Babbit (53 page)

  He was not merely annoyed; he was frightened. "Why
did she quit, then?" he worried. "Did she have a hunch my business
is going on the rocks? And it was Sanders got the Street Traction
deal. Rats - sinking ship!"

  Gray fear loomed always by him now. He watched Fritz
Weilinger, the young salesman, and wondered if he too would leave.
Daily he fancied slights. He noted that he was not asked to speak
at the annual Chamber of Commerce dinner. When Orville Jones gave a
large poker party and he was not invited, he was certain that he
had been snubbed. He was afraid to go to lunch at the Athletic
Club, and afraid not to go. He believed that he was spied on; that
when he left the table they whispered about him. Everywhere he
heard the rustling whispers: in the offices of clients, in the bank
when he made a deposit, in his own office, in his own home.
Interminably he wondered what They were saying of him. All day long
in imaginary conversations he caught them marveling, "Babbitt? Why,
say, he's a regular anarchist! You got to admire the fellow for his
nerve, the way he turned liberal and, by golly, just absolutely
runs his life to suit himself, but say, he's dangerous, that's what
he is, and he's got to be shown up."

  He was so twitchy that when he rounded a corner and
chanced on two acquaintances talking - whispering - his heart
leaped, and he stalked by like an embarrassed schoolboy. When he
saw his neighbors Howard Littlefield and Orville Jones together, he
peered at them, went indoors to escape their spying, and was
miserably certain that they had been whispering - plotting -
whispering.

  Through all his fear ran defiance. He felt stubborn.
Sometimes he decided that he had been a very devil of a fellow, as
bold as Seneca Doane; sometimes he planned to call on Doane and
tell him what a revolutionist he was, and never got beyond the
planning. But just as often, when he heard the soft whispers
enveloping him he wailed, "Good Lord, what have I done? Just played
with the Bunch, and called down Clarence Drum about being such a
high-and-mighty sodger. Never catch ME criticizing people and
trying to make them accept MY ideas!"

  He could not stand the strain. Before long he
admitted that he would like to flee back to the security of
conformity, provided there was a decent and creditable way to
return. But, stubbornly, he would not be forced back; he would not,
he swore, "eat dirt."

  Only in spirited engagements with his wife did these
turbulent fears rise to the surface. She complained that he seemed
nervous, that she couldn't understand why he did not want to "drop
in at the Littlefields'" for the evening. He tried, but he could
not express to her the nebulous facts of his rebellion and
punishment. And, with Paul and Tanis lost, he had no one to whom he
could talk. "Good Lord, Tinka is the only real friend I have, these
days," he sighed, and he clung to the child, played floor-games
with her all evening.

  He considered going to see Paul in prison, but,
though he had a pale curt note from him every week, he thought of
Paul as dead. It was Tanis for whom he was longing.

  "I thought I was so smart and independent, cutting
Tanis out, and I need her, Lord how I need her!" he raged. "Myra
simply can't understand. All she sees in life is getting along by
being just like other folks. But Tanis, she'd tell me I was all
right."

  Then he broke, and one evening, late, he did run to
Tanis. He had not dared to hope for it, but she was in, and alone.
Only she wasn't Tanis. She was a courteous, brow-lifting,
ice-armored woman who looked like Tanis. She said, "Yes, George,
what is it?" in even and uninterested tones, and he crept away,
whipped.

  His first comfort was from Ted and Eunice
Littlefield.

  They danced in one evening when Ted was home from
the university, and Ted chuckled, "What's this I hear from Euny,
dad? She says her dad says you raised Cain by boosting old Seneca
Doane. Hot dog! Give 'em fits! Stir 'em up! This old burg is
asleep!" Eunice plumped down on Babbitt's lap, kissed him, nestled
her bobbed hair against his chin, and crowed; "I think you're lots
nicer than Howard. Why is it," confidentially, "that Howard is such
an old grouch? The man has a good heart, and honestly, he's awfully
bright, but he never will learn to step on the gas, after all the
training I've given him. Don't you think we could do something with
him, dearest?"

  "Why, Eunice, that isn't a nice way to speak of your
papa," Babbitt observed, in the best Floral Heights manner, but he
was happy for the first time in weeks. He pictured himself as the
veteran liberal strengthened by the loyalty of the young
generation. They went out to rifle the ice-box. Babbitt gloated,
"If your mother caught us at this, we'd certainly get our
come-uppance!" and Eunice became maternal, scrambled a terrifying
number of eggs for them, kissed Babbitt on the ear, and in the
voice of a brooding abbess marveled, "It beats the devil why
feminists like me still go on nursing these men!"

  Thus stimulated, Babbitt was reckless when he
encountered Sheldon Smeeth, educational director of the Y.M.C.A.
and choir-leader of the Chatham Road Church. With one of his damp
hands Smeeth imprisoned Babbitt's thick paw while he chanted,
"Brother Babbitt, we haven't seen you at church very often lately.
I know you're busy with a multitude of details, but you mustn't
forget your dear friends at the old church home."

  Babbitt shook off the affectionate clasp - Sheldy
liked to hold hands for a long time - and snarled, "Well, I guess
you fellows can run the show without me. Sorry, Smeeth; got to beat
it. G'day."

  But afterward he winced, "If that white worm had the
nerve to try to drag me back to the Old Church Home, then the holy
outfit must have been doing a lot of talking about me, too."

