Oh, it isn't that. It's just, I don't want to see you get sick. And my, I didn't know it was so late. Don't forget to give me those household accounts for the time while I was away. Thunder, what's he used to taking a trouble make him now? Let's just skip him for that period. Why, George, in all the years we've been married, we've never failed to keep a complete account of every penny we've spent. Well, maybe that's a trouble with us. What world do you mean? Well, I don't mean anything, only sometimes I get so darn sick and tired of all the routine and the accounting at the office and expenses at home and fussing and stewing and fretting and wearing myself out, worrying over a lot of junk that doesn't really mean a dog-gone thing. And being so careful and good, Lord, what do you think I'm made for? I could have been a darn good orator and here I fuss and fret and worry. Would you suppose I ever get tired of fussing? I get so bored with ordering three meals a day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year, and ruining my eyes over that horrid sewing machine, and looking after your clothes and rones and tits and tinkers and everybody's in the laundry, darning socks and going down to the piggy-wiggly to market and bringing my basket home to save money on the cash and carry-in? Everything. Well, George, with a certain astonishment, I suppose maybe you do, but talk about here I have to be in the office every single day while you can go out all afternoon and see folks and visit with the neighbors and do any blinkin' thing you want to. Yes, and a fine lot of good that does me. Just talking over the same old things with the same old crowd while you have all sorts of interesting people coming in to see you at the office. Interesting. Cranky old dames that want to know why I haven't rented their dear precious homes for about seven times their value. Bunch of old crabs panning the everlasting daylights out of me because they don't receive every cent of their rentals by 3 GM on the second of the month. Sure, interesting. Just as interesting as a small box. Now, George, I will not have you shouting at me that way. Well, against my goat-away women figure out that a man doesn't do a darn thing but sit in his chair and have lovey-dovey conferences with a lot of classy dames and give them the glad eye. I guess you managed to give them a glad enough eye when they do come in? What do you mean? Mean I'm chasin' flappers? I should hope not at your age. Now, you luck here. You may not believe it. Of course, all you see is fat little George Babbit. Sure, handyman around the house, fixes a furnace when the furnace man doesn't show up, pays the bills, but dull, awful dull. Well, you may not believe it, but there are some women that think old George Babbit is such a bad scout. They think he's not so bad looking, not so bad that it hurts anyway. And he's got a pretty good line of guff and some of them even think he shakes a darn wicked walk over at dancing. Yes, she spoke slowly. I haven't much doubt of that when I'm away. You manage to find people who properly appreciate you. Well, I just mean, he protested with a sound of denial. Then he was angered into semi-honesty. You bet I do. I find plenty of folks and doggone nice ones that don't think I'm a weak stomach baby. That's exactly what I was saying. You can run around with anybody you please, but I'm supposed to sit here and wait for you? You have the chance to get all the sorts of culture and everything, and I just stay home. Well, gosh almighty, there's nothing to prevent your reading books and going to lectures and all that junk, is there? George, I told you I won't have you shouting at me like that. I don't know what's come over you. You never used to speak to me in this cranky way. I didn't mean to sound cranky, but gosh, it certainly makes me sorta get to blame because you don't keep up with things. I'm going to. Will you help me? Sure, anything I can do to help you in the culture grabbing line. You're still a blight, G.F. Babbitt. Very well, then. I want you to go to Miss Mudge's new thought meeting with me next Sunday afternoon. Who, which? Mrs. Opal Emerson Mudge, the field lecturer for the American New Thought League. She's going to speak on cultivating the Sun Spirit before the leak of her higher illumination at the Thorn Lane. Oh, punk, new thought has thought, and a poached egg, cultivating it sound like, why is a mouse when it spins? That's a fine spiel for a good presbyterian to be going to, when you can hear Doc Drew. Reverend Drew is a scholar in a pulpit orator and all that, but he hasn't got the inner ferment, as Miss Mudge calls it. He hasn't any inspiration for the new era, women need inspiration now. So I want you to come as you promised. 4. The Zenith Branch of the League of the Higher Illumination met in the smaller ballroom out to Hotel Thorn Lane, a refined apartment with pale green walls and plaster wreaths of roses, refined parquet flooring, and ultra-refined frail gilt chairs. Here were gathered sixty-five women and ten men. Most of the men slouched in their chairs and wiggled while their wives sat rigidly at attention, but two of them, redneck meaty men, were as respectably devout as their wives. They were newly rich contractors who, having bought houses, motors, hand-painted pictures, and gentleness, were now buying a refined readymade philosophy. It had been a toss-up with them whether to buy new thought, Christian science, or a good standard high-church model of Episcopalianism. In the flesh Mrs. Opal Emerson Mudge fell somewhat short of a prophetic aspect. She was pony built and plump, with the face of a haughty pecanese, a button of a nose, an arm so short that, despite her most indignant endeavors, she could not clasp her hands in front of her as she sat on the platform waiting. Her frock of taffeta and green velvet, with three strings of glass beads and large folding eyeglasses dangling from a black ribbon, was a triumph of refinement. Mrs. Mudge was introduced by the president of the League of the Hyra Elimination, an oldish young woman, with a yearning voice, white spats, and a mustache. She said that Mrs. Mudge would now make it plain to the simplest intellect how the sun spirit could be cultivated, and they who had been thinking about cultivating one would do well to treasure Mrs. Mudge's words, because even Zenith, and everybody knew that Zenith stood in the van of spiritual and new-thought