Babbit (18 page)

  I

  
B
ABBITT was fond
of his friends, he loved the importance of being host and shouting,
"Certainly, you're going to have smore chicken - the idea!" and he
appreciated the genius of T. Cholmondeley Frink, but the vigor of
the cocktails was gone, and the more he ate the less joyful he
felt. Then the amity of the dinner was destroyed by the nagging of
the Swansons.

  In Floral Heights and the other prosperous sections
of Zenith, especially in the "young married set," there were many
women who had nothing to do. Though they had few servants, yet with
gas stoves, electric ranges and dish-washers and vacuum cleaners,
and tiled kitchen walls, their houses were so convenient that they
had little housework, and much of their food came from bakeries and
delicatessens. They had but two, one, or no children; and despite
the myth that the Great War had made work respectable, their
husbands objected to their "wasting time and getting a lot of crank
ideas" in unpaid social work, and still more to their causing a
rumor, by earning money, that they were not adequately supported.
They worked perhaps two hours a day, and the rest of the time they
ate chocolates, went to the motion-pictures, went window-shopping,
went in gossiping twos and threes to card-parties, read magazines,
thought timorously of the lovers who never appeared, and
accumulated a splendid restlessness which they got rid of by
nagging their husbands. The husbands nagged back.

  Of these naggers the Swansons were perfect
specimens.

  Throughout the dinner Eddie Swanson had been
complaining, publicly, about his wife's new frock. It was, he
submitted, too short, too low, too immodestly thin, and much too
expensive. He appealed to Babbitt:

  "Honest, George, what do you think of that rag
Louetta went and bought? Don't you think it's the limit?"

  "What's eating you, Eddie? I call it a swell little
dress."

  "Oh, it is, Mr. Swanson. It's a sweet frock," Mrs.
Babbitt protested.

  "There now, do you see, smarty! You're such an
authority on clothes!" Louetta raged, while the guests ruminated
and peeped at her shoulders.

  "That's all right now," said Swanson. "I'm authority
enough so I know it was a waste of money, and it makes me tired to
see you not wearing out a whole closetful of clothes you got
already. I've expressed my idea about this before, and you know
good and well you didn't pay the least bit of attention. I have to
camp on your trail to get you to do anything - "

  There was much more of it, and they all assisted,
all but Babbitt. Everything about him was dim except his stomach,
and that was a bright scarlet disturbance. "Had too much grub;
oughtn't to eat this stuff," he groaned - while he went on eating,
while he gulped down a chill and glutinous slice of the ice-cream
brick, and cocoanut cake as oozy as shaving-cream. He felt as
though he had been stuffed with clay; his body was bursting, his
throat was bursting, his brain was hot mud; and only with agony did
he continue to smile and shout as became a host on Floral
Heights.

  He would, except for his guests, have fled outdoors
and walked off the intoxication of food, but in the haze which
filled the room they sat forever, talking, talking, while he
agonized, "Darn fool to be eating all this - not 'nother mouthful,"
and discovered that he was again tasting the sickly welter of
melted ice cream on his plate. There was no magic in his friends;
he was not uplifted when Howard Littlefield produced from his
treasure-house of scholarship the information that the chemical
symbol for raw rubber is C10H16, which turns into isoprene, or
2C5H8. Suddenly, without precedent, Babbitt was not merely bored
but admitting that he was bored. It was ecstasy to escape from the
table, from the torture of a straight chair, and loll on the
davenport in the living-room.

  The others, from their fitful unconvincing talk,
their expressions of being slowly and painfully smothered, seemed
to be suffering from the toil of social life and the horror of good
food as much as himself. All of them accepted with relief the
suggestion of bridge.

  Babbitt recovered from the feeling of being boiled.
He won at bridge. He was again able to endure Vergil Gunch's
inexorable heartiness. But he pictured loafing with Paul Riesling
beside a lake in Maine. It was as overpowering and imaginative as
homesickness. He had never seen Maine, yet he beheld the shrouded
mountains, the tranquil lake of evening. "That boy Paul's worth all
these ballyhooing highbrows put together," he muttered; and, "I'd
like to get away from - everything."

  Even Louetta Swanson did not rouse him.

