Babbit (42 page)

  Or, like a trapper in a Northern Canada movie,
plunge through the forest, make camp in the Rockies, a grim and
wordless caveman! Why not? He COULD do it! There'd be enough money
at home for the family to live on till Verona was married and Ted
self-supporting. Old Henry T. would look out for them. Honestly!
Why NOT? Really LIVE -

  He longed for it, admitted that he longed for it,
then almost believed that he was going lo do it. Whenever common
sense snorted, "Nonsense! Folks don't run away from decent families
and partners; just simply don't do it, that's all!" then Babbitt
answered pleadingly, "Well, it wouldn't take any more nerve than
for Paul to go to jail and - Lord, how I'd' like to do it!
Moccasins-six-gun-frontier town-gamblers - sleep under the stars -
be a regular man, with he-men like Joe Paradise - gosh!"

  So he came to Maine, again stood on the wharf before
the camp-hotel, again spat heroically into the delicate and
shivering water, while the pines rustled, the mountains glowed, and
a trout leaped and fell in a sliding circle. He hurried to the
guides' shack as to his real home, his real friends, long missed.
They would be glad to see him. They would stand up and shout? "Why,
here's Mr. Babbitt! He ain't one of these ordinary sports! He's a
real guy!"

  In their boarded and rather littered cabin the
guides sat about the greasy table playing stud-poker with greasy
cards: half a dozen wrinkled men in old trousers and easy old felt
hats. They glanced up and nodded. Joe Paradise, the swart aging man
with the big mustache, grunted, "How do. Back again?"

  Silence, except for the clatter of chips.

  Babbitt stood beside them, very lonely. He hinted,
after a period of highly concentrated playing, "Guess I might take
a hand, Joe."

  "Sure. Sit in. How many chips you want? Let's see;
you were here with your wife, last year, wa'n't you?" said Joe
Paradise.

  That was all of Babbitt's welcome to the old
home.

  He played for half an hour before he spoke again.
His head was reeking with the smoke of pipes and cheap cigars, and
he was weary of pairs and four-flushes, resentful of the way in
which they ignored him. He flung at Joe:

  "Working now?"

  "Nope."

  "Like to guide me for a few days?"

  "Well, jus' soon. I ain't engaged till next
week."

  Only thus did Joe recognize the friendship Babbitt
was offering him. Babbitt paid up his losses and left the shack
rather childishly. Joe raised his head from the coils of smoke like
a seal rising from surf, grunted, "I'll come 'round t'morrow," and
dived down to his three aces.

  Neither in his voiceless cabin, fragrant with planks
of new-cut pine, nor along the lake, nor in the sunset clouds which
presently eddied behind the lavender-misted mountains, could
Babbitt find the spirit of Paul as a reassuring presence. He was so
lonely that after supper he stopped to talk with an ancient old
lady, a gasping and steadily discoursing old lady, by the stove in
the hotel-office. He told her of Ted's presumable future triumphs
in the State University and of Tinka's remarkable vocabulary till
he was homesick for the home he had left forever.

  Through the darkness, through that Northern
pine-walled silence, he blundered down to the lake-front and found
a canoe. There were no paddles in it but with a board, sitting
awkwardly amidships and poking at the water rather than paddling,
he made his way far out on the lake. The lights of the hotel and
the cottages became yellow dots, a cluster of glow-worms at the
base of Sachem Mountain. Larger and ever more imperturbable was the
mountain in the star-filtered darkness, and the lake a limitless
pavement of black marble. He was dwarfed and dumb and a little
awed, but that insignificance freed him from the pomposities of
being Mr. George F. Babbitt of Zenith; saddened and freed his
heart. Now he was conscious of the presence of Paul, fancied him
(rescued from prison, from Zilla and the brisk exactitudes of the
tar-roofing business) playing his violin at the end of the canoe.
He vowed, "I will go on! I'll never go back! Now that Paul's out of
it, I don't want to see any of those damn people again! I was a
fool to get sore because Joe Paradise didn't jump up and hug me.
He's one of these woodsmen; too wise to go yelping and talking your
arm off like a cityman. But get him back in the mountains, out on
the trail - ! That's real living!" IV

  Joe reported at Babbitt's cabin at nine the next
morning. Babbitt greeted him as a fellow caveman:

  "Well, Joe, how d' you feel about hitting the trail,
and getting away from these darn soft summerites and these women
and all?"

  "All right, Mr. Babbitt."

  "What do you say we go over to Box Car Pond - they
tell me the shack there isn't being used - and camp out?"

  "Well, all right, Mr. Babbitt, but it's nearer to
Skowtuit Pond, and you can get just about as good fishing
there."

  "No, I want to get into the real wilds."

  "Well, all right."

  "We'll put the old packs on our backs and get into
the woods and really hike."

  "I think maybe it would be easier to go by water,
through Lake Chogue. We can go all the way by motor boat -
flat-bottom boat with an Evinrude."

  "No, sir! Bust up the quiet with a chugging motor?
Not on your life! You just throw a pair of socks in the old pack,
and tell 'em what you want for eats. I'll be ready soon 's you
are."

  "Most of the sports go by boat, Mr. Babbitt. It's a
long walk.

  "Look here, Joe: are you objecting to walking?"

  "Oh, no, I guess I can do it. But I haven't tramped
that far for sixteen years. Most of the sports go by boat. But I
can do it if you say so - I guess." Joe walked away in sadness.