progress, didn't often have the opportunities to sit at the feet of such an inspiring optimist and metaphysical seer as Mrs. Opal Emerson Mudge, who had lived the life of wider usefulness through concentration and in the silence found those secrets of mental control and the inner key, which were immediately going to transform and bring peace, power, and prosperity to the unhappy nations. And so, friends, would they, for this precious gem-studded hour, forget the illusions of this seeming reel, and in the actualization of the deep-lying, emeritus pass along with Mrs. Opal Emerson Mudge to the realm beautiful? If Mrs. Mudge was rather pudgier than one would like one's swamis, yogi, seers, and initiates, yet her voice had the real professional note. It was refined and optimistic. It was overpoweringly calm. It flowed on relentlessly without one comma till Babbit was hypnotized. Her favorite word was always, which she pronounced, all the ways. Her principal gesture was apothecal, but thoroughly lay like blessing with two stubby fingers. She explained about this matter of spiritual saturation. There are those. Of those she made a linked sweetness long drawn out, a far-off, delicate call in a twilight minor. It chastely rebuked the restless husbands, yet brought them a message of healing. There are those who have seen the rim and outer seeming of the logos. There are those who have glimpsed and enthusiasm possessed themselves of some segment and portion of the logos. There are those who thus flicked but not penetrated, and radioactivated by the dynamis, go always to and fro, assertitative, that they possess and are possessed of the logos, and the meticycles. But the word I bring you this concept? I enlarge that those that are not utter are not even inceptive, and that holiness is in its definitive essence, always, always, always, wholeness and— It proved that the essence of the sun-spirit was truth, but its aura and affixion were cheerfulness. Face always the day with the dawn lamp, with the enthusiasm of the initiate who perceives that all works together in the revolutions of the wheel and whose answers the strictures of the soured souls of the destructionists with a glad affirmation. It went on for about an hour and seven minutes. At the end Mrs. Mudge spoke with more vigor and punctuation. Now let me suggest to all of you the advantages of the theosophical and panthenistic Oriental Reading Circle, which I represent. Our object is to unite all the manifestations of the new era into one cohesive whole, new thought, Christian science, Theospe, Vendanta, Bahaism, and the other sparks from one new light. The subscription is but ten dollars a year, and for this mere pittance the members receive not only the monthly magazine, Pearls of Healing, but the privilege of sending right to the President our Reverend Mother Dobbs. Any question regarding spiritual progress, matrimonial problems, health and well-being questions, financial difficulties, and—they listened to her with adoring attention. They looked genteel, they looked ironed out, they coughed politely and crossed their legs with quietness, and in an expensive Flynn and Hanukkah chiefs they blew their noses with a delicacy altogether optimistic and refined. As for Babbit, he sat and suffered. When they were blessedly out in the air again, when they drove home through a wind, smelling of snow and honest sun, he dared not speak. They had been too near to quarreling these days, Mrs. Babbit forced it. Did you enjoy Mrs. Mudge's talk? Uh, what did you get out of it? Well, it starts a person thinking it gets you out of a routine of ordinary thoughts. Well, I'll hand it to Opal, she's an ordinary MacGosh. Honest, did that stuff mean anything to you? Of course, I'm not trained in metaphysics. And there was lots I couldn't quite grasp, but I feel it was inspiring, and she speaks so readily. I do think you ought to have got something out of it. Well, I did not swear I was simply astonished the way those women lapped it up. Why, the Dickens, they want to put in their time listening to all that blah when they... It's certainly better for them than going to roadhouses and smoking and drinking. I don't know whether it is or not. Personally, I don't see a whole lot of difference. In both cases, they're trying to get away from themselves, most everybody is these days, I guess. And I certainly got a whole lot more out of hoofing in a good lively dance, even in some dive than sitting and looking at McCaller that was too tight, and feeling too scared to spit, and listening to Opal chewing her words. I'm sure you do. You're a very fond of dives, no doubt. You saw a lot of them while I was away. Look here. You've been doing a hell of a lot of insinuating and hitting about lately as if I were leading a double life or something. And I'm damn sick of it, and I don't want to hear anything more about it. Why, George Peppett, do you realize what you're saying? With George and all our years together, you've never talked to me like that. It's about time, then. Lately you've been getting worse and worse, and now finally you're cursing and swearing at me and shouting at me, and your voice is so ugly and hateful. I just shudder. Ah, rats, quit exaggerating. I wasn't shouting or swearing either. I wish you could hear your own voice. Maybe you don't realize how it sounds. But even so, you never used to talk like that. You simply couldn't talk this way if something dreadful didn't happen to you. His mind was hard with amazement. He found that he wasn't particularly sorry. It was only with an effort that he made himself more agreeable. Well, Garsh, I don't mean to get sore. George, do you realize that we can't go on like this, getting further and farther apart? And you're a ruder and a ruder to me. I just don't know what's going to happen. He had a moment's pity for Herbert Wilderman. He thought of how many deep and tender things would be hurt if they really couldn't go on like this. But his pity was impersonal and he was wondering, wouldn't it maybe be a good thing if not a divorce and all that, of course, but kind of a little more independence? While she looked at him pleadingly, he drove on in a dreadful silence. End of Chapter 30 Chapter 31 of Babbitt. The Sleeper Vox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Mike Vendetti, Mike Vendetti.com. Babbitt. By Sinclair Lewis. Chapter 31 1 When he was away from her while he kicked about the garage and swept the snow off