  He heard them whispering - whispering - Dr. John
Jennison Drew, Cholmondeley Frink, even William Washington
Eathorne. The independence seeped out of him and he walked the
streets alone, afraid of men's cynical eyes and the incessant hiss
of whispering.

  I

  
H
E tried to
explain to his wife, as they prepared for bed, how objectionable
was Sheldon Smeeth, but all her answer was, "He has such a
beautiful voice - so spiritual. I don't think you ought to speak of
him like that just because you can't appreciate music!" He saw her
then as a stranger; he stared bleakly at this plump and fussy woman
with the broad bare arms, and wondered how she had ever come
here.

  In his chilly cot, turning from aching side to side,
he pondered of Tanis. "He'd been a fool to lose her. He had to have
somebody he could really talk to. He'd - oh, he'd BUST if he went
on stewing about things by himself. And Myra, useless to expect her
to understand. Well, rats, no use dodging the issue. Darn shame for
two married people to drift apart after all these years; darn
rotten shame; but nothing could bring them together now, as long as
he refused to let Zenith bully him into taking orders - and he was
by golly not going to let anybody bully him into anything, or
wheedle him or coax him either!"

  He woke at three, roused by a passing motor, and
struggled out of bed for a drink of water. As he passed through the
bedroom he heard his wife groan. His resentment was night-blurred;
he was solicitous in inquiring, "What's the trouble, hon?"

  "I've got - such a pain down here in my side - oh,
it's just - it tears at me."

  "Bad indigestion? Shall I get you some bicarb?"

  "Don't think - that would help. I felt funny last
evening and yesterday, and then - oh! - it passed away and I got to
sleep and - That auto woke me up."

  Her voice was laboring like a ship in a storm. He
was alarmed.

  "I better call the doctor."

  "No, no! It'll go away. But maybe you might get me
an ice-bag."

  He stalked to the bathroom for the ice-bag, down to
the kitchen for ice. He felt dramatic in this late-night
expedition, but as he gouged the chunk of ice with the dagger-like
pick he was cool, steady, mature; and the old friendliness was in
his voice as he patted the ice-bag into place on her groin,
rumbling, "There, there, that'll be better now." He retired to bed,
but he did not sleep. He heard her groan again. Instantly he was
up, soothing her, "Still pretty bad, honey?"

  "Yes, it just gripes me, and I can't get to
sleep."

  Her voice was faint. He knew her dread of doctors'
verdicts and he did not inform her, but he creaked down-stairs,
telephoned to Dr. Earl Patten, and waited, shivering, trying with
fuzzy eyes to read a magazine, till he heard the doctor's car.

  The doctor was youngish and professionally breezy.
He came in as though it were sunny noontime. "Well, George, little
trouble, eh? How is she now?" he said busily as, with tremendous
and rather irritating cheerfulness, he tossed his coat on a chair
and warmed his hands at a radiator. He took charge of the house.
Babbitt felt ousted and unimportant as he followed the doctor up to
the bedroom, and it was the doctor who chuckled, "Oh, just little
stomach-ache" when Verona peeped through her door, begging, "What
is it, Dad, what is it?"

  To Mrs. Babbitt the doctor said with amiable
belligerence, after his examination, "Kind of a bad old pain, eh?
I'll give you something to make you sleep, and I think you'll feel
better in the morning. I'll come in right after breakfast." But to
Babbitt, lying in wait in the lower hall, the doctor sighed, "I
don't like the feeling there in her belly. There's some rigidity
and some inflammation. She's never had her appendix out has she?
Um. Well, no use worrying. I'll be here first thing in the morning,
and meantime she'll get some rest. I've given her a hypo. Good
night."

  Then was Babbitt caught up in the black tempest.

  Instantly all the indignations which had been
dominating him and the spiritual dramas through which he had
struggled became pallid and absurd before the ancient and
overwhelming realities, the standard and traditional realities, of
sickness and menacing death, the long night, and the thousand
steadfast implications of married life. He crept back to her. As
she drowsed away in the tropic languor of morphia, he sat on the
edge of her bed, holding her hand, and for the first time in many
weeks her hand abode trustfully in his.

  He draped himself grotesquely in his toweling
bathrobe and a pink and white couch-cover, and sat lumpishly in a
wing-chair. The bedroom was uncanny in its half-light, which turned
the curtains to lurking robbers, the dressing-table to a turreted
castle. It smelled of cosmetics, of linen, of sleep. He napped and
woke, napped and woke, a hundred times. He heard her move and sigh
in slumber; he wondered if there wasn't some officious brisk thing
he could do for her, and before he could quite form the thought he
was asleep, racked and aching. The night was infinite. When dawn
came and the waiting seemed at an end, he fell asleep, and was
vexed to have been caught off his guard, to have been aroused by
Verona's entrance and her agitated "Oh, what is it, Dad?"

  His wife was awake, her face sallow and lifeless in
the morning light, but now he did not compare her with Tanis; she
was not merely A Woman, to be contrasted with other women, but his
own self, and though he might criticize her and nag her, it was
only as he might criticize and nag himself, interestedly,
unpatronizingly, without the expectation of changing - or any real
desire to change - the eternal essence.

  With Verona he sounded fatherly again, and firm. He
consoled Tinka, who satisfactorily pointed the excitement of the
hour by wailing. He ordered early breakfast, and wanted to look at
the newspaper, and felt somehow heroic and useful in not looking at
it. But there were still crawling and totally unheroic hours of
waiting before Dr. Patten returned.