Babbit (39 page)

  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.

  I

  
H
IS 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.