the running board and examined a cracked hose connection, he repented. He was alarmed and astonished that he could have flared out at his wife. And thought fondly, how much more lasting she was than the bloody bunch. He went in to mumble that he was sorry and didn't mean to be grouchy, and to inquire as to her interest in a movie. But in the darkness of the movie theater he brooded, that he gone and tied himself up to Myra all over again. He had some satisfaction in taking it out on Tannis Judique. Hang, Tannis, anyway, why she'd gone and got him into these mix-ups made him all jumpy, nervous, and cranky. Too many complications. Cut him out. He wanted peace. For ten days he did not see Tannis nor telephone to her. And instantly she put upon him the compulsion which he hated. When he had stayed away from her for five days, hourly taking pride in his resoluteness and hourly, picturing how greatly Tannis must miss him. Ms. McGowan reported, Mr. Judique on the phone. Like to speak to you about some repairs? Tannis was quick and quiet. Mr. Babbit? Oh, George, this is Tannis. I haven't seen you for weeks, days, anyway. You aren't sick, are you? No, just been terribly rushed. I think there'll be a big revival of building this year. Got to, uh, got to work hard. Of course, my man, I want you to. You know I'm terribly ambitious for you much more than I am for myself. I just don't want you to forget poor Tannis. Will you call me up soon? Sure, sure, you bet. Please do. I shan't call you again. Imediated. Poor kid. But, gawr, she ought not phone me at the office. She's a wonder, sympathy, ambitious for me. But, garsh, I won't be made and compelled to call her up till I get ready. Darn these women the way they make demands. It'll be one long old time before I see her. But, garsh, I'd like to see her tonight. Sweet little thing. Cut that, son. Now you've broken away, be wise. She did not telephone him again, nor he, but after five more days she wrote to him. Have I offended you? You must know, dear. I didn't mean to. I'm so lonely and I need somebody to cheer me up. Why didn't you come to the nice party we had at Kerry's last evening? I remember she invited you. Can't you come around here tomorrow, Thursday evening? I shall be alone and hope to see you. His reflections were numerous. Don't, Gannet, why can't she let me alone? Why can't women ever learn if fellow hates to be bulldozed? And they always take advantage of you by yelling how lonely they are. Not it isn't nice of you, young fellow. She's a fine square street girl and she does get lonely. She writes us well hand. Nice looking stationery, plain, refined. I guess I'll have to go see her. Well, thank God I got till tomorrow night free of her. Anyway. She's nice, but hang it. I won't be made to do things. I'm not married to her, nor by golly gonna be. Oh, rats! I suppose I better go see her. Too. Thursday, the to-morrow of Tannis's note, was full of emotional crises. At the rough-next table, at the club, Verge Gunch, talked of the good citizens' league and it seemed to babbit, deliberately left him out of the invitations to join old Matt Peneman and the general utility man at Babbit's office, had troubles, and came in to groan about them. The oldest boy was no good, and wanted for sick, and he had quarreled with his brother-in-law. Tann Red Lighty also had troubles, and since Lighty was one of his best clients, Babbit had to listen to him. Mr. Lighty, it appeared, was suffering from a peculiarly interesting neuralgia, and the garage had overcharged him. When Babbit came home, everybody had troubles. His wife was simultaneously thinking about discharging the impudent new maid and worried lest the maid leave, and Tika desired to denounce her teacher. Oh, quit fussing, Babbit fussed. You never hear me whining about my troubles, and yet if you had to run a real estate office, why, today I've found Miss Bannington was two days behind with her accounts, and I pinched my finger in my desk, and Lighty was in and just as unreasonable as ever. He was so fixed that after dinner, when it was time for a tactful escape to Tannis, he merely grumped to his wife, Gotta go out, be back by eleven, should think. Oh, you're going out again? Again? What do you mean again? Haven't hardly been out of the house for a week. Are you going to the Elks? Nope, better see some people. Though this time he heard his own voice and knew that it was curt, though she was looking at him with wide-eyed reproach, he stumped into the hall, jerked on his ulster, and fur-line gloves, and went out to start the car. He was relieved to find Tannis cheerful, un-reproachful, and brilliant in a frock of brown net over gold tissue. You poor man having to come out on a night like this. It's terribly cold. Would you think a small high ball would be nice? No, by golly, there's a woman with savvy. I think we could more or less stand a high ball if it wasn't too tall of a one. Not more than a foot tall. He kissed her with careless heartiness. He forgot the compulsion of her demands, he stretched in a large chair, and felt that he had beautifully come home. He was suddenly alquacious. He told her what a noble and misunderstood man he was, and how superior to Pete, Fulton Bemis, and the other men of their acquaintance, and she, bending forward, chin and charming hand, brightly agreed. But when he forced himself to ask, Well, honey, how's things with you? She took his duty question seriously, and he discovered that she too had troubles. Oh, all right, but I did get so angry with Carrie. She told many that I told her that many was an awful tightwad, and many told me Carrie had told her, and of course I told her I hadn't said anything of the kind, and then Carrie found many had told me, and she was simply furious because many had told me, and of course I was just boiling because Carrie had told her I told her, and then we all met up at Fulton's, his wife is away, thank heavens. Oh, there's the dandiest floor in his house to dance on, and we were all of us simply furious at each other, and oh, I do hate that kind of a mix-up, don't you? I mean, it's so lacking in refinement, but—and Mother wants to come and stay with me for a whole month, and of course I do love her, I suppose I do, but honestly, she'll crap my style something dreadful. She never can learn not to comment, and she always wants to know where I'm going when I go out evenings, and if I light her, she always spies around and ferrets