Chapter: I

THE summer before, Mrs. Babbitt's letters had crackled with desire to
return to Zenith. Now they said nothing of returning, but a wistful
"I suppose everything is going on all right without me" among her dry
chronicles of weather and sicknesses hinted to Babbitt that he hadn't
been very urgent about her coming. He worried it:

"If she were here, and I went on raising cain like I been doing, she'd
have a fit. I got to get hold of myself. I got to learn to play around
and yet not make a fool of myself. I can do it, too, if folks like
Verg Gunch 'll let me alone, and Myra 'll stay away. But--poor kid, she
sounds lonely. Lord, I don't want to hurt her!"

Impulsively he wrote that they missed her, and her next letter said
happily that she was coming home.

He persuaded himself that he was eager to see her. He bought roses
for the house, he ordered squab for dinner, he had the car cleaned and
polished. All the way home from the station with her he was adequate
in his accounts of Ted's success in basket-ball at the university, but
before they reached Floral Heights there was nothing more to say, and
already he felt the force of her stolidity, wondered whether he could
remain a good husband and still sneak out of the house this evening for
half an hour with the Bunch. When he had housed the car he blundered
upstairs, into the familiar talcum-scented warmth of her presence,
blaring, "Help you unpack your bag?"

"No, I can do it."

Slowly she turned, holding up a small box, and slowly she said, "I
brought you a present, just a new cigar-case. I don't know if you'd care
to have it--"

She was the lonely girl, the brown appealing Myra Thompson, whom he had
married, and he almost wept for pity as he kissed her and besought,
"Oh, honey, honey, CARE to have it? Of course I do! I'm awful proud you
brought it to me. And I needed a new case badly."

He wondered how he would get rid of the case he had bought the week
before.

"And you really are glad to see me back?"

"Why, you poor kiddy, what you been worrying about?"

"Well, you didn't seem to miss me very much."

By the time he had finished his stint of lying they were firmly bound
again. By ten that evening it seemed improbable that she had ever
been away. There was but one difference: the problem of remaining a
respectable husband, a Floral Heights husband, yet seeing Tanis and
the Bunch with frequency. He had promised to telephone to Tanis that
evening, and now it was melodramatically impossible. He prowled about
the telephone, impulsively thrusting out a hand to lift the receiver,
but never quite daring to risk it. Nor could he find a reason
for slipping down to the drug store on Smith Street, with its
telephone-booth. He was laden with responsibility till he threw it off
with the speculation: "Why the deuce should I fret so about not being
able to 'phone Tanis? She can get along without me. I don't owe her
anything. She's a fine girl, but I've given her just as much as she has
me. . . . Oh, damn these women and the way they get you all tied up in
complications!"


II

For a week he was attentive to his wife, took her to the theater, to
dinner at the Littlefields'; then the old weary dodging and shifting
began and at least two evenings a week he spent with the Bunch. He still
made pretense of going to the Elks and to committee-meetings but less
and less did he trouble to have his excuses interesting, less and less
did she affect to believe them. He was certain that she knew he was
associating with what Floral Heights called "a sporty crowd," yet
neither of them acknowledged it. In matrimonial geography the distance
between the first mute recognition of a break and the admission thereof
is as great as the distance between the first naive faith and the first
doubting.

As he began to drift away he also began to see her as a human being, to
like and dislike her instead of accepting her as a comparatively movable
part of the furniture, and he compassionated that husband-and-wife
relation which, in twenty-five years of married life, had become a
separate and real entity. He recalled their high lights: the summer
vacation in Virginia meadows under the blue wall of the mountains; their
motor tour through Ohio, and the exploration of Cleveland, Cincinnati,
and Columbus; the birth of Verona; their building of this new house,
planned to comfort them through a happy old age--chokingly they had said
that it might be the last home either of them would ever have. Yet his
most softening remembrance of these dear moments did not keep him from
barking at dinner, "Yep, going out f' few hours. Don't sit up for me."

He did not dare now to come home drunk, and though he rejoiced in his
return to high morality and spoke with gravity to Pete and Fulton Bemis
about their drinking, he prickled at Myra's unexpressed criticisms and
sulkily meditated that a "fellow couldn't ever learn to handle himself
if he was always bossed by a lot of women."

He no longer wondered if Tanis wasn't a bit worn and sentimental. In
contrast to the complacent Myra he saw her as swift and air-borne and
radiant, a fire-spirit tenderly stooping to the hearth, and however
pitifully he brooded on his wife, he longed to be with Tanis.

Then Mrs. Babbitt tore the decent cloak from her unhappiness and
the astounded male discovered that she was having a small determined
rebellion of her own.


III

They were beside the fireless fire-place, in the evening.

"Georgie," she said, "you haven't given me the list of your household
expenses while I was away."

