Part 5 - Babbitt audiobook by sinclair lewis - Chs 23 - 28

CHAPTER XXIII I HE was busy, from March to June. He kept himself from the bewilderment of thinking. His wife and the neighbors were generous. Every evening he played bridge or attended the movies, and the days were blank of face and silent. In June, Mrs. Babbitt and Tinka went East, to stay with relatives, and Babbitt was free to do--he was not quite sure what. All day long after their departure he thought of the emancipated house in which he could, if he desired, go mad and curse the gods without having to keep up a husbandly front. He considered, "I could have a reg'lar party to-night; stay out till two and not do any explaining afterwards. Cheers!" He telephoned to Vergil Gunch, to Eddie Swanson. Both of them were engaged for the evening, and suddenly he was bored by having to take so much trouble to be riotous. He was silent at dinner, unusually kindly to Ted and Verona, hesitating but not disapproving when Verona stated her opinion of Kenneth Escott's opinion of Dr. John Jennison Drew's opinion of the opinions of the evolutionists. Ted was working in a garage through the summer vacation, and he related his daily triumphs: how he had found a cracked ball- race, what he had said to the Old Grouch, what he had said to the foreman about the future of wireless telephony. Ted and Verona went to a dance after dinner. Even the maid was out. Rarely had Babbitt been alone in the house for an entire evening. He was restless. He vaguely wanted something more diverting than the newspaper comic strips to read. He ambled up to Verona's room, sat on her maidenly blue and white bed, humming and grunting in a solid-citizen manner as he examined her books: Conrad's "Rescue," a volume strangely named "Figures of Earth," poetry (quite irregular poetry, Babbitt thought) by Vachel Lindsay, and essays by H. L. Mencken--highly improper essays, making fun of the church and all the decencies. He liked none of the books. In them he felt a spirit of rebellion against niceness and solid-citizenship. These authors--and he supposed they were famous ones, too--did not seem to care about telling a good story which would enable a fellow to forget his troubles. He sighed. He noted a book, "The Three Black Pennies," by Joseph Hergesheimer. Ah, that was something like it! It would be an adventure story, maybe about counterfeiting--detectives sneaking up on the old house at night. He tucked the book under his arm, he clumped down-stairs and solemnly began to read, under the piano-lamp: "A twilight like blue dust sifted into the shallow fold of the thickly wooded hills. It was early October, but a crisping frost had already stamped the maple trees with gold, the Spanish oaks were hung with patches of wine red, the sumach was brilliant in the darkening underbrush. A pattern of wild geese, flying low and unconcerned above the hills, wavered against the serene ashen evening. Howat Penny, standing in the comparative clearing of a road, decided that the shifting regular flight would not come close enough for a shot.... He had no intention of hunting the geese. With the drooping of day his keenness had evaporated; an habitual indifference strengthened, permeating him...." There it was again: discontent with the good common ways. Babbitt laid down the book and listened to the stillness. The inner doors of the house were open. He heard from the kitchen the steady drip of the refrigerator, a rhythm demanding and disquieting. He roamed to the window. The summer evening was foggy and, seen through the wire screen, the street lamps were crosses of pale fire. The whole world was abnormal. While he brooded, Verona and Ted came in and went up to bed. Silence thickened in the sleeping house. He put on his hat, his respectable derby, lighted a cigar, and walked up and down before the house, a portly, worthy, unimaginative figure, humming "Silver Threads among the Gold." He casually considered, "Might call up Paul." Then he remembered. He saw Paul in a jailbird's uniform, but while he agonized he didn't believe the tale. It was part of the unreality of this fog- enchanted evening. If she were here Myra would be hinting, "Isn't it late, Georgie?" He tramped in forlorn and unwanted freedom. Fog hid the house now. The world was uncreated, a chaos without turmoil or desire. Through the mist came a man at so feverish a pace that he seemed to dance with fury as he entered the orb of glow from a street- lamp. At each step he brandished his stick and brought it down with a crash. His glasses on their broad pretentious ribbon banged against his stomach. Babbitt incredulously saw that it was Chum Frink. Frink stopped, focused his vision, and spoke with gravity: "There's another fool. George Babbitt. Lives for renting howshes--houses. Know who I am? I'm traitor to poetry. I'm drunk. I'm talking too much. I don't care. Know what I could 've been? I could 've been a Gene Field or a James Whitcomb Riley. Maybe a Stevenson. I could 've. Whimsies. 'Magination. Lissen to this. Just made it up: Glittering summery meadowy noise Of beetles and bums and respectable boys. Hear that? Whimzh--whimsy. I made that up. I don't know what it means! Beginning good verse. Chile's Garden Verses. And whadi write? Tripe! Cheer-up poems. All tripe! Could have written--Too late!" He darted on with an alarming plunge, seeming always to pitch forward yet never quite falling. Babbitt would have been no more astonished and no less had a ghost skipped out of the fog carrying his head. He accepted Frink with vast apathy; he grunted, "Poor ***!" and straightway forgot him. He plodded into the house, deliberately went to the refrigerator and rifled it. When Mrs. Babbitt was at home, this was one of the major household crimes. He stood before the covered laundry tubs, eating a chicken leg and half a saucer of raspberry jelly, and grumbling over a clammy cold boiled potato. He was thinking. It was coming to him that perhaps all life as he knew it and vigorously practised it was futile; that heaven as portrayed by the Reverend Dr. John Jennison Drew was neither probable nor very interesting; that he hadn't much pleasure out of making money; that it was of doubtful worth to rear children merely that they might rear children who would rear children. What was it all about? What did he want? He blundered into the living-room, lay on the davenport, hands behind his head. What did he want? Wealth? Social position? Travel? Servants? Yes, but only incidentally. "I give it up," he sighed. But he did know that he wanted the presence of Paul Riesling; and from that he stumbled into the admission that he wanted the fairy girl--in the flesh. If there had been a woman whom he loved, he would have fled to her, humbled his forehead on her knees. He thought of his stenographer, Miss McGoun. He thought of the prettiest of the manicure girls at the Hotel Thornleigh barber shop. As he fell asleep on the davenport he felt that he had found something in life, and that he had made a terrifying, thrilling break with everything that was decent and normal. II He had forgotten, next morning, that he was a conscious rebel, but he was irritable in the office and at the eleven o'clock drive of telephone calls and visitors he did something he had often desired and never dared: he left the office without excuses to those stave-drivers his employees, and went to the movies. He enjoyed the right to be alone. He came out with a vicious determination to do what he pleased. As he approached the Roughnecks' Table at the club, everybody laughed. "Well, here's the millionaire!" said Sidney Finkelstein. "Yes, I saw him in his Locomobile!" said Professor Pumphrey. "Gosh, it must be great to be a smart guy like Georgie!" moaned Vergil Gunch. "He's probably stolen all of Dorchester. I'd hate to leave a poor little defenseless piece of property lying around where he could get his hooks on it!" They had, Babbitt perceived, "something on him." Also, they "had their kidding clothes on." Ordinarily he would have been delighted at the honor implied in being chaffed, but he was suddenly touchy. He grunted, "Yuh, sure; maybe I'll take you guys on as office boys!" He was impatient as the jest elaborately rolled on to its denouement. "Of course he may have been meeting a girl," they said, and "No, I think he was waiting for his old roommate, Sir Jerusalem Doak." He exploded, "Oh, spring it, spring it, you boneheads! What's the great joke?" "Hurray! George is peeved!" snickered Sidney Finkelstein, while a grin went round the table. Gunch revealed the shocking truth: He had seen Babbitt coming out of a motion-picture theater--at noon! They kept it up. With a hundred variations, a hundred guffaws, they said that he had gone to the movies during business-hours. He didn't so much mind Gunch, but he was annoyed by Sidney Finkelstein, that brisk, lean, red-headed explainer of jokes. He was bothered, too, by the lump of ice in his glass of water. It was too large; it spun round and burned his nose when he tried to drink. He raged that Finkelstein was like that lump of ice. But he won through; he kept up his banter till they grew tired of the superlative jest and turned to the great problems of the day. He reflected, "What's the matter with me to-day? Seems like I've got an awful grouch. Only they talk so darn much. But I better steer careful and keep my mouth shut." As they lighted their cigars he mumbled, "Got to get back," and on a chorus of "If you WILL go spending your mornings with lady ushers at the movies!" he escaped. He heard them giggling. He was embarrassed. While he was most bombastically agreeing with the coat-man that the weather was warm, he was conscious that he was longing to run childishly with his troubles to the comfort of the fairy child. III He kept Miss McGoun after he had finished dictating. He searched for a topic which would warm her office impersonality into friendliness. "Where you going on your vacation?" he purred. "I think I'll go up-state to a farm do you want me to have the Siddons lease copied this afternoon?" "Oh, no hurry about it.... I suppose you have a great time when you get away from us cranks in the office." She rose and gathered her pencils. "Oh, nobody's cranky here I think I can get it copied after I do the letters." She was gone. Babbitt utterly repudiated the view that he had been trying to discover how approachable was Miss McGoun. "Course! knew there was nothing doing!" he said. IV Eddie Swanson, the motor-car agent who lived across the street from Babbitt, was giving a Sunday supper. His wife Louetta, young Louetta who loved jazz in music and in clothes and laughter, was at her wildest. She cried, "We'll have a real party!" as she received the guests. Babbitt had uneasily felt that to many men she might be alluring; now he admitted that to himself she was overwhelmingly alluring. Mrs. Babbitt had never quite approved of Louetta; Babbitt was glad that she was not here this evening. He insisted on helping Louetta in the kitchen: taking the chicken croquettes from the warming-oven, the lettuce sandwiches from the ice-box. He held her hand, once, and she depressingly didn't notice it. She caroled, "You're a good little mother's-helper, Georgie. Now trot in with the tray and leave it on the side-table." He wished that Eddie Swanson would give them cocktails; that Louetta would have one. He wanted--Oh, he wanted to be one of these Bohemians you read about. Studio parties. Wild lovely girls who were independent. Not necessarily bad. Certainly not! But not tame, like Floral Heights. How he'd ever stood it all these years-- Eddie did not give them cocktails. True, they supped with mirth, and with several repetitions by Orville Jones of "Any time Louetta wants to come sit on my lap I'll tell this sandwich to beat it!" but they were respectable, as befitted Sunday evening. Babbitt had discreetly preempted a place beside Louetta on the piano bench. While he talked about motors, while he listened with a fixed smile to her account of the film she had seen last Wednesday, while he hoped that she would hurry up and finish her description of the plot, the beauty of the leading man, and the luxury of the setting, he studied her. Slim waist girdled with raw silk, strong brows, ardent eyes, hair parted above a broad forehead--she meant youth to him and a charm which saddened. He thought of how valiant a companion she would be on a long motor tour, exploring mountains, picnicking in a pine