around and finds out where I've been, and then she looks like patience on a monument, till I could just scream, and oh, I must tell you, you know I never talk about myself, I just hate people who do, don't you? But I feel so stupid tonight, and I know I must be boring you with all this. What would you do about Mother? He gave her factual, masculine advice. She was to put off her Mother's stay. She was to tell Kerry to go to the deuce. For these valuable revelations she thanked him, and they ambled into the familiar gossip of the bunch, of what a sentimental fool was Kerry, of what a lazy brat was Pete, of how nice Fulton Bemis could be. Of course, lots of people think he's a regular old grouch when they meet him, because he doesn't give them the glad hand, the first crack out of the box. But when they get to know him, he's a quarker. But as they had gone conscientiously through each of these analysis before the conversations staggered, Fabit tried to be intellectual and deal with general topics. He said some thoroughly sound things about disarmament and broad-mindedness and liberalism, but it seemed to him that general topics interested Tannis only when she could apply them to Pete, Kerry, or themselves. He was distressingly conscious of their silence. He tried to stir her into chatting again, but silence rose like a gray presence and hovered between them. Uh, he labored. It strikes me that unemployment is lessening. Maybe Pete will get a decent job then. Silence. Desperately he essayed, What's the trouble, little honey? You seem kind of quiet tonight. Am I? Oh, I'm not, but... Do you really care whether I am or not? Sure, of course I do. Do you really? She swooped on him, sat on the arm of his chair. He halted the emotional drain of having to appear fond of her. He stroked her hand, smiling up at her dutifully, and sank back. George, I wonder if you really like me at all. Of course I do, silly. Do you really precious? Do you care a bit? Well, certainly. You don't suppose I'd be here if I didn't. Now, see here, young man, I won't have you speaking to me in that huffy way. I am mean to sound huffy. I just... An injured and rather childish tone. Gosh almighty. It makes me tired the way everybody says I sound huffy. Where I just talk natural. Do they expect me to sing it or something? What do you mean by everybody? How many other ladies have you been consoling? Okay, and I won't have this hinting. Humbly. I know, dear. I was only teasing. I know it didn't mean to talk huffy. It was just tired. Forgive bad tantas. But say you love me. Say it. Love you. Of course I do. Yes, you do, cynically. Oh, darling. I don't mean to be rude, but... I get so lonely. I feel so useless. Nobody needs me. Nothing I can do for anybody. And you know, dear, I'm so active I could be if there was something to do. And I am young, aren't I? I'm not an old thing. I'm not old and stupid, am I? He had to assure her. She stroked his hair, and he had to look pleased under that touch, the more demanding in its beguiling softness. He was impatient. He wanted to flee out to a hard, sure, unemotional man-world. Through her delicate, and caressing fingers, she may have caught something of his rugged distaste. She left him, he was, for the moment, buoyantly relieved. She dragged a footstool to his feet and sat looking besiegingly up at him. But as in many men, the cringing of a dog, the flinching of a frightened child, roused not pity but a surprised and jerky cruelty. So her humility only annoyed him. And he saw her now as middle-aged, as beginning to be old. Even while he detested his own thoughts, they wrote him. She was old. Winched old. He noted how the soft flesh was creasing into webby folds beneath her chin. Below her eyes, at the base for wrists. A patch of her throat had a minute roughness, like the crumbs from a rubber eraser. Old. She was younger in years in himself, yet it was sickening to have her yearning up to him with rolling great eyes. As if, he shuddered, his own aunt were making love to him. He fretted inwardly. I'm through with his ass, and I'm fooling around. I'm going to cut her out. She's a darn decent nice woman, and I don't want to hurt her. But it'll hurt her a lot less to cut her right out. Like a good clean surgical operation. He was on his feet. He was speaking urgently. By every rule of self-esteem, he had to prove to her and to himself. That was her fault. I suppose maybe I'm kind of out of sorts tonight, 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 cannyer 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 some time we'll see about the future. What do you mean, dear, about the future? Have I done something? I oughtn't do it. 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 them, 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 awfully 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 it's over. Poor Tannis, poor darling decent Tannis. But it is over. Absolute, unfree. Chapter 32 One. His wife was up when he came in. Didn't have a good time? She snipped. I did not have a rotten time. Anything else I got to explain? George, how can you speak like that? 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. Of 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 them. If you had your way, I'd be as much of a old stick in the mud as Howard Littlefield. You never want to have anybody with any get 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 am not going to have overwhelmed. She bent to his unprecedented tirade and in answer as 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 in 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 Tannis. 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 pulling her. Maybe there is her side to things. Maybe she hasn't had such a bloomin' hectic time herself. I don't care good for her to get waked up a little. And I'm going to keep free of her and Tannis and the fellows at the club and everybody. I'm going to run my own life. Two. 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-month study of the finances, ethnology, political systems, linguistic divisions, mineral resources, and agriculture of Germany, France, Great Britain, Italy, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, 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-sta, said Sidney Finkelstein. But the dissatisfied babbit grumbled. Four-flusher. Bunch of hot air. And what's the matter with immigrants? Gosh, they aren't all ignorant and I got a hunch we're all descended from immigrants ourselves. How you make me tired, said Mr. Finkelstein. Babbit 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. 