"No, I--Haven't made it out yet." Very affably: "Gosh, we must try to
keep down expenses this year."

"That's so. I don't know where all the money goes to. I try to
economize, but it just seems to evaporate."

"I suppose I oughtn't to spend so much on cigars. Don't know but what
I'll cut down my smoking, maybe cut it out entirely. I was thinking of
a good way to do it, the other day: start on these cubeb cigarettes, and
they'd kind of disgust me with smoking."

"Oh, I do wish you would! It isn't that I care, but honestly, George, it
is so bad for you to smoke so much. Don't you think you could reduce the
amount? And George--I notice now, when you come home from these lodges
and all, that sometimes you smell of whisky. Dearie, you know I don't
worry so much about the moral side of it, but you have a weak stomach
and you can't stand all this drinking."

"Weak stomach, hell! I guess I can carry my booze about as well as most
folks!"

"Well, I do think you ought to be careful. Don't you see, dear, I don't
want you to get sick."

"Sick, rats! I'm not a baby! I guess I ain't going to get sick just
because maybe once a week I shoot a highball! That's the trouble with
women. They always exaggerate so."

"George, I don't think you ought to talk that way when I'm just speaking
for your own good."

"I know, but gosh all fishhooks, that's the trouble with women! They're
always criticizing and commenting and bringing things up, and then they
say it's 'for your own good'!"

"Why, George, that's not a nice way to talk, to answer me so short."

"Well, I didn't mean to answer short, but gosh, talking as if I was a
kindergarten brat, not able to tote one highball without calling for the
St. Mary's ambulance! A fine idea you must have of me!"

"Oh, it isn't that; it's just--I don't want to see you get sick and--My,
I didn't know it was so late! Don't forget to give me those household
accounts for the time while I was away."

"Oh, thunder, what's the use of taking the trouble to make 'em out now?
Let's just skip 'em for that period."

"Why, George Babbitt, in all the years we've been married we've never
failed to keep a complete account of every penny we've spent!"

"No. Maybe that's the trouble with us."

"What in the world do you mean?"

"Oh, I don't mean anything, only--Sometimes I get so darn sick and tired
of all this routine and the accounting at the office and expenses
at home and fussing and stewing and fretting and wearing myself out
worrying over a lot of junk that doesn't really mean a doggone thing,
and being so careful and--Good Lord, what do you think I'm made for?
I could have been a darn good orator, and here I fuss and fret and
worry--"

"Don't you suppose I ever get tired of fussing? I get so bored with
ordering three meals a day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year,
and ruining my eyes over that horrid sewing-machine, and looking after
your clothes and Rone's and Ted's and Tinka's and everybody's, and
the laundry, and darning socks, and going down to the Piggly Wiggly to
market, and bringing my basket home to save money on the cash-and-carry
and--EVERYTHING!"

"Well, gosh," with a certain astonishment, "I suppose maybe you do! But
talk about--Here I have to be in the office every single day, while you
can go out all afternoon and see folks and visit with the neighbors and
do any blinkin' thing you want to!"

"Yes, and a fine lot of good that does me! Just talking over the
same old things with the same old crowd, while you have all sorts of
interesting people coming in to see you at the office."

"Interesting! Cranky old dames that want to know why I haven't rented
their dear precious homes for about seven times their value, and bunch
of old crabs panning the everlasting daylights out of me because they
don't receive every cent of their rentals by three G.M. on the second of
the month! Sure! Interesting! Just as interesting as the small pox!"

"Now, George, I will not have you shouting at me that way!"

"Well, it gets my goat the way women figure out that a man doesn't do a
darn thing but sit on his chair and have lovey-dovey conferences with a
lot of classy dames and give 'em the glad eye!"

"I guess you manage to give them a glad enough eye when they do come
in."

"What do you mean? Mean I'm chasing flappers?"

"I should hope not--at your age!"

"Now you look here! You may not believe it--Of course all you see is
fat little Georgie Babbitt. Sure! Handy man around the house! Fixes the
furnace when the furnace-man doesn't show up, and pays the bills, but
dull, awful dull! Well, you may not believe it, but there's some women
that think old George Babbitt isn't such a bad scout! They think he's
not so bad-looking, not so bad that it hurts anyway, and he's got a
pretty good line of guff, and some even think he shakes a darn wicked
Walkover at dancing!"

"Yes." She spoke slowly. "I haven't much doubt that when I'm away you
manage to find people who properly appreciate you."

"Well, I just mean--" he protested, with a sound of denial. Then he was
angered into semi-honesty. "You bet I do! I find plenty of folks, and
doggone nice ones, that don't think I'm a weak-stomached baby!"

"That's exactly what I was saying! You can run around with anybody you
please, but I'm supposed to sit here and wait for you. You have the
chance to get all sorts of culture and everything, and I just stay
home--"

"Well, gosh almighty, there's nothing to prevent your reading books and
going to lectures and all that junk, is there?"