  Mrs. Swanson was pretty and pliant. Babbitt was not
an analyst of women, except as to their tastes in Furnished Houses
to Rent. He divided them into Real Ladies, Working Women, Old
Cranks, and Fly Chickens. He mooned over their charms but he was of
opinion that all of them (save the women of his own family) were
"different" and "mysterious." Yet he had known by instinct that
Louetta Swanson could be approached. Her eyes and lips were moist.
Her face tapered from a broad forehead to a pointed chin, her mouth
was thin but strong and avid, and between her brows were two
outcurving and passionate wrinkles. She was thirty, perhaps, or
younger. Gossip had never touched her, but every man naturally and
instantly rose to flirtatiousness when he spoke to her, and every
woman watched her with stilled blankness.

  Between games, sitting on the davenport, Babbitt
spoke to her with the requisite gallantry, that sonorous Floral
Heights gallantry which is not flirtation but a terrified flight
from it: "You're looking like a new soda-fountain to night,
Louetta."

  "Am I?"

  "Ole Eddie kind of on the rampage."

  "Yes. I get so sick of it."

  "Well, when you get tired of hubby, you can run off
with Uncle George."

  "If I ran away - Oh, well - "

  "Anybody ever tell you your hands are awful
pretty?"

  She looked down at them, she pulled the lace of her
sleeves over them, but otherwise she did not heed him. She was lost
in unexpressed imaginings.

  Babbitt was too languid this evening to pursue his
duty of being a captivating (though strictly moral) male. He ambled
back to the bridge-tables. He was not much thrilled when Mrs.
Frink, a small twittering woman, proposed that they "try and do
some spiritualism and table-tipping - you know Chum can make the
spirits come - honest, he just scares me!"

  The ladies of the party had not emerged all evening,
but now, as the sex given to things of the spirit while the men
warred against base things material, they took command and cried,
"Oh, let's!" In the dimness the men were rather solemn and foolish,
but the goodwives quivered and adored as they sat about the table.
They laughed, "Now, you be good or I'll tell!" when the men took
their hands in the circle.

  Babbitt tingled with a slight return of interest in
life as Louetta Swanson's hand closed on his with quiet
firmness.

  All of them hunched over, intent. They startled as
some one drew a strained breath. In the dusty light from the hall
they looked unreal, they felt disembodied. Mrs. Gunch squeaked, and
they jumped with unnatural jocularity, but at Frink's hiss they
sank into subdued awe. Suddenly, incredibly, they heard a knocking.
They stared at Frink's half-revealed hands and found them lying
still. They wriggled, and pretended not to be impressed.

  Frink spoke with gravity: "Is some one there?" A
thud. "Is one knock to be the sign for 'yes'?" A thud. "And two for
'no'?" A thud.

  "Now, ladies and gentlemen, shall we ask the guide
to put us into communication with the spirit of some great one
passed over?" Frink mumbled.

  Mrs Orville Jones begged, "Oh, let's talk to Dante!
We studied him at the Reading Circle. You know who he was,
Orvy."

  "Certainly I know who he was! The Wop poet. Where do
you think I was raised?" from her insulted husband.

  "Sure - the fellow that took the Cook's Tour to
Hell. I've never waded through his po'try, but we learned about him
in the U.," said Babbitt.

  "Page Mr. Dannnnnty!" intoned Eddie Swanson.

  "You ought to get him easy, Mr. Frink, you and he
being fellow-poets," said Louetta Swanson.

  "Fellow-poets, rats! Where d' you get that stuff?"
protested Vergil Gunch. "I suppose Dante showed a lot of speed for
an old-timer - not that I've actually read him, of course - but to
come right down to hard facts, he wouldn't stand one-two-three if
he had to buckle down to practical literature and turn out a poem
for the newspaper-syndicate every day, like Chum does!"

  "That's so," from Eddie Swanson. "Those old birds
could take their time. Judas Priest, I could write poetry myself if
I had a whole year for it, and just wrote about that old-fashioned
junk like Dante wrote about."

  Frink demanded, "Hush, now! I'll call him. . . O,
Laughing Eyes, emerge forth into the, uh, the ultimates and bring
hither the spirit of Dante, that we mortals may list to his words
of wisdom."

