Babbit (19 page)

  She was beaming. "Oh, it was nice, wasn't it! I know
they enjoyed every minute of it. Don't you think so?"

  He couldn't do it. He couldn't mock. It would have
been like sneering at a happy child. He lied ponderously: "You bet!
Best party this year, by a long shot."

  "Wasn't the dinner good! And honestly I thought the
fried chicken was delicious!"

  "You bet! Fried to the Queen's taste. Best fried
chicken I've tasted for a coon's age."

  "Didn't Matilda fry it beautifully! And don't you
think the soup was simply delicious?"

  "It certainly was! It was corking! Best soup I've
tasted since Heck was a pup!" But his voice was seeping away. They
stood in the hall, under the electric light in its square box-like
shade of red glass bound with nickel. She stared at him.

  "Why, George, you don't sound - you sound as if you
hadn't really enjoyed it."

  "Sure I did! Course I did!"

  "George! What is it?"

  "Oh, I'm kind of tired, I guess. Been pounding
pretty hard at the office. Need to get away and rest up a
little."

  "Well, we're going to Maine in just a few weeks now,
dear." "Yuh - " Then he was pouring it out nakedly, robbed of
reticence. "Myra: I think it'd be a good thing for me to get up
there early."

  "But you have this man you have to meet in New York
about business."

  "What man? Oh, sure. Him. Oh, that's all off. But I
want to hit Maine early - get in a little fishing, catch me a big
trout, by golly!" A nervous, artificial laugh.

  "Well, why don't we do it? Verona and Matilda can
run the house between them, and you and I can go any time, if you
think we can afford it."

  "But that's - I've been feeling so jumpy lately, I
thought maybe it might be a good thing if I kind of got off by
myself and sweat it out of me."

  "George! Don't you WANT me to go along?" She was too
wretchedly in earnest to be tragic, or gloriously insulted, or
anything save dumpy and defenseless and flushed to the red
steaminess of a boiled beet.

  "Of course I do! I just meant - " Remembering that
Paul Riesling had predicted this, he was as desperate as she. "I
mean, sometimes it's a good thing for an old grouch like me to go
off and get it out of his system." He tried to sound paternal.
"Then when you and the kids arrive - I figured maybe I might skip
up to Maine just a few days ahead of you - I'd be ready for a real
bat, see how I mean?" He coaxed her with large booming sounds, with
affable smiles, like a popular preacher blessing an Easter
congregation, like a humorous lecturer completing his stint of
eloquence, like all perpetrators of masculine wiles.

  She stared at him, the joy of festival drained from
her face. "Do I bother you when we go on vacations? Don't I add
anything to your fun?"

  He broke. Suddenly, dreadfully, he was hysterical,
he was a yelping baby. "Yes, yes, yes! Hell, yes! But can't you
understand I'm shot to pieces? I'm all in! I got to take care of
myself! I tell you, I got to - I'm sick of everything and
everybody! I got to - "

  It was she who was mature and protective now. "Why,
of course! You shall run off by yourself! Why don't you get Paul to
go along, and you boys just fish and have a good time?" She patted
his shoulder - reaching up to it - while he shook with palsied
helplessness, and in that moment was not merely by habit fond of
her but clung to her strength.

  She cried cheerily, "Now up-stairs you go, and pop
into bed. We'll fix it all up. I'll see to the doors. Now
skip!"

  For many minutes, for many hours, for a bleak
eternity, he lay awake, shivering, reduced to primitive terror,
comprehending that he had won freedom, and wondering what he could
do with anything so unknown and so embarrassing as freedom.

  
N
o
apartment-house in Zenith had more resolutely experimented in
condensation than the Revelstoke Arms, in which Paul and Zilla
Riesling had a flat. By sliding the beds into low closets the
bedrooms were converted into living-rooms. The kitchens were
cupboards each containing an electric range, a copper sink, a glass
refrigerator, and, very intermittently, a Balkan maid. Everything
about the Arms was excessively modern, and everything was
compressed - except the garages.

  The Babbitts were calling on the Rieslings at the
Arms. It was a speculative venture to call on the Rieslings;
interesting and sometimes disconcerting. Zilla was an active,
strident, full-blown, high-bosomed blonde. When she condescended to
be good-humored she was nervously amusing. Her comments on people
were saltily satiric and penetrative of accepted hypocrisies.
"That's so!" you said, and looked sheepish. She danced wildly, and
called on the world to be merry, but in the midst of it she would
turn indignant. She was always becoming indignant. Life was a plot
against her and she exposed it furiously.

  She was affable to-night. She merely hinted that
Orville Jones wore a toupe, that Mrs. T. Cholmondeley Frink's
singing resembled a Ford going into high, and that the Hon. Otis
Deeble, mayor of Zenith and candidate for Congress, was a flatulent
fool (which was quite true). The Babbitts and Rieslings sat
doubtfully on stone-hard brocade chairs in the small living-room of
the flat, with its mantel unprovided with a fireplace, and its
strip of heavy gilt fabric upon a glaring new player-piano, till
Mrs. Riesling shrieked, "Come on! Let's put some pep in it! Get out
your fiddle, Paul, and I'll try to make Georgie dance
decently."

  The Babbitts were in earnest. They were plotting for
the escape to Maine. But when Mrs. Babbitt hinted with plump
smilingness, "Does Paul get as tired after the winter's work as
Georgie does?" then Zilla remembered an injury; and when Zilla
Riesling remembered an injury the world stopped till something had
been done about it.