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 Babbit to have such a person glower at him. He hastily praised the congressman's wit to Sidney Finkelstein, but for Dr. Dilling's benefit. Three. That afternoon three men shouldered into Babbit'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 McKevley the contractor, and most dismaying of all, the white-bearded Colonel Rutherford Snow, owner of the Advocate Times. In their well-meaning presence Babbit felt small and insignificant. Well, well, great pleasure. Have chairs. What can I do for you? He babbled. They neither sat nor offered observations on the weather. Babbit said Colonel Snow, we've come from the good citizens' league. We've decided we want you to join. Virgil Gunsch 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 and a campaign for the open shop, so it's time for you to put your name down. In his embarrassment Babbit 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 had not wished 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 for a little. He mumbled. McKevley snarled. That means you're not going to join, George. Something black and unfamiliar ferocious spoke from Babbit. Hey, look here, Charlie. I'm damned as if I'm going to be bullied into joining anything not even by you plutes. We're not bullying anybody, Dr. Dillon began, but Colonel Snow thrust him aside with, certainly we are. We don't mind a little bullying if it's necessary. Babbit, the GCL 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 don't. 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 interest in town. Like my friends at the Street Traction Company, and my papers have given you a lot of good booth. 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. Babbit 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 am just as much again the cranks and black skirts and labor unions and so on as you are. But fact is, I belong to so many organizations now that I can't do them justice. And I want to think all over before I decide about coming into the GCL. Girl, snow condescended. Oh, no. I'm not exaggerating. Why the doctor here heard you cussing out and faming one of the finest types of Republican congressmen just this noon. And you have entirely the wrong idea about thinking overjoining. We're not begging you to join the GCL. 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, formerable in the 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. Four. As Babbitt went out to his car that evening, he saw Virgil 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 Fink 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 don't 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 to I got to. But dear, if you don't join, people might criticize you. Let them criticize. But I mean nice people. Rats! On matter of fact, this whole league is a fad. It's like all those other organizations that start off with such a rush and let on they're going to change the whole works. Pretty soon, they peter out and everybody forgets all about them. But if that'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 GCL. I almost wish I'd joined them when Verge first came around. Got it over. Maybe I'd have come in today if the committee hadn't tried to bully rag me. But by God, as long as I'm a free born independent American sit. Ah, 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 Tannis Judig, to be strengthened by her sympathy. When the family were upstairs, he got as far as telephoning to her apartment house. But he was agitated about it when the janitor answered. He blurted, never mind, I'll call later, and hung up the receiver. Five. If Babbot had not been certain about Virgil Gunch's avoiding him, there could be little doubt about William Washington Ethorn next morning. When Babbot was driving down to the office, he overtook Ethorn's car. With the great bankers sitting in anemic solidarity behind the chauffeur, Babbot waved at him and cried, Morning! Ethorn looked at him deliberately, hesitated, and gave him a nod more contemptuous than a direct cut. Babbot's partner and father-in-law came into town. George, what's this here eye about some song and dance you gave Colonel Snow about not wanting to join the GCL? What the dick is you trying to do? Wreck the firm? You don't suppose those big guns will stand for your bucking them and springing all this liberal poppycock you've been getting off lately, do you? Oh, rats, Henry T., you've been reading bum fiction. There ain't any such a thing as these plots to keep folks from being liberal. This a free country. Man can do anything he wants to do. Of course, ain't any plots. Who said they was? Only if folks got an idea, you're scatterbrained 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 though he's full story-riars could think up in a month of Sundays. That afternoon, when the old reliable Conrad Lighty, the Merrimiser, Conrad Lighty appeared, and Babbot suggested his buying a parcel of land in the new residential section of Torchester. Lighty said hastily, too hastily, no, no, don't want to go into anything new just now. A week later, Babbot learned through Henry Thompson that the officials of the street traction company were planning another real estate coup, and that Sanders, Tory, and Wing, not to Babbot Thompson company, were to handle it for them. I figure that Jake Offit is kind of lurid about the way folks are talking about you. Of course, Jake is a rock, ribbed, or 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, Babbot agreed. All nonsense, the way the people misjudged him, but still he determined to join the Good Citizens League the next time he was asked, and in a 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 McGowan, 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 Havestad. What Miss Havestad'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 sweet, 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 two slim, two frail pencil-points. She took dictation swiftly, her typing was perfect. But Babbit 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 McGowan's return and thought of writing to her. Then he heard that Miss McGowan had, a week after leaving him, gone over to his dangerous competitors, Sanders, Tory, and Wing. He was not merely annoyed he was frightened. Why don't you 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, rat-sinking ship. Grey fear loomed always by him now. He watched Fritz Wellinger, 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 spying 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. Internally 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? He 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 invisibly certain that they had been whispering, plotting, whispering, through all his fear and defiance. He felt stubborn. Sometimes he decided that he had been a very devil of a fellow, as bold as Seneca Done. Sometimes he planned to call on Done and tell him what a revolutionist he was. Never got beyond the planning. But just as often, when he heard the soft whispers enveloping him, he wailed, Lord, what have I done? Just played with a bunch and called down Claire's drum about being such a high and mighty soldier. 