"George, I told you, I won't have you shouting at me like that! I don't
know what's come over you. You never used to speak to me in this cranky
way."

"I didn't mean to sound cranky, but gosh, it certainly makes me sore to
get the blame because you don't keep up with things."

"I'm going to! Will you help me?"

"Sure. Anything I can do to help you in the culture-grabbing line--yours
to oblige, G. F. Babbitt."

"Very well then, I want you to go to Mrs. Mudge's New Thought meeting
with me, next Sunday afternoon."

"Mrs. Who's which?"

"Mrs. Opal Emerson Mudge. The field-lecturer for the American New
Thought League. She's going to speak on 'Cultivating the Sun Spirit'
before the League of the Higher Illumination, at the Thornleigh."

"Oh, punk! New Thought! Hashed thought with a poached egg! 'Cultivating
the--' It sounds like 'Why is a mouse when it spins?' That's a fine
spiel for a good Presbyterian to be going to, when you can hear Doc
Drew!"

"Reverend Drew is a scholar and a pulpit orator and all that, but he
hasn't got the Inner Ferment, as Mrs. Mudge calls it; he hasn't any
inspiration for the New Era. Women need inspiration now. So I want you
to come, as you promised."


IV

The Zenith branch of the League of the Higher Illumination met in the
smaller ballroom at the Hotel Thornleigh, a refined apartment with pale
green walls and plaster wreaths of roses, refined parquet flooring, and
ultra-refined frail gilt chairs. Here were gathered sixty-five women and
ten men. Most of the men slouched in their chairs and wriggled, while
their wives sat rigidly at attention, but two of them--red-necked, meaty
men--were as respectably devout as their wives. They were newly rich
contractors who, having bought houses, motors, hand-painted pictures,
and gentlemanliness, were now buying a refined ready-made philosophy.
It had been a toss-up with them whether to buy New Thought, Christian
Science, or a good standard high-church model of Episcopalianism.

In the flesh, Mrs. Opal Emerson Mudge fell somewhat short of a prophetic
aspect. She was pony-built and plump, with the face of a haughty
Pekingese, a button of a nose, and arms so short that, despite her most
indignant endeavors, she could not clasp her hands in front of her as
she sat on the platform waiting. Her frock of taffeta and green velvet,
with three strings of glass beads, and large folding eye-glasses
dangling from a black ribbon, was a triumph of refinement.

Mrs. Mudge was introduced by the president of the League of the Higher
Illumination, an oldish young woman with a yearning voice, white spats,
and a mustache. She said that Mrs. Mudge would now make it plain to the
simplest intellect how the Sun Spirit could be cultivated, and they who
had been thinking about cultivating one would do well to treasure Mrs.
Mudge's words, because even Zenith (and everybody knew that Zenith stood
in the van of spiritual and New Thought progress) didn't often have
the opportunity to sit at the feet of such an inspiring Optimist and
Metaphysical Seer as Mrs. Opal Emerson Mudge, who had lived the Life of
Wider Usefulness through Concentration, and in the Silence found those
Secrets of Mental Control and the Inner Key which were immediately
going to transform and bring Peace, Power, and Prosperity to the unhappy
nations; and so, friends, would they for this precious gem-studded hour
forget the Illusions of the Seeming Real, and in the actualization of
the deep-lying Veritas pass, along with Mrs. Opal Emerson Mudge, to the
Realm Beautiful.

If Mrs. Mudge was rather pudgier than one would like one's swamis,
yogis, seers, and initiates, yet her voice had the real professional
note. It was refined and optimistic; it was overpoweringly calm; it
flowed on relentlessly, without one comma, till Babbitt was hypnotized.
Her favorite word was "always," which she pronounced olllllle-ways. Her
principal gesture was a pontifical but thoroughly ladylike blessing with
two stubby fingers.

She explained about this matter of Spiritual Saturation:

"There are those--"

Of "those" she made a linked sweetness long drawn out; a far-off
delicate call in a twilight minor. It chastely rebuked the restless
husbands, yet brought them a message of healing.

"There are those who have seen the rim and outer seeming of the Logos
there are those who have glimpsed and in enthusiasm possessed themselves
of some segment and portion of the Logos there are those who thus
flicked but not penetrated and radioactivated by the Dynamis go always
to and fro assertative that they possess and are possessed of the Logos
and the Metaphysikos but this word I bring you this concept I enlarge
that those that are not utter are not even inceptive and that holiness
is in its definitive essence always always always whole-iness and--"

It proved that the Essence of the Sun Spirit was Truth, but its Aura and
Effluxion were Cheerfulness:

"Face always the day with the dawn-laugh with the enthusiasm of the
initiate who perceives that all works together in the revolutions of
the Wheel and who answers the strictures of the Soured Souls of the
Destructionists with a Glad Affirmation--"

It went on for about an hour and seven minutes.