  "Does he get tired? No, he doesn't get tired, he
just goes crazy, that's all! You think Paul is so reasonable, oh,
yes, and he loves to make out he's a little lamb, but he's stubborn
as a mule. Oh, if you had to live with him - ! You'd find out how
sweet he is! He just pretends to be meek so he can have his own
way. And me, I get the credit for being a terrible old crank, but
if I didn't blow up once in a while and get something started, we'd
die of dry-rot. He never wants to go any place and - Why, last
evening, just because the car was out of order - and that was his
fault, too, because he ought to have taken it to the
service-station and had the battery looked at - and he didn't want
to go down to the movies on the trolley. But we went, and then
there was one of those impudent conductors, and Paul wouldn't do a
thing.

  "I was standing on the platform waiting for the
people to let me into the car, and this beast, this conductor,
hollered at me, 'Come on, you, move up!' Why, I've never had
anybody speak to me that way in all my life! I was so astonished I
just turned to him and said - I thought there must be some mistake,
and so I said to him, perfectly pleasant, 'Were you speaking to
me?' and he went on and bellowed at me, 'Yes, I was! You're keeping
the whole car from starting!' he said, and then I saw he was one of
these dirty ill-bred hogs that kindness is wasted on, and so I
stopped and looked right at him, and I said, 'I - beg - your -
pardon, I am not doing anything of the kind,' I said, 'it's the
people ahead of me, who won't move up,' I said, 'and furthermore,
let me tell you, young man, that you're a low-down, foul-mouthed,
impertinent skunk,' I said, 'and you're no gentleman! I certainly
intend to report you, and we'll see,' I said, 'whether a lady is to
be insulted by any drunken bum that chooses to put on a ragged
uniform, and I'd thank you,' I said, 'to keep your filthy abuse to
yourself.' And then I waited for Paul to show he was half a man and
come to my defense, and he just stood there and pretended he hadn't
heard a word, and so I said to him, 'Well,' I said - "

  "Oh, cut it, cut it, Zill!" Paul groaned. "We all
know I'm a mollycoddle, and you're a tender bud, and let's let it
go at that."

  "Let it go?" Zilla's face was wrinkled like the
Medusa, her voice was a dagger of corroded brass. She was full of
the joy of righteousness and bad temper. She was a crusader and,
like every crusader, she exulted in the opportunity to be vicious
in the name of virtue. "Let it go? If people knew how many things
I've let go - "

  "Oh, quit being such a bully."

  "Yes, a fine figure you'd cut if I didn't bully you!
You'd lie abed till noon and play your idiotic fiddle till
midnight! You're born lazy, and you're born shiftless, and you're
born cowardly, Paul Riesling - "

  "Oh, now, don't say that, Zilla; you don't mean a
word of it!" protested Mrs. Babbitt.

  "I will say that, and I mean every single last word
of it!"

  "Oh, now, Zilla, the idea!" Mrs. Babbitt was
maternal and fussy. She was no older than Zilla, but she seemed so
- at first. She was placid and puffy and mature, where Zilla, at
forty-five, was so bleached and tight-corseted that you knew only
that she was older than she looked. "The idea of talking to poor
Paul like that!"

  "Poor Paul is right! We'd both be poor, we'd be in
the poorhouse, if I didn't jazz him up!"

  "Why, now, Zilla, Georgie and I were just saying how
hard Paul's been working all year, and we were thinking it would be
lovely if the Boys could run off by themselves. I've been coaxing
George to go up to Maine ahead of the rest of us, and get the tired
out of his system before we come, and I think it would be lovely if
Paul could manage to get away and join him."

  At this exposure of his plot to escape, Paul was
startled out of impassivity. He rubbed his fingers. His hands
twitched.

  Zilla bayed, "Yes! You're lucky! You can let George
go, and not have to watch him. Fat old Georgie! Never peeps at
another woman! Hasn't got the spunk!"

  "The hell I haven't!" Babbitt was fervently
defending his priceless immorality when Paul interrupted him - and
Paul looked dangerous. He rose quickly; he said gently to
Zilla:

  "I suppose you imply I have a lot of
sweethearts."

  "Yes, I do!"

  "Well, then, my dear, since you ask for it - There
hasn't been a time in the last ten years when I haven't found some
nice little girl to comfort me, and as long as you continue your
amiability I shall probably continue to deceive you. It isn't hard.
You're so stupid."

  Zilla gibbered; she howled; words could not be
distinguished in her slaver of abuse.

  Then the bland George F. Babbitt was transformed. If
Paul was dangerous, if Zilla was a snake-locked fury, if the neat
emotions suitable to the Revelstoke Arms had been slashed into raw
hatreds, it was Babbitt who was the most formidable. He leaped up.
He seemed very large. He seized Zilla's shoulder. The cautions of
the broker were wiped from his face, and his voice was cruel:

  "I've had enough of all this damn nonsense! I've
known you for twenty-five years, Zil, and I never knew you to miss
a chance to take your disappointments out on Paul. You're not
wicked. You're worse. You're a fool. And let me tell you that Paul
is the finest boy God ever made. Every decent person is sick and
tired of your taking advantage of being a woman and springing every
mean innuendo you can think of. Who the hell are you that a person
like Paul should have to ask your PERMISSION to go with me? You act
like you were a combination of Queen Victoria and Cleopatra. You
fool, can't you see how people snicker at you, and sneer at
you?"

  Zilla was sobbing, "I've never - I've never - nobody
ever talked to me like this in all my life!"

  "No, but that's the way they talk behind your back!
Always! They say you're a scolding old woman. Old, by God!"

  That cowardly attack broke her. Her eyes were blank.
She wept. But Babbitt glared stolidly. He felt that he was the
all-powerful official in charge; that Paul and Mrs. Babbitt looked
on him with awe; that he alone could handle this case.