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 incredible 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 little fields for the evening. He tried, but he could not express to her the nebulous facts of his rebellion and punishment. And, with Paul and Tannis 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 Tannis for whom he was longing. I thought I was so smart and independent, cutting Tannis 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 Tannis, she'd tell me I was all right. Then he broke, and one evening, late, he did run to Tannis. He had not dared to hope for it, but she was in and alone. Only she wasn't Tannis. She was a courteous, foul lifting, ice-armored woman who looked like Tannis. She said, Yes, George, what is it? An 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 Eunice, Dad? She says her dad says you raised cane by boosting old Seneca Dome. Hot dog, give him fit, stir him up. This old Berg is asleep. Eunice plumped down on Babbit's lap, kissed him, nestled her bobbed hair against his chin and crowed. I think you're a lot nicer than Howard. Why is it? Confidentially. That Howard is such an old grouch. The man is 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. Babbit 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 icebox. Babbit bloated, If your mother caught us at this, we'd certainly get our comeuppance. And Eunice became maternal, scrambled a terrifying number of eggs for them, kissed Babbit on the ear, and in the voice of a brooding abyss. Marbled, it beats a devil why feminists like me go on nursing these men. Thus stimulated, Babbit was reckless when he encountered Sheldon Smeeth, Educational Director of the YMCA and Choir Leader of the Chatham Road Church. With one of his damp hands, Smeeth imprisoned Babbit's thick paw. While he chatted, Brother Babbit, 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, you're good friends at the old church home. Babbit shook off the affectionate clasp. Sheldon liked to hold hands for a long time, Mr. Well, I guess you fellows can run the show without me. Sorry, Smeeth. Gotta beat it. Good 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 Genison Drew, Chamolty Frank, even William Washington Earthorn. The independence seeped out of him, and he walked the streets alone. Afraid of men's cynical eyes, and the incessant hiss of whispering. End of Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Of Babbit This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Mike Vendetti. MikeVendetti.com Babbit By Sinclair Lewis Chapter 33 1 He tried to explain to his wife as they prepared for bed how abjectimble was Sheldon Smeeth. But all her answer was, he has such a beautiful voice so spiritual I don't think you ought to speak to 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 tanness. He'd been a fool to lose her. He had to have somebody he could really talk to. 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. Damn 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 Xenath bully him into taking orders. And he was by and calling. Not going to let anybody bullying him into anything, or weedle 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. Oh, it's trouble, huh? I've got such a pain down here on my side. Well, 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 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 a doctor. No, no, it'll go away. But maybe you might give me an ice bag? He stalked through 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 who was up soothing her. Still pretty bad, honey? Yes, it just grips me and I can't get to sleep. Her voice was faint. He knew her dread of doctors, verdicts, and he did not inform her. But he creaked downstairs, telephoned to Dr. Earl Patton, and waited shivering, trying with fuzzy eyes to read a magazine, till he heard the doctor's car. The doctor was youngest and professionally breezy. He came in as though it were sunny noontime. Well, George, a little troubling. How is she now? He said, busily as with tremendous and rather irritating cheerfulness, he tossed his coat on a chair and warmed his hands at a radiator. He took charge of the house. Babbit felt ousted and unimportant as he followed the doctor up to the bedroom. And it was the doctor who chuckled. Oh, just a little stomach ache when Verona peeped through her door begging. What is it, dad? What is it? To Mrs. Babbit, the doctor said with amiable belligerence after his examination. Kind of a bad ol' pain, eh? I'll give you something to make you sleep, and I think you'll feel better in the morning. I'll come in right after breakfast. But to Babbit, laying in wait in the Laura Hall, the doctor sighed, I don't like the feeling there in her belly. There's some rigidity and some inflammation. She's never had her appendix out, has she? Well, no use worrying. I'll be here first thing in the morning and, meantime, she'll get some rest. I'll give her a hypo. Good night. Then was Babbit caught up in the black tempest. Instantly, all the indignations which had been dominating him and the spiritual dramas through which he had struggled became pallid and absurd before the ancient and overwhelming realities, the standard and traditional realities of sickness and menacing death, the long night, and the thousand steadfast implications of married life. He crept back to her as she drowsed away in the tropic langer of Morphea. You sat on the edge of her bed holding her hand, and for the first time in many weeks, her hand abode, trustfully in his. He draped himself grotesquely in