grove high above a valley. Her frailness touched him; he was angry at Eddie Swanson for the incessant family bickering. All at once he identified Louetta with the fairy girl. He was startled by the conviction that they had always had a romantic attraction for each other. "I suppose you're leading a simply terrible life, now you're a widower," she said. "You bet! I'm a bad little fellow and proud of it. Some evening you slip Eddie some dope in his coffee and sneak across the road and I'll show you how to mix a cocktail," he roared. "Well, now, I might do it! You never can tell!" "Well, whenever you're ready, you just hang a towel out of the attic window and I'll jump for the gin!" Every one giggled at this naughtiness. In a pleased way Eddie Swanson stated that he would have a physician analyze his coffee daily. The others were diverted to a discussion of the more agreeable recent murders, but Babbitt drew Louetta back to personal things: "That's the prettiest dress I ever saw in my life." "Do you honestly like it?" "Like it? Why, say, I'm going to have Kenneth Escott put a piece in the paper saying that the swellest dressed woman in the U. S. is Mrs. E. Louetta Swanson." "Now, you stop teasing me!" But she beamed. "Let's dance a little. George, you've got to dance with me." Even as he protested, "Oh, you know what a rotten dancer I am!" he was lumbering to his feet. "I'll teach you. I can teach anybody." Her eyes were moist, her voice was jagged with excitement. He was convinced that he had won her. He clasped her, conscious of her smooth warmth, and solemnly he circled in a heavy version of the one-step. He bumped into only one or two people. "Gosh, I'm not doing so bad; hittin' 'em up like a regular stage dancer!" he gloated; and she answered busily, "Yes--yes--I told you I could teach anybody--DON'T TAKE SUCH LONG STEPS!" For a moment he was robbed of confidence; with fearful concentration he sought to keep time to the music. But he was enveloped again by her enchantment. "She's got to like me; I'll make her!" he vowed. He tried to kiss the lock beside her ear. She mechanically moved her head to avoid it, and mechanically she murmured, "Don't!" For a moment he hated her, but after the moment he was as urgent as ever. He danced with Mrs. Orville Jones, but he watched Louetta swooping down the length of the room with her husband. "Careful! You're getting foolish!" he cautioned himself, the while he hopped and bent his solid knees in dalliance with Mrs. Jones, and to that worthy lady rumbled, "Gee, it's hot!" Without reason, he thought of Paul in that shadowy place where men never dance. "I'm crazy to-night; better go home," he worried, but he left Mrs. Jones and dashed to Louetta's lovely side, demanding, "The next is mine." "Oh, I'm so hot; I'm not going to dance this one." "Then," boldly, "come out and sit on the porch and get all nice and cool." "Well--" In the tender darkness, with the clamor in the house behind them, he resolutely took her hand. She squeezed his once, then relaxed. "Louetta! I think you're the nicest thing I know!" "Well, I think you're very nice." "Do you? You got to like me! I'm so lonely!" "Oh, you'll be all right when your wife comes home." "No, I'm always lonely." She clasped her hands under her chin, so that he dared not touch her. He sighed: "When I feel punk and--" He was about to bring in the tragedy of Paul, but that was too sacred even for the diplomacy of love. "--when I get tired out at the office and everything, I like to look across the street and think of you. Do you know I dreamed of you, one time!" "Was it a nice dream?" "Lovely!" "Oh, well, they say dreams go by opposites! Now I must run in." She was on her feet. "Oh, don't go in yet! Please, Louetta!" "Yes, I must. Have to look out for my guests." "Let 'em look out for 'emselves!" "I couldn't do that." She carelessly tapped his shoulder and slipped away. But after two minutes of shamed and childish longing to sneak home he was snorting, "Certainly I wasn't trying to get chummy with her! Knew there was nothing doing, all the time!" and he ambled in to dance with Mrs. Orville Jones, and to avoid Louetta, virtuously and conspicuously. > CHAPTER XXIV I HIS visit to Paul was as unreal as his night of fog and questioning. Unseeing he went through prison corridors stinking of carbolic acid to a room lined with pale yellow settees pierced in rosettes, like the shoe-store benches he had known as a boy. The guard led in Paul. Above his uniform of linty gray, Paul's face was pale and without expression. He moved timorously in response to the guard's commands; he meekly pushed Babbitt's gifts of tobacco and magazines across the table to the guard for examination. He had nothing to say but "Oh, I'm getting used to it" and "I'm working in the tailor shop; the stuff hurts my fingers." Babbitt knew that in this place of death Paul was already dead. And as he pondered on the train home something in his own self seemed to have died: a loyal and vigorous faith in the goodness of the world, a fear of public disfavor, a pride in success. He was glad that his wife was away. He admitted it without justifying it. He did not care. II Her card read "Mrs. Daniel Judique." Babbitt knew of her as the widow of a wholesale paper-dealer. She must have been forty or forty-two but he thought her younger when he saw her in the office, that afternoon. She had come to inquire about renting an apartment, and he took her away from the unskilled girl accountant. He was nervously attracted by her smartness. She was a slender woman, in a black Swiss frock dotted with white, a cool-looking graceful frock. A broad black hat shaded her face. Her eyes were lustrous, her soft chin of an agreeable plumpness, and her cheeks an even rose. Babbitt wondered afterward if she was made up, but no man living knew less of such arts. She sat revolving her violet parasol. Her voice was appealing without being coy. "I wonder if you can help me?" "Be delighted." "I've looked everywhere and--I want a little flat, just a bedroom, or perhaps two, and sitting-room and kitchenette and bath, but I want one that really has some charm to it, not these dingy places or these new ones with terrible gaudy chandeliers. And I can't pay so dreadfully much. My name's Tanis Judique." "I think maybe I've got just the thing for you. Would you like to chase around and look at it now?" "Yes. I have a couple of hours." In the new Cavendish Apartments, Babbitt had a flat which he had been holding for Sidney Finkelstein, but at the thought of driving beside this agreeable woman he threw over his friend Finkelstein, and with a note of gallantry he proclaimed, "I'll let you see what I can do!" He dusted the seat of the car for her, and twice he risked death in showing off his driving. "You do know how to handle a car!" she said. He liked her voice. There was, he thought, music in it and a hint of culture, not a bouncing giggle like Louetta Swanson's. He boasted, "You know, there's a lot of these fellows that are so scared and drive so slow that they get in everybody's way. The safest driver is a fellow that knows how to handle his machine and yet isn't scared to speed up when it's necessary, don't you think so?" "Oh, yes!" "I bet you drive like a wiz." "Oh, no--I mean--not really. Of course, we had a car--I mean, before my husband passed on--and I used to make believe drive it, but I don't think any woman ever learns to drive like a man." "Well, now, there's some mighty good woman drivers." "Oh, of course, these women that try to imitate men, and play golf and everything, and ruin their complexions and spoil their hands!" "That's so. I never did like these mannish females." "I mean--of course, I admire them, dreadfully, and I feel so weak and useless beside them." "Oh, rats now! I bet you play the piano like a wiz." "Oh, no--I mean--not really." "Well, I'll bet you do!" He glanced at her smooth hands, her diamond and ruby rings. She caught the glance, snuggled her hands together with a kittenish curving of slim white fingers which delighted him, and yearned: "I do love to play--I mean--I like to drum on the piano, but I haven't had any real training. Mr. Judique used to say I would 've been a good pianist if I'd had any training, but then, I guess he was just flattering me." "I'll bet he wasn't! I'll bet you've got temperament." "Oh--Do you like music, Mr Babbitt?" "You bet I do! Only I don't know 's I care so much for all this classical stuff." "Oh, I do! I just love Chopin and all those." "Do you, honest? Well, of course, I go to lots of these highbrow concerts, but I do like a good jazz orchestra, right up on its toes, with the fellow that plays the bass fiddle spinning it around and beating it up with the bow." "Oh, I know. I do love good dance music. I love to dance, don't you, Mr. Babbitt?" "Sure, you bet. Not that I'm very darn good at it, though." "Oh, I'm sure you are. You ought to let me teach you. I can teach anybody to dance." "Would you give me a lesson some time?" "Indeed I would." "Better be careful, or I'll be taking you up on that proposition. I'll be coming up to your flat and making you give me that lesson." "Ye-es." She was not offended, but she was non- committal. He warned himself, "Have some sense now, you chump! Don't go making a fool of yourself again!" and with loftiness he discoursed: "I wish I could dance like some of these young fellows, but I'll tell you: I feel it's a man's place to take a full, you might say, a creative share in the world's work and mold conditions and have something to show for his life, don't you think so?" "Oh, I do!" "And so I have to sacrifice some of the things I might like to tackle, though I do, by golly, play about as good a game of golf as the next fellow!" "Oh, I'm sure you do.... Are you married?" "Uh--yes.... And, uh, of course official duties I'm the vice-president of the Boosters' Club, and I'm running one of the committees of the State Association of Real Estate Boards, and that means a lot of work and responsibility--and practically no gratitude for it." "Oh, I know! Public men never do get proper credit." They looked at each other with a high degree of mutual respect, and at the Cavendish Apartments he helped her out in a courtly manner, waved his hand at the house as though he were presenting it to her, and ponderously ordered the elevator boy to "hustle and get the keys." She stood close to him in the elevator, and he was stirred but cautious. It was a pretty flat, of white woodwork and soft blue walls. Mrs. Judique gushed with pleasure as she agreed to take it, and as they walked down the hall to the elevator she touched his sleeve, caroling, "Oh, I'm so glad I went to you! It's such a privilege to meet a man who really Understands. Oh! The flats SOME people have showed me!" He had a sharp instinctive belief that he could put his arm around her, but he rebuked himself and with excessive politeness he saw her to the car, drove her home. All the way back to his office he raged: "Glad I had some sense for once.... Curse it, I wish I'd tried. She's a darling! A corker! A reg'lar charmer! Lovely eyes and darling lips and that trim waist--never get sloppy, like some women.... No, no, no! She's a real cultured lady. One of the brightest little women I've met these many moons. Understands about Public Topics and--But, darn it, why didn't I try?...Tanis!" III He was harassed and puzzled by it, but he found that he was turning toward youth, as youth. The girl who especially disturbed him-- though he had never spoken to her--was the last manicure girl on the right in the Pompeian Barber Shop. She was small, swift, black-haired, smiling. She was nineteen, perhaps, or twenty. She wore thin salmon-colored blouses which exhibited her shoulders and her black- ribboned camisoles. He went to the Pompeian for his fortnightly hair-trim. As always, he felt disloyal at deserting his neighbor, the Reeves Building Barber Shop. Then, for the first time, he overthrew his sense of guilt. "Doggone it, I don't have to go here if I don't want to! I don't own the Reeves Building! These barbers got nothing on me! I'll doggone well get my hair cut where I doggone well want to! Don't want to hear anything more about it! I'm through standing by people--unless I want to. It doesn't get you anywhere. I'm through!" The Pompeian Barber Shop was in the basement of the Hotel Thornleigh, largest and most dynamically modern hotel in Zenith. Curving marble steps with a rail of polished