At the end Mrs. Mudge spoke with more vigor and punctuation:

"Now let me suggest to all of you the advantages of the Theosophical and
Pantheistic Oriental Reading Circle, which I represent. Our object is to
unite all the manifestations of the New Era into one cohesive whole--New
Thought, Christian Science, Theosophy, Vedanta, Bahaism, and the other
sparks from the one New Light. The subscription is but ten dollars
a year, and for this mere pittance the members receive not only the
monthly magazine, Pearls of Healing, but the privilege of sending right
to the president, our revered Mother Dobbs, any questions regarding
spiritual progress, matrimonial problems, health and well-being
questions, financial difficulties, and--"

They listened to her with adoring attention. They looked genteel. They
looked ironed-out. They coughed politely, and crossed their legs with
quietness, and in expensive linen handkerchiefs they blew their noses
with a delicacy altogether optimistic and refined.

As for Babbitt, he sat and suffered.

When they were blessedly out in the air again, when they drove home
through a wind smelling of snow and honest sun, he dared not speak. They
had been too near to quarreling, these days. Mrs. Babbitt forced it:

"Did you enjoy Mrs. Mudge's talk?"

"Well I--What did you get out of it?"

"Oh, it starts a person thinking. It gets you out of a routine of
ordinary thoughts."

"Well, I'll hand it to Opal she isn't ordinary, but gosh--Honest, did
that stuff mean anything to you?"

"Of course I'm not trained in metaphysics, and there was lots I couldn't
quite grasp, but I did feel it was inspiring. And she speaks so readily.
I do think you ought to have got something out of it."

"Well, I didn't! I swear, I was simply astonished, the way those women
lapped it up! Why the dickens they want to put in their time listening
to all that blaa when they--"

"It's certainly better for them than going to roadhouses and smoking and
drinking!"

"I don't know whether it is or not! Personally I don't see a whole
lot of difference. In both cases they're trying to get away from
themselves--most everybody is, these days, I guess. And I'd certainly
get a whole lot more out of hoofing it in a good lively dance, even
in some dive, than sitting looking as if my collar was too tight, and
feeling too scared to spit, and listening to Opal chewing her words."

"I'm sure you do! You're very fond of dives. No doubt you saw a lot of
them while I was away!"

"Look here! You been doing a hell of a lot of insinuating and hinting
around lately, as if I were leading a double life or something, and I'm
damn sick of it, and I don't want to hear anything more about it!"

"Why, George Babbitt! Do you realize what you're saying? Why, George, in
all our years together you've never talked to me like that!"

"It's about time then!"

"Lately you've been getting worse and worse, and now, finally, you're
cursing and swearing at me and shouting at me, and your voice so ugly
and hateful--I just shudder!"

"Oh, rats, quit exaggerating! I wasn't shouting, or swearing either."

"I wish you could hear your own voice! Maybe you don't realize how
it sounds. But even so--You never used to talk like that. You simply
COULDN'T talk this way if something dreadful hadn't happened to you."

His mind was hard. With amazement he found that he wasn't particularly
sorry. It was only with an effort that he made himself more agreeable:
"Well, gosh, I didn't mean to get sore."

"George, do you realize that we can't go on like this, getting farther
and farther apart, and you ruder and ruder to me? I just don't know
what's going to happen."

He had a moment's pity for her bewilderment; he thought of how many
deep and tender things would be hurt if they really "couldn't go on like
this." But his pity was impersonal, and he was wondering, "Wouldn't it
maybe be a good thing if--Not a divorce and all that, o' course, but
kind of a little more independence?"

While she looked at him pleadingly he drove on in a dreadful silence.

 Myra returns to Zenith, confessing her fears that George neither missed her nor needed her. As soon as George feels the pressure of obligation to satisfy Tanis while keeping the affair a secret, he is suddenly resentful of Tanis and of "women and the way they get you all tied up in complications. Still, he continues the affair somewhat carelessly and unapologetically. During an argument about George's smoking and drinking, Myra reveals that she is resentful of the fact that George gets to "run around with anybody" he pleases while she stays home, still a slave to routine. When George blindly agrees to help her gain culture, she requests that he accompany her to Mrs. Opal Emerson Mudge's New Thought meeting on Cultivating the Sun Spirit. Mrs. Mudge's speech is hypnotizing and incoherent, concluding with an announcement about the monthly magazine that costs a "mere pittance" per year. Though the audience listens with rapt adoration, Babbitt is unimpressed by this form of escapism, which upsets Myra. After another argument, George is unable to offer any assurance as Myra insinuates that their marriage is ending

