Babbit (38 page)

  But he went on, in a monotonous, terrified insane
mumble. To divert him Babbitt said, "Why, you got a scar on your
cheek."

  "Yes. That's where the cop hit me. I suppose cops
get a lot of fun out of lecturing murderers, too. He was a big
fellow. And they wouldn't let me help carry Zilla down to the
ambulance."

  "Paul! Quit it! Listen: she won't die, and when it's
all over you and I'll go off to Maine again. And maybe we can get
that May Arnold to go along. I'll go up to Chicago and ask her.
Good woman, by golly. And afterwards I'll see that you get started
in business out West somewhere, maybe Seattle - they say that's a
lovely city."

  Paul was half smiling. It was Babbitt who rambled
now. He could not tell whether Paul was heeding, but he droned on
till the coming of Paul's lawyer, P. J. Maxwell, a thin, busy,
unfriendly man who nodded at Babbitt and hinted, "If Riesling and I
could be alone for a moment - "

  Babbitt wrung Paul's hands, and waited in the office
till Maxwell came pattering out. "Look, old man, what can I do?" he
begged.

  "Nothing. Not a thing. Not just now," said Maxwell.
"Sorry. Got to hurry. And don't try to see him. I've had the doctor
give him a shot of morphine, so he'll sleep."

  It seemed somehow wicked to return to the office.
Babbitt felt as though he had just come from a funeral. He drifted
out to the City Hospital to inquire about Zilla. She was not likely
to die, he learned. The bullet from Paul's huge old .44 army
revolver had smashed her shoulder and torn upward and out.

  He wandered home and found his wife radiant with the
hor-ified interest we have in the tragedies of our friends. "Of
course Paul isn't altogether to blame, but this is what comes of
his chasing after other women instead of bearing his cross in a
Christian way," she exulted.

  He was too languid to respond as he desired. He said
what was to be said about the Christian bearing of crosses, and
went out to clean the car. Dully, patiently, he scraped linty
grease from the drip-pan, gouged at the mud caked on the wheels. He
used up many minutes in washing his hands; scoured them with gritty
kitchen soap; rejoiced in hurting his plump knuckles. "Damn soft
hands - like a woman's. Aah!"

  At dinner, when his wife began the inevitable, he
bellowed, "I forbid any of you to say a word about Paul! I'll 'tend
to all the talking about this that's necessary, hear me? There's
going to be one house in this scandal-mongering town to-night that
isn't going to spring the holier-than-thou. And throw those filthy
evening papers out of the house!"

  But he himself read the papers, after dinner.

  Before nine he set out for the house of Lawyer
Maxwell. He was received without cordiality. "Well?" said
Maxwell.

  "I want to offer my services in the trial. I've got
an idea. Why couldn't I go on the stand and swear I was there, and
she pulled the gun first and he wrestled with her and the gun went
off accidentally?"

  "And perjure yourself?"

  "Huh? Yes, I suppose it would be perjury. Oh - Would
it help?"

  "But, my dear fellow! Perjury!"

  "Oh, don't be a fool! Excuse me, Maxwell; I didn't
mean to get your goat. I just mean: I've known and you've known
many and many a case of perjury, just to annex some rotten little
piece of real estate, and here where it's a case of saving Paul
from going to prison, I'd perjure myself black in the face."

  "No. Aside from the ethics of the matter, I'm afraid
it isn't practicable. The prosecutor would tear your testimony to
pieces. It's known that only Riesling and his wife were there at
the time."

  "Then, look here! Let me go on the stand and swear -
and this would be the God's truth - that she pestered him till he
kind of went crazy."

  "No. Sorry. Riesling absolutely refuses to have any
testimony reflecting on his wife. He insists on pleading
guilty."

  "Then let me get up and testify something - whatever
you say. Let me do SOMETHING!"

  "I'm sorry, Babbitt, but the best thing you can do -
I hate to say it, but you could help us most by keeping strictly
out of it."

  Babbitt, revolving his hat like a defaulting poor
tenant, winced so visibly that Maxwell condescended:

  "I don't like to hurt your feelings, but you see we
both want to do our best for Riesling, and we mustn't consider any
other factor. The trouble with you, Babbitt, is that you're one of
these fellows who talk too readily. You like to hear your own
voice. If there were anything for which I could put you in the
witness-box, you'd get going and give the whole show away. Sorry.
Now I must look over some papers - So sorry."

  II

  He spent most of the next morning nerving himself to
face the garrulous world of the Athletic Club. They would talk
about Paul; they would be lip-licking and rotten. But at the
Roughnecks' Table they did not mention Paul. They spoke with zeal
of the coming baseball season. He loved them as he never had
before.

  III

  He had, doubtless from some story-book, pictured
Paul's trial as a long struggle, with bitter arguments, a taut
crowd, and sudden and overwhelming new testimony. Actually, the
trial occupied less than fifteen minutes, largely filled with the
evidence of doctors that Zilla would recover and that Paul must
have been temporarily insane. Next day Paul was sentenced to three
years in the State Penitentiary and taken off - quite
undramatically, not handcuffed, merely plodding in a tired way
beside a cheerful deputy sheriff - and after saying good-by to him
at the station Babbitt returned to his office to realize that he
faced a world which, without Paul, was meaningless.

  I

  
H
E 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.
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 boob!" 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?