brass led from the hotel-lobby down to the barber shop. The interior was of black and white and crimson tiles, with a sensational ceiling of burnished gold, and a fountain in which a massive nymph forever emptied a scarlet cornucopia. Forty barbers and nine manicure girls worked desperately, and at the door six colored porters lurked to greet the customers, to care reverently for their hats and collars, to lead them to a place of waiting where, on a carpet like a tropic isle in the stretch of white stone floor, were a dozen leather chairs and a table heaped with magazines. Babbitt's porter was an obsequious gray- haired *** who did him an honor highly esteemed in the land of Zenith--greeted him by name. Yet Babbitt was unhappy. His bright particular manicure girl was engaged. She was doing the nails of an overdressed man and giggling with him. Babbitt hated him. He thought of waiting, but to stop the powerful system of the Pompeian was inconceivable, and he was instantly wafted into a chair. About him was luxury, rich and delicate. One votary was having a violet-ray facial treatment, the next an oil shampoo. Boys wheeled about miraculous electrical massage-machines. The barbers snatched steaming towels from a machine like a howitzer of polished nickel and disdainfully flung them away after a second's use. On the vast marble shelf facing the chairs were hundreds of tonics, amber and ruby and emerald. It was flattering to Babbitt to have two personal slaves at once--the barber and the bootblack. He would have been completely happy if he could also have had the manicure girl. The barber snipped at his hair and asked his opinion of the Havre de Grace races, the baseball season, and Mayor Prout. The young *** bootblack hummed "The Camp Meeting Blues" and polished in rhythm to his tune, drawing the shiny shoe-rag so taut at each stroke that it snapped like a banjo string. The barber was an excellent salesman. He made Babbitt feel rich and important by his manner of inquiring, "What is your favorite tonic, sir? Have you time to-day, sir, for a facial massage? Your scalp is a little tight; shall I give you a scalp massage?" Babbitt's best thrill was in the shampoo. The barber made his hair creamy with thick soap, then (as Babbitt bent over the bowl, muffled in towels) drenched it with hot water which prickled along his scalp, and at last ran the water ice-cold. At the shock, the sudden burning cold on his skull, Babbitt's heart thumped, his chest heaved, and his spine was an electric wire. It was a sensation which broke the monotony of life. He looked grandly about the shop as he sat up. The barber obsequiously rubbed his wet hair and bound it in a towel as in a turban, so that Babbitt resembled a plump pink calif on an ingenious and adjustable throne. The barber begged (in the manner of one who was a good fellow yet was overwhelmed by the splendors of the calif), "How about a little Eldorado Oil Rub, sir? Very beneficial to the scalp, sir. Didn't I give you one the last time?" He hadn't, but Babbitt agreed, "Well, all right." With quaking eagerness he saw that his manicure girl was free. "I don't know, I guess I'll have a manicure after all," he droned, and excitedly watched her coming, dark-haired, smiling, tender, little. The manicuring would have to be finished at her table, and he would be able to talk to her without the barber listening. He waited contentedly, not trying to peep at her, while she filed his nails and the barber shaved him and smeared on his burning cheeks all the interesting mixtures which the pleasant minds of barbers have devised through the revolving ages. When the barber was done and he sat opposite the girl at her table, he admired the marble slab of it, admired the sunken set bowl with its tiny silver taps, and admired himself for being able to frequent so costly a place. When she withdrew his wet hand from the bowl, it was so sensitive from the warm soapy water that he was abnormally aware of the clasp of her firm little paw. He delighted in the pinkness and glossiness of her nails. Her hands seemed to him more adorable than Mrs. Judique's thin fingers, and more elegant. He had a certain ecstasy in the pain when she gnawed at the cuticle of his nails with a sharp knife. He struggled not to look at the outline of her young *** and her shoulders, the more apparent under a film of pink chiffon. He was conscious of her as an exquisite thing, and when he tried to impress his personality on her he spoke as awkwardly as a country boy at his first party: "Well, kinda hot to be working to-day." "Oh, yes, it is hot. You cut your own nails, last time, didn't you!" "Ye-es, guess I must 've." "You always ought to go to a manicure." "Yes, maybe that's so. I--" "There's nothing looks so nice as nails that are looked after good. I always think that's the best way to spot a real gent. There was an auto salesman in here yesterday that claimed you could always tell a fellow's class by the car he drove, but I says to him, 'Don't be silly,' I says; 'the wisenheimers grab a look at a fellow's nails when they want to tell if he's a tin-horn or a real gent!"' "Yes, maybe there's something to that. Course, that is--with a pretty kiddy like you, a man can't help coming to get his mitts done." "Yeh, I may be a kid, but I'm a wise bird, and I know nice folks when I see um--I can read character at a glance--and I'd never talk so frank with a fellow if I couldn't see he was a nice fellow." She smiled. Her eyes seemed to him as gentle as April pools. With great seriousness he informed himself that "there were some roughnecks who would think that just because a girl was a manicure girl and maybe not awful well educated, she was no good, but as for him, he was a democrat, and understood people," and he stood by the assertion that this was a fine girl, a good girl--but not too uncomfortably good. He inquired in a voice quick with sympathy: "I suppose you have a lot of fellows who try to get fresh with you." "Say, gee, do I! Say, listen, there's some of these cigar- store sports that think because a girl's working in a barber shop, they can get away with anything. The things they saaaaaay! But, believe me, I know how to hop those birds! I just give um the north and south and ask um, 'Say, who do you think you're talking to?' and they fade away like love's young nightmare and oh, don't you want a box of nail-paste? It will keep the nails as shiny as when first manicured, harmless to apply and lasts for days." "Sure, I'll try some. Say--Say, it's funny; I've been coming here ever since the shop opened and--" With arch surprise. "--I don't believe I know your name!" "Don't you? My, that's funny! I don't know yours!" "Now you quit kidding me! What's the nice little name?" "Oh, it ain't so darn nice. I guess it's kind of ***. But my folks ain't ***. My papa's papa was a nobleman in Poland, and there was a gentleman in here one day, he was kind of a count or something--" "Kind of a no-account, I guess you mean!" "Who's telling this, smarty? And he said he knew my papa's papa's folks in Poland and they had a dandy big house. Right on a lake!" Doubtfully, "Maybe you don't believe it?" "Sure. No. Really. Sure I do. Why not? Don't think I'm kidding you, honey, but every time I've noticed you I've said to myself, 'That kid has Blue Blood in her veins!'" "Did you, honest?" "Honest I did. Well, well, come on--now we're friends-- what's the darling little name?" "Ida Putiak. It ain't so much-a-much of a name. I always say to Ma, I say, 'Ma, why didn't you name me Doloress or something with some class to it?'" "Well, now, I think it's a scrumptious name. Ida!" "I bet I know your name!" "Well, now, not necessarily. Of course--Oh, it isn't so specially well known." "Aren't you Mr. Sondheim that travels for the Krackajack Kitchen Kutlery Ko.?" "I am not! I'm Mr. Babbitt, the real-estate broker!" "Oh, excuse me! Oh, of course. You mean here in Zenith." "Yep." With the briskness of one whose feelings have been hurt. "Oh, sure. I've read your ads. They're swell." "Um, well--You might have read about my speeches." "Course I have! I don't get much time to read but--I guess you think I'm an awfully silly little nit!" "I think you're a little darling!" "Well--There's one nice thing about this job. It gives a girl a chance to meet some awfully nice gentlemen and improve her mind with conversation, and you get so you can read a guy's character at the first glance." "Look here, Ida; please don't think I'm getting fresh--" He was hotly reflecting that it would be humiliating to be rejected by this child, and dangerous to be accepted. If he took her to dinner, if he were seen by censorious friends--But he went on ardently: "Don't think I'm getting fresh if I suggest it would be nice for us to go out and have a little dinner together some evening." "I don't know as I ought to but--My gentleman-friend's always wanting to take me out. But maybe I could to-night." IV There was no reason, he assured himself, why he shouldn't have a quiet dinner with a poor girl who would benefit by association with an educated and mature person like himself. But, lest some one see them and not understand, he would take her to Biddlemeier's Inn, on the outskirts of the city. They would have a pleasant drive, this hot lonely evening, and he might hold her hand- -no, he wouldn't even do that. Ida was complaisant; her bare shoulders showed it only too clearly; but he'd be hanged if he'd make love to her merely because she expected it. Then his car broke down; something had happened to the ignition. And he HAD to have the car this evening! Furiously he tested the spark-plugs, stared at the commutator. His angriest glower did not seem to stir the sulky car, and in disgrace it was hauled off to a garage. With a renewed thrill he thought of a taxicab. There was something at once wealthy and interestingly wicked about a taxicab. But when he met her, on a corner two blocks from the Hotel Thornleigh, she said, "A taxi? Why, I thought you owned a car!" "I do. Of course I do! But it's out of commission to-night." "Oh," she remarked, as one who had heard that tale before. All the way out to Biddlemeier's Inn he tried to talk as an old friend, but he could not pierce the wall of her words. With interminable indignation she narrated her retorts to "that fresh head-barber" and the drastic things she would do to him if he persisted in saying that she was "better at gassing than at hoof-paring." At Biddlemeier's Inn they were unable to get anything to drink. The head-waiter refused to understand who George F. Babbitt was. They sat steaming before a vast mixed grill, and made conversation about baseball. When he tried to hold Ida's hand she said with bright friendliness, "Careful! That fresh waiter is rubbering." But they came out into a treacherous summer night, the air lazy and a little moon above transfigured maples. "Let's drive some other place, where we can get a drink and dance!" he demanded. "Sure, some other night. But I promised Ma I'd be home early to- night." "Rats! It's too nice to go home." "I'd just love to, but Ma would give me fits." He was trembling. She was everything that was young and exquisite. He put his arm about her. She snuggled against his shoulder, unafraid, and he was triumphant. Then she ran down the steps of the Inn, singing, "Come on, Georgie, we'll have a nice drive and get cool." It was a night of lovers. All along the highway into Zenith, under the low and gentle moon, motors were parked and dim figures were clasped in revery. He held out hungry hands to Ida, and when she patted them he was grateful. There was no sense of struggle and transition; he kissed her and simply she responded to his kiss, they two behind the stolid back of the chauffeur. Her hat fell off, and she broke from his embrace to reach for it. "Oh, let it be!" he implored. "Huh? My hat? Not a chance!" He waited till she had pinned it on, then his arm sank about her. She drew away from it, and said with maternal soothing, "Now, don't be a silly boy! Mustn't make Ittle Mama scold! Just sit back, dearie, and see what a swell night it is. If you're a good boy, maybe I'll kiss you when we say nighty-night. Now give me a cigarette." He was solicitous about lighting her cigarette and inquiring as to her comfort. Then he sat as far from her as possible. He was cold with failure. No one could have told Babbitt that he was a fool with more vigor, precision, and intelligence than he himself displayed. He reflected