  "You forgot to give um the address: 1658 Brimstone
Avenue, Fiery Heights, Hell," Gunch chuckled, but the others felt
that this was irreligious. And besides - "probably it was just Chum
making the knocks, but still, if there did happen to be something
to all this, be exciting to talk to an old fellow belonging to -
way back in early times - "

  A thud. The spirit of Dante had come to the parlor
of George F. Babbitt.

  He was, it seemed, quite ready to answer their
questions. He was "glad to be with them, this evening."

  Frink spelled out the messages by running through
the alphabet till the spirit interpreter knocked at the right
letter.

  Littlefield asked, in a learned tone, "Do you like
it in the Paradiso, Messire?"

  "We are very happy on the higher plane, Signor. We
are glad that you are studying this great truth of spiritualism,"
Dante replied.

  The circle moved with an awed creaking of stays and
shirt-fronts. "Suppose - suppose there were something to this?"

  Babbitt had a different worry. "Suppose Chum Frink
was really one of these spiritualists! Chum had, for a literary
fellow, always seemed to be a Regular Guy; he belonged to the
Chatham Road Presbyterian Church and went to the Boosters' lunches
and liked cigars and motors and racy stories. But suppose that
secretly - After all, you never could tell about these darn
highbrows; and to be an out-and-out spiritualist would be almost
like being a socialist!"

  No one could long be serious in the presence of
Vergil Gunch. "Ask Dant' how Jack Shakespeare and old Verg' - the
guy they named after me - are gettin' along, and don't they wish
they could get into the movie game!" he blared, and instantly all
was mirth. Mrs. Jones shrieked, and Eddie Swanson desired to know
whether Dante didn't catch cold with nothing on but his wreath.

  The pleased Dante made humble answer.

  But Babbitt - the curst discontent was torturing him
again, and heavily, in the impersonal darkness, he pondered, "I
don't - We're all so flip and think we're so smart. There'd be - A
fellow like Dante - I wish I'd read some of his pieces. I don't
suppose I ever will, now."

  He had, without explanation, the impression of a
slaggy cliff and on it, in silhouette against menacing clouds, a
lone and austere figure. He was dismayed by a sudden contempt for
his surest friends. He grasped Louetta Swanson's hand, and found
the comfort of human warmth. Habit came, a veteran warrior; and he
shook himself. "What the deuce is the matter with me, this
evening?"

  He patted Louetta's hand, to indicate that he hadn't
meant anything improper by squeezing it, and demanded of Frink,
"Say, see if you can get old Dant' to spiel us some of his poetry.
Talk up to him. Tell him, 'Buena giorna, senor, com sa va, wie
geht's? Keskersaykersa a little pome, senor?'"

  II

  The lights were switched on; the women sat on the
fronts of their chairs in that determined suspense whereby a wife
indicates that as soon as the present speaker has finished, she is
going to remark brightly to her husband, "Well, dear, I think
per-HAPS it's about time for us to be saying good-night." For once
Babbitt did not break out in blustering efforts to keep the party
going. He had - there was something he wished to think out - But
the psychical research had started them off again. ("Why didn't
they go home! Why didn't they go home!") Though he was impressed by
the profundity of the statement, he was only half-enthusiastic when
Howard Littlefield lectured, "The United States is the only nation
in which the government is a Moral Ideal and not just a social
arrangement." ("True - true - weren't they EVER going home?") He
was usually delighted to have an "inside view" of the momentous
world of motors but to-night he scarcely listened to Eddie
Swanson's revelation: "If you want to go above the Javelin class,
the Zeeco is a mighty good buy. Couple weeks ago, and mind you,
this was a fair, square test, they took a Zeeco stock touring-car
and they slid up the Tonawanda hill on high, and fellow told me - "
("Zeeco good boat but - Were they planning to stay all night?")

  They really were going, with a flutter of "We did
have the best time!"

  Most aggressively friendly of all was Babbitt, yet
as he burbled he was reflecting, "I got through it, but for a while
there I didn't hardly think I'd last out." He prepared to taste
that most delicate pleasure of the host: making fun of his guests
in the relaxation of midnight. As the door closed he yawned
voluptuously, chest out, shoulders wriggling, and turned cynically
to his wife.