  Babbitt had recovered from his touchy wrath before
Joe returned. He pictured him as warming up and telling the most
entertaining stories. But Joe had not yet warmed up when they took
the trail. He persistently kept behind Babbitt, and however much
his shoulders ached from the pack, however sorely he panted,
Babbitt could hear his guide panting equally. But the trail was
satisfying: a path brown with pine-needles and rough with roots,
among the balsams, the ferns, the sudden groves of white birch. He
became credulous again, and rejoiced in sweating. When he stopped
to rest he chuckled, "Guess we're hitting it up pretty good for a
couple o' old birds, eh?"

  "Uh-huh," admitted Joe.

  "This is a mighty pretty place. Look, you can see
the lake down through the trees. I tell you, Joe, you don't
appreciate how lucky you are to live in woods like this, instead of
a city with trolleys grinding and typewriters clacking and people
bothering the life out of you all the time! I wish I knew the woods
like you do. Say, what's the name of that little red flower?"

  Rubbing his back, Joe regarded the flower
resentfully "Well, some folks call it one thing and some calls it
another I always just call it Pink Flower."

  Babbitt blessedly ceased thinking as tramping turned
into blind plodding. He was submerged in weariness. His plump legs
seemed to go on by themselves, without guidance, and he
mechanically wiped away the sweat which stung his eyes. He was too
tired to be consciously glad as, after a sun-scourged mile of
corduroy tote-road through a swamp where flies hovered over a hot
waste of brush, they reached the cool shore of Box Car Pond. When
he lifted the pack from his back he staggered from the change in
balance, and for a moment could not stand erect. He lay beneath an
ample-bosomed maple tree near the guest-shack, and joyously felt
sleep running through his veins.

  He awoke toward dusk, to find Joe efficiently
cooking bacon and eggs and flapjacks for supper, and his admiration
of the woodsman returned. He sat on a stump and felt virile.

  "Joe, what would you do if you had a lot of money?
Would you stick to guiding, or would you take a claim 'way back in
the woods and be independent of people?"

  For the first time Joe brightened. He chewed his cud
a second, and bubbled, "I've often thought of that! If I had the
money, I'd go down to Tinker's Falls and open a swell shoe
store."

  After supper Joe proposed a game of stud-poker but
Babbitt refused with brevity, and Joe contentedly went to bed at
eight. Babbitt sat on the stump, facing the dark pond, slapping
mosquitos. Save the snoring guide, there was no other human being
within ten miles. He was lonelier than he had ever been in his
life. Then he was in Zenith.

  He was worrying as to whether Miss McGoun wasn't
paying too much for carbon paper. He was at once resenting and
missing the persistent teasing at the Roughnecks' Table. He was
wondering what Zilla Riesling was doing now. He was wondering
whether, after the summer's maturity of being a garageman, Ted
would "get busy" in the university. He was thinking of his wife.
"If she would only - if she wouldn't be so darn satisfied with just
settling down - No! I won't! I won't go back! I'll be fifty in
three years. Sixty in thirteen years. I'm going to have some fun
before it's too late. I don't care! I will!"

  He thought of Ida Putiak, of Louetta Swanson, of
that nice widow - what was her name? - Tanis Judique? - the one for
whom he'd found the flat. He was enmeshed in imaginary
conversations. Then:

  "Gee, I can't seem to get away from thinking about
folks!"

  Thus it came to him merely to run away was folly,
because he could never run away from himself.

  That moment he started for Zenith. In his journey
there was no appearance of flight, but he was fleeing, and four
days afterward he was on the Zenith train. He knew that he was
slinking back not because it was what he longed to do but because
it was all he could do. He scanned again his discovery that he
could never run away from Zenith and family and office, because in
his own brain he bore the office and the family and every street
and disquiet and illusion of Zenith.

  "But I'm going to - oh, I'm going to start
something!" he vowed, and he tried to make it valiant.

  I

  
A
s he walked
through the train, looking for familiar faces, he saw only one
person whom he knew, and that was Seneca Doane, the lawyer who,
after the blessings of being in Babbitt's own class at college and
of becoming a corporation-counsel, had turned crank, had headed
farmer-labor tickets and fraternized with admitted socialists.
Though he was in rebellion, naturally Babbitt did not care to be
seen talking with such a fanatic, but in all the Pullmans he could
find no other acquaintance, and reluctantly he halted. Seneca Doane
was a slight, thin-haired man, rather like Chum Frink except that
he hadn't Frink's grin. He was reading a book called "The Way of
All Flesh." It looked religious to Babbitt, and he wondered if
Doane could possibly have been converted and turned decent and
patriotic.

  "Why, hello, Doane," he said.

  Doane looked up. His voice was curiously kind. "Oh!
How do, Babbitt."

  "Been away, eh?"

  "Yes, I've been in Washington."

  "Washington, eh? How's the old Government making
out?"

  "It's - Won't you sit down?"

  "Thanks. Don't care if I do. Well, well! Been quite
a while since I've had a good chance to talk to you, Doane. I was,
uh - Sorry you didn't turn up at the last class-dinner."

  "Oh-thanks."

  "How's the unions coming? Going to run for mayor
again?" Doane seemed restless. He was fingering the pages of his
book. He said "I might" as though it didn't mean anything in
particular, and he smiled.

  Babbitt liked that smile, and hunted for
conversation: "Saw a bang-up cabaret in New York: the 'Good-Morning
Cutie' bunch at the Hotel Minton."

  "Yes, they're pretty girls. I danced there one
evening."