that from the standpoint of the Rev. Dr. John Jennison Drew he was a wicked man, and from the standpoint of Miss Ida Putiak, an old bore who had to be endured as the penalty attached to eating a large dinner. "Dearie, you aren't going to go and get peevish, are you?" She spoke pertly. He wanted to spank her. He brooded, "I don't have to take anything off this gutter-pup! Darn immigrant! Well, let's get it over as quick as we can, and sneak home and kick ourselves for the rest of the night." He snorted, "Huh? Me peevish? Why, you baby, why should I be peevish? Now, listen, Ida; listen to Uncle George. I want to put you wise about this scrapping with your head-barber all the time. I've had a lot of experience with employees, and let me tell you it doesn't pay to antagonize--" At the drab wooden house in which she lived he said good-night briefly and amiably, but as the taxicab drove off he was praying "Oh, my God!" > CHAPTER XXV I HE awoke to stretch cheerfully as he listened to the sparrows, then to remember that everything was wrong; that he was determined to go astray, and not in the least enjoying the process. Why, he wondered, should he be in rebellion? What was it all about? "Why not be sensible; stop all this idiotic running around, and enjoy himself with his family, his business, the fellows at the club?" What was he getting out of rebellion? Misery and shame--the shame of being treated as an offensive small boy by a ragamuffin like Ida Putiak! And yet--Always he came back to "And yet." Whatever the misery, he could not regain contentment with a world which, once doubted, became absurd. Only, he assured himself, he was "through with this chasing after girls." By noontime he was not so sure even of that. If in Miss McGoun, Louetta Swanson, and Ida he had failed to find the lady kind and lovely, it did not prove that she did not exist. He was hunted by the ancient thought that somewhere must exist the not impossible she who would understand him, value him, and make him happy. II Mrs. Babbitt returned in August. On her previous absences he had missed her reassuring buzz and of her arrival he had made a fete. Now, though he dared not hurt her by letting a hint of it appear in his letters, he was sorry that she was coming before he had found himself, and he was embarrassed by the need of meeting her and looking joyful. He loitered down to the station; he studied the summer-resort posters, lest he have to speak to acquaintances and expose his uneasiness. But he was well trained. When the train clanked in he was out on the cement platform, peering into the chair- cars, and as he saw her in the line of passengers moving toward the vestibule he waved his hat. At the door he embraced her, and announced, "Well, well, well, well, by golly, you look fine, you look fine." Then he was aware of Tinka. Here was something, this child with her absurd little nose and lively eyes, that loved him, believed him great, and as he clasped her, lifted and held her till she squealed, he was for the moment come back to his old steady self. Tinka sat beside him in the car, with one hand on the steering-wheel, pretending to help him drive, and he shouted back to his wife, "I'll bet the kid will be the best chuffer in the family! She holds the wheel like an old professional!" All the while he was dreading the moment when he would be alone with his wife and she would patiently expect him to be ardent. III There was about the house an unofficial theory that he was to take his vacation alone, to spend a week or ten days in Catawba, but he was nagged by the memory that a year ago he had been with Paul in Maine. He saw himself returning; finding peace there, and the presence of Paul, in a life primitive and heroic. Like a shock came the thought that he actually could go. Only, he couldn't, really; he couldn't leave his business, and "Myra would think it sort of funny, his going way off there alone. Course he'd decided to do whatever he darned pleased, from now on, but still--to go way off to Maine!" He went, after lengthy meditations. With his wife, since it was inconceivable to explain that he was going to seek Paul's spirit in the wilderness, he frugally employed the lie prepared over a year ago and scarcely used at all. He said that he had to see a man in New York on business. He could not have explained even to himself why he drew from the bank several hundred dollars more than he needed, nor why he kissed Tinka so tenderly, and cried, "God bless you, baby!" From the train he waved to her till she was but a scarlet spot beside the brown bulkier presence of Mrs. Babbitt, at the end of a steel and cement aisle ending in vast barred gates. With melancholy he looked back at the last suburb of Zenith. All the way north he pictured the Maine guides: simple and strong and daring, jolly as they played stud-poker in their unceiled shack, wise in woodcraft as they tramped the forest and shot the rapids. He particularly remembered Joe Paradise, half Yankee, half Indian. If he could but take up a backwoods claim with a man like Joe, work hard with his hands, be free and noisy in a flannel shirt, and never come back to this dull decency! Or, like a trapper in a Northern Canada movie, plunge through the forest, make camp in the Rockies, a grim and wordless caveman! Why not? He COULD do it! There'd be enough money at home for the family to live on till Verona was married and Ted self-supporting. Old Henry T. would look out for them. Honestly! Why NOT? Really LIVE-- He longed for it, admitted that he longed for it, then almost believed that he was going lo do it. Whenever common sense snorted, "Nonsense! Folks don't run away from decent families and partners; just simply don't do it, that's all!" then Babbitt answered pleadingly, "Well, it wouldn't take any more nerve than for Paul to go to jail and- -Lord, how I'd' like to do it! Moccasins-six-gun-frontier town-gamblers-- sleep under the stars--be a regular man, with he-men like Joe Paradise--gosh!" So he came to Maine, again stood on the wharf before the camp-hotel, again spat heroically into the delicate and shivering water, while the pines rustled, the mountains glowed, and a trout leaped and fell in a sliding circle. He hurried to the guides' shack as to his real home, his real friends, long missed. They would be glad to see him. They would stand up and shout? "Why, here's Mr. Babbitt! He ain't one of these ordinary sports! He's a real guy!" In their boarded and rather littered cabin the guides sat about the greasy table playing stud-poker with greasy cards: half a dozen wrinkled men in old trousers and easy old felt hats. They glanced up and nodded. Joe Paradise, the swart aging man with the big mustache, grunted, "How do. Back again?" Silence, except for the clatter of chips. Babbitt stood beside them, very lonely. He hinted, after a period of highly concentrated playing, "Guess I might take a hand, Joe." "Sure. Sit in. How many chips you want? Let's see; you were here with your wife, last year, wa'n't you?" said Joe Paradise. That was all of Babbitt's welcome to the old home. He played for half an hour before he spoke again. His head was reeking with the smoke of pipes and cheap cigars, and he was weary of pairs and four-flushes, resentful of the way in which they ignored him. He flung at Joe: "Working now?" "Nope." "Like to guide me for a few days?" "Well, jus' soon. I ain't engaged till next week." Only thus did Joe recognize the friendship Babbitt was offering him. Babbitt paid up his losses and left the shack rather childishly. Joe raised his head from the coils of smoke like a seal rising from surf, grunted, "I'll come 'round t'morrow," and dived down to his three aces. Neither in his voiceless cabin, fragrant with planks of new-cut pine, nor along the lake, nor in the sunset clouds which presently eddied behind the lavender-misted mountains, could Babbitt find the spirit of Paul as a reassuring presence. He was so lonely that after supper he stopped to talk with an ancient old lady, a gasping and steadily discoursing old lady, by the stove in the hotel-office. He told her of Ted's presumable future triumphs in the State University and of Tinka's remarkable vocabulary till he was homesick for the home he had left forever. Through the darkness, through that Northern pine-walled silence, he blundered down to the lake-front and found a canoe. There were no paddles in it but with a board, sitting awkwardly amidships and poking at the water rather than paddling, he made his way far out on the lake. The lights of the hotel and the cottages became yellow dots, a cluster of glow-worms at the base of Sachem Mountain. Larger and ever more imperturbable was the mountain in the star-filtered darkness, and the lake a limitless pavement of black marble. He was dwarfed and dumb and a little awed, but that insignificance freed him from the pomposities of being Mr. George F. Babbitt of Zenith; saddened and freed his heart. Now he was conscious of the presence of Paul, fancied him (rescued from prison, from Zilla and the brisk exactitudes of the tar-roofing business) playing his violin at the end of the canoe. He vowed, "I will go on! I'll never go back! Now that Paul's out of it, I don't want to see any of those damn people again! I was a fool to get sore because Joe Paradise didn't jump up and hug me. He's one of these woodsmen; too wise to go yelping and talking your arm off like a cityman. But get him back in the mountains, out on the trail--! That's real living!" IV Joe reported at Babbitt's cabin at nine the next morning. Babbitt greeted him as a fellow caveman: "Well, Joe, how d' you feel about hitting the trail, and getting away from these darn soft summerites and these women and all?" "All right, Mr. Babbitt." "What do you say we go over to Box Car Pond--they tell me the shack there isn't being used--and camp out?" "Well, all right, Mr. Babbitt, but it's nearer to Skowtuit Pond, and you can get just about as good fishing there." "No, I want to get into the real wilds." "Well, all right." "We'll put the old packs on our backs and get into the woods and really hike." "I think maybe it would be easier to go by water, through Lake Chogue. We can go all the way by motor boat--flat- bottom boat with an Evinrude." "No, sir! Bust up the quiet with a chugging motor? Not on your life! You just throw a pair of socks in the old pack, and tell 'em what you want for eats. I'll be ready soon 's you are." "Most of the sports go by boat, Mr. Babbitt. It's a long walk. "Look here, Joe: are you objecting to walking?" "Oh, no, I guess I can do it. But I haven't tramped that far for sixteen years. Most of the sports go by boat. But I can do it if you say so--I guess." Joe walked away in sadness. Babbitt had recovered from his touchy wrath before Joe returned. He pictured him as warming up and telling the most entertaining stories. But Joe had not yet warmed up when they took the trail. He persistently kept behind Babbitt, and however much his shoulders ached from the pack, however sorely he panted, Babbitt could hear his guide panting equally. But the trail was satisfying: a path brown with pine-needles and rough with roots, among the balsams, the ferns, the sudden groves of white birch. He became credulous again, and rejoiced in sweating. When he stopped to rest he chuckled, "Guess we're hitting it up pretty good for a couple o' old birds, eh?" "Uh-huh," admitted Joe. "This is a mighty pretty place. Look, you can see the lake down through the trees. I tell you, Joe, you don't appreciate how lucky you are to live in woods like this, instead of a city with trolleys grinding and typewriters clacking and people bothering the life out of you all the time! I wish I knew the woods like you do. Say, what's the name of that little red flower?" Rubbing his back, Joe regarded the flower resentfully "Well, some folks call it one thing and some calls it another I always just call it Pink Flower." Babbitt blessedly ceased thinking as tramping turned into blind plodding. He was submerged in weariness. His plump legs seemed to go on by themselves, without guidance, and he mechanically wiped away the sweat which stung his eyes. He was too tired to be consciously glad as, after a sun-scourged mile of corduroy tote- road through a swamp where flies hovered over a hot waste of brush, they reached the cool shore of Box Car Pond. When he lifted the pack from his back he staggered from the change in balance, and for a moment could not stand erect. He lay beneath an ample-bosomed maple tree near the guest-shack, and joyously felt sleep running through his veins. He awoke toward dusk, to find Joe efficiently cooking bacon and eggs and flapjacks for supper, and his admiration of the woodsman returned. He sat on a stump and felt virile. "Joe, what would you do if you had a lot of money? Would you stick to guiding, or would you take a claim 'way back in the woods and be independent of people?" For the first time Joe brightened. He chewed his cud a second, and bubbled, "I've often thought of that! If I had the money, I'd go down to Tinker's Falls and open a swell shoe store." After supper Joe proposed a game of stud- poker but Babbitt refused with brevity, and Joe contentedly went to bed at eight. Babbitt sat on the stump, facing the dark pond, slapping mosquitos. Save the snoring guide, there was no other human being within ten miles. He was lonelier than he had ever been in his life. Then he was in Zenith. He was worrying as to whether Miss McGoun wasn't paying too much for carbon paper. He was at once resenting and missing the persistent teasing at the Roughnecks' Table. He was wondering what Zilla Riesling was doing now. He was wondering whether, after the summer's maturity of being a garageman, Ted would "get busy" in the university. He was thinking of his wife. "If she would only--if she wouldn't be so darn satisfied with just settling down--No! I won't! I won't go back! I'll be fifty in three years. Sixty in thirteen years. I'm going to have some fun before it's too late. I don't care! I will!" He thought of Ida Putiak, of Louetta Swanson, of that nice widow--what was her name?