his tallying bathrobe in a pink and white couch cover, and sat lumpishly in a wing chair. The bedroom was uncanny in its half light, which turned the curtains to lurking robbers, the dressing table to a turtled castle. It smelled of cosmetics, of linen, of sleep. He napped and woke, napped and woke a hundred times. He heard her move and sigh and slumber. He wondered if there wasn't some officious brisk thing he could do for her. And before he could quite form the thought he was asleep, wracked and aching. The night was infinite. When dawn came and the waiting seemed at an end, he fell asleep, and was vexed to have been caught off guard, to have been aroused by Verona's entrance and her attitude. Oh, what is it, dad? His wife was awake, her face sallow and lifeless in the morning light. But now he did not compare her with Tannis. She was not merely a woman to be contrasted with other women. But his own self, and though he might criticize her and nag her, it was only as he might criticize and nag himself. Interestedly, un- patriotizingly, without the expectation of changing, or any real desire to change, the eternal essence. With Verona he sounded fatherly again and firm. He consoled Tanka, who satisfactorily pointed the excitement of the hour by wailing. He ordered early breakfast and wanted to look at the newspaper, and felt somehow heroic and useful in not looking at it. But there was still crawling and totally unheroic hours of waiting before Dr. Patton returned. Don't see much change, said Patton. I'll be back about eleven, and if you don't mind, I think I'll bring some other world-famous pill-peddler for consultation, just to be on a safe-site. Now, George, there's nothing you can do. I'll have Verona keep the ice-bag filled. Might as well leave that on, I guess. And you? You better beat it to the office instead of standing around her looking as, if you were, the patient. The nerve of husbands. Lot more derotic than women. They always have to horn in and get all the credit for feeling bad when their wives are ailing. Now have another nice cup of coffee and get. Under this derision, Babbot became more matter of fact. He drove to the office, tried to dictate letters, tried to telephone, and, before the call was answered, forgot to whom he was telephoning. At a quarter after ten he returned home. As he left the downtown traffic and sped up the car, his face was as grimly creased as the Mask of Tragedy. His wife greeted him with surprise. Why, did you come back, dear? I think I'd feel a little better. I told Verona to skip off to her office. Was it wicked of me to go and get sick? He knew that she wanted petting, and she got it, joyously. They were curiously happy when he heard Dr. Patton's car in front. He looked out of the window. He was frightened. With Patton was an impatient man with turbulent black hair and a hussar mustache. Dr. A. I. Dilling, the surgeon. Babbit sputtered with anxiety, tried to conceal it, and hurried down to the door. Dr. Patton was profusely casual. Don't want to worry, old man, but I thought it might be a good stunt to have Dr. Dilling examine her. He gestured toward Dilling as Tortomaster. Dilling nodded in his courtest manner and strode upstairs. Babbit trapped the living room in agony. Except for his wife's confinements, there had never been a major operation in the family, and to him surgery was at once a miracle and an abomination of fear. But when Dilling and Patton came down again, he knew that everything was all right. And he wanted to laugh, for the two doctors were exactly like the bearded physicians in a musical comedy, both of them rubbing their hands and looking foolishly sagacious. Dr. Dilling spoke, I'm sorry, old man, but it's acute appendicitis. We ought to operate. Of course, you must decide, but there's no question as to what has to be done. Babbit did not get all the force of it, he mumbled. Well, as soon as we get ready in a couple of days, probably Ted ought to come down from the university just in case anything happened. Dr. Dilling growled, Nope, if you don't want peritanoid is to set in, we have got to operate right away. I must advise it strongly. If you say go ahead, I'll phone for this St. Mary's ambulance at once and we'll have her on the table in three quarters of an hour. Of course, I suppose you know what, but great God, man, I can't get her clothes ready and everything in two seconds, you know, and in her state so rot up and weak. Just throw her hairbrush and comb and toothbrush in a bag, that's all she'll need for a day or two, said Dr. Dilling, and went to the telephone. Babbit galloped desperately upstairs. He sent the frightened tinka out of the room, he said gaily to his wife, well, the doc thinks maybe we better have a little operation and get it over. Just take a few minutes, not half as serious as a confinement, and you'll be all right in a jiffy. She gripped his hand till the fingers ached. She said patiently like a coward child, I'm afraid to go into the dark all alone. Majority was wiped from her eyes, they were pleading and terrified. Will you stay with me? Darling, you don't have to go to the office now, do you? Could you just go down to the hospital with me? Could you come see me this evening, if everything's all right? You won't have to go out this evening, will you? He was on his knees by the bed. While she feebly ruffled his hair, he sobbed, he kissed the lawn of her sleeve and swore, oh honey, I'd love you more than anything in the world. I've kind of been worried by business and everything, but that's all over now and I'm back again. Are you really Georgie? I was thinking lying here, maybe it would be a good thing if I just went. I was wondering if anybody really needed me or wanted me. I was wondering what was the use of my living. I've been getting so stupid and ugly. Why, you old humbug? Fishing for compliments when I ought to be packing your bag. Me, sure. I'm young and handsome and a regular village cut up and... He could not go on. He sobbed again and in muttered incoherencies they found each other. As he packed, his brain was curiously clear and swift. He'd have no more wild evenings, he realized. He admitted that he would regret them. Little grimly he perceived that this had been his last, despiring fling, before the paralyzed contentment of middle age. Well, and he grinned impartially, it was one dog gone good party while it lasted. And how much was the operation going to cost? I ought to have