--Tanis Judique?--the one for whom he'd found the flat. He was enmeshed in imaginary conversations. Then: "Gee, I can't seem to get away from thinking about folks!" Thus it came to him merely to run away was folly, because he could never run away from himself. That moment he started for Zenith. In his journey there was no appearance of flight, but he was fleeing, and four days afterward he was on the Zenith train. He knew that he was slinking back not because it was what he longed to do but because it was all he could do. He scanned again his discovery that he could never run away from Zenith and family and office, because in his own brain he bore the office and the family and every street and disquiet and illusion of Zenith. "But I'm going to--oh, I'm going to start something!" he vowed, and he tried to make it valiant. > CHAPTER XXVI I As he walked through the train, looking for familiar faces, he saw only one person whom he knew, and that was Seneca Doane, the lawyer who, after the blessings of being in Babbitt's own class at college and of becoming a corporation-counsel, had turned crank, had headed farmer-labor tickets and fraternized with admitted socialists. Though he was in rebellion, naturally Babbitt did not care to be seen talking with such a fanatic, but in all the Pullmans he could find no other acquaintance, and reluctantly he halted. Seneca Doane was a slight, thin-haired man, rather like Chum Frink except that he hadn't Frink's grin. He was reading a book called "The Way of All Flesh." It looked religious to Babbitt, and he wondered if Doane could possibly have been converted and turned decent and patriotic. "Why, hello, Doane," he said. Doane looked up. His voice was curiously kind. "Oh! How do, Babbitt." "Been away, eh?" "Yes, I've been in Washington." "Washington, eh? How's the old Government making out?" "It's--Won't you sit down?" "Thanks. Don't care if I do. Well, well! Been quite a while since I've had a good chance to talk to you, Doane. I was, uh--Sorry you didn't turn up at the last class-dinner." "Oh-thanks." "How's the unions coming? Going to run for mayor again?" Doane seemed restless. He was fingering the pages of his book. He said "I might" as though it didn't mean anything in particular, and he smiled. Babbitt liked that smile, and hunted for conversation: "Saw a ***-up cabaret in New York: the 'Good-Morning Cutie' bunch at the Hotel Minton." "Yes, they're pretty girls. I danced there one evening." "Oh. Like dancing?" "Naturally. I like dancing and pretty women and good food better than anything else in the world. Most men do." "But gosh, Doane, I thought you fellows wanted to take all the good eats and everything away from us." "No. Not at all. What I'd like to see is the meetings of the Garment Workers held at the Ritz, with a dance afterward. Isn't that reasonable?" "Yuh, might be good idea, all right. Well--Shame I haven't seen more of you, recent years. Oh, say, hope you haven't held it against me, my bucking you as mayor, going on the stump for Prout. You see, I'm an organization Republican, and I kind of felt--" "There's no reason why you shouldn't fight me. I have no doubt you're good for the Organization. I remember--in college you were an unusually liberal, sensitive chap. I can still recall your saying to me that you were going to be a lawyer, and take the cases of the poor for nothing, and fight the rich. And I remember I said I was going to be one of the rich myself, and buy paintings and live at Newport. I'm sure you inspired us all." "Well.... Well.... I've always aimed to be liberal." Babbitt was enormously shy and proud and self-conscious; he tried to look like the boy he had been a quarter-century ago, and he shone upon his old friend Seneca Doane as he rumbled, "Trouble with a lot of these fellows, even the live wires and some of 'em that think they're forward-looking, is they aren't broad-minded and liberal. Now, I always believe in giving the other fellow a chance, and listening to his ideas." "That's fine." "Tell you how I figure it: A little opposition is good for all of us, so a fellow, especially if he's a business man and engaged in doing the work of the world, ought to be liberal." "Yes--" "I always say a fellow ought to have Vision and Ideals. I guess some of the fellows in my business think I'm pretty visionary, but I just let 'em think what they want to and go right on--same as you do.... By golly, this is nice to have a chance to sit and visit and kind of, you might say, brush up on our ideals." "But of course we visionaries do rather get beaten. Doesn't it bother you?" "Not a bit! Nobody can dictate to me what I think!" "You're the man I want to help me. I want you to talk to some of the business men and try to make them a little more liberal in their attitude toward poor Beecher Ingram." "Ingram? But, why, he's this nut preacher that got kicked out of the Congregationalist Church, isn't he, and preaches free love and sedition?" This, Doane explained, was indeed the general conception of Beecher Ingram, but he himself saw Beecher Ingram as a priest of the brotherhood of man, of which Babbitt was notoriously an upholder. So would Babbitt keep his acquaintances from hounding Ingram and his forlorn little church? "You bet! I'll call down any of the boys I hear getting funny about Ingram," Babbitt said affectionately to his dear friend Doane. Doane warmed up and became reminiscent. He spoke of student days in Germany, of lobbying for single tax in Washington, of international labor conferences. He mentioned his friends, Lord Wycombe, Colonel Wedgwood, Professor Piccoli. Babbitt had always supposed that Doane associated only with the I. W. W., but now he nodded gravely, as one who knew Lord Wycombes by the score, and he got in two references to Sir Gerald Doak. He felt daring and idealistic and cosmopolitan. Suddenly, in his new spiritual grandeur, he was sorry for Zilla Riesling, and understood her as these ordinary fellows at the Boosters' Club never could. II Five hours after he had arrived in Zenith and told his wife how hot it was in New York, he went to call on Zilla. He was buzzing with ideas and forgiveness. He'd get Paul released; he'd do things, vague but highly benevolent things, for Zilla; he'd be as generous as his friend Seneca Doane. He had not seen Zilla since Paul had shot her, and he still pictured her as buxom, high-colored, lively, and a little blowsy. As he drove up to her boarding-house, in a depressing back street below the wholesale district, he stopped in discomfort. At an upper window, leaning on her elbow, was a woman with the features of Zilla, but she was bloodless and aged, like a yellowed *** of old paper crumpled into wrinkles. Where Zilla had bounced and jiggled, this woman was dreadfully still. He waited half an hour before she came into the boarding-house parlor. Fifty times he opened the book of photographs of the Chicago World's Fair of 1893, fifty times he looked at the picture of the Court of Honor. He was startled to find Zilla in the room. She wore a black streaky gown which she had tried to brighten with a girdle of crimson ribbon. The ribbon had been torn and patiently mended. He noted this carefully, because he did not wish to look at her shoulders. One shoulder was lower than the other; one arm she carried in contorted fashion, as though it were paralyzed; and behind a high collar of cheap lace there was a gouge in the anemic neck which had once been shining and softly plump. "Yes?" she said. "Well, well, old Zilla! By golly, it's good to see you again!" "He can send his messages through a lawyer." "Why, rats, Zilla, I didn't come just because of him. Came as an old friend." "You waited long enough!" "Well, you know how it is. Figured you wouldn't want to see a friend of his for quite some time and--Sit down, honey! Let's be sensible. We've all of us done a bunch of things that we hadn't ought to, but maybe we can sort of start over again. Honest, Zilla, I'd like to do something to make you both happy. Know what I thought to-day? Mind you, Paul doesn't know a thing about this--doesn't know I was going to come see you. I got to thinking: Zilla's a fine? big- hearted woman, and she'll understand that, uh, Paul's had his lesson now. Why wouldn't it be a fine idea if you asked the governor to pardon him? Believe he would, if it came from you. No! Wait! Just think how good you'd feel if you were generous." "Yes, I wish to be generous." She was sitting primly, speaking icily. "For that reason I wish to keep him in prison, as an example to evil-doers. I've gotten religion, George, since the terrible thing that man did to me. Sometimes I used to be unkind, and I wished for worldly pleasures, for dancing and the theater. But when I was in the hospital the pastor of the Pentecostal Communion Faith used to come to see me, and he showed me, right from the prophecies written in the Word of God, that the Day of Judgment is coming and all the members of the older churches are going straight to eternal damnation, because they only do lip-service and swallow the world, the flesh, and the devil--" For fifteen wild minutes she talked, pouring out admonitions to flee the wrath to come, and her face flushed, her dead voice recaptured something of the shrill energy of the old Zilla. She wound up with a furious: "It's the blessing of God himself that Paul should be in prison now, and torn and humbled by punishment, so that he may yet save his soul, and so other wicked men, these horrible chasers after women and ***, may have an example." Babbitt had itched and twisted. As in church he dared not move during the sermon so now he felt that he must seem attentive, though her screeching denunciations flew past him like carrion birds. He sought to be calm and brotherly: "Yes, I know, Zilla. But gosh, it certainly is the essence of religion to be charitable, isn't it? Let me tell you how I figure it: What we need in the world is liberalism, liberality, if we're going to get anywhere. I've always believed in being broad-minded and liberal--" "You? Liberal?" It was very much the old Zilla. "Why, George Babbitt, you're about as broad-minded and liberal as a razor-blade!" "Oh, I am, am I! Well, just let me tell you, just--let me-- tell--you, I'm as by golly liberal as you are religious, anyway! YOU RELIGIOUS!" "I am so! Our pastor says I sustain him in the faith!" "I'll bet you do! With Paul's money! But just to show you how liberal I am, I'm going to send a check for ten bucks to this Beecher Ingram, because a lot of fellows are saying the poor cuss preaches sedition and free love, and they're trying to run him out of town." "And they're right! They ought to run him out of town! Why, he preaches--if you can call it preaching--in a theater, in the House of Satan! You don't know what it is to find God, to find peace, to behold the snares that the devil spreads out for our feet. Oh, I'm so glad to see the mysterious purposes of God in having Paul harm me and stop my wickedness--and Paul's getting his, good and plenty, for the cruel things he did to me, and I hope he DIES in prison!" Babbitt was up, hat in hand, growling, "Well, if that's what you call being at peace, for heaven's sake just warn me before you go to war, will you?" III Vast is the power of cities to reclaim the wanderer. More than mountains or the shore-devouring sea, a city retains its character, imperturbable, cynical, holding behind apparent changes its essential purpose. Though Babbitt had deserted his family and dwelt with Joe Paradise in the wilderness, though he had become a liberal, though he had been quite sure, on the night before he reached Zenith, that neither he nor the city would be the same again, ten days after his return he could not believe that he had ever been away. Nor was it at all evident to his acquaintances that there was a new George F. Babbitt, save that he was more irritable under the incessant chaffing at the Athletic Club, and once, when Vergil Gunch observed that Seneca Doane ought to be hanged, Babbitt snorted, "Oh, rats, he's not so bad." At home he grunted "Eh?" across the newspaper to his commentatory wife, and was delighted by Tinka's new red tam o'shanter, and announced, "No class to that corrugated iron garage. Have to build me a nice frame one." Verona and Kenneth Escott appeared really to be engaged. In his newspaper Escott had conducted a pure-food crusade against commission- houses. As a result he had been given an excellent job in a commission-house, and he was making a salary on which he could marry, and denouncing irresponsible reporters who wrote stories criticizing commission-houses without knowing what they were talking about. This September Ted had entered the State University as a freshman in the College of Arts and Sciences. The university was at Mohalis only fifteen miles from Zenith, and Ted often came down for the week-end. Babbitt was worried. Ted was "going in for" everything but books. He had tried to "make" the football team as a light half-back, he was looking forward to the basket-ball season, he was on the committee for the Freshman Hop, and (as a Zenithite, an aristocrat among the yokels) he was being "rushed" by two fraternities. But of his studies Babbitt could learn nothing save a mumbled, "Oh, gosh, these old stiffs of teachers just give you a lot of junk about literature and economics." One week-end Ted proposed, "Say, Dad, why can't I transfer over from the College to the School of Engineering and take mechanical engineering? You always holler that I never study, but honest, I would study there." "No, the Engineering School hasn't got the standing the College has," fretted Babbitt. "I'd like to know how it hasn't! The Engineers can play on any of the teams!" There was much explanation of the "dollars- and-cents value of being known as a college man when you go into the law," and a truly oratorical account of the lawyer's life. Before he was through with it, Babbitt had Ted a United States Senator. Among the great lawyers whom he mentioned was Seneca Doane. "But, gee ***," Ted marveled, "I thought you always said this Doane was a reg'lar nut!" "That's no way to speak of a great man! Doane's always been a good friend of mine-- fact I helped him in college--I started him out and you might say inspired him. Just because he's sympathetic with the aims of Labor, a lot of chumps that lack liberality and broad-mindedness think he's a crank, but let me tell you there's mighty few of 'em that rake in the fees he does, and he's a friend of some of the strongest; most conservative men in the world--like Lord Wycombe, this, uh, this big English nobleman that's so well known. And you now, which would you rather do: be in with a lot of greasy mechanics and laboring-men, or chum up to a real fellow like Lord Wycombe, and get invited to his house for parties?" "Well--gosh," sighed Ted. The next week-end he came in joyously with, "Say, Dad, why couldn't I take mining engineering instead of the academic course? You talk about standing--maybe there isn't much in mechanical engineering, but the Miners, gee, they got seven out of eleven in the new elections to Nu Tau Tau!" > CHAPTER XXVII I THE strike which turned Zenith into two belligerent camps; white and red, began late in September with a walk-out of telephone girls and linemen, in protest against a reduction of wages. The newly formed union of dairy-products workers went out, partly in sympathy and partly in demand for a forty-four hour week. They were followed by the truck-drivers' union. Industry was tied up, and the whole city was nervous with talk of a trolley strike, a printers' strike, a general strike. Furious citizens, trying to get telephone calls through strike-breaking girls, danced helplessly. Every truck that made its way from the factories to the freight-stations was guarded by a policeman, trying to look stoical beside the scab driver. A line of fifty trucks from the Zenith Steel and Machinery Company was attacked by strikers-rushing out from the sidewalk, pulling drivers from the seats, smashing carburetors and commutators, while telephone girls cheered from the walk, and small boys heaved bricks. The National Guard was ordered out. Colonel Nixon, who in private life was Mr. Caleb Nixon, secretary of the Pullmore Tractor Company, put on a long khaki coat and stalked through crowds, a .44 automatic in hand. Even Babbitt's friend, Clarence Drum the shoe merchant--a round and merry man who told stories at the Athletic Club, and who strangely resembled a Victorian pug-dog-- was to be seen as a waddling but ferocious captain, with his belt tight about his comfortable little belly, and his round little mouth petulant as he piped to chattering groups on corners. "Move on there now! I can't have any of this loitering!" Every newspaper in the city, save one, was against the strikers. When mobs raided the news-stands, at each was stationed a militiaman, a young, embarrassed citizen-soldier with eye- glasses, bookkeeper or grocery-clerk in private life, trying to look dangerous while small boys yelped, "Get onto de tin soldier!" and striking truck-drivers inquired tenderly, "Say, Joe, when I was fighting in France, was you in camp in the States or was you doing Swede exercises in the Y. M. C. A.? Be careful of that bayonet, now, or you'll cut yourself!" There was no one in Zenith who talked of anything but the strike, and no one who did not take sides. You were either a courageous friend of Labor, or you were a fearless supporter of the Rights of Property; and in either case you were belligerent, and ready to disown any friend who did not hate the enemy. A condensed-milk plant was set afire--each side charged it to the other--and the city was hysterical. And Babbitt chose this time to be publicly liberal. He belonged to the sound, sane, right- thinking wing, and at first he agreed that the Crooked Agitators ought to be shot. He was sorry when his friend, Seneca Doane, defended arrested strikers, and he thought of going to Doane and explaining about these agitators, but when he read a broadside alleging that even on their former wages the telephone girls had been hungry, he was troubled. "All lies and fake figures," he said, but in a doubtful croak. For the Sunday after, the Chatham Road Presbyterian Church announced a sermon by Dr. John Jennison Drew on "How the Saviour Would End Strikes." Babbitt had been negligent about church- going lately, but he went to the service, hopeful that Dr. Drew really did have the information as to what the divine powers thought about strikes. Beside Babbitt in the large, curving, glossy, velvet-upholstered pew was Chum Frink. Frink whispered, "Hope the doc gives the strikers hell! Ordinarily, I don't believe in a preacher butting into political matters--let him stick to straight religion and save souls, and not stir up a lot of discussion--but at a time like this, I do think he ought to stand right up and bawl out those plug- uglies to a fare-you-well!" "Yes--well--" said Babbitt. The Rev. Dr. Drew, his rustic *** flopping with the intensity of his poetic and sociologic ardor, trumpeted: "During the untoward series of industrial dislocations which have--let us be courageous and admit it boldly--throttled the business life of our fair city these past days, there has been a great deal of loose talk about scientific prevention of scientific--SCIENTIFIC! Now, let me tell you that the most unscientific thing in the world is science! Take the attacks on the established fundamentals of the Christian creed which were so popular with the 'scientists' a generation ago. Oh, yes, they were mighty fellows, and great poo-bahs of criticism! They were going to destroy the church; they were going to prove the world was created and has been brought to its extraordinary level of morality and civilization by blind chance. Yet the church stands just as firmly to-day as ever, and the only answer a Christian pastor needs make to the long-haired opponents of his simple faith is just a pitying smile! "And now these same 'scientists' want to replace the natural condition of free competition by crazy systems which, no matter by what high-sounding names they are called, are nothing but a despotic paternalism. Naturally, I'm not criticizing labor courts, injunctions against men proven to be striking unjustly, or those excellent unions in which the men and the boss get together. But I certainly am criticizing the systems in which the free and fluid motivation of independent labor is to be replaced by cooked-up wage-scales and minimum salaries and government commissions and labor federations and all that poppycock. "What is not generally understood is that this whole industrial matter isn't a question of economics. It's essentially and only a matter of Love, and of the practical application of the Christian religion! Imagine a factory--instead of committees of workmen alienating the boss, the boss goes among them smiling, and they smile back, the elder brother and the younger. Brothers, that's what they must be, loving brothers, and then strikes would be as inconceivable as hatred in the home!" It was at this point that Babbitt muttered, "Oh, rot!" "Huh?" said Chum Frink. "He doesn't know what he's talking about. It's just as clear as mud. It doesn't mean a darn thing." "Maybe, but--" Frink looked at him doubtfully, through all the service kept glancing at him doubtfully, till Babbitt was nervous. II The strikers had announced a parade for Tuesday morning, but Colonel Nixon had forbidden it, the newspapers said. When Babbitt drove west from his office at ten that morning he saw a drove of shabby men heading toward the tangled, dirty district beyond Court House Square. He hated them, because they were poor, because they made him feel insecure "Damn loafers! Wouldn't be common workmen if they had any pep," he complained. He wondered if there was going to be a riot. He drove toward the starting-point of the parade, a triangle of limp and faded grass known as Moore Street Park, and halted his car. The park and streets were buzzing with strikers, young men in blue denim shirts, old men with caps. Through them, keeping them stirred like a boiling pot, moved the militiamen. Babbitt could hear the soldiers' monotonous orders: "Keep moving--move on, 'bo--keep your feet warm!" Babbitt admired their stolid good temper. The crowd shouted, "Tin soldiers," and "Dirty dogs--servants of the capitalists!" but the militiamen grinned and answered only, "Sure, that's right. Keep moving, Billy!" Babbitt thrilled over the citizen-soldiers, hated the scoundrels who were obstructing the pleasant ways of prosperity, admired Colonel Nixon's striding contempt for the crowd; and as Captain Clarence Drum, that rather puffing shoe-dealer, came raging by, Babbitt respectfully clamored, "Great work, Captain! Don't let 'em march!" He watched the strikers filing from the park. Many of them bore posters with "They can't stop our peacefully walking." The militiamen tore away the posters, but the strikers fell in behind their leaders and straggled off, a thin unimpressive trickle between steel-glinting lines of soldiers. Babbitt saw with disappointment that there wasn't going to be any violence, nothing interesting at all. Then he gasped. Among the marchers, beside a bulky young workman, was Seneca