fought that out with Dilling, but no damn it. I don't care how much it cost. Motor ambulance was at the door. Even in his grief the Babbot who admired all technical excellences was interested in the kindly skill with which the attendant slid Mrs. Babbot upon a stretcher and carried her downstairs. The ambulance was a huge, suave, varnished white thing. Mrs. Babbot moaned, it frightens me, it's just like a hearse. Just like being put in a hearse. I want you to stay with me. I'll be right up front with a driver, Babbot promised. I want you to stay inside with me, to the attendants. Can he be inside? Sure, ma'am, you bet. There's a fine little camp stool in there, the older attendant said with professional pride. He sat beside her in the traveling cabin with its cot, its stool, its active little electric radiator, and its quite unexplained calendar, displaying a girl eating cherries and the name of an enterprising grocer. But as he flung out his hand in hopeless cheerfulness, it touched the radiator and he squealed, Oh, Jesus! My George Babbot, I won't have you cursing and swearing and blaspheming. Oh, awful, sorry, but gosh, old fish-hooks, look how I burned my hand. Gee whiz it hurts, it hurts like mitchef. Why, that damn radiator is hot as it's, hot as, it's hotter than the hinges I ate. Look, you can see a mark. So as they drove up to St. Mary's Hospital with the nurses already laying out the instruments for an operation to save her life, it was she who consoled him and kissed the place to make it well. And though he tried to be gruff and mature, he yielded to her and was glad to be babied. The ambulance whirled under the hooded carriage entrance of the hospital, and instantly he was reduced to a zero in the nightmare succession of cork-floored halls, endless doors open and old women sitting up in a bed, an elevator, an anesthesizing room, a young intern contemptuous of husbands. He was permitted to kiss his wife. He saw a thin, dark nurse fit the cone over her mouth and nose. He stiffened at a sweet and treacherous odor. Then he was driven out and on a high stool in a laboratory. He sat dazed, longing to see her once again, to insist that he had always loved her, had never for a second loved anybody else or looked at anybody else. In the laboratory he was conscious only of a decayed object preserved in a bottle of yellowing alcohol. Made him very sick, but he could not take his eyes from it. He was more aware of it than of waiting. His mind floated in abeyance, coming back always to that horrible bottle. To escape it he opened the door to the right, hoping to find a sane and business-like office. He realized that he was looking into the operating room. In one glance he took in Dr. Dilling, strange and white gown and bandaged head, bending over the steel table with its screws and wheels, then nurses holding basins and cotton sponges, and the swan thing, just a lifeless chin, an amount of white in the midst of which was a square of shallow flesh with a gash a little bloody on the edges, protruding from the gash a cluster of forceps like clinging parasites. He shut the door with haste. It may be that his frightened repentance of the night and morning had not eaten in, but this dehumanizing interment of her, who had been so pathetically human, shook him utterly. And as he crouched again on the high stool in the laboratory he swore faith to his wife, to zenith, to business efficiency, to the boosters club, to every faith of the clan of good fellows. Then a nurse was soothing. All over perfect success she'll come out fine. She'll be out from under anesthetic soon and you can see her. He found her on a curious, tilted bed, her face an unwholesome yellow, but her purple lips moving slightly. Then only did he really believe that she was alive. She was muttering. He bent and heard her sighing, hard to get real maple syrup from her pancakes. He laughed inexhaustibly. He beamed on the nurse and proudly confided, Think of her, talking about maple syrup by golly I'm going to go and order a hundred gallons of it right from Vermont. Two. She was out of the hospital in seventeen days. He went to see her each afternoon and in their long talks they drifted back to intimacy. Once he hid in something of his relations to Tannis and the Bunch, and she was inflated by the view that a wicked woman had captivated her poor George. If once he had doubted his neighbors and the supreme charm of the good fellows, he was convinced now. You didn't, he noted. See, Seneca Dome coming around with any flowers or dropping into chat with the Mrs. But Mrs. Howard Littlefield brought to the hospital her priceless wine jelly flavored with real wine. Orville Jones spent hours in picking out the kind of novels Mrs. Babbitt liked. Nice love stories about New York millionaires and Wyoming cow punchers. Luetta Swanson did it a pink bed jacket. Sydney Finkelstein and his merry brown-eyed flapper of a wife selected the prettiest nightgown in all the stock of parturans dying. All his friends ceased whispering about him, suspecting him. At the athletic club they asked after her daily. Club members whose names he did not know stopped him to inquire. How's your good lady getting on? Babbitt felt that he was swinging from bleak uplands down into the rich warm air of a valley, pleasant with cottages. One noon Virgil Gunch suggested, you planning to go to the hospital about six? The wife and I thought we'd drop in. We did drop in. Gunch was so humorous that Mrs. Babbitt said he must stop making her laugh because honestly it was hurting the her incision. As they passed down the hall Gunch demanded amably, George O. Scout, you were sore-headed about something here a while back. I don't know why. And it's none of my business, but you seem to be feeling all hunky-dory again and why don't you come join us in the good citizen's legal man? We have some quirkin' times together, and we need your advice. Then did Babbitt almost cheerful with joy at being coaxed instead of bullied, at being permitted to stop fighting, at being able to desert without injuring his opinion of himself, cease utterly to be a domestic revolutionist? He patted Gunch's shoulder, and next day he became a member of the good citizen's league. Within two weeks no one in the league was more violent regarding the wickedness of Seneca Dome, the crimes of labor unions, the perils of immigration, and the delights of golf, morality, and bank accounts than was George F. Babbitt.