Doane, smiling, content. In front of him was Professor Brockbank, head of the history department in the State University, an old man and white-bearded, known to come from a distinguished Massachusetts family. "Why, gosh," Babbitt marveled, "a swell like him in with the strikers? And good ole Senny Doane! They're fools to get mixed up with this bunch. They're parlor socialists! But they have got nerve. And nothing in it for them, not a cent! And--I don't know 's ALL the strikers look like such tough nuts. Look just about like anybody else to me!" The militiamen were turning the parade down a side street. "They got just as much right to march as anybody else! They own the streets as much as Clarence Drum or the American Legion does!" Babbitt grumbled. "Of course, they're--they're a bad element, but--Oh, rats!" At the Athletic Club, Babbitt was silent during lunch, while the others fretted, "I don't know what the world's coming to," or solaced their spirits with "kidding." Captain Clarence Drum came swinging by, splendid in khaki. "How's it going, Captain?" inquired Vergil Gunch. "Oh, we got 'em stopped. We worked 'em off on side streets and separated 'em and they got discouraged and went home." "Fine work. No violence." "Fine work nothing!" groaned Mr. Drum. "If I had my way, there'd be a whole lot of violence, and I'd start it, and then the whole thing would be over. I don't believe in standing back and wet- nursing these fellows and letting the disturbances drag on. I tell you these strikers are nothing in God's world but a lot of bomb-throwing socialists and thugs, and the only way to handle 'em is with a club! That's what I'd do; beat up the whole lot of 'em!" Babbitt heard himself saying, "Oh, rats, Clarence, they look just about like you and me, and I certainly didn't notice any bombs." Drum complained, "Oh, you didn't, eh? Well, maybe you'd like to take charge of the strike! Just tell Colonel Nixon what innocents the strikers are! He'd be glad to hear about it!" Drum strode on, while all the table stared at Babbitt. "What's the idea? Do you want us to give those hell-hounds love and kisses, or what?" said Orville Jones. "Do you defend a lot of hoodlums that are trying to take the bread and butter away from our families?" raged Professor Pumphrey. Vergil Gunch intimidatingly said nothing. He put on sternness like a mask; his jaw was hard, his bristly short hair seemed cruel, his silence was a ferocious thunder. While the others assured Babbitt that they must have misunderstood him, Gunch looked as though he had understood only too well. Like a robed judge he listened to Babbitt's stammering: "No, sure; course they're a bunch of toughs. But I just mean--Strikes me it's bad policy to talk about clubbing 'em. Cabe Nixon doesn't. He's got the fine Italian hand. And that's why he's colonel. Clarence Drum is jealous of him." "Well," said Professor Pumphrey, "you hurt Clarence's feelings, George. He's been out there all morning getting hot and dusty, and no wonder he wants to beat the tar out of those sons of guns!" Gunch said nothing, and watched; and Babbitt knew that he was being watched. III As he was leaving the club Babbitt heard Chum Frink protesting to Gunch, "--don't know what's got into him. Last Sunday Doc Drew preached a corking sermon about decency in business and Babbitt kicked about that, too. Near 's I can figure out--" Babbitt was vaguely frightened. IV He saw a crowd listening to a man who was talking from the rostrum of a kitchen- chair. He stopped his car. From newspaper pictures he knew that the speaker must be the notorious freelance preacher, Beecher Ingram, of whom Seneca Doane had spoken. Ingram was a gaunt man with flamboyant hair, weather-beaten cheeks, and worried eyes. He was pleading: "--if those telephone girls can hold out, living on one meal a day, doing their own washing, starving and smiling, you big hulking men ought to be able--" Babbitt saw that from the sidewalk Vergil Gunch was watching him. In vague disquiet he started the car and mechanically drove on, while Gunch's hostile eyes seemed to follow him all the way. V "There's a lot of these fellows," Babbitt was complaining to his wife, "that think if workmen go on strike they're a regular bunch of fiends. Now, of course, it's a fight between sound business and the destructive element, and we got to lick the stuffin's out of 'em when they challenge us, but doggoned if I see why we can't fight like gentlemen and not go calling 'em dirty dogs and saying they ought to be shot down." "Why, George," she said placidly, "I thought you always insisted that all strikers ought to be put in jail." "I never did! Well, I mean--Some of 'em, of course. Irresponsible leaders. But I mean a fellow ought to be broad- minded and liberal about things like--" "But dearie, I thought you always said these so-called 'liberal' people were the worst of--" "Rats! Woman never can understand the different definitions of a word. Depends on how you mean it. And it don't pay to be too cocksure about anything. Now, these strikers: Honest, they're not such bad people. Just foolish. They don't understand the complications of merchandizing and profit, the way we business men do, but sometimes I think they're about like the rest of us, and no more hogs for wages than we are for profits." "George! If people were to hear you talk like that-- of course I KNOW you; I remember what a wild crazy boy you were; I know you don't mean a word you say--but if people that didn't understand you were to hear you talking, they'd think you were a regular socialist!" "What do I care what anybody thinks? And let me tell you right now--I want you to distinctly understand I never was a wild crazy kid, and when I say a thing, I mean it, and I stand by it and--Honest, do you think people would think I was too liberal if I just said the strikers were decent?" "Of course they would. But don't worry, dear; I know you don't mean a word of it. Time to trot up to bed now. Have you enough covers for to-night?" On the sleeping-porch he puzzled, "She doesn't understand me. Hardly understand myself. Why can't I take things easy, way I used to? "Wish I could go out to Senny Doane's house and talk things over with him. No! Suppose Verg Gunch saw me going in there! "Wish I knew some really smart woman, and nice, that would see what I'm trying to get at, and let me talk to her and--I wonder if Myra's right? Could the fellows think I've gone nutty just because I'm broad-minded and liberal? Way Verg looked at me--" > CHAPTER XXVIII I MISS McGOUN came into his private office at three in the afternoon with "Lissen, Mr. Babbitt; there's a Mrs. Judique on the 'phone--wants to see about some repairs, and the salesmen are all out. Want to talk to her?" "All right." The voice of Tanis Judique was clear and pleasant. The black cylinder of the telephone- receiver seemed to hold a tiny animated image of her: lustrous eyes, delicate nose, gentle chin. "This is Mrs. Judique. Do you remember me? You drove me up here to the Cavendish Apartments and helped me find such a nice flat." "Sure! Bet I remember! What can I do for you?" "Why, it's just a little--I don't know that I ought to bother you, but the janitor doesn't seem to be able to fix it. You know my flat is on the top floor, and with these autumn rains the roof is beginning to leak, and I'd be awfully glad if--" "Sure! I'll come up and take a look at it." Nervously, "When do you expect to be in?" "Why, I'm in every morning." "Be in this afternoon, in an hour or so?" "Ye-es. Perhaps I could give you a cup of tea. I think I ought to, after all your trouble." "Fine! I'll run up there soon as I can get away." He meditated, "Now there's a woman that's got refinement, savvy, CLASS! 'After all your trouble--give you a cup of tea.' She'd appreciate a fellow. I'm a fool, but I'm not such a bad cuss, get to know me. And not so much a fool as they think!" The great strike was over, the strikers beaten. Except that Vergil Gunch seemed less cordial, there were no visible effects of Babbitt's treachery to the clan. The oppressive fear of criticism was gone, but a diffident loneliness remained. Now he was so exhilarated that, to prove he wasn't, he droned about the office for fifteen minutes, looking at blue-prints, explaining to Miss McGoun that this Mrs. Scott wanted more money for her house--had raised the asking-price--raised it from seven thousand to eighty-five hundred-- would Miss McGoun be sure and put it down on the card--Mrs. Scott's house--raise. When he had thus established himself as a person unemotional and interested only in business, he sauntered out. He took a particularly long time to start his car; he kicked the tires, dusted the glass of the speedometer, and tightened the screws holding the wind-shield spot-light. He drove happily off toward the Bellevue district, conscious of the presence of Mrs. Judique as of a brilliant light on the horizon. The maple leaves had fallen and they lined the gutters of the asphalted streets. It was a day of pale gold and faded green, tranquil and lingering. Babbitt was aware of the meditative day, and of the barrenness of Bellevue--blocks of wooden houses, garages, little shops, weedy lots. "Needs pepping up; needs the touch that people like Mrs. Judique could give a place," he ruminated, as he rattled through the long, crude, airy streets. The wind rose, enlivening, keen, and in a blaze of well-being he came to the flat of Tanis Judique. She was wearing, when she flutteringly admitted him, a frock of black chiffon cut modestly round at the base of her pretty throat. She seemed to him immensely sophisticated. He glanced at the cretonnes and colored prints in her living-room, and gurgled, "Gosh, you've fixed the place nice! Takes a clever woman to know how to make a home, all right!" "You really like it? I'm so glad! But you've neglected me, scandalously. You promised to come some time and learn to dance." Rather unsteadily, "Oh, but you didn't mean it seriously!" "Perhaps not. But you might have tried!" "Well, here I've come for my lesson, and you might just as well prepare to have me stay for supper!" They both laughed in a manner which indicated that of course he didn't mean it. "But first I guess I better look at that leak." She climbed with him to the flat roof of the apartment-house a detached world of slatted wooden walks, clotheslines, water- tank in a penthouse. He poked at things with his toe, and sought to impress her by being learned about copper gutters, the desirability of passing plumbing pipes through a lead collar and sleeve and flashing them with copper, and the advantages of cedar over boiler-iron for roof-tanks. "You have to know so much, in real estate!" she admired. He promised that the roof should be repaired within two days. "Do you mind my 'phoning from your apartment?" he asked. "Heavens, no!" He stood a moment at the coping, looking over a land of hard little bungalows with abnormally large porches, and new apartment-houses, small, but brave with variegated brick walls and terra-cotta trimmings. Beyond them was a hill with a gouge of yellow clay like a vast wound. Behind every apartment-house, beside each dwelling, were small garages. It was a world of good little people, comfortable, industrious, credulous. In the autumnal light the flat newness was mellowed, and the air was a sun-tinted pool. "Golly, it's one fine afternoon. You get a great view here, right up Tanner's Hill," said Babbitt. "Yes, isn't it nice and open." "So darn few people appreciate a View." "Don't you go raising my rent on that account! Oh, that was naughty of me! I was just teasing. Seriously though, there are so few who respond--who react to Views. I mean--they haven't any feeling of poetry and beauty." "That's a fact, they haven't," he breathed, admiring her slenderness and the absorbed, airy way in which she looked toward the hill, chin lifted, lips smiling. "Well, guess I'd better telephone the plumbers, so they'll get on the job first thing in the morning." When he had telephoned, making it conspicuously authoritative and gruff and masculine, he looked doubtful, and sighed, "S'pose I'd better be--" "Oh, you must have that cup of tea first!" "Well, it would go pretty good, at that." It was luxurious to loll in a deep green rep chair, his legs thrust out before him, to glance at the black Chinese telephone stand and the colored photograph of Mount Vernon which he had always liked so much, while in the tiny kitchen--so near--Mrs. Judique sang "My Creole Queen." In an intolerable sweetness, a contentment so deep that he was wistfully discontented, he saw magnolias by moonlight and heard plantation darkies crooning to the banjo. He wanted to be near her, on pretense of helping her, yet he wanted to remain in this still ecstasy. Languidly he remained. When she bustled in with the tea he smiled up at her. "This is awfully nice!" For the first time, he was not fencing; he was quietly and securely friendly; and friendly and quiet was her answer: "It's nice to have you here. You were so kind, helping me to find this little home." They agreed that the weather would soon turn cold. They agreed that prohibition was prohibitive. They agreed that art in the home was cultural. They agreed about everything. They even became bold. They hinted that these modern young girls, well, honestly, their short skirts were short. They were proud to find that they were not shocked by such frank speaking. Tanis ventured, "I know you'll understand-- I mean--I don't quite know how to say it, but I do think that girls who pretend they're bad by the way they dress really never go any farther. They give away the fact that they haven't the instincts of a womanly woman." Remembering Ida Putiak, the manicure girl, and how ill she had used him, Babbitt agreed with enthusiasm; remembering how ill all the world had used him, he told of Paul Riesling, of Zilla, of Seneca Doane, of the strike: "See how it was? Course I was as anxious to have those beggars licked to a standstill as anybody else, but gosh, no reason for not seeing their side. For a fellow's own sake, he's got to be broad-minded and liberal, don't you think so?" "Oh, I do!" Sitting on the hard little couch, she clasped her hands beside her, leaned toward him, absorbed him; and in a glorious state of being appreciated he proclaimed: "So I up and said to the fellows at the club, 'Look here,' I--" "Do you belong to the Union Club? I think it's--" "No; the Athletic. Tell you: Course they're always asking me to join the Union, but I always say, 'No, sir! Nothing doing!' I don't mind the expense but I can't stand all the old fogies." "Oh, yes, that's so. But tell me: what did you say to them?" "Oh, you don't want to hear it. I'm probably boring you to death with my troubles! You wouldn't hardly think I was an old duffer; I sound like a kid!" "Oh, you're a boy yet. I mean--you can't be a day over forty- five." "Well, I'm not--much. But by golly I begin to feel middle-aged sometimes; all these responsibilities and all." "Oh, I know!" Her voice caressed him; it cloaked him like warm silk. "And I feel lonely, so lonely, some days, Mr. Babbitt." "We're a sad pair of birds! But I think we're pretty darn nice!" "Yes, I think we're lots nicer than most people I know!" They smiled. "But please tell me what you said at the Club." "Well, it was like this: Course Seneca Doane is a friend of mine--they can say what they want to, they can call him anything they please, but what most folks here don't know is that Senny is the *** pal of some of the biggest statesmen in the world--Lord Wycombe, frinstance--you know, this big British nobleman. My friend Sir Gerald Doak told me that Lord Wycombe is one of the biggest guns in England--well, Doak or somebody told me." "Oh! Do you know Sir Gerald? The one that was here, at the McKelveys'?" "Know him? Well, say, I know him just well enough so we call each other George and Jerry, and we got so pickled together in Chicago--" "That must have been fun. But--" She shook a finger at him. "--I can't have you getting pickled! I'll have to take you in hand!" "Wish you would!...Well, zize saying: You see I happen to know what a big noise Senny Doane is outside of Zenith, but of course a prophet hasn't got any honor in his own country, and Senny, darn his old hide, he's so blame modest that he never lets folks know the kind of an outfit he travels with when he goes abroad. Well, during the strike Clarence Drum comes pee-rading up to our table, all dolled up fit to kill in his nice lil cap'n's uniform, and somebody says to him, 'Busting the strike, Clarence?' "Well, he swells up like a pouter-pigeon and he hollers, so 's you could hear him way up in the reading-room, 'Yes, sure; I told the strike-leaders where they got off, and so they went home.' "'Well,' I says to him, 'glad there wasn't any violence.' "'Yes,' he says, 'but if I hadn't kept my eye skinned there would 've been. All those fellows had bombs in their pockets. They're reg'lar anarchists.' "'Oh, rats, Clarence,' I says, 'I looked 'em all over carefully, and they didn't have any more bombs 'n a rabbit,' I says. 'Course,' I says, 'they're foolish, but they're a good deal like you and me, after all.' "And then Vergil Gunch or somebody--no, it was Chum Frink--you know, this famous poet- -great pal of mine--he says to me, 'Look here,' he says, 'do you mean to say you advocate these strikes?' Well, I was so disgusted with a fellow whose mind worked that way that I swear, I had a good mind to not explain at all--just ignore him--" "Oh, that's so wise!" said Mrs. Judique. "--but finally I explains to him: 'If you'd done as much as I have on Chamber of Commerce committees and all,' I says, 'then you'd have the right to talk! But same time,' I says, 'I believe in treating your opponent like a gentleman!' Well, sir, that held 'em! Frink--Chum I always call him--he didn't have another word to say. But at that, I guess some of 'em kind o' thought I was too liberal. What do you think?" "Oh, you were so wise. And courageous! I love a man to have the courage of his convictions!" "But do you think it was a good stunt? After all, some of these fellows are so darn cautious and narrow-minded that they're prejudiced against a fellow that talks right out in meeting." "What do you care? In the long run they're bound to respect a man who makes them think, and with your reputation for oratory you--" "What do you know about my reputation for "Oh, I'm not going to tell you everything I know! But seriously, you don't realize what a famous man you are." "Well--Though I haven't done much orating this fall. Too kind of bothered by this Paul Riesling business, I guess. But--Do you know, you're the first person that's really understood what I was getting at, Tanis--Listen to me, will you! Fat nerve I've got, calling you Tanis!" "Oh, do! And shall I call you George? Don't you think it's awfully nice when two people have so much--what shall I call it?- -so much analysis that they can discard all these stupid conventions and understand each other and become acquainted right away, like ships that pass in the night?" "I certainly do! I certainly do!" He was no longer quiescent in his chair; he wandered about the room, he dropped on the couch beside her. But as he awkwardly stretched his hand toward her fragile, immaculate fingers, she said brightly, "Do give me a cigarette. Would you think poor Tanis was dreadfully naughty if she smoked?" "Lord, no! I like it!" He had often and weightily pondered flappers smoking in Zenith restaurants, but he knew only one woman who smoked--Mrs. Sam Doppelbrau, his flighty neighbor. He ceremoniously lighted Tanis's cigarette, looked for a place to deposit the burnt match, and dropped it into his pocket. "I'm sure you want a cigar, you poor man!" she crooned. "Do you mind one?" "Oh, no! I love the smell of a good cigar; so nice and--so nice and like a man. You'll find an ash-tray in my bedroom, on the table beside the bed, if you don't mind getting it." He was embarrassed by her bedroom: the broad couch with a cover of violet silk, mauve curtains striped with gold. Chinese Chippendale bureau, and an amazing row of slippers, with ribbon-wound shoe- trees, and primrose stockings lying across them. His manner of bringing the ash-tray had just the right note of easy friendliness, he felt. "A *** like Verg Gunch would try to get funny about seeing her bedroom, but I take it casually." He was not casual afterward. The contentment of companionship was gone, and he was restless with desire to touch her hand. But whenever he turned toward her, the cigarette was in his way. It was a shield between them. He waited till she should have finished, but as he rejoiced at her quick crushing of its light on the ashtray she said, "Don't you want to give me another cigarette?" and hopelessly he saw the screen of pale smoke and her graceful tilted hand again between them. He was not merely curious now to find out whether she would let him hold her hand (all in the purest friendship, naturally), but agonized with need of it. On the surface appeared none of all this fretful drama. They were talking cheerfully of motors, of trips to California, of Chum Frink. Once he said delicately, "I do hate these guys--I hate these people that invite themselves to meals, but I seem to have a feeling I'm going to have supper with the lovely Mrs. Tanis Judique to-night. But I suppose you probably have seven dates already." "Well, I was thinking some of going to the movies. Yes, I really think I ought to get out and get some fresh air." She did not encourage him to stay, but never did she discourage him. He considered, "I better take a sneak! She WILL let me stay--there IS something doing--and I mustn't get mixed up with--I mustn't--I've got to beat it." Then, "No. it's too late now." Suddenly, at seven, brushing her cigarette away, brusquely taking her hand: "Tanis! Stop teasing me! You know we--Here we are, a couple of lonely birds, and we're awful happy together. Anyway I am! Never been so happy! Do let me stay! Ill gallop down to the delicatessen and buy some stuff--cold chicken maybe--or cold turkey--and we can have a nice little supper, and afterwards, if you want to chase me out, I'll be good and go like a lamb." "Well--yes--it would be nice," she said. Nor did she withdraw her hand. He squeezed it, trembling, and blundered toward his coat. At the delicatessen he bought preposterous stores of food, chosen on the principle of expensiveness. From the drug store across the street he telephoned to his wife, "Got to get a fellow to sign a lease before he leaves town on the midnight. Won't be home till late. Don't wait up for me. Kiss Tinka good-night." He expectantly lumbered back to the flat. "Oh, you bad thing, to buy so much food!" was her greeting, and her voice was gay, her smile acceptant. He helped her in the tiny white kitchen; he washed the lettuce, he opened the olive bottle. She ordered him to set the table, and as he trotted into the living-room, as he hunted through the buffet for knives and forks, he felt utterly at home. "Now the only other thing," he announced, "is what you're going to wear. I can't decide whether you're to put on your swellest evening gown, or let your hair down and put on short skirts and make- believe you're a little girl." "I'm going to dine just as I am, in this old chiffon rag, and if you can't stand poor Tanis that way, you can go to the club for dinner!" "Stand you!" He patted her shoulder. "Child, you're the brainiest and the loveliest and finest woman I've ever met! Come now, Lady Wycombe, if you'll take the Duke of Zenith's arm, we will proambulate in to the magnolious feed!" "Oh, you do say the funniest, nicest things!" When they had finished the picnic supper he thrust his head out of the window and reported, "It's turned awful chilly, and I think it's going to rain. You don't want to go to the movies." "Well--" "I wish we had a fireplace! I wish it was raining like all get-out to- night, and we were in a funny little old- fashioned cottage, and the trees thrashing like everything outside, and a great big log fire and--I'll tell you! Let's draw this couch up to the radiator, and stretch our feet out, and pretend it's a wood-fire." "Oh, I think that's pathetic! You big child!" But they did draw up to the radiator, and propped their feet against it--his clumsy black shoes, her patent-leather slippers. In the dimness they talked of themselves; of how lonely she was, how bewildered he, and how wonderful that they had found each other. As they fell silent the room was stiller than a country lane. There was no sound from the street save the whir of motor-tires, the rumble of a distant freight-train. Self-contained was the room, warm, secure, insulated from the harassing world. He was absorbed by a rapture in which all fear and doubting were smoothed away; and when he reached home, at dawn, the rapture had mellowed to contentment serene and full of memories. >